Grand Valley State University (in Michigan)br / Department Art And Designbr / College Lib Arts/Sciencesbr / br / [b]Graphic Design - Assistant Professor (2 positions)[/b]br / br / Responsibilitiesbr / Teach three courses per semester in a NASAD accredited undergraduate program with approximately 350 majors, participate in portfolio reviews and student advising, provide leadership and vision in curricular development, participate in university and departmental committee work, and maintain an active research and professional practice.br / br / Required Qualificationsbr / * MFA in Graphic Design or related field by August 2009 required.br / * Professional experience and/or prior teaching experience preferred.br / * A combination of skills covering the following areas: typography, identity design, page layout, print production, and contemporary media (web design, motion graphics, interactive media, and video). Additional skills might also include letterpress, contemporary illustration, packaging, or exhibit design, and the ability to teach classes outside of the graphic design emphasis such as drawing, composition, etc.br / * Background in historical and contemporary design literacy.br / br / Salary Rangebr / Commensurate with Experiencebr / br / Application Deadline Infobr / Review will begin January 5, 2009 and continue until the position is filled.br / br / How To Applybr / Send (as hard copy or digital files): letter of application, CV, teaching philosophy, artist statement, documentation of creative research, sample syllabi, unofficial transcript, contact information for at least 3 references, and SASE. Send 20 examples of professional work and 20 examples of student work (if available) on a MacIntosh compatible CD or DVD in an easily viewed presentation format such as PowerPoint, pdf, Flash, html, mpeg, or jpeg.br / br / Send materials to:br / Virginia Jenkins, Chairbr / Department of Art Designbr / 1105 Calder Art Centerbr / 1 Campus Drivebr / Grand Valley State Universitybr / Allendale, MI 49401-9403.img src="http://rhizome.org/syndicate/nothing.gif?f=announce" border="0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rhizome-announce/~4/473153486" height="1" width="1"/

iGenome Biology, Vol. 9 (24 November 2008), R165./ibr /br /Whole genome tiling arrays are a key tool for profiling global genetic and expression variation. In this study we present our methods for detecting transcript level variation, splicing variation and allele specific expression in Arabidopsis thaliana. We also developed a generalized Hidden Markov Model for profiling transcribed fragment variation de novo. Our study demonstrates that whole genome tiling arrays are a powerful platform for dissecting natural transcriptome variation at multi-dimension and high resolution.br /iXu, Justin Borevitz/i

At the beginning of this past summer, I finally caved and decided to check out Lost on DVD. A friend of mine had gone on some crazy Lost binge, watching all four seasons in, like, a week, and afterward the dude was a little dizzy, dirty and distant. So, instead of going the crazy route, I spread the sucker out over five months and just finished up season four last week ... itching for more, of course. With season five debuting in January, and season four arriving on DVD this December 9, series writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse sat down for a roundtable discussion and answered questions about the show.

Collider has a great transcript, and I could spend hours chatting it up with you, but this is a movie blog and we're more comfortable sticking with things that may or may not end up on the big screen. Case in point: What about Lost? Sure, they've cut a deal to end the series in 2010, but will they surprise us with a finale in theaters? When asked this, Lindelof said, "No. At least not by us. We've always felt that the show should definitively end the same place it started... on television. To bring our characters to some sort of cliffhanger where the audience gets none of the answers that they really care about and then say, "Now give us ten bucks, buy some popcorn and we'll give you the rest!" would pretty much be the worst thing ever."

What do you think? Should Lost stick to the small screen, or would a theatrical finale be more fitting?

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Embedded above, and in glorious technicolor downloadable MP4 here: this week's Boing Boing update on Boing Boing tv. diams; We begin with a video chat about O'Reilly Media cofounder DALE DOUGHERTY's guestblog post on why television networks, including CNN, seem to be struggling to cover "The Economic Panic." Why is the current "this great-or-not-so great depression" such a difficult story for TV? Dale believes part of the challenge is that it's big, slow-moving, and abstract. There are no videogenic focal points, no crash scenes or hurricanes for which to don yellow jumpers, no perp mugshots (well, okay, there was this, video here.). We're also in the middle of "a peculiar period inbetween an election and an inauguration," Dale says -- more from him in today's video review, and don't miss the comment thread on the post, either. diams; Next, we speak with JULIE AMERO, the 41-year old Connecticut schoolteacher accused of showing porn to students on a classroom computer when a computer with malware displayed popup windows with sexual content. Last week, she accepted a misdemeanor plea deal to avoid felony charges, despite proof she was innocent, and that her case was mishandled. The deal allows her to avoid a previously-imposed jail sentence, but means she has to surrender her teaching credentials. A forensic report showed Amero was not responsible for the infection of porn pop-up windows on the PC in question. There is also ample proof that the school district's IT manager, detectives and prosecutors misled the court. Here's last week's post by Rob at Boing Boing Gadgets about the plea bargain reached in her case, and here are earlier Boing Boing posts by Mark, starting back in 2007: one, two, three, four, five. I'll be posting the full audio and transcript of our phone interview this week on boingboing.net. diams; Also in today's BB Update: my co-blogger Cory has been posting some HOLIDAY GIFT ROUNDUPS (so far: DVDs and CDs, kids' stuff, fiction, gadgets, comics and nonfiction.) diams; And finally in today's episode, eyewitness snapshots from the MUMBAI TERRORIST ATTACKS, shot by 27-year-old amateur photographer Vinu Ranganathan. He lives in the Colaba distict, near the attack sites. WIRED's Threat Level blog has an interview up with him. Snip: "For hours [on the day of the attacks], his graphic photos of the destruction wrought by the terrorists in the Colaba district on the photo-sharing site Flickr seemed to be the only relevant ones available online." Related Boing Boing posts: Mumbai Attacks: Day 1, Mumbai Attacks: Day 2. Previous Boing Boing updates on BBtv: * Boing Boing tv Update: Virgin WiFi, Obfuscated Code, Comment Poetry, Downfall Housing Remix * Boing Boing tv Update: OFFWORLD, YES MEN, and THIS IS THE FIRST....br style="clear: both;"/gt; a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2f364ee823d403a53b1cdaf3f88c37e5p=1"gt;img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2f364ee823d403a53b1cdaf3f88c37e5p=1"/gt;/agt; img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2f364ee823d403a53b1cdaf3f88c37e5" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/gt;

p[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]/ppMIT scientists have designed a new robot. Yoursquo;ll probably never see it though--itrsquo;s meant to be hidden. Because itrsquo;s a robot clam. Engineers wanted to design a lightweight anchor that could be easily set and then picked up. Thatrsquo;s not possible with conventional anchors. A more talented anchor would be great for, say, small submarines that move around constantly to test ocean temperatures and currents./p a href=http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=robot-clam-achieves-feat-with-foot-08-12-02[More]/a

We've been meaning to interview the developer of Mighty Jill Off and Calamity Annie for a while now, but alas Eegra and Lesbian Gamers got to her first. Still, better late than never as the old saying goes. What follows is a chat transcript of our discussion about fanart, art games, indie games, IGF, IFs, and more. (interview archives)

Hi Anna, how about we start off with a short introduction of who you are and what it is exactly that you do.
i'm anna anthropy. my nom de game is "auntie pixelante." i make games.

When did you start making games? And how many games have you made since then?
i started making games when i was little, with whatever tools i could get my hands on: zzt, stuff like that. i still use whatever i can find to tell stories. i like games that allow for creativity as much as destruction, so i spend a lot of time with games that have level editors. my own games i usually put together in game maker, which isn't ideal but is easy and cheap, which is why it's brought a lot of people into game design who wouldn't otherwise be.

Which of your creations are you most proud of?
mighty jill off seems to be the game i'm most associated with, though i'm just as proud of other projects. calamity annie is important to me, as it came out of a time of trial for me -- i'd just gotten kicked out of game school for using the word "art" to refer to something other than photoshop and i felt a drive to prove myself. i made a game this past weekend, a one-switch version of mighty jill off called "jill off with one hand," and maybe i'm still in the afterglow but i'm very proud of that right now.

Games


Were you pleased/thrilled with the number of turnouts for the Mighty Jill Off fanart contest? Which entries were the most arousing to you?
my only disappointments with the competition were the entries that didn't get finished! josh rylander pencilled a wonderful drawing of jill creeping over a pit of spikes that seemed to have claimed the life of an earlier jill, and mariel cartwright sketched a perspective drawing of the queen stamping her boot on jill's face, which is the sort of thing i am all about.

How long do you see yourself still sticking with making freeware (or donationware) Game Maker games?
donationware is a good model for me: what's most important to me is for people to be able to play my games. if those players feel there's value in what i do and want me to continue to do it, that's dandy. "donationware" allows players to decide how much my games are worth.

Which of your game has done the best in terms of donationware, and why you think that is the case?
calamity annie was the first game i asked for donations for: players who donate any sum receive a password that unlocks hidden characters in the game, a totally superficial extra. i like to think that both as a measure of the game's quality and as a show of support from my players during that rough time, annie made more than enough money in donations to pay for both annie's and mighty jill off's admittance to the upcoming independant games festival.

Is there actually any secret easter eggs that fans of your games don't know about?
calamity annie is pretty much all easter eggs. but here's one i like: get the "happy ending," then play three games without losing before you reach the bar. you'll see a special message i wrote to my slut.

Do you harbor plans on milking Calamity Annie and Mighty Jill Off for all they're worth by releasing sequels in the near future (besides Jill Off Harder)?
i think our medium is too obsessed with sequels: sequels to videogames tend to offer new content but not new ideas. i say this, of course, after having spent a weekend working on a one-switch spin off to mighty jill off. i'm not interested in retreading ground i've already explored, though it seems i'm building a cast of characters.

Are you currently working on anything new then?
always. at the moment, not to give too much away, my projects include a reimagining of the data east game nail 'n scale, a rom hack of megaman 2, and an rpg of the "pen and paper" variety, though it most likely won't involve either pens or paper. and i'm dangerously prone to getting sudden ideas and spending the next few days putting them together, so i can't make any guarantees.

Let's just say you have a choice of collaborating with any indie game developer out there, would you do it? Who would you choose, and why? And what sweet games would you make?
i ought to collaborate with messhof. we keep being in the same room and nearly meeting. i can't say exactly what we'd create, but it would have lots of flashing colors. if anyone reading this is messhof, feel free to collaborate with me.



Playing Favorites


Which game genres are your favorites?
i think that discussing games in terms of genre is dangerous and paralyzing. part of the reason we see so many games that are the exact same experience is because our critical vocabulary only allows for us to discuss games, and what games might be, in terms of these very limiting, established models. though i have to confess, i'm typically drawn to shooters (of the "space invaders" variety) because what they represent is the most basic, abstract form of videogame interaction: one actor sends a signal, another actor receives it, and reacts.

Any favorite indie games then?
among freeware games, those that have impressed me recently are knytt stories, barkley, shut up and jam: gaiden, karoshi 2.0 and psychosomnium. nifflas, jesse venbrux and cactus are among the designers i most admire, them and emily short. and linley's dungeon crawl is probably the game i will have spent the most time with, in total, when all is said and done.

Your favorite IF writers? And favorite IF games?
i admire emily short immensely: she's interested in the discussion of design, which is something we need far more of. i very much like zarf's work, particularly "hunter, in darkness" and "so far." i like some of adam cadre's more formal experiments, like 9:05 and shrapnel. and i consider victor gijsbers's the baron to be pretty important, since i keep citing it as an example of how games by hobbyist game developers are allowing the medium to shift away from men with guns and toward the exploration of more relevant and human topics.

Recent indie games which you've been playing?
lately i've been spending time with an early nineties mac game called glider, now freeware. it's neat in that it's played with just two buttons, to move your paper plane left and right, and the y axis is accounted for by gravity and gusts of wind. what's particularly charming about it is the sheer breadth of things that have been implemented simply for the sake of implementation, like a guitar that plays a chord as your plane glides across its strings.

Any unreleased indie games you can't wait to get your hands on?
i'm excited about games that haven't yet been made, because there are so many of them, and lots of them explore our medium in ways we haven't seen so far. i am looking forward to the day when these games are made.

Being Indie


What do you think is wrong with the indie games scene? Any suggestions on how to improve the situation?
a problem i think the "indie" games scene unfortunately shares with the larger community surrounding videogames is that of exclusion. that's why i don't like the "indie" label - there's a sense of this is us and these are our values and these are our private jokes that only serves to keep people out, when what should be the real strength of independant game development - the thing that above all the industry is incapable of - is diversity. independant game development should be an avenue for anyone to tell her stories, not another tiny, self-congratulatory circle.

What are your thoughts on the subject of art games?
i think the discussion of whether games are art, or whether some games are art, or which games are art and which aren't is a diversion and a waste of time. what's true is that games are an expressive and communicative medium and that, at the moment, they aren't communicating very much. we need to be telling more interesting stories, mapping out the potential of our medium, and saying a lot more than we are now.

This is sort of related to the Eegra interview you did back in September (2008). Do you prefer the word gamer or player?
i don't like the term "gamer," as it implies that one defines one's identity around videogames. which, apart from being shallow, ties into this poisonous idea we have in our medium that playing a game should be considered an end in and of itself. we need to escape this complacency: videogames are not worthwhile unless we are doing something worthwhile with them. i find "player" a more useful term in that describes an act -- it describes someone who is in the process of playing a game -- not an identity.

The Festivities


What are your modest expectations on how the two games you've submitted to IGF will do?
i'm not holding my breath. there are categories for innovation in graphics and innovation in audio, which are neat parlor tricks, but there are no awards honoring holistic game design or storytelling. i think that's another trend that it's unfortunate to see the independent game community share with the mainstream: partitioning games rather than considering the work as a whole. there's supposedly a new category this year to address this issue: i'm interested in seeing what it produces.

So what changes would you like to see made to the competition?
i've sort of already answered this question: i want to see the awards recognize progress in storytelling rather than technology. the latter we have plenty of, but it's the former that is going to allow our medium to come into its own. i would like to see more celebration of bedroom coders, of hobbyist game designers, of people that are outside the mainstream and who really are outside the industry and whose lives would actually be changed by getting the thousand dollar prize for their creations.

Played any competition entries in this year's IGF yet? Anything that impressed you?
i'm sharing the entry list with a lot of games i admire: barkley, shut up and jam: gaiden, which i've mentioned before, dino run, i wish i were the moon, dangerous high school girls in trouble. quite soulless is competing, and i hope it and i both make finalist so i can meet vasily zotov. i'm a little disappointed that none of my former classmates seem to be competing in the student competition.

Who would you like to see win the grand prize?
i want barkley, shut up and jam: gaiden to win, and i want the developers to be handed their award by none other than charles barkley himself. then, right there on stage, they break for an impromptu game of b-ball as everyone in the audience whistles "sweet georgia brown" in unison. i can't help it. i think it's an important game. though i don't know if, legally, they can. tim, talk to simon. do whatever you have to do to make this happen.

I'll consider that a prediction then. In closing, any favorite haunts? Any shoutouts?
i'll give a shout out to my comrades at glorioustrainwrecks.com, a site that champions the value of spirit in game creation above technical ability. we have an amazing two-hour game jam the third saturday of every month - traditionally using free copies of klik & play - and all are invited to join in.


More...

Today Clearwire said it had completed the transactions that will allow it to build the first nationwide WiMAX network, to be known as Clear. CEO Ben Wolff took a few minutes to answer some questions about what the upcoming service will look like, how Clearwire might handle network congestion and how the recession might affect the speed with which Clearwire builds its network. Below is an edited transcript of our interview:

GigaOM: How much will it cost to build the nationwide network and will the economy slow the buildout?

Ben Wolff: Coupled with what we’ve spent, the $3.2 billion from our investors, and based on the same build schedule we released in May, we need to raise $2 billion to $2.3 billion in additional capital and will look at doing so in the next couple of years. We’ve got the ability to modulate the build plan to the point where we could reduce that funding gap by slowing down the build. That’s one of the first things the new board is going to address in the January meeting — make decisions about how quickly we build.

GigaOM: How will the white spaces broadband spectrum compete with WiMAX?

Wolff: We don’t see the whites spaces spectrum as being competitive with our network, much as we didn’t view the Muni wireless networks as competitive. We see it very much as being complementary with the Clear service. The white spaces spectrum will be unlicensed, and any time you have unlicensed spectrum as the primary means of connecting to the Internet you have the potential for interference and quality-of-service issues. We like the idea of relying on white spaces in some of the more rural areas and dense urban areas.

GigaOM: Will Clearwire or its partners use femotocells to build out the wireless networks?

Wolff: I think that femtocells are promising for any kind of wireless network. Having a femtocell indoors will provide better in-building coverage, and an opportunity for our [cable] partners to look at ways to utilize the backhaul they have going into the house. I think all wireless networks going forward could use them, but there are still questions about the business model — who pays for it and getting the cost of femtos down to a point where they can be cost-effective for a home.

GigaOM: Will WiMAX be as fast as LTE and can it act as a fat enough pipe to deliver Internet service to the home?

Wolff: I don’t think there is going to be much in the way of performance differences in LTE and WiMAX. The limiting factor is unlikely to be the technology; it’s likely to be how much spectrum the operator has available for 4G services. We have 100 MHz of spectrum and are in great shape to ultimately deliver a robust broadband experience.

GigaOM: What kind of services can Clear deliver using WiMAX?

Wolff: The suite of services people will eventually be able to buy are residential broadband, mobile broadband for each individual in the house, residential voice, and ultimately, mobile voice.

GigaOM: Since this is all IP network, will you charge for this as individual services or will this be one service that consumers can buy and add things like VoIP to?

Wolff: There will be some customers that will use a bring-your-own-VoIP service and we’ll offer our own managed mobile voice services that will offer higher quality of service.

GigaOM: What about network management such as blocking some traffic or slowing it down when the network is congested?

Wolff: We will have to experiment with how were dealing with network management issues. We won’t ID specific bandwidth-hogging apps and try to restrict or limit those. What we’re going to do is manage the network on a sector-by-sector basis, so if there’s no congestion we do nothing. If it turns out we do have congestion, we’ll manage bandwidth for all users in that segment rather than by applications.

GigaOM: Can a WiMAX network really provide the amount of bandwidth necessary to offer services such as streaming video that can really clog wireless networks today?

Wolff: One of the benefits over 3G is we have much more capacity, and we designed it to have a large number of customers using a large amount of data — including consistent streaming capacity.

pBorders a href="http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=65380p=irol-newsArticleID=1230254highlight="announced its Q3 2008 earnings/a on Wednesday. The company posted a net loss of $175.4 million (versus $161.1 million in 2007) on sales of $693.4 million (down 9.4%)./p pInventory was reduced by 19.5% (by cost) and at the end of the quarter Borders' music inventory was 30% lower than a year ago. Music now occupies 7% of floor space. These changes portend a difficult Q4 for record labels. /p pTo no surprise, music sales were down. Of the 12.8% drop in Q3 same store sales, music alone accounted for 2.2 points. /p pThe CD is playing a smaller part in Borders' product mix, but like its competitors the retailer is interested in music if it gets an advantage. Borders has an exclusive on Aretha Franklin's emThis Christmas/em. /p pSales of Borders.com were almost nonexistent: $11.9 million for Q3. Borders.com has a section for a href="http://musicdownloads.borders.com/"music MP3s/a. Borders.com is available at kiosks inside physical stores. The earnings release nor the earnings call mentioned the progress of in-store kiosks. Let's just assume kiosk sales are not setting the world afire, shall we?/p pAs of January, NPD Group had Borders as the a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080402-apple-passes-wal-mart-now-1-music-retailer-in-us.html"fifth largest US music retailer/a (tied with FYE/Coconuts) with 3% of the market. /p pBorders also a href="http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=65380p=irol-SECTextTEXT=aHR0cDovL2NjYm4uMTBrd2l6YXJkLmNvbS94bWwvZmlsaW5nLnhtbD9yZXBvPXRlbmsmaXBhZ2U9NjAwMTAzNCZkb2M9MiZudW09Mg%3d%3d"announced/a it is no longer considering a sale of the company. /p pHere's the a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/108158-borders-group-inc-q3-2008-qtr-end-11-01-08-earnings-call-transcript?page=-1"Seeking Alpha transcript of the earnings call/a./phr/[music jobs] a href="http://coolfer.jobamatic.com/a/jbb/job-details/43602"The Beggars Group Matador Records is seeking a Paralegal/adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=4iPmo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=4iPmo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=NT67O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=NT67O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=5nZyO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=5nZyO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/coolfer/~4/471544854" height="1" width="1"/

p[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]/ppIt may look like just another animal. But one kind of lowly sea slug actually has the solar power abilities of a plant. Bizarre but true, the sea slug carries out photosynthesis. This finding was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences./p a href=http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=solar-powered-sea-slug-08-12-01[More]/a