Ads via The Deck
May 31, 2008
The Letter in the Pond (passive aggressive note sent five years into the future) [via]
World Without Oil trailer from 2007 (only a year after the ARG launched, some of its peak-oil predictions already seem understated)
May 30, 2008
The Sound of Young America interviews comedy legend Jack Handey (dinosaurs, monsters, and cowboys)
Trailer for The Onion Movie, now on DVD (starring Steven Seagal as "The Cockpuncher")
FiveThirtyEight, weighted electoral projections (from a guy who specializes in baseball stats; looks like a good dashboard) [via]
Dean Kamen's mind-controlled prosthetic arm (Dr. Octopus!)
Danah Boyd's "My Long Lost Handwriting" illustrated (the artist takes blog entries and turns them into great little comics) [via]
May 29, 2008
Trulia Snapshot (more lovely visualization work from Stamen Design)
Metagold, a research blog about Nico Nico Douga (every entry is great; read the intro and YouTube/Nico cultural divide to start)
QR-Code Bots, an army of little men convert your URL into QR (background; can you tell I've been surfing Japanese blogs today?)
Stitch 2, generate a pixel-art knit cap for purchase (from Factio, creators of a similar t-shirt widget creator) [via]
Roz Savage's blogging her world record solo trip across the Pacific Ocean (a compelling read, she'll be the first woman to row the 7,000 miles from the US to Australia)
Tegaki, hand-written blogging (social self-expression where all entries, comments, and tags are hand-drawn) [via]
Multiplayer Pong on the iPod touch (cute hack built in about an hour)
Hello Windows Hello World, Japanese fan song made from Windows system sounds (also, a good example of what Nico Nico Douga comments look like)
May 28, 2008
Wired's self-retrospective on its 15th anniversary (don't miss the video promos further down the page and photo gallery)
Robokill (one of the slickest Flash games I've played, like Smash TV with robots) [via]
Displacements (film installation projects a rotating video onto a whitewashed room) [via]
Trailer for Guitar Hero: World Tour on the Nintendo DS (a terrible use of the license, Activision should be embarrassed)
Add Art, Firefox plugin replaces ads with contemporary art (built on AdblockPlus, the images rotate every two weeks) [via]
Internet Love Song ("circumflex underscore circumflex, I love you so") [via]
Paper Console, Pong as a choose your own adventure book (from the creator of Pac-Txt, a Python script that generates an 184-page book) [via]
Tom the Dancing Bug on Disney's eternal copyright (reminiscent of my own Mickey comic from 2003) [via]
The Native Faith of Donald (Japanese insanity is leaking from Nico Nico Douga into YouTube; much more Japanese McDonald's madness)
May 27, 2008
The eleven-minute Automatic Mario masterpiece (Super Mario World used as an instrument to accompany anime songs)
Interview with the director of Weezer's "Pork and Beans" (interviews from the video shoot will be coming soon on their YouTube channel)
Grabb.it TV, the top 20 music videos for every week from MTV to Napster (brilliant mashup wiring up YouTube and Wikipedia with the Whitburn chart data)
Complete footage of Jason Scott's "Before the LOL" talk at ROFLCon (whirlwind tour of the evolution of memes from the telegraph and Xeroxlore to modern day) [via]
"Biggest drawing in the world" art project not real (as suspected, the artist now says it's a work of fiction at the bottom of his site)
The Homebrew Channel, elegant homebrew launcher for the Wii (new from the creators of the Twilight Hack; don't miss the video) [via]
Google offers permanent hosting for major Ajax libraries (cached, minified, gzipped and up-to-date versions of jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, and more)
Team Genius' Illegal Donkey Kong Remix (tribute to Donkey Kong Country 2)
"We Are The World" performed by Japanese celebrity impersonators (the Cyndi Lauper was pretty impressive)
MuxFind, search for songs on Muxtape (this can't last long) [via]
New York Times developing an API ("Everything we produce should be organized data.") [via]
Philipp Lenssen on historical concepts of collective intelligence (from the noosphere to smart mobs)
May 26, 2008
Microsoft considering removing unpopular games from Xbox Live Arcade (don't sever the tail)
Parchment, a pure Javascript Z-machine interpreter (try some games from the IF Archive) [via]
May 25, 2008
Techdirt on Craigslist's ongoing battle with spammers (what a mess; that blackhat SEO forum is depressing me)
May 24, 2008
Biggest Drawing in the World (using a GPS-laden briefcase to draw a self-portrait 69,000 miles long; I'm skeptical, but it's a neat idea) [via]
May 23, 2008
Weezer's Pork and Beans video is Internet meme madness (riffs on nearly every major web meme; they even hired Afro-Ninja!)
May 22, 2008
National poll estimates 18 million Americans have been Rickrolled (probably higher, since the sample didn't include anyone under 18)
Cactus. Cactus cactus. (organized prank calling to a radio show by the PLA, professional trolls) [via]
Guitar Hero hacker plays Smells Like Teen Spirit without game console (I've seen several mods turning the guitar into an instrument, but never seen a guitar solo on one) [via]
Philipp Lenssen on using hoax news to boost search rankings (recent story about a teen paying for prostitutes with dad's credit cards was a hoax to boost a finance site's pagerank)
May 21, 2008
The New York Times' TimesMachine (back after an aborted launch that I missed out on, this is great archival work)
Jamie Livingston's Photo of the Day (he shot a Polaroid every day until his death from cancer in 1997) [via]
Sneak peek at the new Last.fm redesign (too early to judge, but a glimpse where they're headed; announcement and more screenshots) [via]
Slow-motion videos of people getting punched in the face (background on the clips, shot at 1000 frames per second) [via]
Offline Oracle Ouija Board (summon the Internet spirits with a QWERTY layout and cursor control) [via]
Huntington Hartford, kooky millionaire, dies at 97 (he blew $80 million of his inheritance on crazy schemes like a handwriting institute and automated parking garage)
Mike Sacks' Photos of TV ("funk master friendly")
Funny Farm (old, but new to me; a dangerous time-waster, spoilers here)
May 20, 2008
Amateur footage of the China quake moments after it ended (terrifying beyond belief)
16% of US science teachers are young-Earth creationists (they believe humans were created in the last 10,000 years; won't someone think of the children!?) [via]
Chuck Klosterman's list of the most fanatical fanbases (Tori Amos is at #2, which sounds right to me; nice gallery of uber-fans) [via]
Errol Morris reveals the backstory behind one Abu Ghraib photograph (fake smiles, Weekend at Bernie's, and the coverup behind a prisoner's death during interrogation)
Rory Root, owner of Berkeley's Comic Relief, dead at 50 (nice tributes from comic greats; the best comic book store I've ever seen, his passion was clear on the shelves)
May 19, 2008
How to Use Nico Video (Japanese video site from 2chan's creator requires registration to view videos, so I'm slogging through it)
YouTomb's tracking who ordered YouTube takedowns (recent takedowns are on the homepage of the MIT project) [via]
Threadless Prints (limited-edition 18"x24" posters based on shirt designs) [via]
Web Trigrams, visualizing three-word phrases from Google's corpus (gorgeous infoviz; more of his work from the massive dataset) [via]
Homer Simpson says, "Beat it, Waxy!" (from the archives)
SNL's Japanese version of "The Office" ("It's funny because it's racist.")
Music Bounce (quirky game built on music patterns) [via]
Vice-Presidential Prognosticatin' (Obama/Prime 2008)
Drew Burrows' virtual girlfriend in bed, a lonely art installation (reminds me of Daki Makura hug pillows and bedsheets) [via]
Webmonkey relaunches, again (this must be the third or fourth time the site's come back from the dead)
May 17, 2008
The London Tower Bridge on Twitter (I hope someone wires up a Coke machine to Twitter next)
Why We Twitter, academic paper from 2007 about microblogging (nice network analysis and node graphs towards the end; Scoble's tying disparate groups together)
Wired News on the new Soulseek client for jailbroken iPhones (decent speeds downloading music and it imports into your iPhone music library when done)
May 16, 2008
Bill O'Reilly's Producer (look at the other side of the camera)
"Things Younger Than McCain" creator on the subject of ageism (unlike sex and race, your age affects your ability to lead see my comments on this issue here)
V8 Engine built out of Lego Mindstorms (it can hit 1440 RPM without any lubrication)
Let's Write a Song with Rivers Cuomo (the Weezer frontman's been vlogging on YouTube; the moustache is unnerving)
May 15, 2008
Joel Johnson's exhaustive roundup of 25 years of "exergaming" (from the Atari Joyboard to the Wii Fit)
George Lucas wanted Indy IV to be "Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men From Mars" (the aborted draft by The Fugitive screenwriter made its way online in 2005)
California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban (systemic discrimination of same-sex couples is unconstitutional, period)
NodeBox, OS X app to create 2D visualizations in Python (for a more practical example, see Tufte-style charts in 11 lines of Nodebox code)
Cubescape, fun tool for building isometric pixel landscapes (some nice 8-bit art in the popular section)
May 14, 2008
b3ta's Extending Album Art challenge (all the Pink Floyd ones made me laugh) [via]
Games With A Purpose (humans playing games to teach computers, from the creator of reCAPTCHA and the ESP Game) [via]
MacJesusX (the very blasphemous Mac app from 1992 was ported to OS X with new features)
goodbye, foom (John Campbell's been trying to live off patronage from custom comics and shirts)
TwitBuzz (I've tried several Twitter meme-trackers, and this is the best)
Simon Stabs (Bishop's knife trick turned into a harmless game)
May 13, 2008
McSweeney's on good dating advice from a Grand Theft Auto FAQ (the original is on GameFAQs) [via]
Android Scan, mobile barcode scanner and search utility (a winner in Google's Android developer challenge, this looks very useful) [via]
Trailer for Mr. Bounce, an innovative riff on Breakout (from the creators of the wonderful Understanding Games series) [via]
Last.fm Playground (read more about the announcement, with some fun examples) [via]
New Einstein letter elaborates on his views of religion (he rejects it as "childish superstition," but also disliked the hubris of atheism) [via]
Sightseeing in Liberty City (Flickr photoset compared NYC locations to their GTA counterparts) [via]
WalletCards, clever idea to store membership cards on your iPhone (I'd love a slim wallet too, but your mileage may vary) [via]
Christian Mac/PC parody on GodTube (394 comments debating the differences between "Christians" and "Christ-followers"; more here)
Sad Trombone (goes nicely with Instant Rimshot) [via]
May 12, 2008
New Google Reader for the iPhone (huge improvement)
MUTO, an animation on public walls (I love watching it replace graffiti as it walks through) [via]
Current.tv on Tron Guy at ROFLCon (some of the user-contributed video on Current is great, as is the original programming)
BloggerBoard tracks top authors on Techmeme (amazing, Arrington wrote 67 posts in the last 30 days that ended up on Techmeme)
Obsessing, a web-based editor for playing with Processing.js (could Processing.js be the beginning of the end for the closed-source culture of rich media tech?)
Yahoo! opens its geo location database to the world (I'm stunned and thrilled they finally opened it up; this powers Flickr and Upcoming's geo features)
Things Younger Than John McCain (I didn't realize he'd be the oldest US President ever) [via]
PMOG comes out of beta (Justin Hall and Merci Hammon's game built on passive web surfing) [via]
Matt Haughey on how PR people should pitch bloggers (most won't do this because it takes too much time, even though it's far more effective)
Italians flee Google Street View cameras on streets of Rome (they assumed the far-right government was trying to film them)
First-person video of the China 7.7 earthquake (some original coverage on Flickr, too)
May 10, 2008
TinyDB, store tiny data in a tiny URL (store variables with a POST or GET, get it back in JSON or XML) [via]
May 9, 2008
Ian Rogers on Reaper, Justin Frankel's current project (the Winamp/Gnutella creator made a formidable ProTools competitor; amazing to see it go from this to this)
A Brief History Of Cars Crashing Through Walls On Sitcoms (I'm embarrassed to admit I found the Happy Days clip (in French) for Jeff)
Turning the New York Times into a beatbox (an application for Lily turns DOM elements into audio) [via]
Antville Quarterly, their favorite music videos so far this year (high quality videos in three torrents from the music video community)
Gore Verbinski to direct Bioshock film (I loved Bioshock's story but not the gameplay, so this should be a fun ride) [via]
Anil Dash's Paste to Win (random sampling of 150 people's clipboards, categorized)
May 8, 2008
John Resig ported Processing to Javascript, using the Canvas element (one of the most amazing hacks I've ever seen; don't miss the demos further down the page)
Chronotron (time-bending Flash game, reminiscent of P.B. Winterbottom)
Rock Band hates me (a multi-instrumentalist's reality meets fiction) [via]
May 6, 2008
Piet, a graphical programming language, with source code resembling abstract art (named after Piet Mondrian, here's how it works; also, a Javascript IDE) [via]
The Sewer Goblet, The Wu-Tang Clan and the Wu-Tang Baby (new RPG madness from the developers of Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden)
Interview with indie game creator Cactus (he just released a mega-sampler of 17 of his games; highly recommended)
May 5, 2008
Dino Run (surprisingly deep multiplayer 8-bit Flash game)
Kottke on the Yahoo! stock "plunge" (on the contrary, Yahoo! gained $7B in value while Microsoft lost $33B)
Interview with astronaut Peggy Whitson about her return to Earth (members of the Soyuz capsule were greeted by confused locals in a Kazakhstan field) [via]
SynPet's Newton, 1989 promo video for a personal robot (like R2D2 with a floppy drive and 20MB hard drive)
Why the Lucky Stiff's Unholy attempt to convert Ruby into Python (not there yet, but a fun first pass at getting Ruby code running Google App Engine)
Google's chart of character encoding adoption on the web (last December, Unicode beat out ASCII and Western European encodings for the first time)
May 4, 2008
Ben Goldacre debunks the recent "regrown finger" story (glad I wasn't the only one skeptical of "pixie dust" made of pig bladders) [via]
San Diego GOP chairman co-founded warez group Fairlight (funny, guys like that usually end up in tech, not politics) [via]
May 3, 2008
Soundamus (generate a feed of upcoming releases from your favorite artists on Last.fm)
May 2, 2008
XSketch, multiplayer Pictionary game (from the creators of Kdice, even more fast-paced than iSketch)
Ze Frank, Textism, Chip Kidd, and Aviary join The Deck (Jim Coudal knows how to pick 'em)
Schulze & Webb show off the Olinda prototype (their social radio for the BBC, modular hardware that adjust to your habits and social network)
Twitter typewriter in Second Life (hop around on the giant keyboard and it'll post here) [via]
May 1, 2008
College Humor's All-Nighter (live feed with thousands of chatters, and they're posting new videos all night)
Winners of Boing Boing Gadget's 1k contest (if you like that, try these popular 1k intros from the demoscene)
Homer Simpson in CSS, animated (taking typewriter art to the next level; from the same creator, a portrait of Bush)
Jonathan Coulton performs "First of May" (take that, Bee Gees; NSFW lyrics, for the sensitive folks) [via]
AT&T wi-fi hotspots now free for iPhone users (including Starbucks and Barnes & Noble; spoof the iPhone user-agent and it's free from your laptop too)
Mena Trott's Wasted on the Young (what if first-gen bloggers were vlogging in 1994? this is amazing, I want to see Kottke next)