Cute baby animals and a little typographical humor for this last week of the semester.No one in *this* class would ever attempt a tactic so lacking in subtlety as this, of course. 😉

Read “13 Simple Steps to Get You Through a Rough Day.”

This NYT article might be of interest — particularly to those of you with projects that teach some kind of scripting or programming language. It describes the recent rise of businesses or services that promise to help people learn to code or otherwise become more fluent in the language of computers.

The market for night classes and online instruction in programming and Web construction, as well as for iPhone apps that teach, is booming. Those jumping on board say they are preparing for a future in which the Internet is the foundation for entertainment, education and nearly everything else. Knowing how the digital pieces fit together, they say, will be crucial to ensuring that they are not left in the dark ages.

Below is the documentary on Charles and Ray Eames that I mentioned in class today — for the moment, you can still watch it online. If you’re at all interested in design, you should know about this husband and wife duo.

You’ve probably sat on furniture they’ve designed or perhaps you viewed their film Powers of Ten in high school.

The documentary (narrated by James Franco) is a fascinating glimpse into the Eames’s creative process, the workplace culture of their studio, and the dynamics of this husband-wife collaboration during a time when women were expected to stay in the home.

Here’s a Salon article about the documentary (but if you’re short on time, I’d just watch the documentary itself, which is well done).

Here’s what Google recommends you do to prepare for an interview with them:

• Know what interests you about Google and why you’ve applied.
• Familiarize yourself with Google’s products and services. Research our competitors.
• If you are interviewing for a software engineering or technical role, be ready to answer high-level technical questions on data-structures and algorithms. We would like you to code up your answers on boards with our engineers.
• Familiarize yourself with the job description you are interested in.
• If you are interviewing for a software engineering role then you may first want to visit the website www.topcoder.com. Please launch the “Arena” widget and go to the practice rooms where you can solve problems in the first and second division.
• Ensure you can substantiate anything your CV/resume says – for instance, if you list Java or Haskell as your key programming language, questions about this are fair game and may be asked of you.

Unrelatedly, here are the two funny references to kerning that came up in class awhile back: Addy commercial and this comic from Kirstyn.

In In the Plex we read a little about Google’s policies re: not removing information from its searches, even if it poses a threat to someone, even if it is embarrassing to its CEO.

New proposed legislation in the EU would give people the right to be “forgotten” by having information about them blocked or removed from the Internet (compromising Facebook photos, to give just one example). Some lawyers warn that, if passed, this legislation would threaten free speech.

Thought this recent NYT review of OnLive Desktop Plus might be of interest to some of you as another example of developments in cloud computing.

You’re probably paying something like $60 a month for high-speed Internet. I’m paying $5 a month, and my connection is 1,000 times faster.

 

Your iPad can’t play Flash videos on the Web. Mine can.

Your copy of Windows needs constant updating and patching and protection against viruses and spyware. Mine is always clean and always up-to-date.

[…]

That’s pretty impressive — but not as impressive as what’s going on behind the scenes. The PC that’s driving your iPad Windows experience is, in fact, a “farm” of computers at one of three data centers thousands of miles away. Every time you tap the screen, scroll a list or type on the on-screen keyboard, you’re sending signals to those distant computers. The screen image is blasted back to your iPad with astonishingly little lag.

This week’s reading reminded me of this 2006 TED video; the speaker argues that schools kill creativity: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Our Levy reading for Tuesday reminded me of this video from a few years back — The Machine is Us/ing Us — particularly the part about “teaching the machine.” This also illustrates a particular style of “essay” — one created using some of the motion screen capture programs we’ve discussed before.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE[/youtube]

Here’s another example with a different feel: Desktop MCing.