Fantasy, feedback, facts, and flies, all will be revealed in today’s links of loops and life:
- Blueful – a story told in text, but delivered through the medium of web sites. It’s like an xkcd cartoon embodied in the web. Interesting, artistic, and makes you look at web sites in a new way. From Aaron A. Reed.
- The Case Against Candy Land – Steven Johnson talks about how dull the children’s games of our youth are. “What’s irritating about the games is that they are exercises in sheer randomness. It’s not that they fail to sharpen any useful skills; it’s that they make it literally impossible for a player to acquire any skills at all.” Every process in life should have a feedback loop that lets you get better at it.
- Journo Data – a Guardian journalist publishes data resources about the US economy as Google spreadsheets. This is the start of something interesting, where the raw data is available from journalists not just the (textual or programmatic) interpretation. As mentioned in the fantastic presentation Tim just linked to, access to the data behind our world view is essential if we are to critically assess that world view.
- Userfly – a usability tool that records and then recreates your users’ sessions on your web site, so you can see where and when they type, click on, backtrack, etc. (via RWW)