Lisa Albers

Nintendo's Style Savvy

I just got word that the game I worked on for Nintendo will be in stores Nov. 2. Here's the official game Web site, with a fun sneak-preview video:  www.stylesavvyds.com

Cool bridge/earthquake sim video

For the past two years or so, I've been working on a book for General Construction Company, chronicling its 100-year history. One of its latest projects is major upgrades to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which recently reopened. Here's a cool video simulating how cutting-edge seismic mechanisms in the bridge will work:

Salon's redirection: 'another funnel to Google'

Apparently Salon's loss of ad revenue and subsequent layoffs has the Internet pioneer rethinking its long-form journalism model in favor of, well, looking like all the other crap on the Web.

What this article doesn't say is that they already shortened their articles; back in 2003, they were still publishing New Yorker-length pieces that were so in-depth and well-written, I used them in my college classes. Take a gander at this article on a long argument between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis that had a profound effect on the two authors' classic works. Since then, the stories have gotten leaner, and in my opinion, the quality has gone down as well. I shudder to think what the new Salon will look like, and it seems I'm not the only one:

But Bob Sacks, president of marketing and media planner Precision Media Group, says that running away from the print-style magazine format will ultimately be self-defeating for Salon. He tells NewsPay: “If we go to aggregation as our formula, as our business model, we won’t be publishers as we were. ... We’ll lose our revenue stream. We’ll be another funnel to Google.”

via paidcontent.org

I'm not saying, by the way, that short pieces are always crap and long is always better. Blaise Pascal once apologized for the length of one of his letters, saying he did not have "the leisure to make it shorter." It sometimes takes time to edit down a mess; just ask any poet. However, long-form journalism is what I depend upon in order to really understand an issue. Most news stories leave me with more questions than answers. But I read an article in Harper's on the Mexican drug cartel and come to know the complexity and nuance of the problem. Sure, I read Harper's on paper, but if I find a really good long piece online, I'll invest the time to read it, even on my little laptop screen. The best thing I've ever read about the Craigslist phenomenon is this piece in Wired, which took time and editing to produce. Note the length, and the lack of annoying page jumps.

The future of fiction? A 'digi-novel'

Zuiker has created “Level 26,” a crime novel that also invites readers to log on to a website about every 20 pages using a special code to watch a “cyber-bridge” — a three-minute film clip tied to the story.

via blog.newfiction.com

The ultimate fiction mashup--a combination book, movie, and Web site. Now if they could just add in a little interactive game....

Kennedy memoir discusses 'terrible decisions' he made at Chappaquiddick

The account by Mr. Kennedy, who died on Aug. 25 at age 77, adds little to what is known about the accident and its aftermath but recounts how they weighed on him and his family. The book does not shy from the accident, or from some other less savory aspects of the senator’s life, including a notorious 1991 drinking episode in Palm Beach, Fla., or the years of heavy drinking and women-chasing that followed his 1982 divorce from his first wife, Joan.

via www.nytimes.com

The NYT obtained a copy of the 532-page memoir in which he owns up to his mistakes and faults. It will also shed light on his decision to shy away from the presidency. It's being published by Twelve, a great press (which published a book about the Titanic I reviewed last year). This will be on my wish list, as it promises to give rare insight into the past 50 years in U.S. political history.