Waxy.org: Links Archives: August 2005

CBGB's lease won't be renewed (legendary club to close despite rallies) [via]

Video: Cubic Tragedy (outstanding CG animation available as a very high-res download)

Flickr photobook printing with Qoop (here are some example pages of the book design) [via]

Kiko (nicely designed web calendaring with very low barrier to entry)

NYC subway flasher caught (Flickr cameraphone photo that made NY Post front page leads to his capture)

Racism in AP's Katrina photo coverage (everyone's talking about this one; you decide)

Image: Bush Extended Family Photo (geek political satire; reminds me of one ring)

Pandora Music Engine comes out of private beta (streaming music recommendation service)

The Onion redesigns, opens complete archives to all (Khoi Vinh comments on his top-notch work on the redesign; the new archives go back to 1996)

Lego Factory (create and share digital Lego models, then buy custom-made kits of your designs) [via]

NYT on Flying Spaghetti Monster (classic net-style satire makes a comeback)

A judicial answer to the RIAA (RIAA sues mom for file sharing; judge kicks their asses)

Credible rumors on the IM war (Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL may be conspiring against Google Talk in the IM space) [via]

The Final Blow in the Doppler Wars (I'm waiting for Doppler Infinity+1) [via]

Upcoming.org adds Groups (we just launched this; for example, SoCal Indie Rock and Flickr events)

TechCrunch's short review of Flock (the social web browser sounds interesting) [via]

Best CAPTCHA ever (next: captchas in Flash and VRML)

Hot Biscuit Mod (Nintendogs the next to be targeted after GTA San Andreas)

Image: Pac Man on Trial (best entry from b3ta's If Computer Games Were Real)

MovableType 3.2 released (looks like Greg updated MT-Upcoming for 3.2, too!)

Greasemonkey 0.5.1 final released (you may now resume remixing the web)

Matt Haughey writing reviews for the New York Times (I've always wanted to see my name in all-caps Times New Roman)

Playing a Platinum Record (it was recorded backwards and wasn't the song being awarded)

Last Stand for First Sale (sewing software publisher threatens woman who tries to sell her legal copy on eBay) [via]

Is MySpace deliberately ugly? (also, could crappy visual design have contributed to eBay's success?) [via]

I am not responsible for making Google better (concise counterpoint in the search engine spam debate with some good thoughts in the comments)

Trackback: A Tragedy in Three Acts (I wish more tech writing was done in the form of short plays)

TechCrunch reviews Pandora (new music recommendation engine for custom streaming radio)

China tries to remove Internet icon from Web (like always, Wikipedia's coverage of Sister Furong is essential)

Bricolage adds support for PHP templating (the open-source CMS we use at work keeps getting better)

Chris Anderson on "just enough piracy" (piracy can be useful, and there may be optimal piracy rates for different industries)

Kottke's essay on WebOS (lots of good thoughts and predictions)

Tim O'Reilly responds to accusations of supporting search engine spammers (thoughtful reply; this is a subtle issue that people are only now becoming aware of)

Google Talk launches (Skype must be freaking out right about now; here's a review)

Leaked info on logging into Google's new Instant Messenger service (using their Jabber-based IM with your Gmail username)

Dateline tracks down a porn spammer (odd bit of investigative journalism turns up the owner, web host, and spammer of a bestiality site; Joey has more) [via]

O'Reilly's search engine spam (read about this on my last day at Foo Camp, but couldn't get a quote from anyone there) [via]

TiVo adds support for moving video from PCs to DVR

Google running Jabber server, fueling rumors of IM tool announcement on Wednesday (the talk.google.com domain resolves, too) [via]

A List Apart redesigns (lovely work, great typography)

Quake III source code released under GPL (Slashdot thread on the quality of the code with comments by Carmack himself) [via]

Pwntcha (project to decode Captcha images; more info in this article) [via]

Phone pirates in seek and steal mission (thieves using Bluetooth phones near locked cars to find laptops to steal) [via]

News Corp may buy IGN Entertainment (which includes Rotten Tomatoes) [via]

Engadget 1985 (the SYSOP is IN)

Dick Tracy introduces the bootleg DVD gang (this storyline is hilarious; Cellphone, Digit, Download, and Miss Laptop!)

Google Desktop 2 beta release (the sidebar seems a bit obnoxious)

Scans of the Target-sponsored issue of the New Yorker (the first comment made me laugh)

Dick Tracy busting DVD pirates in new storyline ("your living is costing the movie industry five billion a year!")

Vice Records' "Do They Know It's Halloween?" (insanely bizarre benefit recording with an all-star indie rock lineup)

DJ Lush Life's West Sounds (remixing Kanye West with Beach Boys' Pet Sounds) [via]

Yahoo Local beta (very impressive alternative to CitySearch; some of the highlights)

Wikipedia entry on Flying Spaghetti Monster (take that, Brittanica) [via]

Protopage (gorgeously designed Ajaxy sticky notes website)

Turn your NES gamepad into a TV remote (funny hack) [via]

Seven Band Names That Would Be Impossible to Book [via]

Maya's Micronomicon (my friend Maya's insanely detailed notebook drawings; more obsessiveness in her Flickr stream)

Salon to sell The WELL (a part of history that could be lost forever)

The Goddess Bunny (your guess is as good as mine)

Blogger toolbar for Microsoft Word (feels strange, but casual users will love this)

Quake III to be open-sourced this week (six years later, still a great game we play at work regularly)

Video: Grumpy Starbucks spec ad (it's no Nutrigrain, but it made me laugh) [via]

MyProgs (collaborative list of applications people use; like Del.icio.us for software)

Dave Matthews Band encouraging fans to bypass DRM restrictions on new album (they're petitioning Apple to support WMA in iTunes, rather than releasing DRM-free audio)

Etsy (nicely designed shopping site for buying and selling handmade stuff) [via]

Feedster's Top 500 (wow, Waxy Links is #60; read about who was excluded) [via]

Linux and Windows running on the PSP (a healthy homebrew community keeps the platform alive, despite the lack of good games) [via]

CNET buys Metacritic (still catching up from last week's vacation)

Video: 10 mph movie trailer (film about two guys crossing America on a Segway) [via]

Del.icio.us adds recommendations (and, just as important, they added full search)

Technorati about to be sold? (I guess I could ask Dave in person on Friday at Foo Camp)

Flash: Spaceworms (use the arrow keys to evade the dots; I can't get past level 8)

Om Malik says Google building massive broadband network (he speculates they could one day offer country-wide free wifi) [via]

Fiona Apple album to be released in October (apparently, she wasn't happy with Jon Brion's production; stream a new track) [via]

BBS Documentary Video Collection on Archive.org (as promised, Jason started uploading the raw interviews from his excellent documentary) [via]

Waxy goes on Vacation (I'm taking the week off; in the meantime, try Populicious or my favorite sources for links)

Amazon's long tail shorter than previous estimates (the original Wired article said 57%; new research shows closer to 25%)

Doom ported to iPod Linux (crazy hack; watch the videos)

John Gruber on Apple's Trusted Computing (a rebuttal to Cory Doctorow's essay)

Video: OS X running on generic Intel hardware? (OSx86 project claims it's not fake, but it's currently slow and unstable)

"Phil Collins Minus One" and other radio station promo scams (MP3s of a fake interview album and some good station identifiers)

Complete scan of Mickey Mouse vs the Air Pirates (the infringing comic book that launched Disney's copyright war) [via]

Homebrew port of Heretic for the DS (Doom DS may be close, as well) [via]

These Are the Breaks (MP3s of famous original samples; reminds me of this other amazing site)

Wikipedia to tighten editorial controls? (the Wikimedia board says Jimmy Wales was misquoted) [via]

Apple Dictionary's definition of "blog" (bläg sounds very Spinal Tap) [via]

Video of the San Francisco bouncy balls (the photos of the Sony commercial shoot made the rounds last week; high-res video here) [via]

JJG interviews Eric Costello on the history of Flickr (they've influenced the entire industry with their ability to adapt quickly to user wants and needs)

Google blacklists CNet reporters (because of information about CEO Eric Schmidt in this previous article?)

Peekaboom (Carnegie Mellon's multiplayer game used to train computer vision algorithms)

Jason Scott partnering with Archive.org to host raw interviews from BBS Documentary (all under a CC license; over time, this is even more important than the documentary itself)

A Rocket to Nowhere (Maciej Ceglowski's excellent article on the problems with NASA's manned space flight program)

Redbug, graphic Javascript demo from Assembly 2005 (try it in IE)

Broken counterfeit jeans (buggy code prints an Excel function onto clothing labels) [via]

Ask Mefi on porn in the woods (growing up in the San Fernando Valley, I'd never encountered this phenomenon)

Vox Delici (Stamen's neat visualization of Delicious Popular) [via]

TiVo banner ads released (show me ads or charge subscription fees, but not both)

Assembly 2005 awards and releases (the PC demoscene continues to amaze; don't miss the Che Guevara and Fiat Homo 64k demos)

Wired News interviews Mike Lynn on Cisco security flaw (bizarre story; ISS asked him to do it and wanted to release it to hurt Cisco?)

Mozilla announces the Mozilla Corporation (for-profit subsidiary headed by Mitchell Baker)

Yahoo Publisher Network private beta (they're gearing up to take on Google's Adsense)

WFMU's answer songs roundup with MP3s (also: don't miss their MP3 Download Dinner Bell for August)

Apple's Mighty Mouse (oddball mouse design, with "scroll ball" and built-in speaker)

Follow-up on the Aristocrats conspiracy theory (that settles it; definitely not a Penn Jillette hoax)

Greasemonkey 0.5 beta released (closes those nasty security holes, and adds some new features too)

LA Times on Defamer's Mark Lisanti (more interesting is what he's decided not to post)

MegaManEffect for the Mac (OS X app launcher emulates the Megaman 2 level starting screen) [via]

Mirror Me (DIY file mirroring, with stats and bandwidth throttling)

Flickr Explore! (holy crap, this is cool; also, interesting photos in the last 24 hours and clustering for all tags)

Technorati's State of the Blogosphere, August 2005 (80,000 blogs created daily, blogosphere still doubling every five months)

Mercury News on Bram Cohen and the future of BitTorrent (evolving from a protocol to a company, they recently met with the MPAA in Burbank)

Flash: Leave It to Bush #3 (the supremely weird Flash series is always good)

How many punch cards would it take to fit a 3-minute MP3? (answer: without error checking, 36,864 cards reading 206 cards per second) [via]

Cory Doctorow on Apple's apparent switch to "Trusted Computing" CPU DRM (for everything Apple does right, a huge step in the wrong direction)