Mike Arauz's Blog – The Archives

A few of my favorite links, photos, and videos from the week on my Tumblr blog. Lots of happy fun and smart posts and articles.

When I was up in Cape Cod last weekend I stumbled across this strange little scene. Luckily I had my camera with me. So I threw together this cheery little image macro. (Click image for full-size image)




Thoughtful and fascinating story about journalism, blogs, and the internet, by Michael Massing in The New York Review of Books.

This image of the Internet as parasite has some foundation. Without the vital news-gathering performed by established institutions, many Web sites would sputter and die. In their sweep and scorn, however, such statements seem as outdated as they are defensive. Over the past few months alone, a remarkable amount of original, exciting, and creative (if also chaotic and maddening) material has appeared on the Internet. The practice of journalism, far from being leeched by the Web, is being reinvented there, with a variety of fascinating experiments in the gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. And unless the editors and executives at our top papers begin to take note, they will hasten their own demise.

Jake Bronstein, the man behind Zoomdoggle, is engaged! This is probably the funnest and sweetest marriage proposals you'll ever see. And on top of that they set the world record for the longest successful whisper chain.




Big Spaceship blog looks at Spymaster.

In late May, arcane tweets about buying weapons and assassinating people began showing up in my Twitter feed. I asked what was up and received an invite to join a spy ring and play Spymaster. Opinions are divided on how ‘social’ social networking is. This Twitter-based spy game presents an opportunity to look at why.

BBH Labs talks to Jeremy Ettinghausen about interactive storytelling.

Launched last month under their Puffin label, We Make Stories is the latest in a long line of digital publishing innovations masterminded by Jeremy Ettinghausen (@jeremyet), Penguin’s Digital Publisher. In short, we’re witnessing a radical re-shaping of an industry we believe we can learn a lot from. An industry which - aside from its sheer cultural importance in the first place - has been experimenting with new creative & organisational solutions for some time now.

One of my all-time favorite sketches, from the brilliant Mr. Show: