Along the lines of the Instant Oil Spill, now there’s a site where you can overlay a website with photos of protesters: Occupy the URL. No real news importance to this, just a fun item to play around with and perhaps foster discussion. (via @OccupyKlout on Twitter)

Speaking of which, it’s only been a little over a year since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. That seems like ages ago.

Related articles

• Occupy the URL Takes OWS Protests to the Internet (mashable.com)
• If you can’t make it to Wall Street, Occupy the URL lets you do it from home (thenextweb.com)

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Image via Wikipedia

It’s Memorial Day weekend, which means people will hopefully be enjoying a few days away from the grind. To help with that, for those who are musically inclined, here’s a link to a pretty neat concert: Our Concert Could be Your Life, via NPR’s All Songs Considered:

In the decade since its publication, Michael Azerrad’s book Our Band Could Be Your Life has taken on a sort of biblical quality among fans of independent music. So it’s no surprise that this concert — 14 current bands performing the songs of 13 icons of indie rock at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan — occasionally felt like church. The lesson of the book — if nobody else is doing it, do it yourself — was repeated many times, and more than one musician credited Azerrad with clarifying the lessons of the earlier age at a moment when they seemed lost.

Have a great weekend. If you’re looking for work-related things to read on the Internet, check out the Diigo links I’ve been posting, or the CICM Twitter feed.

Cheers

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550D T2i Camera Test from Drew Painter on Vimeo.

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Some decent buzz on the Internet this week about the New York Times’ recent interactive “You Fix the Budget” game. I found the game interesting (and yes, I fixed the budget), but somewhat dry. Part of the reason for that is I was familiar with a previous budget-balancing game called “Budget Hero,” introduced in 2008 by American Public Media’s “Marketplace.”

“Budget Hero” has more movement, more explanatory details when you make selections, and even some cheesy sound effects. And it has a storyline, which sells it as a game, in my opinion. “You Fix the Budget” feels like a Sunday Crossword, which may be the intended effect.

But this got me to thinking: Do people have a preference when it comes to games as journalistic explanation? Is the “Budget Hero” better than “You Fix the Budget”?

I’m sure there is a certain amount of “different strokes for different folks” involved, and I can’t imagine this:

showing up on the NYT web site.

Still, I’m curious which method of gaming does a better job of illustrating the challenges involved in the budget process. Any thoughts?

And as long as we’re mentioning games related to the news, APM has a new “game” called Future-Jobs-O-Matic that might be worth mentioning for college media audiences.

And there are a wealth of related topical games linked at gamesforchange.org. I like the idea behind Free Rice, a definition game that adds rice grains to your total that are then donated to a hunger charity. Strengthen your vocabulary while helping out with world hunger.

(Future-Jobs-Orama link found via Nieman Labs)

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Be sure to hold your mouse over the image to get another piece of geek humor. (and click the link to see the full 740×850 version.

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