Waxy.org: Links Archives: January 2007

Boston police overreact to Aqua Teen promotional LED throwies (a Flickr user took one of the "suspicious objects" home) [via]

Flickr announces March 15 deadline for switching to Yahoo IDs (the backlash has been fierce; Stewart and clan have been responding throughout)

idproxy.net: Use your Yahoo! account as an OpenID (oustanding hack)

Midomi, music search using your own voice (incredibly, it worked for all three songs I belted out)

Teriyaki Boyz video parodies YouTube (I highly second the Rip Slyme and "Beef or Chicken" recommendations)

Mapping New Testament Social Networks (from the guys who did the Mechanical Turk bible quote database)

SF Chronicle starts podcasting voicemails from angry readers ("pilotless airplane! pilotless airplane! drone, drone, drone!")

In My Language, autistic woman speaks her native language and translates into ours (she responds in the comments; this instantly changed my perception of the world)

Video: College Saga (funny real-life recreation of a classic 8-bit RPG)

Clive Thompson's A Head for Detail (good article on Gordon Bell and MyLifeBits; recording every piece of his life) [via]

Gen Kanai on the High Cost of Monoculture (Korean Internet are stuck using IE 6 because of ancient encryption standards)

Mates of State's Kori Gardner on touring with kids (she's been writing a regular column for Babble on being a parent in a band)

Yahoo's most popular BitTorrent searches (I swear I had nothing to do with this)

Quag7's State of the BBS (he called 50 dialup BBSes and wrote up the results; the parts about where web communities fail is essential reading)

Flickr quietly launches machine tag support (the possibilities here are kinda mind-bending)

Coca-Cola settles with Joel Veitch and his ninja kitten video (more from Joel) [via]

Jason Scott on A Sysop, Forever (story of one tiny BBS, the death of its 15-year-old sysop, and how his brother and father kept it alive)

Paul Ford's Followup/Distraction ("There are two kinds of distraction, at least.") [via]

IBM's Many Eyes (like Swivel, a site for creating and sharing data visualizations; O'Reilly has more)

Waxy.org: Pirating the 2007 Oscars (I just posted my research into Oscar screener piracy, also showing that restricting screeners may hurt film's Oscar chances)

Food Network running subliminal McDonald's ads (too bad subliminal ads don't work) [via]

Video: Flea Market Montgomery, the mini-mall rap ("You heard me! Come shop!")

Coachella 2007 lineup leaked (three days of heat and music)

Video: Children Are A Gift (a star performance by Ben, the son of my oldest childhood friend)

Foo campers' Space Invaders and Cylon Raider artwork on Google Maps (Google arranged a flyover of the campus during last year's camp)

Social Whitelisting with OpenID (something big is brewing here; just wait until someone builds exactly what Scott proposes)

My Name Is Meta ("My Name Is Earl" writers plant references on Television Without Pity forums six months before they mention it on-air) [via]

Every Ad in Times Square (it's posts like these that make Ironic Sans one of my favorite new blogs)

Piano Hero (play along with any MIDI file, Guitar Hero-style)

Get A First Life (backstory on the joke from Darren, along with an incredibly clueful official response from Linden)

First image of Wall-E revealed (Pixar's next film after Ratatouille) [via]

How big is Azeroth? (measuring the size of a virtual world in real-world terms)

Bitpass shuts down (despite this, the iTunes music store proves micropayments can work well with a single service)

New York bakery prints error message on cake (here's the backstory)

American Idol Myspace Hunt: Round #1 (researching each contestant so you can heckle them directly)

The Astoria Notes (David documents the complaints of an unhappy neighbor)

Make your own custom songs for Guitar Hero 2 (see the growing list of songs with accompanying YouTube videos of gameplay; for example, JerryC's Canon Rock)

First pirated HD DVD movie hits BitTorrent (at 20GB each, this could spell the eventual end of the Usenet binaries)

Timbaland samples Demoscene musician without attribution for Nelly Furtado song (first time I've seen a chiptune from the MOD scene end up in mainstream pop)

Windows Mobile Users Get Hacked iPhone UI (like OS X themes for XP, it's not quite the same)

MPAA Caught Uploading Fake Torrents (public trackers aren't safe and will only get worse) [via]

Unsigned band's digital single to enter UK top 40 charts (first unsigned band and first download-only song to make the cut after new rule changes)

Top 100 Duplicate Digg Comments from 2006 (I'd love to see the same on other social sites to see the zeitgeist of Fark vs. Metafilter vs. Slashdot)

Kottke gets crafty with a cardboard iPhone (round those corners, mister!)

Apple's official iPhone site (inspiring industrial and UI design)

Effect of Apple's iPhone on RIM and Palm stock (the market has spoken)

Engadget has photos of new Apple iPhone (details rolling in on MacRumors and Engadget)

Yahoo buys MyBlogLog, for reals (I played a part in this deal but had to keep quiet; congrats, Eric!)

Homebrew DS motion sensor card (with some homebrew games already written for it, including DS Saber) [via]

Kasou Taishou Grand Prix 2007 (worth it for the human version of Breakout with marshmallows and blackface)

Wired's 101 Ways to Save Apple cover story from 1997 (ten years later, on the eve of an exciting Macworld, still a great read for its good and bad advice)

Digg Scares Me (refusing requests from Digg.com because of rampant asshats) [via]

xkcd on YouTube commenters

The Simpsonzu, anime version of the Simpsons (using this drawing for reference)

Zug.com's John Hargrave releases prank book (one of the oldest e-zines, Zug has been active since 1995 and still very funny) [via]

Suck.com's Joey Anuff launches recommendations site (sounds like Metacritic for music singles, gears, autos, and so on)

Merlin Mann's Phone Guy series ("my nails are salon-perfect") [via]

A Kinda Patton Christmas (including custom Carvel cake and fake Photoshopped magazine)

Amazon launches Now Now answer service (send a question by email, get three responses from Mechanical Turk workers)

LA Weekly profile on Mark Allen and the Machine Project (an old friend and former coworker, Mark never fails to inspire me)

Jason Scott goatse's Myspace (a long read on a simple prank, but worth it for the conclusion)

How to play Windows XP alerts on the piano (don't miss the Tiny Music Makers links, the creators of famous computer sounds)

Google Reader adds personalized charts (the best feedreader around keeps getting better)

Celebrity Patents (Eddie Van Halen has the best patent illustration ever created)

Chip & PIN terminal playing Tetris (the video is mirrored on YouTube) [via]

Video: Joel Veitch vs. Coca-Cola Argentina (they ripped off his song and dancing kitten video for their ad)

Wired Science, the Wired/PBS collaboration, debuts tonight (it took ten years, but they finally launched Wired TV)

Video: Fionn Regan's "Be Good or Be Gone" (using ambient audio from diverse locations, creativity on zero budget)

Danah Boyd on ephemeral profiles (it always amazed me that my little sister created a new IM screenname every couple months)

Top 12 Appearances by Bands in Films (also: '60s garage band cameos in TV & film)

The Edge annual question, "What are you optimistic about?" (funny, everyone from Boing Boing was a contributor except Mark) [via]

Kongregate (nicely designed community for sharing Flash games) [via]

Sci-Fi Channel's "The Lost Room" as adventure game (sounds intriguing; the Wikipedia entry has more spoilers) [via]