Waxy.org: Links Archives: August 2008

Adam Savage's "Obsession with the Dodo Bird" from the Last HOPE (great talk about geek obsession and DIY; he built a dodo and a Maltese Falcon!) [via]

GameSetWatch's roundup of NVScene's demoscene contest (second the recommendation on ASD's Midnight Run; here's the video cap of the real-time demo)

Bush covers REM's "The End of the World As We Know It" (don't know how I missed this mashup from Rx, creator of the Sunday Bloody Sunday remix)

Koyaanisqatsi, 1982 film about urban life, technology, and nature (full-length in 420p; the spliced-in Hulu ads break the mood a bit, but worth watching) [via]

First public release of Gazelle, open-source software for BitTorrent communities (brave move, opening up what.cd to potential attacks)

McCain's prickly TIME interview (I'd recommend listening to the MP3, which is different from the transcript, and in some ways much more painful)

WolfenFlickr 3D, mashing up Wolfenstein with Flickr's Javascript API (browse your photos in 3D, hit ctrl-click to view photos in high-res; more on the project) [via]

John McCain's POW Bros. (like Mario, he should only be able to use it three times before it disappears)

Net mob searches for iPhone girl's identity (the "human flesh search engine" tracked her down to the fifth floor of a FoxConn building in Shenzhen)

Roz Savage, on 95th day of solo trans-Pacific row, approaches Hawaii (she's been blogging and podcasting the whole trip)

Bubble flow chart of things to say during sex ("Thanks... for that.") [via]

Larry Lessig on McCain's technology policy (he argues McCain's taking a strong stance against Internet growth in the US)

The inspiration behind Guns n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" (great origin story) [via]

Introducing the Chinese to fortune cookies (from the full article, "they always think it's contamination of some sort") [via]

iPhone password useless; allows full access to contacts, email, and web (not mentioned: you can dial any number with the "Emergency Call" button)

YouTube on letting copyright holders make money from infringing videos (they're automatically detecting cam video; only 10% of detected videos are blocked by the rights-holder)

Scott Campbell's 8-bit Showdowns (see also: great showdowns from the movies, and its sequel) [via]

Soulja Boy on getting his Myspace account hacked by 4chan (they did it for the lulz)

Aza Raskin on Mozilla's Ubiquity (extremely powerful add-on, like Quicksilver for the whole web; more in the tutorial)

The untold story of Lucasart's two cancelled Full Throttle sequels (with concept art, sketches, and prototype screenshots)

Rihanna takes on the Numa Numa song in T.I.'s "Live Your Life" (this is the actual single, not a fan-made mashup; what's next, a duet with Tay Zonday?) [via]

OpenTape, open-source Muxtape clone (nicely designed but requires PHP hosting, ruling out most Muxtape users) [via]

Brian "Boom Goes the Dynamite" Collins back on the air (he's got a reporting job and he's improved since college, but that's not saying much)

Aviary's How to Draw Anything in One Step (step 1: draw a dog)

Burning Man's Black Rock City on Flickr Maps (nice implementation)

X Girls Y Cups (I'm going to pass on "7 girls 3 cups," thanks)

AIGA designs a better ballot (amazing how awful the original is; "Vote for Not More Than One (1)") [via]

Tris, free Tetris clone for iPhone, pulled over copyright claim (it's hard to compete with free; will they C&D TetoTeto, too?)

Hands On A Hard Body, full-length documentary from 1997 (24 Texans compete in an epic endurance contest to win a truck, last one standing wins)

10 Zen Monkeys interviews Mat Honan on "Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle" (great interview with the backstory and repercussions of the site)

Approval Ratings: The Public vs. McCain (fan-made campaign ad, which is way more effective than Obama's new negative ads)

YouTube Comment Snob, Firefox extension hides idiotic comments (customizable filter based on spelling errors, punctuation, and capitalization; the result is stark)

Lenticular portraits of YouTube memes (meme artifacts left behind in real-life places)

Richard Nixon's Piano Concerto #1 (a story related to one of the best videos buried in that Metafilter post)

Metafilter's collection of US presidential campaign commercials from 1958-1998 (use the play icons to watch the videos inline)

BoomBot (addictive Flash game from the maker of Bloons)

MySQLGame, multiplayer database manipulation game (very odd use of SQL statements as a proof-of-concept game UI) [via]

Chromeo goes to Daryl Hall's house (occasionally awkward but mostly awesome, I really love this format)

Mycrocosm (very, very similar to Daytum, but supports OpenID and a mobile/email interface)

Foxkeh Dance, celebrating 10 years of Hampsterdance and Mozilla (could only be better if they used the original sound clip instead of the dance remix from 2000) [via]

Bear Creek Apartments (a mini-comic written by Hope Larson and drawn by Bryan Lee O'Malley) [via]

Dear Lulu, sample book for testing digital printing on Lulu.com (pushing the edges of color, type, patterns, weights, and cuts; download the PDF) [via]

Daytum, collecting the minutiae of your daily life (private beta service from Nicholas Felton, author of the Feltron Annual Reports) [via]

Tom Armitage on what games can learn from social software (I love this talk, great reading for both game and web geeks) [via]

Fleshmap's infographic of body parts mentioned in song lyrics, by genre (mildly NSFW; I love the sharp distinction between hip-hop and everything else) [via]

Gamasutra's long oral history of Atari's golden years (23,000 words! also, don't miss Steve Fulton's earlier feature on Atari's roots)

Steven Frank's torn feelings for the iPhone App Store (a Panic co-founder weighs in with a thoughtful criticism and defense) [via]

Joshua Callaghan's sculptures based on charts & graphs (very minimalist, stripped of labels and axes) [via]

Does The New Business Of Music Change The Way Music Sounds? (some heartfelt predictions from Ian Rogers)

The Chameleon, the many lives of Frédéric Bourdin (long New Yorker tale of the arrest of a serial imposter) [via]

Clive Thompson on Weight Watchers as an RPG (making the painful playful)

Review of the first three SSH clients for the iPhone (a fourth, simply called SSH, was added yesterday)

Ex-Daily Show staffer reveals details about their TiVo setup (also, how they research current and archival video) [via]

Chicago Tribune Magazine's cover story on EveryBlock's Adrian Holovaty (Adrian was still wearing makeup from his cover shoot when we ate deep-dish last month)

SIGGRAPH 2008 papers on the web (I could spend all day looking at these)

Data-Driven Enhancement of Facial Attractiveness (also presented at SIGGRAPH: Face Swapping)

University of Washington team uses static photos to enhance, edit, and modify videos (insanely cool video tech demo; don't miss the sign removal at the 6:00 mark) [via]

Cliffski's response to the game pirates (he solicited feedback from people who pirate games, with hundreds of replies) [via]

Illustrated book of cat stories created with Mechanical Turk (experiment idea: can random turkers create a compelling narrative?) [via]

Constant Setting (real-time photos added to Flickr of the sun setting around the world; more from the developer) [via]

Slate on China's CCTV coverage of the Olympics (along with HD quality, perhaps why the Chinese have been dominating torrent activity)

TechCrunch digs up prototype screenshots of Gmail and Google Groups (dating back to 2002, very fun to see how it evolved) [via]

Mygazines, community for sharing print magazine scans (publishers are trying to shut it down, but having trouble with jurisdiction)

Jason Scott on GIF News, graphical newsletter from 1988-1993 (the largest archive of the lovingly-crafted e-zine, now available on Flickr)

Blip Festival: Reformat the Planet, full-length chiptune documentary freely viewable for one week only (watch it before next Friday!)

Boss battle lasts over 18 hours, causing players to vomit and pass out from stress (people paying money to be abused)

Coign of Vantage (rotate playing field with your mouse to assemble icons ) [via]

Antivirus software fails to detect fresh viruses ("the criminals are innovating faster than the antivirus vendors can keep up") [via]

Jason Scott's collection of BBS-era graphics and advertisements (when an 8-bit VGA image was a show of graphical might; culled from cd.textfiles.com, back from the dead)

View from our room in Kauai (or: why updates are even more sporadic for the next 8 days than normal)

Google Insights shows state-by-state usage of popular websites (also: the spread Twitter and YouTube over time)

Extreme Toothbrushing (viewer warning: this is extreme)

Frotz interpreter added to iPhone App Store as free download (with downloadable games from interactive fiction repositories)

David Friedman's suggested design for cut & paste on the iPhone (not as elegant as Adam's, but a clever alternative)

Brett Erlich's Viral Video Film School (entertaining rambles about found footage on YouTube) [via]

Doveman's Footloose (Thomas Bartlett covers the entire album for a friend, with absolutely no irony) [via]

Blue Screen of Death during the Olympic torch-lighting (appeared for a split second in the broadcast, but attendees took photos) [via]

Google Translate optimized for iPhone (with one release, wiping out the need for pocket dictionaries)

Chatroom, short game simulates a post-apocalyptic IRC (Windows-only, great concept for the One Room One Week game design competition)

Barack Roll [via]

Yahoo! Answers tackles a tough question (perfect example of an incentive system optimized for quantity, not quality)

Actionsprite's Switch (addictive, mindless Flash fun) [via]

AOL starts offering mcom.com email addresses (blast from the past)

The Art of Braid (how the painterly style evolved, with tons of early concept artwork)

New York Times says Girl Talk album "may be illegal" (you don't say! I think the labels are waiting for the physical CD to drop next month)

Temp Fortress 2 (clever machinima built on Team Fortress, spliced with live video)

Fuelly, track gas usage with friends (built by Matt Haughey and Paul Bausch in two weeks using bits of the Metafilter code base)

Adaptive Path posts second Aurora video (a futurific Upcoming is featured, and a G-Man sighting)

Jonathan Blow's Braid released to critical raves (like Portal, it forces you to rethink what you know about platformers; amazing to see how many people complain about the $15 price tag)

Calvin and Jobs (Gizmodo doesn't mention they're from Mad Magazine's July issue) [via]

Crazy Sprinkler Lady (way, way more paranoia on her YouTube page)

The Girl in the Window (horrific story of a little girl raised feral by neglectful parent; don't miss the video slideshow) [via]

Adaptive Path's Aurora, imagining the future web (part of Mozilla Labs' Concept Series)

Jason Fortuny gets sued for Craigslist trolling (I first broke the story two years ago; from his personal statement: "This was never a plan to embarrass people")

Zinc Oxide and You (from the Kentucky Fried Movie) [via]

Audio Damage's Automaton, audio plugin controlled by cellular automata (Conway's Game of Life as a beatmaker)

Sneak peek at Google Translation Center (get text translated by volunteers and pros, likely designed to improve their automatic translations)

Microsoft researchers find an average 6.6 degrees of separation between MSN Messenger users (they looked at 30 billion conversations from 240 million people to validate Milgram's findings)

Merlin Mann on YouTube's "cash gifting" pyramid scheme subculture (learn more about Cash Duke's Cash Givanation System)

WSJ reporter's sources for "Obama's too skinny for president" article came from trolling Yahoo! Message Boards (I thought the quotes were suspicious this morning, but should've dug deeper) [via]

Pigeon plays Tap Tap Revenge on the iPhone (I'm surprised the beak's conductive enough to register clicks)

John Gruber on the NetShare tethering app for the iPhone (despite reports of being removed by Apple, it's still available and I just purchased it seconds ago; and, it's gone again)

The Last Guy, Japanese game turns any website into a battlefield (move around with the mouse to pick up people and return them to the safety zone) [via]

The Big Picture on CERN's Large Hadron Collider (The Economist explains the LHC's importance for the layman; see also: Large Hadron Rap)

Tube Adventures, Spanish interactive adventure game on YouTube (constructed using YouTube's annotations and 67 videos)