Ads via The Deck
February 29, 2008
Haxed by Megahurtz (extremely strange Flash game; level 3 plays over a landscape of scrolling spam emails) [via]
Gravitation, an experimental game about balancing work and family (from the creator of Passage, the pixel game that made people cry) [via]
Daily WTF's very funny story about truly awful web security (they changed the username, but it's still in plaintext in the source!)
Sched.org, the SXSW 2008 scheduler (elegantly designed, with the simplest signup process I've ever seen)
February 28, 2008
Heaven's Database transcript from Saturday Night Live (no video online that I can find, but the audio sounds like the sketch fell flat) [via]
iPhone stopwatch hits 1,000 hours (41.666 days later...) [via]
Editor fired for strangled-kitty joke slipping into production (regret the error, indeed)
FriendFeed publishes a blog of code check-ins (common for open-source projects, but I've never seen this done for a web startup)
One Page Magazine (I'd seen the Wired one, but not the rest) [via]
The Internet circa 1997 featured on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the entire episode is viewable via Hulu on various sites) [via]
Project Riff, insane dataset compiled by MST3k fans (read more about the project) [via]
826 Valencia opens time travel mart in Los Angeles (like their other stores, it's a front for their non-profit writing center) [via]
Roy Gould presents Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope (lovely, it's like Photosynth for the universe) [via]
Video: Ernie and Bert go BRUTAL (a far-out, super-hep swinging drum solo) [via]
Interview with developer of Trism, lovely new iPhone game (buit in only 10 days, it uses the accelerometer to determine how pieces fall)
February 27, 2008
Interview with Susan Bradley, Pixar graphic designer (among other things, she designed the hand-drawn type in the Ratatouille titles) [via]
My Favorite Liar (a college professor uses a clever technique to focus attention)
Jason Reitman's "In God We Trust" (great little short film about the afterlife from Juno's director)
Dead Word, the Word.com archive (just stumbled on this 1997-era snapshot of Word, apparently captured by net Yoshi Sodeoka)
Carl Steadman's Two Solitudes (love in the early digital age, originally delivered to subscribers as a series of emails in real time)
February 26, 2008
His Aim Is Truer, bootleg of historic concert reuniting Elvis Costello with Clover (BigO removed the files, but you can download the MP3s or FLACs here)
Rocketboom's Know Your Meme series (surprisingly good, tries to identify running themes in Internet memes)
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early ("we at Diebold will see to it that we properly safeguard the illusion of democracy") [via]
Jonathan Coulton performs "Still Alive" in Rock Band (backed by Merlin Mann, Leo Laporte, and Veronica Belmont; it's a geekgasm)
Nestography (Adam reads new meanings into NES screenshots)
Doom Rickroller (more powerful than the BFG) [via]
February 25, 2008
LimerickDB's Top 150 (in particular, I love this one)
Vice Magazine's cover feature on Shintaro Kago (weak interview, but interesting he's getting more attention; don't miss the Labyrinth scanlation)
Talking Points Memo becames first blogger to win Polk Award (too bad the Pulitzer excludes independent journalism outside of newspapers, online or off)
February 24, 2008
Map of social network popularity around the world (Asia loves Friendster, Russia loves LiveJournal, and Orkut still dominates Latin America) [via]
February 22, 2008
Jake and Amir getting MTV show? (if true, College Humor secured digital rights, so good news all around)
Hot Topic selling design pirated from popular Threadless shirt (and a low quality ripoff, too; Jess Fink has a right to be irritated) [via]
Fan creates 3.5GB torrent of SXSW 2008 free MP3s (SXSW won't release a torrent this year, so Greg made one himself)
Boom Blox to include Wiimote head tracking (the inventor of the technique didn't get credit or money for it, but he doesn't mind)
Interview with Tay Zonday on "selling out" (he's eloquent, grounded, and philosophical about his fame) [via]
February 21, 2008
ForumWarz (supremely brilliant browser-based RPG parodying Internet culture; more about the creators)
Yahtzee Goes to the GDC (very entertaining videos created for the awards show)
Obay Unveiled (Torontoist gets official word from the people behind the ad campaign)
Human Giant, Paul's Time Machine (yay, drunk Waxy Linking!)
February 20, 2008
I Wanna Be The Guy! (viciously hard Windows platformer with a pastiche of retro games; here's one attempt) [via]
Microsoft announces Xbox Live Community (anyone who pays $99/year for the development kit can submit games for review)
Phun, 2D physics playground (like a freeform Crayon Physics) [via]
February 19, 2008
The Soul of the Sims (Will Wright's prototype code from 1997)
Perry Bible Fellowship creator retiring weekly comic strip (switching to periodic updates, which makes more sense for a cartoon like his)
BME interviews man who deliberately amputated his right hand (he felt it was a birth defect, so staged an accident with a power tool) [via]
Torontoist on Obay, mysterious billboard campaign (good research into this cleverly-designed viral campaign)
February 18, 2008
Lawyers representing gold farmers threaten MMO blogger (nice summary; here's one archive of the original post, now removed)
Video: Jammin' the Blues, 1944 (historic jazz session with sublime performances and gorgeous direction) [via]
Yahoo! filters The Pirate Bay from search results? (a strange move, since people are looking for it constantly)
File Destructor 2.0 (create a corrupted file to send in when you're missing deadline; old, but new to me) [via]
California judge forces Wikileaks.org DNS entries removed (a tactic I've never seen before, the site is still accessible by IP address or multiple mirrors) [via]
February 16, 2008
Hoax analyst haunts earning calls (this is wonderful, like mundane performance art) [via]
POV-Ray Short Code Contest #5 Winners (creating a ray-traced animation in only 512 characters; see the other rounds) [via]
Kottke's Single Serving Sites (this meme is his new bicycle)
February 15, 2008
Oscillofy, turn any image into sound (inspired by my oscilloscope hacks entry)
February 14, 2008
Rex Sorgatz interviews Adrian Holovaty about EveryBlock (excellent interview addresses a bunch of questions I had about the site)
Quake II ported to the Nintendo DS (impressive feat; from the same guy who ported the first Quake) [via]
Video: Chris Vincze's "EVOL" (love in a backwards world) [via]
Rejected valentines from Shoebox Greetings ("I love everything about you... except the things we've already discussed") [via]
Love blossoms in the lab (it shouldn't be a surprise that romantic love is chemically similar to OCD)
4 Color Rebellion's video game valentines (their Tetris valentine from 2006 became a cult favorite)
February 13, 2008
MMOG Charts updated (World of Warcraft hits the 10M subscription mark and still exploding)
The Cernettes' "Surfin' on the Web" from 1992 (the band formed at CERN next door to Tim Berners-Lee's office)
We Now Conclude Our Broadcast Day (collection of TV signoff videos)
February 12, 2008
How Cool Impacts Technology Adoption
Jason Scott's final words on The King of Kong (very long, absolutely essential reading; gives tremendous insight into the repercussions of documentary filmmaking)
February 11, 2008
Spongebob cast dubs classic movies (Nickelodeon meets The Godfather) [via]
Wired founder Louis Rossetto responds to Rex's Wired 1.1 tribute (some fascinating history; I totally agree with him about the innovative design)
EnerJar (DIY power meter measures output of your electrical devices) [via]
john.he.is (parody of the will.i.am "Yes We Can" video)
February 9, 2008
Derek Powazek launches Pixish (instead of commissioning art or buying stock photos, allows anyone to run a Threadless-like design contest for cash)
Rewind Kindly, contest to create 5-minute-long no-budget film remakes (in the spirit of Be Kind Rewind's sweding method)
Political contributions from tech companies (Google loves Obama, Microsoft loves Hillary, and Yahoo! employees hang on to their money) [via]
February 8, 2008
The Aimee Mann Christmas Trilogy ("you should do that one song you have about being really depressed") [via]
Wired's mirroring all the St. Sanders videos (take that, Yngwie)
Previously on Lost (band recaps each episode in song) [via]
TorrentFreedom to offer completely anonymous and unrestricted BitTorrent (built on top of OpenVPN, the pay service bypasses any firewall and keeps no identifying logs, including billing)
Randy Newman, San Francisco 1972 bootleg MP3s (what an odd site; Singapore e-zine posts rare bootlegs weekly)
Niall's technique for sniffing browser history to customize pages (I'd only seen this used for evil before)
Mike Dailly's concept art from the design of Lemmings (including the original animation that inspired the game; there's much more FROM DMA, too) [via]
Smugmug addresses some privacy issues (all new galleries get keys appended to the incremented URLs)
The RICHH Archive (Usenet legend's brilliantly funny writings)
February 7, 2008
Wired 1.1: An Archaeology (Rex looks back on the first issue of Wired 15 years later)
Yahoo! Live, multi-user video chat (server's getting slammed right now, but I'm surprised to say, it's pretty fun to use with friends)
Yngwie Malmsteen shreds with the New Japan Philharmonic (the video that got Yngwie so pissed, he had Santori's YouTube account shut down)
Video: The making of Brent Spiner's second album, Dreamland (I just found out the followup to his 1991 debut was announced right before my entry; nice timing!)
Details about a cancelled Naked Gun adventure game from 1997 (they hired and paid Leslie Neilsen to voice act, but political issues derailed the game)
Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo join the OpenID Foundation (holy cow, that's some mighty big guns)
The Evolution of Tech Company Logos (the designer of the first Apple logo gave up 10% of the company for an $800 payout) [via]
February 6, 2008
Trailer for Blip Festival, the chiptune documentary (debuting at SXSW Film with a huge chiptune concert? count me in)
Bully for the 360 adds achievement for kissing 20 boys (very surprising, considering the rampant homophobia on Xbox Live) [via]
Auto-Tune Abuse in Pop Music (what hath Antares wrought?) [via]
Akari's Coming Soon page (I guess that's better than an "Under Construction" icon) [via]
Ape Lad's Pappy and the Cryptids (this whole series is pretty great)
Matt Webb on Snap, the syndicated next action pattern (watch the screencast of Dentrassi, their to-do list that runs entirely in a feed reader)
YouTube removes St. Sanders' "Shreds" account (word on the street is Yngwie Malmsteen complained about being mocked; parody is protected speech!)
February 5, 2008
Twitter stats from Superbowl Sunday (I want a magic CNN-style "Breaking News" on Twitter determined by algorithm; related: Twitterverse)
Groundhog Day screenwriter on the "how long?" question (he mentions a deleted plot device that would've cleared it up; also: no mention of jwz's post)
7 Viral Videos You Didn't Know Were Staged (I'm impressed by the research; Cracked is dominated by Digg-bait, but it's adapted well to the current web)
Pravin Sathe's How You See It (overlapping multiple versions of the same TV news story) [via]
Kottke's great roundup of time merge media (I love this kind of thing)
Peter Hirschberg opens the doors to his insane new home arcade (over a year in the making, he moved it from his basement to a 2,400 square foot building)
Flash: Spin the Black Circle (I started tearing my hair out at level 12; enjoy yourself!) [via]
Sometimes Red, Sometimes Blue (no shades of purple) [via]
February 4, 2008
Jason Scott's scathing critique of The King of Kong (a perspective I've never heard, from a well-respected documentary filmmaker on geek subculture)
Eels' 1-second ad for Super Bowl that didn't air (as E says on their site, the NFL doesn't sell ads in 1-second increments; nice try!) [via]
Hide an image in HTML with CSS3 (highlight the text with your mouse; good for propaganda!)
Why Leonard Lin's Voting for Barack Obama (see also: eloquent and heartfelt endorsements by Michael Chabon, xkcd, and Larry Lessig; do the right thing, America.)
Arcade Fire's "Black Mirror" DIY remixer (6 tracks of vocals and instrumentation to tweak alongside the video) [via]
The Mountain Goats do Super Tuesday ("And we reach out for the lever in the dark, Get a sticker for our shirts as we head into the sun, Proudly bearing the mark")
February 3, 2008
Dan & Kathryn's Apple //c unboxing (related: another vintage computer fan who bid for the same auction)
Dinosaurs & Robots Dispatch #1 (new digital magazine by Mark Frauenfelder and Mr. Jalopy, powered by Yahoo/Adobe PDF ads) [via]
Jason Scott on maximalized pandas (my drum kit came from Sweetwater, also wrapped with a handful of candies; I love stories of great service)
Cory and Alice's baby girl, Poesy, is born (congratulations, you two! beautiful and fitting name)
Video: Out of Context ("actors say the darndest things") [via]
Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward on KCRW (hearing this, I'm even more excited about the She & Him debut)
February 2, 2008
Drawn Metafilter Comments (old, but new to me; I'd love to see this extended to other sites)
February 1, 2008
Twenty-Six Types of Animals (custom type personifying each animal; sketches of the process on Flickr) [via]
Tweet Scan (real-time Twitter search, very well done)
John Gruber's analysis of the Microsoft/Yahoo merger (best I've seen so far, and not just because he quotes me at the end)
Five subtle changes in the event that Microsoft acquires Yahoo! ("owing to unavoidable data corruption, all Upcoming.org events must be reinstalled monthly")
Google's Social Graph API (they're culling FOAF/XFN links from the web; here's an example of passing my FriendFeed URL to their My Connections app) [via]
Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo! (holy crap; the press release from Redmond)
Mass Games Human Computer (winning Half Baked idea suggests turning North Korean-style mass displays into human logic gates)