RSS Feed Screen Saver

Screen Shot

I just noticed that Mac OS X has a RSS feed screensaver that shows headlines in spiraling columns. When you see an item you want to read you press a key and it opens the item. It is an interesting example of live text visualization. You can see it on YouTube – RSS Feed on my Screen saver.

Quartz Composer Screen Shot

The RSS Screensaver seems to be built in a visual programming language for the Mac called Quartz Composer. From the documentation and discussions online it sounds like something one can play with easily (when I have the time.)

What would an academic screen saver look like?

T-REX: TADA Research Evaluation Exchange

T-REX logo

Stéfan Sinclair of TADA has put together an exciting evaluation exchange competition, T-REX | TADA Research Evaluation Exchange. This came out of discussions with Steve Downie about MIREX (Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange) and our discussions with the SHARCNET folk and then DHQ. The initial idea is to have a competition for ideas for tools for TAPoR, but then to migrate to a community evaluation exchange where we agree on challenges and then compare and evaluate different solutions. We hope this will be a way to move tool development forward and get recognition for it.

Thanks to Open Sky Solutions for supporting it.

Dialogue РPublished by SSHRC/Publi̩ par le CRSH

Having written a book on dialogue, (Defining Dialogue) I’m always intrigued when others call for dialogue or name some initiative dialogue.

Well, SSHRC has just published the second issue of its online e-newsletter, Dialogue and I’m going to rise to the bait.

Here goes. What is interesting about things named “dialogue” is that they are usually so named because “dialogue” is supposed to be good. In fact, it may be the last good left in an intellectual climate where there are no certainties or grounds to stand on. All that is left is some form of interaction, and dialogue is the good form of interaction (as opposed to gossiping, bickering, or fighting.)

The problem with this is that the models we have inherited for dialogue in the humanities, from Plato to Heidegger, are not quite so comfortable. This is seen especially in Plato where usually one of the interlocutors leaves unenlightened and irritated with Socrates. Dialogue is rarely good for those in it. The dialogues of Plato are aggressive, they portray posturing and misunderstanding, and they are designed to be interesting to those listening in, not the interlocutors.

So … what sort of dialogue then is SSHRC’s newsletter? Is it a scrappy Socratic tussle in front of us? No, it is a gracious praising of researchers who got grants! Is it SSHRC the gadfly engaging people who claim to know something so as to show them (and us) that they (and we) know nothing? No, SSHRC wouldn’t dare. Is it SSHRC engaging us with questions that force us to think about what we know. No, there is only a call for comments, which is about as interactive as asking what I did for my summer vacation.

In short, SSHRC has published another Dialogue that is innocent of the history or theories of dialogue. What Dialogue really is for SSHRC is public relations or advertising. Perhaps it is what Socrates taught in Aristophanes’ Clouds? Why shouldn’t SSHRC be honest and call it something like “Braggadocio“?

To be fair ,there is a sense in which what Dialogue does is document the activities of the humanities and social sciences. These activities have been called a conversation by Michael Oakeshott; in that sense Dialogue is not a dialogue with us or with anyone, but a record of great moments in the Canadian academic conversation.

As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an enquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves. (Oakeshott, The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, p. 11)

If you are interested I have a copy of my thesis about dialogue, from which the book evolved, here in PDFs of the chapters. Read it and you too can get cranky when people propose dialogue.

Interactive Matter

imatter logo

The Interactive Matter group that I and Lynn Hughes lead met this Monday and Tuesday, May 5th and 6th, 2008, to talk about theories and methodologies of interactivity. A series of excellent short papers were presented on Monday that surveyed the literature and practices of research into interactivity. Some of the presenters were Chris Salter, Sara Diamon, Ron Wakkary, Cindy Poremba, Stéfan Sinclair, Liss Platt, Shirley Madill, Susan Brown, Glen Lowry, and Jutta Treviranus. (I’m sure I missing someone.) I’m still processing this, but some of the highlights for me were:

  • Interactivity matters because it is such broad term that is used as if we understand it. There is the material dimension of interactivity, the ethical and social matters around interactivity, and the issues that matter.
  • It is time now for the digital arts and humanities to recover interactivity from scientific approaches like HCI, computer science and software engineering. While they yield interesting insights into cognition, efficiency and the engineering of interactivity – we want to look at hwo interactivity is embodied, how it has human contexts, how it has histories, and how it is imagined. That is what the arts and humanities can contribute.
  • We are interested in much more than the interactive work. We are interested in its history of production and design. We are interested in its context and reception. We are interested in how it might evolve over time and be maintained, preserved, exhibited again, or disappear.
  • We are interested in practices that approach interactivity not as something to be observed and critiques, but something that is learned through interaction. We imagine practices that bridge the practices of discovery of art, design and the humanities.

Personalized Online Electronic Text Services (POETS)

I just came across a group at the Kyoto Notre Dame University who are building small text utilities called, Personalized Online Electronic Text Services (POETS). They have a nice English Vocabulary Assistant (EVA) WordNet 3.0 Vocabulary Helper which takes a word, looks it up in WordNet and gives you an exhaustive entry. They also have a Eva Text Analysis service that will, for example, link all words in a text except for stop words, to the Vocabulary Helper entry.

Adonomics: Facebook Analytics

Adonomics offers statistics for Facebook plugins so you can see which developers have the most installs. They give you emebedable code so you can track, for example, daily active users of an individual plugin like FunWall:

Adonomics also provides a valuation for plugins and a space for developers to try to sell plugins. To developers they offer services like:

Adonomics helps Facebook developers and owners take their applications through the three key phases of Growth, Engagement, and Monetization (GEM). Whether you’re interested in

1. Growing your app by designing it to spread virally
2. Engaging your app’s user base activating key users
3. Monetizing your app by running third-party ads, signing up sponsors, or selling it outright

Adonomics is your best source for information on what works (and what doesn’t). We’re dedicated to sharing the best practices and helping you get the most out of the Facebook platform.

Thanks to Shawn for this.

The potted expert on CHCH

Image off video

I’ve just used up 5 of my 15 minutes of fame as a local computer games expert in Hamilton. CHCH, our local television channel has a segment on Grand Theft Auto IV yesterday and they interviewed me and Jacob. (See the video here.)

They should have interviewed Andrew Mactavish, but he is on leave and I’m teaching his games course. My sense from following the news is that the story is not playing out in the mainstream the way I expected – the mainstream news are more intrigued by GTA 4 and its reception in the gaming community. Of course, as Andrew pointed out in a conversation, Rockstar could have hidden some provocative parts to be discovered which will stir things up.

I note that the interview with me was taken in the Lyons Instructional Media Centre‘s game viewing room. How many libraries have one of those?

Grand Theft Auto IV: Panic Magnet or Cultural Criticism

Screen Capture
Well, Grand Theft Auto IV is on sale today and the news is predicting it “will break sales records.” More importantly the media are warming up for a juicy story about game violence while the gaming news is ready for the moral panic of the mainstream media. Take Kotaku:

One might also suspect that, when the game is finally release (sic), opportunistic, fear mongering elected officials, clueless mainstream media and glory seeking attorneys may find extra content not listed, including Virtual Rape, Cop Killing, Overt Racism, Gerbil Abuse, Being On Someone’s Lawn and Buggery. We’re looking forward to a fun ride.

I think the gaming community expects that GTA IV is going to be a magnet for media stories about violence and videogames. Remember that hard core gamers have been following GTA 4 for a while and thinking about its reception while the audience of the mainstream news (if there is such a thing left) are just waking up to it as the stories go mainstream. Rockstar may even have placed some content designed to spark controversy since nothing sells games like controversy, even when the game is rated Mature. In the case of gaming, the media have little credibility compared to the narrow gaming channels that gamers read, but gamers love to have their opinions of n00bs confirmed when the mainstream seems to parachute in the day before a game is released or when some kid goes postal. Thus we end up with two solitudes that feed off misunderstanding each other: parents who can panic after reading that they should and gamers frustrated that they aren’t understood when they knew they wouldn’t be. That’s the essence of commedia – the fun of watching groups creatively misunderstand each other in public. GTA IV promises to be another chapter in a comedy of misunderstanding that goes back to Socrates complaining about the poets teaching youth to practice disreputable characters (and Aristophanes making fun of him doing so.) I note that Rockstar has made a brilliant first move on the Information page of the web site for the game by stealing some cultural criticism high-ground:

What does the American Dream mean today?

For Niko Bellic, fresh off the boat from Europe, it is the hope he can escape his past.

For his cousin, Roman, it is the vision that together they can find fortune in Liberty City, gateway to the land of opportunity.

As they slip into debt and are dragged into a criminal underworld by a series of shysters, thieves and sociopaths, they discover that the reality is very different from the dream in a city that worships money and status, and is heaven for those who have them and a living nightmare for those who don’t.

Think about it – a Scottish game development company making a game that claims to critique the emptiness of the American dream in order to make lots of money the American way. But seriously, some interesting aspects of the story are:

  • How do companies manage blockbuster games? GTA 4 was delayed (possibly to avoid other big releases like Halo 3) and now seems to have been well timed (and built up) to take off. Given how much it cost to develop GTA 4, the launch probably has to be carefully staged to be perceived as the next “fastest-selling” so that they make a profit. How do they stage blockbusters? Should we care about them?
  • How do blockbuster games intersect with other forms of entertainment “properties”? Will GTA 4 really affect movie going among young men by taking them off the streets and out of the theatres (and into the gaming room) for a few weeks? Will it have a measurable effect on sales of other types of entertainment as some speculate?
  • A related question is how they manage the tie-in with Amazon for music? I think games like GTA 4 have real potential to sell other merchandise – especially music, given the way radio stations entertain in the game. They apparently have some deal for selling tunes through the game in the US. Will it have an effect on Amazon’s music sales?
  • How effective is the game engine (Euphoria) that they are using? GTA 4 is one of the first major games to use Euphoria – will it make a difference players respond to?

Old Bailey Online

Image from Web Page
The Globe and Mail today had a story about a humanities computing project, the Old Bailey Online – The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 – Central Criminal Court. The story is titled, A crime time machine (Tuesday, April 29, 2008, Page A2) and is really quite nice. That the story appears on the second page of our national newspaper shows how humanities computing projects are of general interest (especially if they are about criminals.) The introduction on the web site reads,

A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.

One thing that is interesting is that they have Google Ads down the left-hand side, which is unusual for an academic project.

Bravo to the team that developed it!