Waxy.org: Links Archives: November 2007

Google Reader adds feed recommendations (they were deadly accurate for me)

Tay Zonday promotes Dr. Pepper with "Cherry Chocolate Rain" (strangely depressing, but I guess it's better than William Hung's commercial) [via]

Google tests thumbs-up voting on search results (no social feedback, but retains your setting across searches for the same terms) [via]

Stir-fried wikipedia (I think I'd prefer the steamed eggs with wikipedia)

PayPerPost's bloggers ask if the marketplace is dying (the PPP forums are fascinating right now, seeing how the community responds as the business collapses around them)

Technical overview of how the Facebook Beacon works (this could have been fun and useful, if it was only opt-in on a site-by-site basis) [via]

Gamespot reviews Deal or No Deal for the Nintendo DS (problems with the randomizer make this the worst game released this year)

What the Google Intranet Looks Like (to compare, I found recent intranet screenshots for Yahoo! and Microsoft)

Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein compares real bands to Rock Band (she continues the discussion on her own blog) [via]

Video: Gay bashing in Halo 3 (warning, offensive audio; very upsetting to hear, but not at all surprising) [via]

Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark's clock (the same group responsible for the secret cinema and bar built in a cavern under Paris)

Desert Bus for Hope hits $20,000 raised for Child's Play (they've been playing the world's most tedious game on live cameras for four days straight)

So You Want to be An Arcade Champion? (one man's quest to play all 4,000 games in the Twin Galaxies world records book alphabetically)

Managing RSS feeds with better groups (funny, this is almost exactly the way I organize my feeds in Google Reader)

Ron Paul Blimp ($235k in pledges so far; oh, the humanity)

ROFLCon's Guest List status report (shaping up to be one of the strangest conventions of all time)

Shredz64 (one man's quest to connect his Guitar Hero controller to his C64 and develop a game to use it with) [via]

Fray relaunches as a quarterly printed book (the original community for personal storytelling comes back after two years of hiatus)

Ze Frank on feeling uninspired ("let's not wait for inspiration, but let's be ready for it when it comes")

Gameplay footage from The Act, cancelled coin-op game (the unusual game used cel-style animation and a knob to control the character's mood from serious to silly) [via]

LucasArts game engine ported to iPhone (all their classic adventure games running full-speed with multitouch control)

Facebook, you owe Mike a Christmas present (I need a spoiler warning for my mini-feed)

Desert Bus for Hope hits $11,000 and 98 hours (now in its 66th hour of gameplay, Penn & Teller donated $1,500 and bought them sandwiches; more on the game)

2 Guys 1 Cup with John Mayer (safe-for-work parody of the sickening original) [via]

iPhysics, physics game engine for the iPhone (inspired by Crayon Physics)

Rex starts the 2007 List of Lists (as always, keep checking back as we get closer to 2008)

Video: Music Animation Machine plays Gradius, Dr. Mario, Donkey Kong, and more (images from classic video games play their own themes using MIDI visualization; more background) [via]

Food Pairing (tool to inspire creative cooking using the flavor components of 250 different ingredients) [via]

PickyPirate, a Metacritic-BitTorrent mashup (finding the best-rated media on popular torrent sites) [via]

Video: Grickle's Closet (I don't know why I find Graham Annable's animations so funny, but I do; see also: The Last Duet on Earth)

Flickr's second billion took three months (absolutely insane growth, though slightly skewed by the one-time Yahoo Photos user migration?) [via]

Flickr launches Places and redesigned map views (big congrats to Rev. Dan, Kellan, and the rest of the flickr crüe)

Mark Pilgrim's The Future of Reading (I wish they'd modeled the Kindle after their excellent MP3 store instead of bowing to paranoid publishers)

Google Reader team visits the set of Heroes (they should've given a bit part to Chris)

I Want to See That! (should be called "Go See A Movie With Ben and Katie")

Google Maps adds collaborative map editing (fix address and Street View locations while retaining original locations) [via]

The Laptop Club (hand-drawn laptops created by 7- to 9-year-olds) [via]

Harry Potter and the Order of Typography (Jon Hicks highlights the typeface selection in a lovely slideshow) [via]

Katamari creator previews new game, Noby Noby Boy (the gameplay video shows off the stretching dynamic, combined with eating and expelling barnyard animals; whee! )

Jonathan Coulton performs "Portal" live (better than other shakycam versions, but the guy with the cake is scaring me)

Video: Twitter helps solve a murder on CSI (both usernames were registered shortly after it aired)

World of Datecraft (travel the world, meet interesting people, and steal their loot) [via]

Half-Life 2 Episode 2 statistics (this kind of communal feedback is fascinating for players, but invaluable for developers) [via]

Lost in the Static (strange freeware PC game builds a platformer out of noise) [via]

You gonna light that pipe? (Jim Treacher takes on a three-panel comic from a "write this comic" contest)

Interactive Fiction Comp '08 results announced (download them all; read Emily Short's review of Lost Pig, the winner)

Catching Up with an Aqua Teen Terrorist (R.U. Sirius interviews Peter Berdovsky about hairstyles from the 1970s)

GameSetWatch on the extremely meta Game Center CX (a Nintendo DS game about playing retro games, based on a Japanese TV show about playing retro games) [via]

plusplusbot, karma for anyone (bringing the IRC karma bot to Twitter) [via]

Ian Rogers' 1994 zine about Sly and the Family Stone (a loving tribute from a man who really loves his music)

Peter Rojas' RCRD LBL goes live (exclusive DRM-free music from their own new label and partnering with like-minded labels on a daily MP3 blog)

ASCII rave in Haskell (creating music by typing text into a "broken" speech synthesizer; another video) [via]

Prince sends DMCA notices to b3ta users for Photoshopping contest (this is just idiotic (sorry, Anil!))

Prince of Persia butchered in "Life" TV show (laughably bad portrayal of technology, including Excel spreadsheets hidden in the 10th level of the game) [via]

Ze Frank's Strike #2 (if he keeps making them, I'll keep linking to them)

Peter Pan finds his Tinkerbell (there's someone out there for everyone)

Announcement: I'm leaving Upcoming to work on Waxy.org full-time! (a friend said I should cross-post this to Waxy Links since they didn't see the main blog post)

Orangina's new furry-friendly ad campaign (more head-shaking weirdness at the official site)

24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot (we're paying for the Internet by the hour) [via]

Smoking Gun uncovers David Bowie's 1976 mugshot (the only guy that could make a mugshot look like a high fashion photo shoot)

Elvis Costello reunites with Clover to perform "My Aim Is True" live, tonight (I'm insanely giddy about this; I'll be in line for the late show at 7:30pm if anyone wants to say hi) [via]

Jimmy Carter, cat murderer (lamentably)

Homebrew version of The Last Starfighter (they developed a working version of the nonexistent game from the film)

Video: Facebook News Network ("All the News Feed that's fit to print.")

Ze Frank's Strike Day (it's like The Show, but with blinking and better lighting)

Tim O'Reilly on Open Social and Facebook (he nicely articulates why both fall short, while reframing the problem with a solid prediction)

Matthew Somerville's BBC News diffs (thanks, Webb)

FoxDiff, tracking diffs in FoxNews.com headlines (biases aside, it's fun simply to watch a newsroom making slight changes over time)

Feed the Head, updated in late August (if you played it before, try it again)

Pac-Txt (Pac-Man meets Zork) [via]

Google's OpenSocial API docs go live (the Orkut sandbox is moderated, so Plaxo Pulse is the only live implementation so far)

Tumblr 3.0 launches with a zillion new features and improvements (including privacy, hosted MP3s, video through Vimeo, and investors)

Mythbusters to test "plane on conveyer belt" riddle on December 12 episode (using an Ultralight plane and a quarter-mile conveyor belt)