domingo, janeiro 15, 2012

Dicas de Leitura

Aqui alguns links interessantes que trombei nestes últimos dias:


  • How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body
    “Yoga is for people in good physical condition. Or it can be used therapeutically. It’s controversial to say, but it really shouldn’t be used for a general class.”
    According to Black, a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems.

  • A Man. A Van. A Surprising Business Plan.
    We've all been there. Trapped in line at the DMV. Or stuck on hold while trying to call a city agency. It's easy to complain about government bureaucracy. But it's the rare person who sees such inefficiency as a business opportunity.

  • In Which Eben Moglen Like, Legit Yells at Me for Having Facebook
    Mr. Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University , was not particularly interested in talking about banks using social media to spy on their customers.

    Everyone who uses Facebook, Twitter and the like shares the blame for the serious and ongoing global erosion of privacy enabled by the internet, he said. Banks aren’t the problem, he said; the users tempting banks with their Twitter and Facebook postings are the problem.

  • Be A Creator, Not a Consumer
    Write a book. Start a blog. Build a website. Publish some software. Contribute to an open-source project. Participate in forums. Leave an indelible mark on your community.

  • The Curse of Cow Clicker: How a Cheeky Satire Became a Videogame Hit
    “Games like FarmVille are cow clickers. You click on a cow, and that’s all you do.
    As the debate over Zynga—and social games in general—became an industry obsession, Bogost was asked to speak at several conference panels and academic colloquiums. Before a seminar at New York University called Social Games on Trial, he decided that instead of creating the usual series of slides to accompany his talk, he would design a game that would illustrate what he saw as the worst abuses of social gaming in the clearest possible manner. That way, rather than just listening to his argument, people could play it.
    To some industry stalwarts, the gamification craze looks a lot like Cow Clicker—mindlessly deploying gaming’s most superficial and addictive features, such as leaderboards and badges, without providing the underlying experience that gives them meaning. Bogost himself made this argument at a gamification conference, during a talk called Gamification Is Bullshit, in which he suggested an alternate term, exploitationware. That, he said, represents the true mission of gamifiers: to use game mechanics to cynically ensnare their customers, much as Cow Clicker had unwittingly hooked its prey—including, as it turned out, Bogost himself.



Recomendo a utilização de algum plugin que limpe as páginas e as tornem agradáveis para a leitura, tipo o Clearly, Readability, Instapaper Text bookmarklet ou mesmo o Stylebot. Pois as sidebars e propagandas em sites de jornais andam cada vez pior…

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