Assorted Udderances take a pull offa Ben's pipe

19May/110

Embracing a single point of failure

As Marco Arment says in this piece about Twitter (specifically, the impact of its recent whimsical change to authentication requirements, though the observation applies generally):

These are the risks that you take when you base your personal happiness or your business on a single, irreplaceable, young, evolving third-party service.

The same can be said for Facebook, or those silly "URL shorteners", or Gmail, or any number of other no-cost fad services that seem to become so popular.

Commonfolk can always be counted upon for short-sighted feelings of entitlement.

22Jul/100

Cow Clicker

Ian Bogost has created Cow Clicker, a Facebook game  in which you get a cow, and can click on it.  Six hours later, you can click on it again.

The article is an insightful essay on the cyclical and insipid phenomenon of today's "social gaming".

I post this as a follow-up to earlier linkage of a couple weeks ago, an essay exploring why people play FarmVille. (via Marco)