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February 28, 2009
Livejournal shuts down scans_daily after Marvel complaint (one complaint, and they've killed six years of work) [via]
Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom (Parry Gripp is a genius; take that, Monteiro)
February 27, 2009
"What were arcades like?" (in other news, I'm old) [via]
Animated HD promo for Art Spiegelman's Be A Nose! (the new book offers a glimpse of his sketchbooks) [via]
Rocky Mountain News' farewell video (only 55 days short of their 150th birthday)
Nightline's tongue-in-cheek piece on Twitter (also: TED posted Ev's TED talk and he was just interviewed by Charlie Rose)
Who Killed the Rocky Mountain News? (interactive blamestorm from a laid-off developer)
Highlight2Translate, Greasemonkey script for instant Google Translation (absolutely invaluable for my Economist research, for translating text in password-protected forums)
Sudo Make Me a Sandwich Robot (inspired by xkcd) [via]
Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues animated film released online (finally out of copyright hell after being quoted $220,000 for clearing the eleven 1920s songs she used) [via]
February 26, 2009
Exploring Logo Designs with Mathematica ($2,495, cheap)
The Economist on Dunbar's number in Facebook (featuring data extracted from Dr. Cameron Marlow)
Dr. Zilog's gorgeous chiptune remix of MGMT's "Kids" (from Laughing Squid's roundup of videogame-themed music videos) [via]
Paul Graham's lessons learned on community building from Hacker News (how he's tried to prevent bad links, bad comments, and bad people)
February 25, 2009
Andy Richter to rejoin Conan O'Brien on the Tonight Show (great news, he'll be the announcer and comic foil instead of Ed McMahon-like sidekick)
Zen Bound released for the iPhone (originally released as Zen Bondage in 2005 by the PC demoscene group Moppi)
February 24, 2009
xkcd on the Kindle 2 (Don't Panic!)
Quake Live goes public beta (the private beta was a blast, but their server's are exploding today and the plugin's still Windows-only)
Recipe community borrows Del.icio.us design/code for redesign (the creator's nice about it, but how could he think that this was okay?)
Winners of Stephen Fry's 50 "L"s Twitter contest (Jorn points out that several people created helper utilities)
Maximum Fun excerpts Adam Carolla's new podcast (his radio show was canceled so he's moved to the web, and he seems to get it)
Back to the Future, alternate ending (see also: the BTTF Temporal Experiments) [via]
BackGames, videogame plots in reverse (Tetris: "player must break apart a giant rectangle, sending the pieces into space") [via]
Visualizing the number of links on 98 popular websites (36,128 total links, with Techmeme on top) [via]
Pirate 2 Pirate Kopimi Station (insert USB thumb drive into kiosk, get Oscar nominated films; this has potential for legal uses, too)
GOOD Magazine's visualization of fuel use by mode of transportation (the comments on Flowing Data point out some of the flaws)
Billboard releases Chart API (that would've made The Whitburn Project much easier, but I wonder how their licensees feel about it?)
February 23, 2009
Cursor*10 2nd session (sequel to the best single-player cooperative game I've ever played; see also: Chronotron) [via]
Sched.org releases SXSW 2009 schedule (the best conference scheduling app ever returns; related: their API for all event and user info)
Kate Winslet's Holocaust Oscar (strategy revealed, from Ricky Gervais's Extras)
UserFriendly comic plagiarized multiple punchlines from Metafilter comments (the author's a long-time Metafilter user and apologizes here, while people keep finding more)
Radiohead vs. Dave Brubeck's "Five Step" (or download the MP3)
Unofficial SXSW 2009 torrents (5GB of all 1,053 free MP3s from this year's showcasing artists)
Last.fm blogs their response to the false Techcrunch rumor (I love these guys; the original article was updated with some weak backpedaling)
Nate Silver on why his Oscar predictions missed (it's difficult to know which factors to model, and the criteria can be very subjective)
February 20, 2009
Buzzfeed's Wikipedia Names Your Band album covers (some of these are lovely; here's mine)
Josh Freese's very unusual giveaways to promote his solo album (busy guy; he's the drummer for A Perfect Circle, The Vandals, and Devo)
Jandrew Edits ("a collection of humorously edited footage")
Jumpman, reinventing the retro platformer (this is a must-play for Mac/PC, the game gets increasingly clever and complex)
The Big Picture highlights photos of people at work (the Bulgarian nuclear control panel is gorgeous)
Jesse Bearden's Twitter encounter with Shaq (the story behind this tweet making the rounds)
Quicken Online puts foot in mouth after accusing Mint of incredible growth (great advertising for Mint, and reveals that Quicken's growth must be pretty flat)
Aviary releases Raven, first full-featured online vector editor (very impressive; like their other tools, any public illustration can be forked at any revision)
Very Small Array charts Billboard vs. Pitchfork's Top 100 of 2008 (indie geeks love bands (especially duos), while the mainstream loves young solo artists)
February 19, 2009
Jason Grigsby on the history of Cup o' Noodle and embracing constraints (a very entertaining five-minute presentation from Ignite Portland)
Eurogamer's detailed review of Noby Noby Boy (the game was released on the PS3 today for $5; Panic is selling the official shirts)
Flickr interviews the Astrometry.net Flickr bot creator (it analyzes sky photos added to the Astrometry group, and tags them with celestial bodies)
Available Online for Free, the Sticker (Evan Roth's free PDF book is brilliant too, blending technology and art in clever ways)
East Bay Express' long hit piece on Yelp (Yelp's response, which I completely agree with; someone needs to record a sales call to settle this)
February 18, 2009
Marc Hedlund on Hulu, Boxee, and "content providers" ("someone else -- not you, someone smart -- will win instead, or you can change your mind")
Home of the Underdogs goes offline for good (the essential abandonware site is abandoned; thanks for the memories, Sarinee) [via]
Hulu content providers demand Boxee remove Hulu support (here's Boxee's blog post; that's a great way to drive Boxee users back to BitTorrent)
Sanctuary Wood (an urban explorer finds an abandoned caravan in the woods) [via]
Dirk's Accident, very graphic images of a Neodymium magnet collision (crushed finger after two magnets with 700 lbs. of force came within 20 inches of one another) [via]
Rex Sorgatz interviews Moot (this is the best idea I've seen for making money off the site, with more here)
Matt Webb's retweeting Carl Steadman's 99 Secrets from 1996 (someone needs to do Two Solitudes for the Twitter era with @replies)
Wired reviews Retro Game Challenge for the DS (game about playing games, inspired by Japanese reality show about playing games)
Facebook reverts to previous Terms of Service after outcry (best quote: "like you were going to write Finnegans Wake on someone's wall or some shit?")
February 17, 2009
Steal This Film, The Trial Edition (early cut of the anti-copyright documentary's third part; see part 1 and part 2 on Google Video) [via]
Facebook's TOS changes compared to MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and more (while I'm sure Mark means well, Facebook's lawyers are still overreaching) [via]
Washington Post profile of 4chan's moot (they spend four pages in backstory, leaving the interesting personal stuff for the last page) [via]
The Trilogy Tomatometer (inspired by Dan Meth's charts, Darren Levy fulfilled my Lazyweb request)
February 16, 2009
The Trilogy Meter (I'd love to see a version redone using ratings from Rotten Tomatoes)
TorrentFreak summarizes the Pirate Bay's first day in court (their coverage is great; also, their writeup of the press conference)
Nate Silver predicts the Oscar winners (or: how to ruin an Oscar pool) [via]
February 15, 2009
The Simpsons' new HD title sequence (airing in HD for the first time tonight) [via]
NYT's Article Skimmer prototype (I find this much more usable than the homepage) [via]
February 13, 2009
Yo-Yo Ma Shreds (in the style of StSanders) [via]
Pirate Bay trial starts Monday in Stockholm (BitTorrent trackers don't host any infringing material, but clearly aid infringement; should be an interesting trial)
February 12, 2009
Twitter's "Don't Click" clickjacking, explained (the most coherent explanation and how Twitter resolved it)
Winners of Information Aesthetics' paper-based visualization competition (Charlene Lam's Petals and Britta's watercolor map are particularly nice) [via]
February 11, 2009
Compression artifact art in Chairlift's "Evident Utensil" music video (yes, it's supposed to look like that) [via]
Slyck interviews Giganews, the most popular Usenet provider (it's up to 5 terabytes of new uploads per day, with no signs of slowing)
Kittens, Inspired by Kittens (it's like Lolcats narrated by a 6-year-old girl) [via]
WhatTheFont released as free iPhone app (take a photo, discover the font instantly) [via]
Antiques Roadshow 2550 (I'd like to see someone doing serious scifi in 5-10 minute shorts, like Twilight Zone for YouTube)
Kevin Kelly on hackers and technology in the Amish community (some first-hand mythbusting)
February 10, 2009
Bohemian Deconstruction (Eric Kleptone sources his massive Bohemian Rhapsody mashup)
Buster McLeod's history of the Morale-o-Meter (he's been gaming his life for years; every post on his new blog about enjoyment is great) [via]
The Pepsi Gravitational Field (supposed internal document explaining the Pepsi logo redesign; quite possibly a joke) [via]
Chad After Dentist (also, the WSJ tracked down the boy and his father)
Jonathan Coulton on The Setup (YACHT's interview ended up causing a big controversy when he admitted to pirating audio software)
IHT on the reinvention of Newsweek ("If we don't have something original to say, we won't.") [via]
February 9, 2009
Torrentfreak on internal drama on a private BitTorrent tracker (piracy takes effort so it's natural, but still amusing, to see the scene get upset over leaks)
Funky bass lines in the Sonic the Hedgehog series (Dan argues the 16-bit era changed the way composers thought about arranging music)
Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on creative genius and the muse (very inspiring talk, she received a standing ovation)
Google Sync beta comes to iPhone and Windows Mobile (using Exchange, wirelessly pushes changes from your Google contacts and calendar )
Smarterware, Gina Trapani's new blog (after leaving Lifehacker, a "slower pace and a more personal approach to online publishing")
Supercut of every profanity in The Sopranos (added to the list) [via]
Take Away Show with Tom Jones (I'm a little surprised they didn't leave the hotel room)
James Duncan Davidson fought off a mugger trying to take his TED badge ("All I know is that he didn't want money. He wanted access.")
February 8, 2009
The Lonely Island's "I'm On A Boat" in HD (get your towels ready, it's about to go down) [via]
February 6, 2009
Ridethrough of revamped "It's A Small World" with added Disney characters (they added stylized versions of at least 25 Disney characters to the ride)
Wired on MIT's wearable computing project with interactive displays (demonstrated at TED, these video demos are very clever)
February 5, 2009
Boston Phoenix digs up off-color MP3s from Barack Obama's audiobook (April has the clips with an inline player)
Bill Gates talks about ending malaria at TED 2009 (the only TED video released so far; he unleashes the mosquitoes at 5:06)
Fake parking ticket leads to malware download (malicious spam leaking into real life) [via]
_why on the Art & Code conference for young hackers (created by Golan Levin, who spoke at TED today; here's his 2004 talk)
February 4, 2009
NYT announces Article Search API (get JSON for every article from 1981 to today)
See You See Me (Evan Roth records the x-ray machines in airports around the world) [via]
LucasArts Posters (fan project to scan and clean up the artwork for oversize printing) [via]
Ze Frank's audio drawing toy used to visualize music (Aerosmith's "Living on the Edge" sketches out a likeness of America) [via]
The Pirate Bay maps connections to its tracker (a third of all connections come from China, which blocks the website entirely)
Kloonigames' 4 Minutes 33 Seconds (a non-interactive game in which you can only win if nobody else in the world is playing it)
Entertainment Weekly on Letterman's airing of the censored Bill Hicks set (with video, in case you missed it)
February 3, 2009
Celebrity Tweets (not naming names, but they're stretching the definition of "celebrity" a bit)
Alexandria Neonakis's Left 4 Dead valentines (another in a long line of geek valentines)
Sleep Talking on the Mic (a sleep-talker records himself nightly and posts the nonsensical results) [via]
NYT visualizes Twitter activity during the Superbowl (the emoticon and commercial maps are particularly awesome) [via]
David After Dentist, a 7-year-old's first drug trip ("I feel funny. I can't see anything. I don't feel tired. Is this real life?") [via]
Histogram of name length for all 1,200 SXSW bands (surprisingly, there aren't any one-letter band names)
February 2, 2009
Wonderfl, build Flash online (community for writing and sharing AS3 code, compiled immediately on the server)
Closure, a game experimenting with light and shadow (from the programmer/designer of Aether)
Please Stand By (test pattern entirely in CSS)
Crackulous developer wants people to stop pirating his App Store piracy app ("I need people to support my work... I deserve appreciation.")
World Superhero Registry (real-life public defenders fighting crime in costume)
Independently Speaking's best of Global Game Jam 2009 (six-part series sorting through the complete list of 300+ two-day games; Custody looks ambitious)
Greasemonkey script shows Twitter mentions and unread count (clever use of the Search API, Twitter should integrate this into the Replies tab)
Pup Contemplates the Heat Death of the Universe (new to me, it was mentioned in McCloud's TED talk)
Scott McCloud's TED talk on vision and understanding comics (a concise and understandable guide to comics theory) [via]
Twittering the daily Depression-era diary of a 13-year-old farm girl (one tweet per day, from 1937 to 1941) [via]
D-Pad Hero, playable NES version of Guitar Hero (the Guns n' Roses and Daft Punk chiptune remixes stand on their own) [via]
Eric Bauman fired from Ebaumsworld, along with rest of staff (long despised for repurposing other's work without credit, the commenters are having a field day) [via]
Annika's Odyssey (adorable game from 2007 in which you save a bunny, make a mountain blush, and fetch a pail of water) [via]
DeweyMusic, alternate interface for browsing Archive.org's live music collection (37,483 albums by 2,082 artists, with tags pulled from the Last.fm API)
Dom Sagolla's story of the birth of Twitter (a former employee, he recalls how Jack first discussed the idea on the slide in South Park)
Crummy.com's series on the naming of videogames (every new console followed similar trends, except for pinball; here's the second part of the series)
February 1, 2009
Conspiracy Rock, 1991 Schoolhouse Rock parody of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy (4,320 frames painstakingly animated by Jason Scott, online for the first time) [via]
Ben Fry on turning charts into music with Microsoft Songsmith (don't miss the sonification of the Dow Jones compared to the growth of the porn industry)