What is a hacker? Unfortunately, to most people, it’s a person who breaks into another person’s computer (or a nuclear command center if you’re making a movie.) But to Gina Trapani, it’s anyone who finds an unconventional way of doing things. That’s the philosophy of her site Lifehacker (which is a totally awesome site, if […]
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? In the following video presentation, Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.
Okay, so maybe we have a little bit of a problem. Boardgames in this house have achieved a kind of holy status. At first it started out with just a few games. The Settlers of Catan, back in 2002, followed by Puerto Rico. But very quickly, it became apparent that playing board games — especially […]
From Wikipedia: In 1909, Mark Twain is quoted as saying: I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: […]
You may have noticed that Facebook isn’t exactly my favorite social media network. There are 100 reasons not to like Facebook, but now I have another one. According to the Financial Times, Facebook traffic has just surpassed Google. Over the last year the company has seen phenomenal growth, especially among the baby boomer crowd. But […]
A secret document has revealed US government officials have so many programs of agents working undercover on social networking sites that they have had to create a coordination program. The Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained the document under freedom of information laws. The document, “Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites” is authored by the […]
In celebration of Pi Day last Sunday, many pies were baked and shared. ScienceBlogs, together with Serious Eats, held a Pi Day Bake-Off. They received 35 entries, which have been narrowed down to ten finalists. Not only are these “pi pies” decorated in a mathematically clever way, they look scrumptious! See the full-size pictures at […]
The Internet grew 20% more hateful in the past year according to new figures. That’s not in terms of losers nitpicking on forum flame wars, but rather racist and other hurtful material, plus terrorist propaganda. The report comes from the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Tolerance, named after a Jewish holocaust survivor who later pursued those […]