August 31, 2009

NPR on the end of Reading Rainbow — after a 26 year run, thanks Levar #

Pretweeting — virtual stock exchange for Twitter trends (via) #

Moldover's circuit board CD packaging — headphone jack and light sensor makes a portable musical instrument #

August 28, 2009

Dooce's washer saga — less about the power of Twitter, more the failure of customer service #

Worldwide Lexicon's Firefox Translator — automatic language detection and translation, with community editing tools #

Morph by Skylined — real-time ASCII art Javascript demo #

Google search for "ASCII art" — and it's actually text, too #

August 27, 2009

Yelp iPhone app adds augmented reality easter egg — in other iPhone news, Apple approved Spotify and Facebook 3.0 is out #

August 26, 2009

LA Times profile of Jani, a 6-year-old girl with early onset schizophrenia — her father's blog is simultaneously heartbreaking and terrifying (via) #

Visualization of time travel plots in popular TV and film — the source data's in the Google Spreadsheet #

Tile Drawer — drop-dead easy way to run your own OpenStreetMap install on EC2 with custom styles #

Wikipedia to trial moderated edits for articles about living people — the debate is archived here; Jason's predictions are slowly coming true #

August 24, 2009

The Pirate Bay forced offline by Swedish authorities — they've moved ISPs, but it's still down for me #

Typedia, encyclopedia of typefaces — created by an all-star team; long look into the logo design and great use of Flickr machine tags #

Bill Wyman on why newspapers are failing — his solution is deep local coverage, the only area newspapers weren't made redundant by the web (via) #

August 23, 2009

xkcd's Tech Support Flowchart — so true; the only thing holding newbies back is the fear of making it worse #

Gabe Askew's fan-made video for Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" — lovely cut-out art direction, I want to play a game in this universe #

8-Bit Trip, insane stop-motion Lego film — like a real-life PC demo #

Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend (mildly NSFW) — the fusion of a number of Japanese memes from 2chan and Nico Nico Douga #

August 22, 2009

Bokode — very clever barcode design uses out-of-focus photos shot from a distance (via) #

The Boy Who Heard Too Much — Rolling Stone profile of a young, blind phone phreaker (via) #

4chan users launch embarrassing attack on Christian Facebook users — using passwords from a Christian university, they've been posting fake entries on Facebook #

tldr, app to visualize discussions on Reddit — don't miss the gallery (via) #

August 21, 2009

Paul Ford's Unicode Table for You — go vote for his SXSW panel, while you're at it (via) #

Tipjoy shuts down — they argue it's the lack of official support that stifled growth (via) #

Kit Williams reunited with Masquerade's treasure after 30 years — the original treasure hunt had a bitter ending (via) #

Twitter adding geocoded tweets — this should make real-time news reporting much more viable #

Uncanny parallels between Avatar and Delgo — these screengrabs show a striking similarity #

Tanaka's Friendly Adventure on Kongregate — collect them all! don't miss the hand-drawn map #

The Grownup's Guide to Indie Rock — guide to new music for the layman, written by a 57-year-old convert #

August 20, 2009

Study finds smaller banner ads more effective than skyscrapers — plus, 94% less likely to make you want to gouge your eyes out (via) #

Mark Pilgrim's preview of Dive Into HTML 5 — just gorgeous (via) #

Pirate Bay torrent archive spawns a clone — fully functional backup created by a fan #

One-time stock photo model tracks her own sightings — related: Unsolicited Commercial Love Story and The Everywhere Girl #

Kind of Bloop On Sale

Posted August 20, 2009 by Andy Baio

I’m happy to announce that Kind of Bloop is now officially on sale to everyone, $5 for high-quality digital downloads in MP3 or FLAC format. Buy it now with Amazon Payments.

Working with these guys was an absolute dream. Their creativity and dedication transcends the original concept, creating something that pays tribute to Miles’ seminal work while pushing the boundaries of the genre.

I know there are jazz purists out there that hate the idea of anyone interpreting a jazz masterpiece in this way, but to them, I’d only ask that you listen to it first before making a judgment. Virt responded to one naysayer in the comments on my original post:

Way I see it, chiptunes can either be a punishingly difficult artistic medium we happened to grow up with, or a tired retro fashion statement. Our goal was to stick to the former, pushing the limitations hard, building on our capacity for expression using the most basic sounds. There could be no better challenge, Andy thought, than one of the most expressive jazz albums of all time, one that has inspired us all.

So, you see, I’m not the least bit embarrassed by our work. In fact, I think you might be short-changing “the masters of jazz,” who I believe would be grinning ear to ear right now. They were ALL ABOUT mastering unusual techniques and expressing within a framework. That’s the whole point of Kind of Blue. The parallels to our own medium were dead obvious, and I got the same rush of perverse glee that the original ensemble must have felt 50 years ago, locking myself in a cell and playing between the metal bars.

I hope, if you still can’t enjoy the sound of the album itself, you might at least be less quick to dismiss it, given this perspective. It’s not a parade, it’s a love letter in our own weird handwriting.

So, thanks for listening. (Oh, and bonus points to anyone who can identify all the quotes and references in the album.)

Newly-discovered Disneyland home movies from 1956 — incredible quality; did you know they had a Space Bar? (via) #

Longest Poem in the World — aggregating tweets that rhyme, compiled into an ever-growing poem with 344,000 verses (via) #

Matt Thompson on the missing parts of news coverage — too much focus on "news" and not enough context #

Codepad — like Pastebin with a built-in compiler/interpreter; examples: Hello World, 99 Bottles (via) #

August 19, 2009

Fig. 8 — elegant Flash game inspired by architectural blueprints and diagrams (via) #

Aaron Zinman's Personas — barcode visualization of "how the Internet sees you" #

John Resig's eulogy for _why — he treated his online presence like a temporary sand mandala; don't miss the song #

Hacker/artist _why the lucky stiff deletes projects, online presence — still no clues why he killed his blog, Twitter, Hackety Hack, Why's Poignant Guide, Shoes, Try Ruby, and more #

Shnabubula's alternate-reality Super Mario World medley — live jazz improvisation using classic SNES sample sounds #

Neven Mrgan on Zingerman's product illustrations — staggering amount of love put into an online store #

August 18, 2009

Internet University — if websites were cartoon characters (via) #

Joanne McNeil on the Daily Death — I've wondered this myself, the effects of a microcelebrity culture aging #

August 17, 2009

Dinosaur Comics meets Twitter — reload for new ones #

Songs from The Point! — Nilsson tribute with songs by Martha Wainwright, Andrew Bird, DeVotchKa, and Nada Surf #

Kind of Bloop released! — Bygone Bureau wrote a great behind-the-scenes feature about the album #