From 1983. I remember reading this book obsessively as I tried to develop my own versions of Zork . I was in middle school learning how to write a language parser. Nerd!
470 N=1 480 IF MID$(A$,N,1)=" " THEN C$=MID$(A$,N+1,3): IF LEFT$(C$,1)<>" " THEN 530 ELSE 500
Relying on the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to guide you while forgetting that sometimes that produces shoddy folk-art and lowest common denominator output.
Technically I shouldn’t use the word ‘tard’ since it is offensive to people with mental disabilities. But the people I’ve met with mental disabilities are about 10x more skilled than some webtards I find online.
Andy Sernovitz (blog), author of Word of Mouth Marketing and general marketing bad-ass is hosting a small-group word of mouth marketing seminar. Usually he only does private training for companies at a very large price, so this is a rare chance for 50 people to get the best introduction to word of mouth that there is.
We’ve arranged for a $250 discount for our clients. Use code "weloveblogwild" when you register.
This is a very practical, hands-on course. In one intense day, you will:
Andy promises you will learn a repeatable, proven marketing framework that is easy to execute, affordable, and provides measurable results within 60 days.
More information: http://events.gaspedal.com
Chicago: July 30 and September 4
Pass it on: http://events.gaspedal.com/banners
I like how we’ve now coined a word for a vacation where you don’t have enough money to leave the house: staycations.
AAA Vice President Mark Brown says the slowing economy and high fuel prices "have pushed some Americans to what we call the traveling tipping point. It’s clear that a small number of us may choose to stay home … and relax with friends and family rather than take a vacation. Gas prices appear to "have nowhere to go but up and consumers and airlines in the United States are being dragged along for a very uncomfortable ride," Brown says. Economics aside, "staying at home for a vacation can be enormously restorative and transformative, and fits much, much better into a lot of people’s schedules and logistics," says Kristie McLean, a life coach in Seattle, Washington.
Poor people call this ’staying at home.’ Not even poor people - most people. But no, we have to have special name when affluent people do it that says ‘I could go on vacation but it is all just so pricey.’
When we turn thrift into a trend you know this capitalist consumerist car-worshipping culture is in trouble.
A thread on Metafilter looks back at Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz pizza places where a cavalcade of animatronics would serenade youngsters as they alternately tossed pizza down their gullets and played video games. One commenter boils it down:
Robot furries that sing, entertain you, then bring you carbs.
That made me smile.
Usability and design touches us all day, every day - every single item around you right now was designed by someone, somewhere with varying degrees of attention to your needs and goals. ATMs are a huge exercise in design and functionality that has to be immediately accessible and useful and obvious. For me they are never fast enough and the latest ones that suck up cash without an envelope make me skittish.
Pentagram design company just finished up design for 7,000 Wells Fargo Bank ATMS.
"From looking at usage statistics, the design team learned that the single-most used feature of an ATM is the cash withdrawal. Even though many more services are available, most people simply want to be able to quickly and safely punch in their security code, get the cash, and leave. The objective for the new UI was to continue to offer quick and easy cash withdrawals, while making the other services more visible and accessible."
They built the design around the most used feature and went from there.
Downloading the Blurb Bookmaker that helps you make books to then be printed by the Blurb service. Here’s their instructions on installation for a Mac:
Drag the BookSmart folder into your Applications folder, then drop it like it’s hot.
I love that.
In a critique of the Lilith-sphere:
It’s just odd that while there has been a significant advance in sites by and for women, much of what is being produced replicates, rather than revolutionizes, the template set down by women’s magazines for decades. "The lack of evolution is disappointing to me," said Caterina Fake, one of the founders of Flickr.com. "Back in 1996, it was going to be this brave new world where women were finally going to take control of their stories, and to me, it is often more a crushing sameness."
It is the flip-side of feminist advancement: Women can be just as single-minded, consumerist-maddened and driven by pop culture trash as men.
Advertising is driving content. As long as that is the case blog readers will be partitioned off into lifestyles that can be pitched in aggregate.
Why do people want to insist that women’s media should be different than it already is? Just because it is online? There are thousands of women blogging everyday about diverse topics that have nothing to do with a not-so-fresh feeling. It is you fault if you can’t find them.
Mötley Crüe, who simultaneously managed to ruin umlats and a timeless Shakespeare reference at one time, released one of their new singles to players of the Rock Star video game. Rock Star is in the same vein as Guitar Hero, instead of a joystick you have a fake guitar and have to match the screen as you play rock songs from a wide variety of artists. Rock Star allows players to download new songs as they come out and rock out to their favorite musicians.
Motley Crue released a single to iTunes for people to listen to as well as a version on Rock Star - the one you can listen and sing and play along to.
According to data provided by the band’s management, Tenth Street Entertainment, the track was downloaded more than 47,000 times via the Xbox 360 version of the game alone in the first week after it became available. ("Rock Band" publisher MTV Networks was unable to independently verify these figures, and total downloads that include the PlayStation 3 version of the game were not available.) By comparison, the same track received slightly more than 10,000 downloads via digital services like iTunes and Amazon, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Nutshell: I’d rather make your song my own as a participant than just be a spectator.
I’ll probably always blog about things related to Six Apart after their big splashes - I’m always skittish about saying something too early.
Yesterday Six Apart released TypePad Antispam a service that any blogger can use to guard their blog against spam. Here’s how it works:
Each time a comment or trackback or pingback is submitted to your blog, TypePad Antispam takes a look at it to see if there’s anything fishy going on:
TypePad AntiSpam flags suspicious comments as spam and they are either held for you to approve or discarded and no longer an annoyance.
Automattic, the makers of WordPress, have a similar system called Akismet that is used by thousands of bloggers as well. The trouble is if you are a successful blogger or make income from your blog you have to pay for a license to use Akismet. TypePad AntiSpam is a completely free service for anyone to use no matter how popular their blog is or how many comments they get.
It is a ’self-learning’ system meaning that as it sifts through more comments and learns which ones are spam and which ones aren’t, it’ll only get better (and we will be watching it to make sure it doesn’t become self-aware). And it is open-sourced as well, if you think you can do an anti-spam service better you can grab the code and off you go. They’ve already been training the system on TypePad comments for quite a while so it is pretty highly-tuned and expanding it to more blogs and bloggers will only make it stronger.
TechCrunch had secretly done the Folgers switch with TypePad Antispam and reports back:
But last week we switched to TypePad AntiSpam as a test, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. After a week I’m pleased to say that as good as Akismet is, the TypePad product has performed as good or better for us.
Part of our launch is also a broadening of ‘what TypePad means.’ Our BlogIt application for Facebook is ‘powered by TypePad’ even though you can post to any blog platform. TypePad Antispam is a further extension of creating a toolbox for bloggers of all shapes, sizes and platforms so they can spend less time managing their blogs and more time posting, creating community, conversation and income.
Congrats to the brainiacs down the hall that worked hard on this!
I’ve been beta testing this on my blogs that are WordPress-powered and it works bing-bang-boom fantastic!
Update: Just got back from our weekly meeting and realized things I need to kinda emphasize are that this is really not a service in spite of our competitors but part of Six Apart’s commitment to the overall health of the blogosphere. I was thinking about it like infrastructure.
My name is Andy Wibbels. I'm the author of Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging and I've helped hundreds of businesses all over the world get started blogging, increase traffic and make money online. I am a Marketing Manager at Six Apart, creators of Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. Contact me today to learn more. Full bio
