Saturday 27 March 2010

The Weekly Links Post: No. 4

An entirely subjective weekly selection of 15 links, roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below:

Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now that it's no longer in the print edition).

Wednesday was Ada Lovelace Day; Guardian Tech columnists Mercedes Bunz and Jemima Kiss offer their personal tributes to women in technology here and here.

Could games become a force for more than just entertainment? Jane McGonigal believes so. (And here's her TED talk).

Facebook causes syphilis... if you misquote unsupported speculation and have newspapers to sell.

What you need to know about the Digital Economy Bill. Probably.

Apparently there's an etiquette to posting on Comment is Free. (Well, that's what the article says).

Books, Writing & Storytelling

Overcoming creative block, the ISO50 blog way. (Link courtesy of @nibus).

Writers talking about writing: useful and inspiring quotes selected from The Paris Review Interviews Vols. 1 - 4 by the Inkslinger blog.

Social Media

Facebook threatens to sue The Daily Mail, over claims of misrepresentation and damage to its reputation. (No word yet whether Zuckerberg's engaging anyone re. the syphilis stories).

Useful Apps & Downloads

For the Chrome browser: ExtensionFM, in effect, creates a music library from the music sites you visit. It's still pre-release, and invitation only, but you can sign up for invitations. (I've been using it for a few days now; a full review will follow in the next couple of days...)

For Firefox: Twones does much the same job, but with more social features. Plus, it's at a more advanced stage of the development process.

Games & Other Distractions

It's a game, it's a maze, it's a story. It's a spiralling deconstruction of all three. It's Ergon / Logos.

Music

Beautiful and idiosyncratic MP3 blog Motel de Moka is posting its Top 200 Tracks of the 2000s - the first 180 tracks are already available for download, the final 20 are due any day now...

Audiotool.com lets you make or remix music in your browser. (Can also serve as a handy reminder that you're just not that musical... Sigh).

Miscellaneous

Dweeb? Nerd? Dork? Geek? What's the difference? Here's a Venn diagram to clear up the matter once and for all. (Link courtesy of @patroclus).

Ever found yourself registering at temp agency after temp agency after temp agency, desperate for just one more hit of that MS Word competency test? No, me neither; but apparently that hasn't stopped Microsoft from creating Ribbon Hero.

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