"Unless you design, build, experiment and test in the real world in a tight loop, you can spend a lot of time on the wrong problems" Yep.

Super-good article about wargames, through the lens of the Connections conference, that considers their relevance and what they have to teach, especially within games that aren't about war or conflict.

Valve's publications page, with PDFs of papers/talks they've done. Lots of good stuff here.

"The laser has become vital for our way of life, yet no researcher who worked on it after Einstein's paper could have predicted what would emerge. If Mandelson had had anything to do with it, we'd be reading barcodes by flashlight."

"This guidebook is a practical “how-to” manual on the conduct of effective nation-building. It is organized around the constituent elements that make up any nation-building mission: military, police, rule of law, humanitarian relief, governance, economic stabilization, democratization, and development. The chapters describe how each of these components should be organized and employed, how much of each is likely to be needed, and the likely cost." Not your average "for dummies" book, then.

Castronova's paper on whether the Law of Demand, as it works in the real world, also works in the virtual.

"Daily deep-dive analysis of a specimen from the modern world's most exciting communication medium for penis humor."

"The results from two surveys, based on responses from over 2,500 people who participate in an Internet chat group focused on video games, found that the inclusion of violent content did nothing to enhance players’ enjoyment. What did matter was feeling in control and feeling competent. “Games give autonomy, the freedom to take lots of different directions and approaches,” says Ryan."

danah's PhD dissertation. I need to bookmark this, and have not read it yet, but am sure, at some point, I am going to plough through it, for work, recreation, or (most likely) a bit of both. Until then: just a bookmark.

"Slowly, over time, a page typeset in 1771 might start to get a whole new life, thanks to the growing authority we grant it through that elemental gesture of making a link." And this is why we need to empower the socialised book, not just through Google Books, but through the physical things themselves.

"There was a correlation between their performance on the game and their improvement on certain cognitive tests, Kramer said. Those who did well in the game also improved the most on switching between tasks. They also tended to do better on tests of working memory." Playing the game (Rise of Nations) didn't affect all tasks, but it had improvements on some - seemingly those involving task and process management.

"The truth is that regular PC games and console games have begun overshooting the market for quite some time now. What is described as a ‘casual game’ used to be the ‘bread and butter’ of the Game Industry not too many years ago." Interesting, if perhaps a tad overwritten; some nice insight about the nature of gamings' demographics.

"We MUST keep arguing for, and ensure, that all our young people are valued, challenged and that the highest expectation what they can do and where they can go is the minimum they experience when they are in the education system. We’re failing them if we don't and if that's the case then get somebody in who can do it." Yes.

Some interesting user research, especially when it comes to understandings of the device, and perceptions of the App Store. It's amazing how people's attitude to price changes when you've got a small screen, a market saturated with cheap goods, and a product that isn't in a box.

Science doctoral candidates attempt to communicate their thesis subjects through the medium of dance. The winners get time with a professional choreographer to make the whole thing better, and to see it performed by professional dancers at the end. Crazy, wonderful.

Man, SIGGRAPH papers have the best titles. This is a lot of seriously hardcore, cutting edge, graphic-programming nous. Also: "jiggly fluids".

"Dolores Labs paid MechaTurks to apply labels to 10,000 color swatches." Then they built network graphs out of them. Very nice.

"With money, it seems, it is not familiarity, but unfamiliarity that breeds contempt." People are less good at estimating the value of unfamiliar currency, no matter what it says on it.

Dan Saffer's talk from Institute of Design’s 2007 Design Research conference is now available online. Entitled "How To Lie With Design Research", it's an entertaining look at the many ways you can do evil things with research. Made me chuckle quite a lo

Lots of interesting numbers here...

Guest edited by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison: a special issue of the JCMC on social network sites. Must return to this, because there's lots to sink one's teeth into.

A wicked problem is one for which each attempt to create a solution changes the understanding of the problem.

First half of the interview at WWMNA.

What sort of interface semantics would move computer-human interaction design out of the often awkward, frustrating Proterozoic era we currently inhabit, into a more habitable, lively, human-scaled era for computer-human interfaces?

Friendship helps people write community into being in social network sites. Through these imagined egocentric communities, participants are able to express who they are and locate themselves culturally.

A perceptive and detailed analysis of the Dunbar Number - and why some of the hype around it is misguided.

Fairly old now, but some great notes from Henry Jenkins.

In the paper we present two taxonomies of tagging, the first dedicated to design decisions in tagging systems, and the second to the incentives that drive people to tag therein.

My research is concerned with algorithms that exploit the combinatorial structure of networks and information.

Awesome - Julian starts building a game of Battleships played out in the real world and Google Earth, using a mobile phone as a geolocator. It'll be interesting to see how this develops

"The IDF’s strategy of ‘walking through walls’ involves a conception of the city as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare – a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux." - Fascinating article on why Isra

Julian Bleecker on potential (slower) alternatives to email.

Julian Bleecker commenting on Theory Objects: "A Theory Object is a kind of Theory Object"

worth going through and following up