“If you can’t design a non-digital game from a digital game…you don’t truly understand the nuances of the pure design underneath the art and…programming.” -Brathwaite & Schreiber

While you may take any digital game that interests you, I recommend working with a simpler game we have already looked at (such as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, and Centipede) and convert that to a board game. These games are simple and easy to understand.

If you haven’t heard (it’s not for lack of me trying), I’m moving my family to London for 2 years. As part of the transition I bought all of my kids tablets that they could hold all of their music and books on and that they could also access email, skype and their own blogs. It has been an interesting experience, especially since my kids are all at such interesting ages.

When I was growing up I moved around a fair amount early in life and even a move across town meant that I wouldn’t see my friends anymore. Especially if you were grade school age, you just didn’t use the phone much and unless your parents were friends with their parents, cross-town “play dates” just didn’t happen.

But now, moving my kids to another country isn’t that big of a deal. Like I said they all have email, blogs and Skype, as do most of their friends.

Stephens is what business author Daniel Pink would call a “free agent.” Stephens is a professional speaker who is currently booking speaking dates for fees between $2,500-$7,000 on his topic of expertise, self-directed learning. He is the creator of the blog and social movement UnCollege.org. He is also a budding book author represented by legendary literary agent Jim Levine; my guess, based on my own extensive experience of the publishing market, is that with the large platform Stephens has built for himself from scratch, combined with Levine’s representation, he’ll receive an advance well into six figures for his upcoming first book.

I read a great article in the Economist the other day on my iPad. I tried to share it with my social network on Facebook and Twitter, but I can't do that with old media.

When the iPad came out, I was ready to give big media another chance. I thought they might wake up and start exploring new products and business models. I thought they might explore how to integrate with the modern Internet, the distributed and syndicated content model, and the social ecosystem. Then the apps came out. It was all the same - a proliferation of branded channels.