December 27, 2004

Del.icio.us gets Slashdotted — generally positive comments, but they're stunned by the lack of porn/spam #

Inconsistent numbers with Google's library scanning project — at their best rate, it'll take 43 years to scan all pages (via) #

Video: Tsunami wave hitting Phuket beach, RealVideo format — also: six minutes of raw flooding footage #

December 26, 2004

Photo sequence of tsunami flooding in Phuket resort — intense (via) #

First-hand photos of the tsunami damage in Phuket — another gallery, found from these forums #

Flickr as a MMO (via) #

Blizzard trying to end Warcraft auctions on eBay — they should be fostering economy, not trying to kill it (via) #

Headphone Headshots — what New Yorkers are listening to on their headphones, and what they ate for breakfast #

Overclocking the NES — the demo videos compare before and after (via) #

Eliot's First Christmas

Posted December 25, 2004 by Andy Baio

I know this comes dangerously close to breaking my First Rule, but what’s the point of a personal website if you can’t post baby photos?

With that said, here’s Eliot’s First Christmas!

And for everyone who can’t stomach adorable baby photos, Jason Scott has the complete soundtrack to The Last Starfighter, The Musical.

December 25, 2004

Child's Play II — more kids making fun of old video games (via) #

December 24, 2004

Stereogum's Top 14 Albums of 2004 — with b-side MP3s for every one #

December 23, 2004

LABlogs's Notable Blogs of 2004 — a great list of other Los Angeles bloggers #

Activision buys the cover of Electronic Gaming Monthly — Variety does this too, but EGM's case is more deceitful #

December 22, 2004

Dylan Verdi, 11-year-old videoblogger — kids like this will soon kick the asses of all the old-timers (via) #

iTunes Producer Patent

Posted December 22, 2004 by Andy Baio

Last week, Apple Computer filed a patent application covering the iTunes Producer application and backend architecture, used for managing and sending music to the iTunes Music Store. The patent includes screenshots of the application, which Apple only distributes to authorized musicians and record labels.

One screenshot includes some interesting fields, such as Parental Advisory warnings, BPM, and various sales and copyright information. There’s a button for adding Lyrics, which may indicate future support for lyric searching in iTunes Music Store.

Unfortunately, you need a special plugin to view the embedded images at the Patent Office website, so I’ve converted all the drawings to GIF and included them below.

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The U.S. Patent Office Search is consistently interesting. If you search by “Assignee Name,” you can keep track of all the pending and approved patent activity by your favorite companies. For example, here are all approved patents and pending applications for Apple Computer. Some other interesting company searches: Google’s pending and approved, TiVo’s pending and approved, and Yahoo’s pending and approved.

Not surprisingly, there are a few good blogs that focus exclusively on new patents. Patently Obvious and Patent Pending. And I just found Fresh Patents, a fantastic daily index of new patents, with RSS feeds by industry.

Fresh Patents — RSS-enabled directory of new patent applications (via) #

Musical Pi — assign numbers to notes, and play the first 10,000 digits of pi as music (via) #

Full albums of "Dragnet: The Christmas Story" from 1953 and "Non-Stop Christmas Disco" from 1979 — more great Christmas rarities: FaLaLaLaLa.com, Oddio Overplay (via) #

D.C. Comics superhero Christmas album from 1977 — "Exciting Christmas Stories" with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman (via) #

Technology Review on Amazon's web services — high-profile mention of Alan's excellent Amazon Light (via) #

Background of the Apple Graphing Calculator — sneaking onto Apple's campus for six months of unpaid work in hiding (via) #

pb's Radio Dials photographs — this one has an insane UI (via) #

Monkey Donkey Gift Guide — web lunacy with Google image search and speech synthesis (via) #

December 21, 2004

First Nintendo DS ROM successfully dumped — Darkfader posted the file listing for Metroid Prime: Hunters #

Mark Pesce on the MPAA's attack on BitTorrent — "Hey, Hollywood! Can you feel the future slipping through your fingers?" (via) #

Massive list of substantial non-infringing uses of P2P technology — an attempt to support the defense in MGM v. Grokster (via) #

WFMU's On the Download — monthly collection of oddball recordings published in the station's newsletter (via) #

Rex Sorgatz' Blogs of the Year — holy crap! I made #4 on the list, and #3 on Kottke's list!? #

Google Suggest Poetry Generator — here's how it works (via) #

Podcasting audio with Skype — co-workers could record Skype conference calls and subscribe to the MP3s (via) #

Final release of Dolphin, the best Gamecube emulator — the screenshots are stunning; Paper Mario 2, Animal Crossing, Zelda Four Swords, and more #

Rands on tool cruft — are you using obsolete tools just because they're comfortable? #

Stipple Portrait Illustration by Noli Novak — as seen in the Wall Street Journal hedcuts (via) #

eBay: Original engraving plate of Wally Wood's "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" — the infamous X-rated Disney spoof originally ran in The Realist in 1967 #

Manybooks.net — amazingly well-designed free eBook site, try the recommendations (via) #

Prodigem — free BitTorrent tracker for open, CC-licensed content (via) #

USPS website fails for non-IE6 users — in an extremely aggravating (and illegal?) way, too #

The Long Tail blog and book — Wired editor Chris Anderson's original article got him a book deal (via) #

If Internet Explorer was your girlfriend — spyware and popups as STDs and annoying children (via) #

Virtual virii in Second Life — red wings with a porn payload, and self-replicating swarming objects #

Staccato Music — downloadable music show of legal Creative Commons-licensed songs (via) #

The Clueless Top 20 of Google — "i'm confused" has 575k results #

Debunking the myth that video games are bigger than Hollywood — this recent SF Chronicle article perpetuates the myth (via) #

Unofficial Suprnova closure FAQ — includes a torrent link to an audio interview with Suprnova's creator; currently offline (via) #

BitTorrent 3.9.0 beta released — supports multiple torrents now, but a very awkward UI #

December 20, 2004

FCC photos of the DS — try searching for other wireless products, like Apple's Airport Express #

Aaron Swartz on the Google Library — best roundup I've seen #

SwitchProxy extension for Mozilla — a really well-designed extension for bypassing censorware #