Flash Flood

Louis Gerbarg offers one of the most level-headed and informative approaches to the Apple/Flash debate that I’ve seen. He makes some points that might not be immediately clear from some other sources’ posts:

He doesn’t think that Flash is the only target
The language of the new license could potentially also apply to game developers, though it seems unlikely that Apple would pursue that course.
Apple doesn’t hate 3rd party runtimes because they are power-hungry; Apple is concerned with their OS development cycles and compatibility issues.
The desire for Flash might be quenched a bit if we had a light development tool (something like HyperCard Touch)

Though the article tends to lean on the side of Apple, it’s a pretty fair analysis of the situation and how it could possibly come to agreement.

Send News

Terrific new media, new and old, that we’re particularly enjoying.

Black Box

Spectacular Twitter fiction from Jennifer Egan, impinging on the world of her novel,A Visit From The Goon Squad.
Patanoir

Simon Christiansen’s brilliantly clever interactive fiction.
Out Of Touch

Christine Wilks’s Out of Touch is an exploration into loneliness and the fetish (and artifice) of human connectedness inherent in social media, a theme to which many of us can relate.
Meanwhile

Andrew Plotkin’s iOS implementation of Jason Smiga’s interactive comic.
Machine #69

by Mark Wernham. Machine #69 recalls Ryman’s 253, and especially Bob Arellano’s Sunshine ’69 both in its embrace of arbitrary connection and its fond nostalgia for the era when cheap booze, good drugs, fast cars and hot guns seemed to offer everything worth wanting and when nothing was worth wanting very much.
afternoon, a story

by Michael Joyce. The first great hypertext fiction, a landmark that repays close study.
Luminous Airplanes

A new hyperromance for the Web. Sparsely linked, La Farge’s new hypertext nods at Stephanie Strickland’s design and to Michael Joyce’s direct address to the reader. but brings a new voice and sensibility to Web fiction.
Changed

Multimedia notes from underground, where a traumatized girl furnishes a cozy space in an underground tunnel. Script by Lynda Williams, music and code by Andy Campbell and Matthew Wright. A web work that’s especially nice on the iPad. (The floor lamp is a nice allusion. Get it?)

Key readings about Reading Hypertext, edited by Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco. Just published by Eastgate; $39.95.

Some of the people we’re following lately. (This list changes arbitrarily from time to time; don’t read the tea leaves.)

Please follow htlit on Twitter.
Mark Bernstein (chief scientist at hypertext publisher Eastgate Systems)
Stacey Mason (editori at hypertext publisher Eastgate Systems)
Steve Ersinghaus (100 stories project)
Susan Gibb (100 stories project)
Gene Golovchinsky (hypertext and tablet computing pioneer)
Diane Greco (hypertext author and editor)
David Kolb (author of Socrates in the Labyrinth)
Cathy Marshall (inventor of spatial hypertext, co-author of Forward Anywhere, Microsoft researcher)
Jill Walker (University of Bergen)