Category Archives: Web

We Make Stories: Oddly Deceptive Membership Site from Penguin Books

by Editor

Penguin’s Puffin Books has a new membership site called We Make Stories, where kids can use an online tool to create stories.  There are several types of story creation, including a remix tool to use on existing classic tales, a map maker, and a comic book style creator.  It’s all drag and drop type stuff and is intended to teach creativity and encourage literacy.

While this is reasonably fun-looking, I cannot understand why a site would present itself for pay membership and not really give any useful demonstration versions of its tools.  There is a single demo based on remixing old stories, but this is not sufficient to make me want to offer $9.99.  That price, by the way, is very effectively hidden from view and presented in a rather disturbing manner.  Here’s what I mean:

1. First create a user name and password and give us your parent’s email address.

2. Your parent will then get an email asking them to pay for the membership (£5.99/$9.99).

3. Once your parent has paid this, your membership will be activated and you can start to play all the games.

Those are the instruction on the sign-up page.  So kids are expected to blunder forth and sign up without the benefit of an effective demonstration.  Give away a parent’s email address without permission.  Then the parent receives an email demanding money.  No sir.  Absolutely not.  You put the price in big print on the front page and you don’t mislead children into presenting their parents with an unexpected request for money.  Everything should be up-front and visible right at the beginning.  I just can’t believe what I’m seeing online from a major publisher.  Perhaps we have here an example of how the publishing industry intends to get money out of people – by tricking their children.

Is Amazon Run by a Simpleton?

by Editor

Tim O’Reilly has posted quotes from an interview with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

“We’ve co-evolved with our tools for thousands of years,” he says, explaining how ease of Kindle buying changes behavior.

“Reading is an important enough activity that it deserves a purpose-built device….It’s a myth that multi-purpose devices are always better…. I like my phone… I like my swiss army knife too, but I’m also happy to have a set of steak knives.”

“I get grumpy now when I have to read a physical book….The physical book has had a great 500 year run, but it’s time to change.”

Hmmm.  First of all, anyone who uses the expression ‘swiss army knife’ in a conversation is skating on very thin ice because if he actually owns one he understands perfectly well that those things are not ‘multi-purpose’ at all.  And no army in the world carries them.  Secondly, if Mr. Bezos is grumpy when he has to read a physical book, he should get out of the bloody book selling business.  What a simpleton.  During Amazon’s entire history of steady growth as the Wal-Mart of the internet, I have never heard Mr. Bezos utter a single intelligent or captivating remark.

Thirdly, I think it is very clear that Mr. Bezos gets grumpy whenever he has to read anything at all.

Bob Dylan Needs a Blog

by Editor

This is Bob Dylan with his typewriter.  I got the image from a nice blog called Daily Dose of Dylan.  I know Mr. Dylan really likes playing his music everywhere and I sure like listening to him when he does it.  But I have a message for him too: Hey, you with the boots, you really should make a blog and write in it.  Not a fake one.  A real one that you write for on a laptop in airports and stuff like that.  Or on long bus rides.  That would be something I’d read.  I always wonder what a blog by Jack Kerouac might have been like had he been around to write one.  I don’t want to die without knowing what a Bob Dylan blog would be like.

Gutenberg Bible Coming Online From Cambridge University

by Editor

The Gutenberg Bible from approximately 1455 was the first book printed in Europe with moveable metal type.  The BBC reports that Cambridge University is preparing to make a scan of this book available online.  Scholars from around the world will soon have access to one of the first printed books in history.  The university will also release the first printed edition of Homer’s works.

While this is good news, one does have to wonder what’s taken so long.

Word Bullets are Destabilizing Guatemala’s Government

by Editor | 1 Comment

The Guatemalan Twitter user named Jean Anleu Fernández who was arrested for making a Twitter post that suggested people should remove their money from the Banrural in order to help break the backs of corrupt politicians has been released from jail and placed under house arrest.  In the video above, you can watch as he greets his friends and makes a Twitter post while in handcuffs.  In one of the most fascinating recent examples of the battle for free expression we are watching a normal guy get persecuted by a Western nation for simply posting his thoughts on the internet.  He has been charged with inciting financial panic and attempting to cause a run on the bank.  I actually think his idea for pulling money out of the bank is a very good one and I fully support his idea.  Why not?  If Guatemala is so afraid of a run on its bank, then it either needs a new bank or a new government.  Perhaps both.  I think that, on the basis of what we are seeing in Guatemala, both the bank and the country’s government should be eliminated as quickly as possible.  The barrage of worldwide outrage toward Guatemala’s government via the internet is illustrative of the power of ‘word bullets’ to destabilize and destroy governments.  This is a fearsome power in the hands of ordinary internet users all over the globe.  It is this power that is the great weapon in the hands of all free people.  But it is also the power that will cause a dangerous reaction from governments seeking to eliminate this potent popular weapon.  I think that we are on the brink of the greatest assault on freedom of expression in history and that the assault will come primarily from free Western nations.  We are seeing it already in attempts like U.S. congressional representative Linda Sanchez’s bill to criminalize the posting of opinions on the internet that may offend anyone at all or emotionally injure a potential reader.  There is absolutely no difference between her attempt at legislation to eliminate freedom of speech and the behavior of the Guatemalan government in arresting a man for suggesting that people withdraw their own money from a bank.

Guatemala Imprisons Man for Twitter Suggestion that People Withdraw Their Money From Bank

by Editor

The government of Guatemala has arrested and imprisoned a man named Jean Anleu Fernández who posted on Twitter yesterday the following message: “The first action people should take is to remove cash from Banrural, and break the banks of corrupt people. #escandalogt”

His Twitter message was in response to the suspected involvement of the Guatemalan president in the recent assassination of a prominent lawyer who was investigating government corruption.  What we are seeing here is the new power of words.  Their power to take down a government.  The outrageous action of Guatemala has created a worldwide eruption of blog and Twitter outrage in which Anleu Fernández’ original message is being reproduced countless times.  Boing Boing is doing excellent coverage of this story.

I agree with Mr. Anleu Fernández in his suggestion that people withdraw their money from a bank that people suspect of corruption.  I would withdraw my money if I were in Guatemala.  I also think the people should probably withdraw themselves from Guatemala if at all possible since it is quite obviously moving toward total collapse.  If Guatemala thinks I’m creating panic, then I would suggest that people actually run screaming from the country because panic is exactly what should be happening there.  When police start arresting people for telling other people to pull money out of a bank, then it’s all over.