Four short links: 15 July 2011

Gender on Forms, Glitch Gets God, Predictably? Irrational Web Sites, and Successfully Open

  1. The Gender Question — a clever solution to the vexed question of asking users for their gender. (via Luke Wroblewski)
  2. Katamari Damacy Creator Joins Glitch — an amazing coup for Stewart Butterfield’s new game.
  3. How Online Companies Get You to Spend More and Share More (Wired) — Dan Ariely (“Predictably Irrational”) tackles Amazon, Netflix, Groupon, etc. and shows how their web design ties into studies of our cognitive biases. This is great post-hoc analysis, but I’d love to know whether it’s predictive: can you say “do X, in line with study Y” and conversions always increase?
  4. The Power of Open — a collection of success stories around creators releasing Creative Commons-licensed works. Examples range from movies to TED talks to photos to music to books to education. High quality PDF for download for free, or pay for a print copy. (via Gabriella Coleman)
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