Alice Hill
C.S. Magor
Cat Miller
David Brumbaugh
David Chie
Dawn Kawamoto
Don Willmott
Elisabeth Greenbaum Kasson
Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Lekan Oguntoyinbo
Leslie Stevens-Huffman
M Noivad
Mark Feffer
nick kolakowski
Stephen Lahanas
Susan Hall
Vincent Chow
4 Reasons You Don’t Want to Develop Games
Are you an avid gamer? Do you think you have what it takes to work in games? Or better yet, Do you even know what it takes to work in games? You may think producing games would be a blast, fitting right in with your addiction. But the truth is, you may be better off sticking to the joystick. Creating games, after all, is a job and much like any other job it comes with a lot of drawbacks —… continue…
Is Nuclear Power the Fix to Global Warming?
While President Obama has put climate change back on the national agenda, the likelihood of significant action is low. Earth continues its resolute march toward global warming, the results of which continue to be born out in every storm, drought and species die-off. A chorus of experts has offered up everything from energy credits, carbon caps, taxes and social engineering to address the crisis, but so far we’ve only continued to shove our heads further into the increasingly hot sand.… continue…
Cool Skin: A Digital Librarian Tells a Story
By training Vika Zafrin is a digital humanist, a Ph.D. whose area of study is the humanities as they intersect with the confluence of computing, research, teaching and creation. Currently, the 36-year-old is the Digital Collections Librarian at a major Boston-area university. As part of that community, Zafrin makes digital content as widely available as possible, online and for free, curates online collections and data mines large cultural data sets. It’s pretty heady stuff and unsurprisingly, her tattoos have a… continue…
Iceland: This App Will Keep You From Dating Your Cousin
“She’s my sister. She’s my daughter. My sister. My daughter. She’s my sister AND my daughter.” Those classic lines from Chinatown, uttered by Faye Dunaway’s character Evelyn Mulwray, have been oft parodied since the film’s 1974 release, but who’d think that one day there would actually be an app to prevent such awkward familial relationships from occurring? There is in Iceland, where “bump the app before you bump in bed” may become the catch phrase for a generation who really… continue…
Nicole Sharp: Taking Fluid Dynamics to a Whole New Level
Nicole Sharp is a wind tunnel jockey. “What’s that?” you ask. The short answer involves crawling around in wind tunnels big enough for a human to get around in, but not hot or windy enough to bake said human and blow them away. The longer answer is a whole lot more interesting. Sharp is a 27-year-old aerospace engineer and Texas A&M Ph.D. student and Amelia Earhart Fellow in fluids research. She spent her childhood in Arkansas and later lived in… continue…
Interview Questions for Developers Over 18
Working in the business side of adult entertainment isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but these companies are often among the leaders when it comes to aggressive use of technology and closely following best practices. It’s a dynamic that fascinates us: That’s why we wrote about the adult website Kink.com some months ago, and why we went back to its CTO, Steve Morgan, to find out how he goes about hiring developers for his tech team of about 25 people. For… continue…
Microsoft’s Xbox Studios: Old School or New?
As Microsoft ramps up its Los Angeles-based Xbox Entertainment Studios, you have to wonder whether its goal is to bring innovative platforms to old-school media, or old-school media to innovative platforms. If the top-down hiring is any indication, it may be the latter. Yusuf Mehdl, senior vice president of Redmond’s interactive entertainment business, says that Xbox users are more interested in videos and music than those who play with other Internet-related consoles. In that context, hiring Nancy Tellem last September as… continue…
Joseph Shoer: Space Battles and Imaginary Worlds
Joseph Shoer is a 28-year-old guidance, navigation and control engineer for a major commercial spacecraft company. He has a B.A. in physics with honors from Williams College and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Cornell. He’s also been involved in research on included solar physics, optical-fiber pulse lasers, interactions between superconductors and magnetic fields, multibody spacecraft dynamics, and the lunar rover in NASA’s Constellation program. His blog, which features both his professional and personal interests, has been featured by Gizmodo,… continue…
Cool Skin: Life’s Outlook in Japanese Ink
Erica Langworthy is an early-30-something animator for a video game company in New York. She uses a wide variety of programs, techniques and technology to execute her work, moving from 3D to compositing and FX, to character design and animation. She loves her job, but today we’re talking tattoos, dramatic and beautiful body art. Why did you decide to decorate yourself? I’ve wanted a tattoo since I was a teenager, though I was smart enough to know I wanted to… continue…
Online Dating Costs You More Privacy Than You Think
Here’s a heads up to the millions of people looking for love on line: Your security and privacy are probably at risk. Many of the most popular dating sites are playing fast and loose with your romantic avatars. Some of them are susceptible to hackers and, to paraphrase a Microsoft cybersecurity expert, anything that you post on line is pretty much permanent after 20 minutes, whether you’ve deleted the file or not. Still feeling brave? A few more facts, then.… continue…
