Waxy.org: Links Archives: November 2005

Game Set Watch (new gaming blog by Simon Carless, one of my favorite link sources)

Nick Montfort's Book and Volume (new text adventure about being a sysadmin; try the Java version online without save/load) [via]

Firefox 1.5 final released (read about their new marketing blitz)

RSS reader added to Yahoo! Mail beta (I've used it, and it's good stuff)

Time Travel Holograph conspiracy theory (photographic evidence the government is placing time travel holograms over this guy's face)

Mapquest FindMe (local mobile search plus Dodgeball-like GPS features)

Try Ruby (play around with the Ruby language in your web browser) [via]

Teen with peanut allergy dies after kiss (such a strange and sad story)

The Protomen's Mega Man-themed rock opera (details and MP3s from the epic concept album)

United Arab Emirates blocks Flickr, again (apparently for good, this time)

SplogSpot, spam search engine (all splogs, no blogs!)

Evan Williams' Ten Rules for Web Startups (from a man who knows)

Gollum, the Wikipedia browser (alternative UI for browsing the site, could be useful in a library or academic setting) [via]

Hands-on review of Sony's Talkman for the PSP (an avatar-based universal translator with speech recognition)

Archive.org asked to remove Grateful Dead soundboard bootlegs (very sad; Cory sums it up) [via]

Songbird (media player built on Mozilla platform, very iTunes-like)

Richard Scarry's The Best Word Book Ever, 1963 and 1991 (Alan compares all the subtle differences between the two versions)

Internet chatspeak as vintage type ligature (the "wtf" series is outstanding)

Meet with Approval (lo-fi meeting scheduler)

Gary Glitter facing death penalty in Vietnam (possible death by firing squad for child rape)

Anti-videogame lawyer Jack Thompson disbarred from Alabama courts (good, because that guy is a huge ass)

Gordon gets his traffic ticket dismissed (Gordon doesn't do anything casually, and I love that about him)

Washington Post Remix (Adrian Holovaty is leading the effort to let people mashup WaPo)

Bram Cohen agrees to remove pirated torrents from BitTorrent.com search results (about time; I said back in May that drawing attention to infringing uses was a big mistake)

Sketchplanet (cute community for instantly sharing Flash sketches)

Del.icio.us redesigns (increasing the emphasis on recently popular links is very smart)

WSJ interviews the Million Dollar Homepage creator (Philipp has great before and after screenshots)

BitTorrent and MPAA to make major announcement today? (Bram Cohen and Dan Glickman are holding a joint press conference at 2pm PST)

Video: Mario on the Marimba (very good talent show medley of Mario themes) [via]

VisitorVille 3D released (oddball visualization of your website traffic as people and vehicles roaming a city)

Video: Best Christmas Lights Ever (or: how to get your neighbors to hate you)

Web 2.0 Checklist (don't forget feature screencasts) [via]

8-bit NES covers of hit songs (not bad, but Virt's covers of Hot in Herre and Thriller reign supreme) [via]

TiVo adding iPod/PSP support to TiVoToGo (this is a surprising move, but wonderful for TiVo owners) [via]

Influential guitarist Link Wray, dead at 76 (the news is spreading on blogs and message boards, with nothing in the US media yet; MP3s here of the guy who arguably invented guitar distortion and the power chord)

Google-Mart (intriguing Cringely column on Google's dark fiber plans) [via]

Tom Coates on Space Cadets, the real-life Truman Show (I agree, it sounds cruel regardless of the execution)

Video: Dying Fetus, "Kill Your Mother, Rape Your Dog" (death metal music video using clips from Disney and Nickeloden kid's shows) [via]

JS/UIX, Unix OS in Javascript (with a stripped down vi clone; also, try /usr/bin/invaders)

MIT unveils $100 laptop (with photos) [via]

DVD Jon's GPL code in Sony rootkit? (this story continues to get weirder; Cory's coverage has been outstanding)

Peter Callesen's Paperworks gallery (amazing cutout art from sheets of A4 paper; more on his official site)

Text message transcripts admitted as evidence in teen murder trial (very disturbing read)

Meg Hourihan and Jason Kottke get engaged (five years after You've Got Blog; a warm and wonderful congrats, you two) [via]

Leeroy Jenkins mentioned on Jeopardy! (the contestants weren't well-versed in Internet memes)

Video: Rumble Strip's "Motorcycle" (one take music video for a good song, with very good timing) [via]

Interactive Fiction Competition 2005 winners announced (reviews are coming in; an excellent chance to play wonderful games created by a single passionate author)

Video: 12 Lucasarts games in 24 hours (what, no Grim Fandango?)

Linkroll.com for sale on eBay (get your own Del.icio.us clone for $499, cheap!)

Google Base launches (for real, this time) [via]

Wall Street Journal on the Interactive Fiction competition (this year's IF Comp winners should be announced tomorrow) [via]

eBay stops charging for API use (good move! I complained about their API charges back in 2003) [via]

King Kong, business monkey (Alan rounds up the merchandising from Peter Jackson's Kong)

AOL launching online TV service (3,400 hours of ad-supported video) [via]

Video: David Cross on Fox's mishandling of Arrested Development (from the Season 2 blooper reel, but very relevant)

Amazon tries tagging (also, they have a "Tags Team")

Google Analytics (free, gorgeous web stats package, with site overlays; so that's why they bought Urchin)

Fan-made films from Lionhead Software's The Movies (Peter Molyneux's new RPG has a built-in machinima engine with export options)

Video: Harry Potter and the Hogwarts Dance Team (sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion)

Fox cancels Arrested Development (officially, this time; I hate Fox) [via]

Watching all six Star Wars films simultaneously (reminds me of Jason Salavon's work) [via]

Digg vs Dot (comparing cross-posting between Slashdot and Digg, with a running tally) [via]

Blogger catches SF Chronicle plagiarizing New Yorker (nicely handled without an angry mob, giving them the chance to fix it and respond)

Say So (like an anonymous, lo-fi version of Ask Metafilter)

SF Gate web designers get snarky in alt tags [via]

Katamari creator dreams of playgrounds (ok, misread this story; he doesn't see a long career in gaming)

Katamari Sushi (nope, not sick of katamari yet)

Replica of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree (isn't the whole idea of this contrary to the moral of A Charlie Brown Christmas?) [via]

Ning.com's Anytown Marketplace (Jon Aquino's genericized Craig's List, cloneable for any city) [via]

Florida judge rules online discussion can apoint public figures (interesting precedent in a defamation case)

NYT on leaked Microsoft memos panicking about the "Internet services" era (Winer has the full text of Gates' and Ozzie's e-mails)

Flash: eBaum's World Sucks (it may be flamebait, but at least it's entertaining)

Digg.com set to overtake Slashdot in Alexa traffic rankings (pretty amazing, especially considering the timeframe) [via]

Yahoo Pirate Maps and Radar (using Flash filters and transforms to make a new look and feel) [via]

Mainstream Media Meltdown II (Chris Anderson updates his media stats)

Grokster shuts down network (the final chapter in the settlement, if not for the ongoing aftermath)

FlickrFS (Linux virtual filesystem that ties to Flickr for grabbing and posting photos) [via]

MySpace threats shuts down San Antonio high school (the school's reaction is puzzling; shouldn't they be grateful the information spread so quickly?)

Risk on Google Maps (the next version will attempt multiplayer) [via]

Aimi.cn (a Chinese 43things clone; this goal made me laugh)

Google adds Creative Commons license search (like Flickr, the ability to filter website by usage rights is wonderful)

Kottke on My Dirty iPod (I'll let him link to it, since it's explicit NSFW)

NYT tech columnist on the future of Yahoo (whoa, with a mention of Upcoming)

Dave Cassel's 100 Greatest Internet Moments (some serious nostalgia, mining the early web for memes and culture)

Something Awful on honest game titles (the first one is brilliant, but they're all good)

Best privacy policy ever (the Malevole text generator slips into production)

Japanese blogger poisons mother in homage to killer (with translated excerpts from her blog)

White Stripes cover Tegan and Sara on new EP (nice homage, but the original is much better; judge for yourself) [via]

MySpace starts record label (sounds like a natural extension of the buyout) [via]

Rasmus Lerdorf's PHP tutorial on the new Yahoo geocoder (for me, the geocoding platform is just as important as the new maps UI) [via]

Google Desktop 2 launches (with support for user-created plugins) [via]

Alisa Viejo teen murderer posted on Something Awful, Anandtech, others (he was about shotguns on SA, then killed his neighbors and himself three days later)

Amazon Mechanical Turk (develop questions that can only be answered by humans, make money answering them)

Fark makes violent videogames friendly (my favorites are Duck Hunt, Pac-Man and Postal) [via]

Cafepress copyright police shut down parody t-shirts for non-existent drug (the Panexa site is great, too) [via]

Yahoo! Maps beta (developers have already built some neat apps, including the outstanding MashUpcoming)

BitTorrent for Dummies (it doesn't get much more mainstream than this) [via]