Creativity at it's best...
For those of you who don't frequent Boing Boing, you should. There's never a lack of something interesting there. (Granted, sometimes I've already seen it somewhere else first, but the Boing Boing columnists usually have some extra added bits of insight or snark that keep seeing the same thing twice from being boring.)
Daily Show on Congressional video game hearings
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart takes on Congress debating video game regulation (starts around 2:00), with predictable hilarity:
Rep Lee Terry (R-Nebraska): As a father of three young boys -- 11, 8 and 6 -- who are avid gamers, I'm very concerned about the content included in the games.
Jon Stewart: And as I stand there, watching them play these violent games, helpless to do anything about it, I can't help but wonder where the system has failed... Who wants to be the first person to sound like an out-of-touch jackass? Oh, you! Congressman Upton.
The anonymous surrealist art/performance group The Residents is selling a double-CD package, titled River Of Crime, for $14.99. The two disks inside are blank. The recordings, inspired by old-timey radio serials, and other multimedia material will be released online every other week throughout the summer for download by those who have the digital subscription code inside the CD-R package. Once the whole collection of "Crimecasts" are downloaded, the owner is meant to complete the package by burning the disks.
That's just a neat idea. People get something immediately tangible for the money they pay (the CDs and the neat case art) and then have to go back to your site every time a new bit of the drama goes up to grab it. Brilliant! (Especially if the plays are actually as good as they sound like they may be.) The best part is, they let you decide what you're going to do with your downloads (and, it appears there's going to be a lot of "extra" stuff--scripts, artwork, music, etc.). I'm actually considering buying this... but I probably won't because of the whole "just bought a new computer I can't really afford" thing.
Mapping The Blogosphere: LiveJournal
Here is an initial view of the LiveJournal portion of the blogosphere. The image maps 24,000 LiveJournal blogs using the interlinking, or citations between blogs to determine the layout. This means that blogs near the periphery have fewer links. I've also included press sites in the graph. These are the square nodes painted in pale yellow.
That's just neat. I love the idea of being able to visualize the connections made in a virtual space like LiveJournal. I know this is the same sort of thing the Feds have been doing and lots of us are up in arms about. It's more a question of application and intent than technology. What we have here is an academic use to see how the virtual world is growing in general--and it's done anonymously, there is no real identifying information directly accessible. What the Feds are doing is actively tracking specific user information in an effort to wheedle out the "bad guys" from the general population. It is a very fine line between the two.
