Gizmodo: choose your own adventure

The Magic of Choose Your Own Adventure Books, Beautifully Visualized

John Herrman — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:20:00 EST

There are two ways to look at the legendary Choose Your Own Adventure books. As reading experiences and childhood memories, they're vital. But as data sets for visualizations, they're weirdly spectacular. Observe!

Designer Christian Swinehart has parsed piles upon piles of Choose Your Own Adventure titles, and rendered them as a series of visualizations, from charts documenting how frequent "catastrophic" endings occur as opposed to "favorable" ones to animated representations of every single permutation of a given book to a digital copy of Zork: The Cavern of Doom, which tracks your every move on a visual graph.

Continue browsing the main site, because you have no sense of whimsy/had a horrifying childhood that you'd rather not be reminded of? Click here.

See your favorite childhood books, exploded into animated data sets? Click here. [via MetaFilter]

Choose Your Own Apple CEO Adventure

Jason Chen — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

Future, Cupertino — After a long and fruitful tenure as CEO, Steve Jobs steps down in early 2009 to fanfare and industry fawning. Apple needs a new leader. It's time to choose your own adventure.

Much deliberation and coin tossing goes on in the back rooms of Apple. Their board of directors choose a person who they strongly believe can lead Apple into its next phase of growth, a person who can, at the very least, match Steve Jobs' product development whip cracking, if not his outsized public persona.

The board chooses...

• Jonathan Ive, Apple's Senior Vice President of Industrial Design. Turn to page 10.
• Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing. Turn to page 11.
• Tim Cook, Apple's Chief Operating Officer. Turn to page 12.
• Bill Gates, Super Rich Dude. Turn to page 13.
• Yourself, Super Poor Dude. Turn to page 14.

Choose Your Own Adventure is property of CYOA.com.

Choose Your Own iPod Adventure

Jason Chen — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:44:08 EST

Good news everyone! Those Choose Your Own Adventure books you loved to read while stuffed into a locker as a kid are finally making their way to the iPod. The CYOA titles come in two forms, e-book and audio book.

With the e-book, you read normally and choose pages when prompted. As an audiobook, the author (some weirdo who writes CYOA books) reads the text to you, then prompts you whenever applicable. The whole scheme is kinda wonky, but may be neat for your kid to play with instead of bugging you while you're driving.

Plus, the publisher is giving away a free CYOA: The Abominable Snowman as a free download until January 25. Try it yourself and relive the glory days of 7th grade. – Jason Chen

Choose Your Own (iPod) Adventure [Amazon]

Product Page [CYOAStore]

Choose Your Own HDTV Adventure

Jason Chen — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 13:00:17 EST

For those of you still having a hard time deciding which HDTV to buy, Joel's got a spectacular guide to help you out. And if Joel Johnson's one thing, it's hairy. If he's two things, then he's hairy and clever. Clever enough to put on his pants in the morning and churn out this brilliant Choose Your Own Adventure.

Not to spoil anything for you—J.K. Rowling gets remarried!—but part of it involves a gnome and choice of inputs. – Jason Chen

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Cave of HDTV [Dethroner]