July 2010
Grand Theft Auto - An apology →
ON 21 July we published an article claiming that the video games company Rockstar Games were planning to release a version of their popular Grand Theft Auto video games series titled “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.
We also published what we claimed would be the cover of this game, solicited comments from a family member impacted by the recent tragedy and criticised Rockstar Games for their...
“I want you to teach our kids internet stuff.”
– Heather, in reference to that Jessi Slaughter thing. I love that she thinks about this stuff—a surprising number of people still don’t. I think in today’s society this kind of thing should be as much a given as a parenting responsibility as teaching your kid to ride a bike or about...
The Web Means the End of Forgetting →
Technological advances have often presented new threats to privacy. In 1890, in perhaps the most famous article on privacy ever written, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis complained that because of new technology — like the Kodak camera and the tabloid press — “gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious but has become a trade.” But the mild society gossip of the Gilded Age...
The Mail's online miracle: or how to get paid... →
The Daily Mail, meanwhile, are doing pretty well.
Take the Mail in print. Around 1.9 million punters buying a copy every day, which means 4,881,000 readers scanning their favourite sheet each morning. And online, the growth from nothing much four years ago to 40,500,000 unique browsers a month is verging on the phenomenal: up 72% year on year.
They’re making money without a paywall....
Times loses almost 90% of online readership →
Data from the web metrics company Experian Hitwise shows that only 25.6% of such users sign up and proceed to a Times web page; based on custom categories (created at the Guardian) that have been used to track the performance of major UK press titles online, visits to the Times site have fallen to 4.16% of UK quality press online traffic, compared with 15% before it made registration compulsory...
Hidden Objects
I just realised how many hidden object games there are. (Which is to say, the game is simply a matter of finding hidden objects within a static scene.) There are so many of them. The casual gaming industry seems to be churning these things out.
Obviously, they appeal to enough people that it’s profitable, but why? I tried a few and it’s literally just finding hidden objects....
Fuck Frogs
Here’s a little something you probably don’t know about the frogs around here. That ribbit sound they make? They actually don’t do it very often, and when they do it’s territorial. “My turf, fuck off,” basically. One noise you get much more used to hearing is a similarly onomatopoeic splat. Frogs, despite having perfectly useful legs, refuse to walk, instead...
When Social Media goes wrong: Gillian McKeith... →
penllawen:
I wanted to write something up about this myself but I won’t have time tonight; instead I’m going to link to this very thorough writeup by David Naylor.
The summary, to whet your appetite: Gillian McKeith, famous quack (her of You Are What You Eat and the owl-on-speed eyes) called Ben Goldacre (science journalist par excellence) a liar on Twitter. She also become embroiled in a...
Newspaper to Charge People to Comment →
sasquatchmedia:
In the category of putting your money where your mouth is: I have no idea if people will be willing to pay to comment — if they’re reluctant to pay for online news why would they pay to comment on news? — but I’ll sure be watching this.
RJD2 - “The Takeoff”
RJD2 + Jean...
Methane bubble "doomsday" story debunked →
io9 debunks the world-ending exploding methane bubble I mentioned the other day. I don’t know why they have to be so sneery about it, but I suppose that’s just the Gawker way.
Apparently a bunch of news orgs picked the story up, which is unsettling. Some guy on the internet being taken in by this is one thing, a news organization being taken in by it, and not doing any fact-checking...
Nova Solus – Reefersleep →
inky:
Released my first album! It’s called Reefersleep and it looks something like this:
Dark ambient music inspired by space, both real and sci-fi. You can download it for €5 (approx. $6.30).
Just for this week, Tumblr followers can get 15% off with the promo code “reblogged” (subtle)!
What Was The Real Probability of Paul the Octopus... →
nsbarr does the math on Paul the octopus’s World Cup predictions.
Conclusion: that fucking octopus is a genius.
"Rupert Murdoch may be evil, but that doesn't mean... →
The media mogul has been dismissed for introducing his Times paywall, but what if it actually works?
David Mitchell has a great column on the Times’ paywall in today’s Guardian. This bit in particular echoes something I wondered about when the Guardian published a gloating piece welcoming its new readers abandoning ship from the Times a few weeks ago:
By implying that it...
How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a... →
A little light Sunday reading for you.
If the methane bubble—a bubble that could be as big as 20 miles wide—erupts with titanic force from the seabed into the Gulf, every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will immediately sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists participating in the salvage operation will die instantly.
...
Deep Throat →
Turns out competitive eating is actually a “thing” in the US. So much so that if you’re able to down 68 hotdogs within 10 minutes you can help yourself to an O-1 visa for people with extraordinary ability in their field:
But competitive eating has become more than professional. According to Kobayashi, it’s now government-sanctioned. “I recently received a O-1 visa...
I KNOW YOU! I KNOW I KNOW YOU! →
These were the words said to me as I was pondering the idea of buying a donut to go with my cheap wine on Saturday night. It has been 90’s every day and humid as hell, so by 8:30PM, you can imagine how lovely I look. I often walk to the grocery store not caring what I look like because I DON’T KNOW ANYONE HERE. Imagine my horror and surprise when I hear those words coming from an gorgeous and...
Semantic satiation →
Semantic satiation (also semantic saturation) is a cognitive neuroscience phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who can only process the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.
This is one of those things that makes me expect a chorus of “me too” in the reblogs, but this is my favourite part:
Another application...
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Clay Shirky on the Paywall
This Guardian piece purports to be about Clay Shirky’s thoughts on the Times’ paywall experiment1, but only really devotes one paragraph to it. It’s worth repeating though:
“Everyone’s waiting to see what will happen with the paywall – it’s the big question. But I think it will underperform. On a purely financial calculation, I don’t think the numbers...
Candi Redd - “Independent Bitches”
I...
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Paywall Miscellany
Here’s a pretty good summary of The Times’ paywall experiment, launched this week. I’m sure the industry will be keeping a pretty close eye on how that goes.
Worth remembering is that this is the first publication (in the UK, at least) to start charging for general content. That is to say, news one could perfectly easily get elsewhere free of charge. The question seems to be...
