ProphecyBoy

Learning about prostitutes in Brooklyn in the 70's. Like you do. - more on Twitter

The NYT Misreads Sex on Stage

The New York Times has an article up comparing the way sex is treated in two of the season's biggest hits, Spring Awakening and Company. What a good idea, I thought. Not quite... The article an awful conflation of being narrow-mindedly liberal (in the reading of Spring Awakening as outdated because ...

Attention Students: The US Government Hates You

In case you haven't heard, the interest rate is about to jump. A lot. Good for investors and people who already have money. Bad for people who owe money, specifically students: The variable rate on a common Stafford loan dipped to as low as 2.77 percent for students in the ...

The Battle Over Books

I've fallen behind again! That's what I get for taking a real weekend, I suppose. Catching up, and hopefully progress on this whole Gaming the System thing in the near future. In the meantime... I went to a debate about Google Book Search last night, hosted by the LA Public Library. ...

Attention CA copyfighters

From BoingBoing: A Pledgebank campaign is looking for constituents of California Senator Diane Feinstein to sign on to vote against her if she keeps on supporting the PERFORM act, which will ban MP3 streaming and mandate DRM for Internet audio. Imagine not being able to email, copy, or edit any digital ...

Google Currency?

This Business Week article suggests that Google might be developing their own currency, making an end-run around PayPal (and just about everyone else). This is fascinating when taken together with the economies of MMOGs, especially Second Life, whose Lindens are easily converted to and from real-world currencies. If Google starts ...

United Church of Christ commercial

According to Towleroad, none of the major networks will run this ad, deeming it "too controversial" to accept $1.5 million for. It's really depressing when money can't buy a message of acceptance. Mainline churches should be silent while right-wing extremists get to speak their mind? Do you care?

Texas is For (Ex-)Escorts

Wonkette just posted a great interview with gay ex-escort, ex-top-ranked-Mary-Kay-salesman Tom Malin, who was recently running for office in Texas. It's a really fun read, and makes you all the more sad that Malin won't be in public office anytime soon. I just had to point out that halfway through, ...

iPod the Senate

UPDATE (1/31/06): Seems like someone else had the same idea - IPac is currently accepting contributions right now. Click the button below to help: --- The EFF is noting a shift in the Broadcast Flag debate in the Senate. It seems that a well-timed gift has caused the Commerce Committee chairman to ...

Help CC and EFF protect emerging media

After dropping too much cash on gifts and sale items this month, I decided I needed to throw some more money at something that actually mattered, so today I donated to both Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Both of these organizations play an important role in protecting our rights ...

Politics, linguistics, and the future of the internet

This is dense, but important. Skip to the third section (the "solution") if you must, but read it. Doc Searls writing about how linguistics are losing us the battle for the future of the internet. His basic premise is that by speaking of the net in terms of a transport ...

Colophon

Turning coffee into feats of intellectual derring-do since 2001

Hi there, I'm Adam Simon. I'm the Creative Director and Co-Founder of Socialbomb, a social gaming startup in New York City. I recently graduated from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), doing research in large scale game design, social networking, urban computing, performative technology, and networked objects. You can find info on my thesis here, and a big list of all my ITP-related posts here

I sometimes work at area/code.

Projects that I've been a part of which you might have heard of include BootyDialer, The Invention of Murder, Rumplestiltskin (An Aretefactual Performance), & Sharkrunners

You can email me at adam @ [the name of this website].

Syndicate

Social Heroes: Games as APIs for Social Interaction (aka, my ITP thesis)

Because I've been busy/lazy and off the blogging habit, here, at long last, is my thesis for ITP, almost a year late. Comments and such are still more than welcome, as many of the ideas are still being worked on in my current projects, and Social Heroes itself is likely ...

Crazy Blind Date: A Quintet for Human & Computer

The appeal of Crazy Blind Date\ is immediately apparent, and seems custom-designed for busy city folks: “on very short notice we can set you up on quick dates with total strangers at public places like bars and coffee shops. You're not allowed to see their picture or even communicate.” Created ...
March 29th 2008
Tags: Social Software Studio, Thesis 2 Comments

Social Heroes

My thesis has split into two ideas, something which was foreshadowed at the end of my midterm presentation. I mistakenly assumed that one of the ideas would seem obviously better than the other, but that hasn't happened. Rather, I'm stuck with two ideas which I think explore the ideas I'm ...
March 16th 2008
Tags: ITP One Comment

PCBs from Eagle to Production

In this post I'm going to explain how to output files from Eagle PCB in order to send your designs off to be professionally fabbed. There are two major steps before this in the process: creating the electrical schematic, and moving from that schematic to a board layout. I'm not ...
March 14th 2008
Tags: Social Software Studio, Thesis One Comment

Thesis: midterm presentation & playtest

| View | Upload your own ITP Thesis: Midterm presentation (with notes) (PDF) Here's the midterm presentation I just gave in my thesis section (the PDF includes the presenter notes, and is perhaps more comprehensible). I felt like this presentation was a return to form for me - lots of photos, ...

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