May 31, 2009

Know Your Meme tracks the origins of the "God Kills a Kitten" meme — appears to have originated from Portland's BarFly magazine in 1999 #

Windows Update quietly installs Firefox extension — which can't be easily uninstalled; karma, indeed #

May 29, 2009

Zoho CEO on Google Wave, Microsoft Silverlight, and technology karma — even though Google's their biggest competitor, they've aligned with them because of their history (via) #

PatchMatch, incredible video demo of interactive content-aware image editing — taking seam carving to the next level, I really could've used this last week #

Yahoo! 360 closing down in July — they're providing a migration option and export tools, though only six weeks to use them #

The Onion's report on tracking down an NYU dorm fire — the future of news (via) #

Normalware's Bebot, surprisingly deep synth for the iPhone — don't miss the demo song by Jordan Rudess, showing how it's a full instrument (via) #

Twitter, as viewed by everybody who's never used Twitter — finally, the cliche's going away (via) #

Invaders! Possibly From Space! — Futurama fan makes a game based on a sketch based on a game #

Google Wave's full hour-long demo at Google I/O — don't miss the stunning demo of Rosy, real-time character-by-character language translation #

May 28, 2009

EFF chairman Brad Templeton makes a Hitler Downfall parody — don't miss his explanation of how he finally made the clip without breaking any laws (via) #

Hulu launches Desktop client for Windows/Mac — also, they just released browsing by air date and recommendations #

How Google Wave's spellcheck uses natural language processing — context-sensitive, it can correct there/their/they're and its/it's errors; also: Arrington interviews the founders #

Tim O'Reilly on the newly-announced Google Wave — real-time collaboration tool with an open protocol, blurring the line between email, IM, and personal publishing #

Don Bluth's Space Ace ported to iPhone — cheaper than the laserdisc version, but apparently, just as frustrating (via) #

Jeff Veen announces Typekit, licensing and hosting for web font embedding — short on details, but glad someone clever's trying to bridge the gap between developers and foundries #

Kevin Fox on Nilla wafers — I found this strangely touching #

May 27, 2009

Cabel Sasser on Panic's 50% off sale — every software company needs a green screen #

The Legion of Rock Stars — band wears 30dB noise-canceling headphones and plays along to rock songs #

Phreakmonkey surfs the web with a 300 baud acoustic modem from 1964 — at 6:30, he loads Wikipedia in Lynx; amazing it works so well with modern hardware (via) #

Zero Punctuation reviews Duke Nuke Forever — "taht's targic" (via) #

Dennis Knopf's Bootyclipse series — booty-shaking videos on YouTube with the booty removed; the angry comments are funny #

May 26, 2009

Play Him Off, Green Day — Colbert gets in on the keyboard cat action #

Highlights from the truly horrible Star Wars first draft script — constraints led Lucas to make one great film; without them, he turned out films like this draft (via) #

Pick One — don't miss the top 10 (Sex, The Internet, Cats) and bottom 10 (AIDS, 9/11, Lil' Wayne) (via) #

Meme Scenery

Posted May 26, 2009 by Andy Baio

So I had this silly idea to isolate the backgrounds from famous Internet memes, removing all the subjects from every photo or video. I’m pretty happy with the results.

Like Jon Haddock’s porn sans people, these photos are banal out of context. Only someone familiar with the original memes would sense something’s amiss, like the set of a play waiting for the actors to stumble into history.

Can you name all 22 23? (Click any image for the answer.)

Continue reading “Meme Scenery” →

May 25, 2009

nasty nets' YouTube Monster — culled from unrelated videos, like the visual version of In Bb 2.0 #

Néojaponisme on the culture of anonymity for Japanese Internet users — opinionated but interesting article, particularly Japan's public vs. private personas #

Text Adventure, typography in video games — remember to adjust your fart volume (via) #

J. Chris Anderson on Toast, his standalone CouchDB chat demo — in the process, he explains some of the overlooked benefits of CouchDB #

May 24, 2009

Apple changes its mind, allows Eucalyptus into App Store — until Apple sorts out their approval process, it helps to have noisy friends #

The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist — "Having your desk near the entrance to your office without visitors assuming you're the receptionist." (via) #

May 23, 2009

Techcrunch reports CBS secretly gave Last.fm data to RIAA — Arrington says CBS lied to Last.fm and gave it to the RIAA without their knowledge; Last.fm is vehemently denying it, implying a personal vendetta #

May 22, 2009

An Optical Illusion by Ze Frank — put on a finger cot first #

The Deck Readership Survey — best survey ever; an excellent example of why I love The Deck so much (via) #

Intel's nerd rockstar ad — the way it should be! sadly, Intel hired an actor to play Ajay Bhatt #

Davario's Draw Yourself As A Teen meme on Livejournal — over 500 submissions in a year, some highlights #

May 21, 2009

Scott Schiller's forensics on a nasty piece of JS malware — the most bizarre Javascript obfuscation I've ever seen #

Buzzfeed's top video reactions to American Idol's finale — some very upset Adam Lambert fans, #9 is my personal favorite #

John Gruber on the next-gen iPhone's specs — he has the best sources of anyone in the industry, I'll bet this is dead-on accurate #

Sorry I'm Late, a stop-motion short film — I loved seeing how it was made, from the first test animations to the final shoot (via) #

U.S. government launches Data.gov, national data repository — not much there yet, but centralized data is good #

Project Gutenberg iPhone app blocked by Apple because of the Kama Sutra — note that Stanza, eReader, and Amazon's Kindle app all allow the same book (via) #

Infinite Summer, read Infinite Jest this summer — only 75 pages a week, easy! #

Brian & Eileen's Wedding Music Video — someone found a business model for lip dubs #

Tiny Art Director, little kids are difficult clients — I'm finding this very, very late, but every entry made me laugh (via) #

May 20, 2009

Mozilla Jetpack, extend Firefox with HTML, CSS, and jQuery — don't bother trying to grok it from the text, just watch the screencast #

Yahoo! Placemaker, extract world locations from unstructed content — also, Yahoo released the huge GeoPlanet/WOE placename database under a CC license #

Axono.me, isometric pixel art grid library for jQuery — check out the demos, including these racing cubes #

LEGO announces Frank Lloyd Wright sets — the Guggenheim and Fallingwater are first, continuing the LEGO Architecture series of landmarks #