» I recently linked to an item about Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a service which pays people a small amount to perform tasks that are easy for them, but hard for computers. Now, meet Mycroft, a company that plans to distribute microtasks across the Web via banner ads. If I were on the Board of Directors, I would instantly improve the payment scheme by allowing people to apply earned credits toward participating charities. I think this would be a strong incentive for some people who otherwise will quickly lose interest in the whole scheme.
Mycroft, by the way, is named after Sherlock Holmes's mysterious older brother, a "sort of human computer". [ 08/04/06 ]
» More film commentary released to iPod. This time, it's by the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000: Rifftrax. Now when will my favorite film directors start critiquing their favorite films? (via rw) [ 07/26/06 ]
» As gaming matures, designers are experimenting with "serious games" that aim to illustrate their political views, spur players into humanitarian action, or even to see the other side of an entrenched world view.
"When they hear about Peacemaker, people sometimes go, 'What? A computer game about the Middle East?'" admits Asi Burak, the Israeli-born graduate student who developed it with a team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "But people get very engaged. They really try very hard to get a solution. Even after one hour or two hours, they’d come to me and say, you know, I know more about the conflict than when I’ve read newspapers for 10 years." [...]
When Mr. Burak first showed Peacemaker to Israelis and Palestinians, he found that they were most interested in playing as their own "side." But when he pushed them to switch positions they developed a more nuanced sense of why the other side acted as it did. In Qatar several people told him that "they kind of understood more the pressures the Israeli prime minister has."
Now the MacArthur Foundation is issuing grants to develop persuasive games. (thanks, jjg!) [ 07/25/06 ]
» Citizen Journalism on Flickr: Pictures of the wreckage in Lebanon on Flickr. You can also search for "Beirut" and
"Israel" or the Middle East Israel-Lebanon-War cluster to see recent images. (via dp) [ 07/24/06 ]
