Alternate Reality Games: A Mini-Guide: I'm doing some reading and thinking on ARGs (though I still hate the name, sorry). This is a nice overview of several recent games (or should we call them stories?). It's not an exhaustive list, but it does include some interesting notes. There are also some links at the bottom of the article to some really nice related articles.
The Facebooker Who Friended Obama - NYTimes.com: A really nice article on how Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook, left Facebook at the peak of its popularity to work for the Obama campaign. Most interesting to me is the point that at that time, Chris was finding his away around and the Obama campaign was not the force it is today. After winning Iowa, of course, that all changed. It's a nice point, too, about how social networks on the web serve a use to connect real people in their everyday lives. The point is made in the article that the Obama site drives local connections, rather than just connections for the sake of the site itself.
doctype - Google Code: Google Doctype is, in Mark Pilgrim's own words, "an encyclopedia for web developers by web developers." Looks very cool. There are several parts to this. The first is using the wiki component of Google code hosting to document the Web (document from the developer's perspective). It's like Wikipedia just for web development. The second part is a library of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML reference code, largely a set of tests. It does include "goog" which looks to be a JavaScript library akin to YUI or mootools. Also, I was struck by Mark Pilgrim calling himself a "technical writer" in the Doctype video I just watched. There's a lot to use and understand here, and I'm only just beginning to read through all this. (Via Simon Willison.)
What I've Learned: Vint Cerf: Incredible. Absolutely amazing quotes from Vint Cerf in this piece from Esquire. He plays WoW with his son, gives Al Gore props for the Internet, offers his thoughts on Second Life, and then offers up my favorite quote from the last several months of online reading: "At the roots, people are still people." In the context of a discussion about the Internet, this is a powerful statement, and one anyone who spends much time online can readily agree with. The Internet, in the end, is just a reflection of the people it connects.
Web space lounge -- ESC Portfolio: This screenshot of Electric Sheep's work on a virtual world in the browser is nice looking. They're using Ogoglio for the sever component and Papervision3D for the client. The look is nice certainly. When I was in Arlington this past week, Jesse demoed some Papervision stuff to me, and I was certainly impressed. This from ESC continues to impress. Of course, this is no where near what Second Life is -- a single night club in no way compares to an expansive and varied virtual world -- but it is impressive for a low barrier to entry alternative that runs in the browser.