Four short links: 3 January 2012

Sumerian Data, Mobile Shopping, Design for Participation, and Chrome Native Porting

  1. What the Sumerians Can Teach Us About Data (Pete Warden) — money quote: Gathering data is not a neutral act, it will alter the power balance, usually in favor of the people collecting the information. I also loved the Sumerian boundary marker covered in the supernatural equivalent of “copying is a federal crime!” pre-roll DVD warnings.
  2. 2011 Holiday Shopping Mobile Numbers (Luke Wroblewski) — iPad and iPhone shoppers account for 90% of all mobile purchases; spend 19% more per order than Android users. All these statistics are jaw-dropping.
  3. Fifteen Things I’ve Learned About Designing for Participation This Year (Nina Simon) — most insightful to me “Make and share” is more powerful for many people than “make and take.” Most people–including kids–want to display their creations, not keep them. . Most thought-provoking: People of all ages can use sledgehammers with minimal oversight. We had over 400 successful bangers with no injuries. The risk of liability was worth it.
  4. Porting MAME to ChromeThis document describes how we ported MAME using tools on the Linux platform. The resulting code runs in the Google Chrome browser on all currently supported Native Client platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux). Jaw-dropping part: The port of MAME was relatively challenging; combined with figuring out how to port SDL-based games and load resources in Native Client, the overall effort took us about 4 days to complete. (via Slashdot)
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