Waxy.org: Links Archives: May 2005

Trixie, Greasemonkey for Internet Explorer (closed source and, in my mind, somewhat unnecessary) [via]

O'Reilly roundup of BBC Backstage mashups with Google Maps (see also: gMapTrack, a tool to easily create custom Google Maps like this one)

Irina witnesses a stabbing (psychotic woman stabs a Nordstrom shopper right in front of her)

Christmas Day With My New Girlfriend's Family As a Circa-1982 Text-Based Computer Adventure Game (I wouldn't mind reading an entire book in this format)

Improv Everywhere fakes a U2 rooftop concert (I'm mirroring the slow performance video) [via]

First look at Google Earth (holy cow; 3D buildings, public transit, and driving directions) [via]

Concerned, a comic made with the Half-Life 2 engine (if you've played the game, this is funny) [via]

Fan-made Star Wars embroidered quilt (extremely geeky)

David Lynch gives the weather report (updated daily; eat your heart out, Nick Nolte) [via]

Ten Years of Zeldman (congrats, Jeffrey)

Ex-FBI official states he's Deep Throat (he denied it to Slate back in 1999, but he's been the likely culprit for years)

Videocrab's E3travaganza (entertaining photos and stories from E3 2005, including the classic gaming exhibit)

Origins of the Crazy Frog ringtone (started on the Internet in 1997)

Phrack publishes final issue (end of an era; I've been reading the hacking e-zine since 1991) [via]

Ringtone beats Coldplay to top of UK charts (it's a dance remix of a ringtone mixed with Axel F; the video)

Amazon reviews by Smith T. Aames (occasionally offensive, but very funny)

MP3: Seven Minutes in Deadwood (editing out everything but profanity in an episode of Deadwood)

Intel quietly adds DRM to new chips (very, very lame) [via]

Compositing Half-Life 2 models in photographs (my personal favorite)

All Consuming joins the Robot Co-op (how did I miss this last week? a natural move for Erik and company) [via]

JWZ on the Royal de Luxe parade (massive French marionettes with beautiful backstory; see the insanely cool photos and video)

Abused Amazon Images (some new net art made using the recent Amazon URI hacking guide) [via]

Fabricating video game objects in real life (uses HijackGL; I'd love to see sets of videogame object miniatures like this)

Blake Ross's roundup of college newspapers link farms (including, sadly, my alma mater's daily newspaper)

MP3: Interview with Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair (they cover the history of Boing Boing, from zine to Xeni)

Console Controller Family Tree (visual history of console joysticks and gamepads) [via]

Lost as an Infocom game (clever bit of TV writing)

Flickr Lifehack pool (this shoe hack is useful, as is the stapler/remover and ruler tattoo)

List of fictional curse words (from Wikipedia's amazing Archive of fictional things)

Blake Ross digs up link spam on the Stanford Daily site (there are many spam blog entries linking to Stanford Daily with the "diet pills" keyword, too)

Yahoo! Mindset (brilliant idea, a slider moving from commercial to non-commercial web results) [via]

Wikitrivia adds categories and images (a little quirky, but I got 8 out of 10 in the Blogs category)

NYT on falling box office attendance (they blame DVD sales, PVRs, video-on-demand, video games, and the Internet)

Mike Doughty busks outside his own Seattle concert (one of my favorite live performers, this should be a good EP)

Andrew Leonard commentary on Star Wars BitTorrent busts (hit this link after viewing the page to read the whole story)

Rojolicious (Greasemonkey script adds Del.icio.us linking to the Rojo feedreader) [via]

Guiness Ice Lollies (perfect for the summer, if a little big) [via]

TorrentSpy blocking some searches (like Google, they're filtering because of DMCA orders)

Yahoo Photomail (their photo sharing service that doesn't work in Firefox or on Macs) [via]

Mobile software startup spams Del.icio.us? (read Patrick Hurley's comment in the thread)

Podcasting Star Wars: Winer vs. Curry (silly little drama, but don't miss Winer's MP3 response; he sounds heavily stoned)

MP3: Waiting for my Hash Pipe (Gwen Stefani vs Weezer mashup, very clever mix of verses) [via]

Video: Indie Rock Cribs (the very talented Joe Pernice shoots a pilot for MTV2 Cribs) [via]

All Threadless shirts $10 until June 6 (three of my all-time fav are in stocks: Goatse (safe for work), The Internet, Pirate)

Worst web application you've ever seen (unbelievably bad UI scraped from a mainframe terminal app) [via]

BitTorrent search goes live (why this is a bad move)

Homeland Security busts Elite Torrents (they say it's the first criminal action in the US against a BitTorrent tracker)

ml_iPod, iPod plugin for Winamp (looks nice, but strange that it warranted a Wired News story)

Visible Human Browser (Java applet, but amazing visualization of human anatomy) [via]

Abusing Amazon images (every image on the page is generated dynamically from Amazon's server) [via]

Analysis of posting activity by popular blog (around 30 entries per day, with less than 150 words per entry)

Grafolicious, chart Del.icio.us link popularity over time (like, say, Waxy Links) [via]

FOX issuing takedown notices to Star Wars downloaders (is anyone surprised? if you used BitTorrent, you're an uploader too) [via]

reFeed 1.3 released (web-based feedreader designed for high-volume feeds and linkblog integration; try the demo)

Video: Stunt City (best commercial I've seen in months) [via]

Eric Meyer on hCalendar and Upcoming.org (we haven't announced it yet, but there's full hCal support on Upcoming)

Matt Haughey on the problem with ads in RSS feeds (exactly why I don't show ads to logged-in users on Upcoming.org)

Video: SMS vs. Morse Code speed contest on Leno (one of the Morse guys comments several times in this thread) [via]

Murdered blogger's journal leads to killer's capture (here's the Xanga entry)

Alice's roundup of geeky cakes (also: iPod mini, iPod shuffle, Playstation, PSP, Xbox, and Blackberry cakes)

Piggy Bank extension turns Firefox into a semantic web browser (deep and interesting app; read more from one of the developers) [via]

Feedication, collect your data from other web services (pull from services like Flickr and Delicious, but doesn't displaying ads on Flickr photos violate their non-commercial clause?) [via]

Xbox 360 dashboard screenshots (nice IM and game downloads, but the tabs look a little confusing and ugly) [via]

Virtual Magic Kingdom beta goes live (Disney's odd massively multiplayer Flash game) [via]

Nick Bradbury on RSS spam and spyware (the EXE enclosures are fixable, but RSS blog spam is harder)

WikiTrivia (automated quiz game pulling entries from Wikipedia; ridiculously hard) [via]

Hippocamp's "Pet Sounds" remix on Banned Music (I love illegal remixes)

Bram Cohen to launch BitTorrent search engine (drawing attention to infringing uses of BT is a hugely bad idea)

Upcoming.org users create MovableType plugin and Python, Java, Ruby libraries (plus, we added related tags like on the "apple" page)

iTunes 4.9 to support integrated podcasting (though Apple will apparently be moderating the hosted podcasts)

Lawrence Lessig and John Hardwicke fight sexual abuse and the American Boychoir School (amazing story about a harrowing and extremely personal part of Lessig's life) [via]

GPS Visualizer (upload GPS data, get a lovely map) [via]

Philipp Lenssen's thoughts on Google's language translation tools (their new efforts could be a step toward a working Babel Fish)

Roadcasting (ad-hoc FM networks, sharing MP3s between cars and live DJing from the road) [via]

Simpsons episodes described for the blind (don't miss the MP3; it's like listening to old-time radio serials) [via]

Richard Linklater directing Fast Food Nation adaption (a "fictionalized thriller"? this must be a joke) [via]

Business Week profile of "hacker hunters" (one Slashdot commenter discusses the problems with prosecuting criminal hacking cases) [via]

PyPy public release (Python implemented in Python) [via]

Mark Pesce's "Piracy Is Good?" part two (how the Internet is rewriting the laws of television; excellent read) [via]

Socialized.net, decentralized search infrastructure for searching Bittorrent (with Azureus and Firefox plugins) [via]

Matt Haughey on a truly awful ~~Reuters~~ Variety article about Creative Commons (not only misguided, but flat out factually wrong; Lessig's comments)

MPAA blames BitTorrent for Star Wars distribution (blaming BitTorrent is like trying to blame HTTP or FTP; it's just a protocol)

Guns n' Roses Self-Similar Synth (compressing entire GnR songs into tiny samples; it's like fractal music) [via]

Scavenger (web scavenger hunt to find images on user-submitted lists) [via]

Ringtone Dancer (extremely obnoxious; warning: sound) [via]

Delivr (postcard builder app built on Flickr) [via]

Crying, While Eating (videos of people crying while eating) [via]

Contagious Media Showdown entries (some of these are brilliant! the next few links are my favorites)

Blogebrity, tabloid-style magazine about blogger gossip (an entry in the Contagious Media Showdown, and I fell for it) [via]

Google: Personalize Your Homepeage (drag and drop is nice, but I don't like the move away from simplicity)

Das Keyboard (blank keyboard for serious geeks) [via]

Pixel Group (Ajax play space for group pixel art)

"My Google" portal launching soon? (the shift from search engine to portal will be complete)

Nintendo announces DSpeak (voice over IP with the Nintendo DS!?) [via]

GrafikDemo (real-life wireframe teapot in a CBM shell; from the genius behind PongMechanik) [via]

The Morning News' 2005 Editors' Awards for Online Excellence (I'm honored to have made the cut on such an interesting list)

Saludos Amigos soundtrack ripped from vinyl (Kiddie Records is doing amazing work; Bugs Bunny in Storyland is great, too)

Netscape 8 released (what's the point? there's no advantage over using Firefox) [via]

Netflix takes over Wal-Mart DVD rentals (they're now a formidable opponent against Blockbuster) [via]

David Cross' "Albums to Listen to While Reading Overwrought Pitchfork Reviews" (David Cross writes on Pitchfork about Pitchfork writing about David Cross)

BitTorrent goes trackerless (less reliable, but only requires one active seeder and no tracker)

OpenID, an actually distributed identity system (looks very cool)

E3: Gameboy Micro hands-on (still looks too small to be useful, but it is sexy)

Cheap Gas, mashup of Google Maps and Gasbuddy (also: Google Maps Movie Search by same guy) [via]

Namco developing Katamari for cellphones (like most cellphone games, this probably won't port well)

Google launches Adsense for RSS feeds (the best practices recommend only using ads in full-text feeds) [via]

Del.icio.us pioneers (spotting the Del.icio.us trend makers) [via]

Image: Venice drawn with Microsoft Paint (also: two early versions of the 500 hour pixel drawing)

Backpack API (Backpack just got more interesting; here's a great real-world usage) [via]

Image: Star Wars' Last Supper (from Giant Magazine)

Nintendo announces Game Boy Micro (a GBA with a 2 inch screen; are games even playable at that size?)

Playstation 3 technical demos (all real-time, very impressive)

Nintendo Revolution revealed (first pics, but not focused on performance increases) [via]

Video: Killzone 2 trailer for the PS3 (looks pre-rendered to me; I'll believe it when I see it) [via]

Chicago Crime (amazing database of publicly-reported crimes; here's a first-degree murder Google Map)

NES emulator for the PSP released (SNES and Gameboy Color emulated already; is the GBA next?) [via]

Episode III hits BitTorrent? (sorry, I don't buy it; if anyone can confirm this isn't a fake, let me know)

Newsgator buying FeedDemon? (two of the biggest client-side Windows feedreaders merging) [via]

Joystiq's live coverage of the PS3 press conference (more powerful than the new Xbox; other photos in the comments)

50 Fun Things to Do with Your iPod (a great roundup)

Halfbakery idea for Google Minus Button (badly needed, and would also provide aggregate stats to Google for removing spam)

SNES9x emulator ported to the PSP (all these hacks require the Japanese 1.0 firmware, which Sony is quickly forcing out) [via]

Ariel Atom 2 (don't miss the video review (full-screen torrent); I've never lusted after a car before this) [via]

Adam Kempa's roundup of vinyl video (video encoded on grooved albums and neat zoetrope animations on records)

Elizabeth Gilbert on the worst wedding toast ever (just finishing up a toast for my mom's wedding tonight) [via]

Flickr switches from Flash to Ajax (that was quick! the notes work well with heavily annotated photos)

Nintendo DS demos to be distributed wirelessly at E3 (exciting use of the technology) [via]

Why Lichtenstein sucks (I posted a refutation with some research in the comments)

Outfoxed, Firefox extension to socially annotate the web (extensively documented and clever thesis project; read the nutshell intro) [via]

Flash Is Ajax at the Ajax Summit (the Flash-Javascript graphing demo is nice)

UFOs on Google Maps (a commenter posted link to several other identical UFOs, all in a grid) [via]

Scientology losing ground to new Fictionology ("we offer our preclear followers procedures to erase overts in the reactive mind") [via]

Xbox 360 to debut on MTV tonight (here's the TiVo link) [via]

Photos of 28 course, 7.5 hour tasting menu at Alinea restaurant (read more about this remarkable new restaurant) [via]

Broadcast Machine preview released (publish RSS video channels, distributing the bandwidth with Blog Torrent)

Google ponders Blogger, Gmail integration (also: privacy options and native photo uploading) [via]

OpenStreetMap (a wiki world map, created and hand-drawn by users) [via]

E3's "I Love Katamari" ball (a giant ball of stuff to be contributed by E3 attendees; should be fun) [via]

Del.icio.us starts a blog (I wish every corporate blog posted cat photos) [via]

Fundable launches (like Dropcash for groups; if the goal isn't met, everyone gets refunds)

Google buys Dodgeball (some interesting possibilities with Blogger and Google Maps) [via]

Video: Chronicles of Narnia trailer (also: Zathura, aka "Jumanji in Space," could be good too)

Monkeywire mailing list (since October 2000, the #1 source for monkey-related news online)

Frank Zappa's Proposal For A System To Replace Ordinary Record Merchandising (from 1983, he saw the future of streaming digital audio distribution from the network; as seen in the Frank Zappa Book) [via]

BBC Backstage (open API, feeds, and tools for remixing BBC content; if only all media was this open) [via]

Video: Katamari Damacy creator's lecture from Game Developers Conference 2005 (hour-long discussion of the game design, with hand puppets!) [via]

Thoughts on Apple's video plans (spurred by the insightful Apple insider's Slashdot comments)

Apple granted patent for Mac touchscreen tablet (with simple illustrations) [via]

Google Content Blocker (block everything except ads; remember to read the privacy policy) [via]

Flickr moving from Flash to Ajax (also: if you want it now, there's always Lickr) [via]

Omnipelagos (find connections between any two Wikipedia entries, like here to there) [via]

Platypus, Firefox extension for inline editing of Greasemonkey'd sites (edit the content and layout of websites, and save the changes as a Greasemonkey script; here's the correct location of the broken link) [via]

Wired News releases internal source review (Gelf Magazine, who originally broke the story of a Wired News reporter fabricating sources, follows up with an Adam Penenburg interview) [via]

Dive Into Greasemonkey (Mark Pilgrim's free book on Greasemonkey hacking; an essential resource)

Yahoo News tag soup (automatic tagging of Yahoo News feeds, using the content analysis web service)

Hilary Rosen complains about iTunes DRM (completely hypocritical, to the point of Bizarro-world surrealism) [via]

Apple insider posting regularly to Slashdot? (see their interesting comments on the iTunes Store selling video; other recent comments) [via]

Gameboy emulator released for PSP! (the PSP homebrew scene is getting huge) [via]

SAT writing test rewards length and ignores errors (the longer the essay, the higher the score) [via]

L.A. Times redesigns to 1024 pixel fixed width (unlike WaPo and IHT, they're putting more than just ads on the far right; also, CalendarLive is free again)

JotSpot inaugural hackathon (brilliant idea for practically any company) [via]

Official Mr. Clean forums (a strange community of cleaning product fans, with their own trolls, in-jokes, fanfic, and more) [via]

Flash: Radial visualizations of Upcoming.org events (one of the coolest uses of the API so far)

Comparing Gawker's blogger pay rates to mainstream journalism (about $30,000/year)

Geotagging Flickr with Greasemonkey and Google Maps (amazing hack! sets the bar for how manual geotagging should be done online) [via]

Binary Bonsai's Live Archives (intelligent ways of browsing blog archives, powered by a new Wordpress plugin)

Greasemonkey blows up business models (some great thoughts on why Greasemonkey is important, and a great idea for a Netflix-BitTorrent script) [via]

ScrappyGoo (hosted RSS feeds of Google News search results) [via]

Image: Episode III merchandising goes too far (if you thought the lawn sprinkler was bad; from the SA goons) [via]

Apple Widget of Mass Destruction (blueprint for auto-installing spyware widget you can't remove; very dangerous)

HySpace, Hyrule's online friend community (brilliant Zelda-themed MySpace parody, with profiles for each character) [via]

Google outage (DNS for several Google domains goes down; Google News still inaccessible)

Nintendo DS ads in Stuff Magazine (overtly sexual ads conflict with Nintendo's family-friendly image) [via]

Tiny Mix Tapes reviews the new Nine Inch Nails album (best album review ever) [via]

Video: Working Title (animation of 3,100+ movie title screens, spliced together and set to audio) [via]

Barbie USB Drive (disturbing and funny) [via]

What I Would Be Thinking About If I Were Billy Joel Driving Toward a Holiday Party Where I Knew There Was Going to Be a Piano (written by The State's Michael Ian Black) [via]

Upcoming.org gets a wiki (not much there yet, but I'd love some help fleshing it out; feel free to add your feature requests)

Google Web Accelerator wreaks havoc on web applications (since it follows every link on the page, it can cause a huge mess; I should block it on Upcoming.org)

The Onion A.V. Club interviews Ben Folds (the new album is more understated than Rockin' the Suburbs, and it's grown on me) [via]

Flags as infographics (clever and funny) [via]

Greasemonkey: Boing Boing Quiz (the Greasemonkey script game?) [via]

Broadcast Flag struck down by Appeals Court! ("nothing has changed to give the FCC the authority it now claims")

Tristan Lewis on Google Web Accelerator (the utility may help Google mine the Deep Web, pages that aren't already getting indexed)

Blogger Mobile (post blog entries and photos with MMS) [via]

Google Web Accelerator showing other people's pages (SomethingAwful forums users snapped screenshots of being magically logged in as other users) [via]

Image: Institute of Eastern Studies (excellent logo; see also: SQL Fairy) [via]

New Movie Idea: E.T. (brilliant, it might catch on) [via]

"The Internet" t-shirt on Threadless (references to Goatse, Tubgirl, Domokun kittens, Badger Badger, John Titor, All Your Base, and more)

Creative Commons ends BzzAgent partnership (Lessig has much more commentary on the decision)

Adam Mathes hired by Google (congrats! but does that affect the future of Consumating?)

Soderbergh and Cuban closing the theater-to-DVD release gap (I mentioned this idea in my old entry on the future of movie theaters)

First homebrew code running on the PSP (a Hello World program, and a huge first step in opening up the platform)

Polish circus posters (gorgeous illustration from the late '60s and '70s) [via]

Kronos Projector (scrub parts of video forward and backward in time; don't miss the video) [via]

Linux for the DS working (the kernel's booting and a SASH shell is working) [via]

iPod shuffle captures 58 percent of Flash MP3 player market in six months (and Apple owns 90 percent of the hard drive-based market) [via]

PSP UMD format cracked, game ISOs appear online (don't hold your breath for an emulator any time soon) [via]

SEO Inc. sends a cease and desist to Google Blogoscoped (they have no case, but it's hard to fight even groundless lawsuits; read the Google cached story before it's gone)

Video: Montage of clips from Rosie O'Donnell's TV melodrama (the funniest thing I've seen all year; more details)

Image: Dr. Mario Winamp (drag this image onto Winamp for a surprise; how it works)

Long article on DDoS extortion in the online gambling industry (Eastern European hackers using zombie networks to shut down gambling sites that won't pay) [via]

Loews Theaters to publish actual movie start times ("10 to 15 minutes"? on Sunday, I waited through 20 minutes of commercials and trailers)

Mashup of Google Maps and Yahoo Traffic feeds (even though Yahoo was first, it functions better on Google Maps) [via]

Metababy back online with Typekey logins (launched in November 1998, Metababy was an early cousin to modern wikis but recently taken offline by rampant vandalism)

Roger Ebert and Daniel Woodburn on the derogatory use of "midget" (The Station Agent's Peter Dinklage doesn't agree) [via]

Oberkampf, Flickr-powered PHP photo gallery (very customizable, with nice utility functions) [via]

Protected Storage PassView (Windows freeware utility to decrypt all saved passwords from Internet Explorer and Outlook Express)

Google Web Accelerator for Windows (a Google proxy cache, but like other proxies, will muck with website stats and ad reporting) [via]

Senators who Flickr (the canned copy reminds me of the presidental candidates on Friendster)

NY Observer article on Bob Saget's dirty mind (mentions the Aristocrats joke; I'm still hosting the South Park version (extremely offensive)) [via]

Video: Bright Eyes performs "When the President Talks to God" on Jay Leno (Leno: "great job, buddy!")

Image: Nine Inch Nails covers Johnny Cash (silly mistake by the Press-Enterprise)

flickRate, enchanced ratings for Flickr photos (the Greasemonkey script integrates the rating function inline)

Azureus decentralizes BitTorrent (nice idea, but doesn't help BitTorrent's image)

Tumbleweed Dispenser on Halfbakery (some other recent favs: Arrggh!, Puzzle Prison, Airplane Seat Guestbooks, Pincushion Ceiling/Floors, and Pedagotchi)

Tear-Away Pringles Canister (Halfbakery is a great source for half-insane ideas; here's my personal view of the last month's top ideas)

37signals' Backpack goes live (brilliant and very flexible web-based PIM, with adding data by e-mail, RSS changes, and a very loose wiki style)

Video: Jon Udell explains simple single sign-ons (using this Javascript MD5 bookmarklet, which could also be a Firefox extension)

Backfence, local community sites (only in two areas of Virginia for now, but I like the community-edited approach)

Jeremy Keith's Adactio Elsewhere (pulling together personal information from disparate sources is a theme this year)

1UP's hands-on preview of Katamari sequel (the Prince is controlled by Katamari fans; warning: audio on first page) [via]

ABC to offer PSP-formatted news (strange, but okay) [via]

Gridlockd urban game (capture intersections on a city grid using semacode and cameraphones) [via]

Abandoned Japanese amusement park photos (much more urban decay on the same site, including this odd Gulliver attraction; see also, Defunct Parks) [via]

Shockwave: Searchscapes Manhattan (3D visualization of Google searches for NYC addresses) [via]

AtomFilms hosting PSP-formatted short films (sponsored by Sony, naturally) [via]

Coachella 2005 photos on Flickr (blow up the crowd photos to feel like a rock star)

Image: Johnny Hart's B.C. comic on evolution (from the Sunday newspaper)

Unclaimed assets of the stars (Marlon Brando has a check for $48k waiting for him)

Fiona born (congratulations, Matt and Kay!)

Geobloggers, Flickr meets Google Maps (view geotagged Flickr photos on a Google map)

CNN spamming blog comments? (Wired News has more information)

Matt Haughey is photo blogging his daughter's birth (congrats, Matt and Kay!) [via]

Kottke roundup of bad Tiger headlines (I'm hoping cute headlines die off completely in an RSS-enabled news landscape)

Image: AFP infographic for blog-related article (it accompanies this story)

Longhorn preview screenshots (hideously ugly and a usability nightmare) [via]

Controversy over Creative Commons partnership with marketing firm (more on Lessig and BzzAgent )

Yahoo Traffic Conditions in RSS (some interesting possibilities here)

Gamespot's hands-on preview of Shadow of the Colossus (the new PS2 game by the team that made ICO) [via]