WRT: Writer Response Theory

TADS 3, a “robust, modern programming environment specially designed for creating Interactive Fiction,” is officially out in General Release 3.0.12. The freeware release comes in author and player kits for Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X, and is complemented by an admirably packaged bookshelf of documentation, including Getting Started, a Tour Guide, and system, technical, […]

Recently, Mark discussed the 2003 ELDRAS hoax in which a chatbot / author committed suicide in anticipation of imminent reincarnation. Tracing the explosion of discussion on the message board, he notes some lessons for hoaxing and viral marketing - in particular, citing a lacuna, some original news source that doesn’t exist.

When I first read about […]

Netspeak, or its phreaky (ph5e@k) kin leet (l33t), has been sneaking into schools and various narrative forms for quite some time. Here’s a Slashdot post from 2002 about its entry without a hall pass. Since instant messaging and texting is such a dominant part of youth culture, where else would it go? (According to Mobile Youth, 3.2 billion text messages sent in the UK in March 2006.) Of course, it was just a matter of time before it showed up in fiction, though not always how you’d expect.

TTYL (2004), TTFN (2006)
By Lauren Myracle

This is a pair of best-slling print-based, teen-oriented epistolary novelsl written entirely in texting. They are, to my knowledge, the only novels written entiely in this format. Author Myracle, of course, has a MySpace page for all her fans to post their messages of luv, sending their own netspeak messages back. Her next outing: l8r, g8r

I was shown this site about a year ago and have been enamoured with it ever since. It is a repository of split-screen imagery from film, TV and installation art. Here is the way James Seo described his blog when he started it in July 2005:
 
 
Split Screen is a weblog dedicated to the art of the split screen and other […]

We’ve long followed Google’s evolving toolset, whether to ponder philosophical points about digital text or learn practical lessons for developing our own research tools… or just for fun.

Here is a quick roundup of some recent Google developments that might aid the research blogger, with helpful instructions and tips:

Google Books: Full-text downloads
Google News: History
Google Scholar: Library […]