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July 29, 2011
CrowdDB, answering queries with crowdsourcing (academic paper proposes SQL queries backed by a Mechanical Turk engine) [via]
Rorschmap (don't miss James Bridle's thinking behind it)
Kevin Slavin's TED talk on how algorithms shape our world (Roombas, recommenders, and financial algorithms terraforming the Earth) [via]
July 28, 2011
MTV News on The Internet in 1995 (when Moby had hair)
Kevin Huizenga's Time Travelling (from the always-excellent What Things Do)
July 27, 2011
Topiary from LulzSec arrested (his last tweet: "you cannot arrest an idea")
The Crowdfunding Cargo Cult (companies are trying to clone Kickstarter and the iPhone without understanding why they work)
July 26, 2011
Danny Choo on 3D printed vanity dolls in Japan (deep in the uncanny valley, dolls that looks exactly like you)
0-DAY ART (related: Street Show, a dead drop for art in NYC) [via]
Stereogum's tribute to the Strokes' Is This It (love the Owen Pallett, Frankie Rose, and Real Estate covers)
Selected (Mike Guppy replaces classic art with marching ants selections)
July 25, 2011
This American Life's brilliant episode on Intellectual Ventures and patent trolling (meant to be listened to, not read)
NYT on how the deficit got this big (the chart that should accompany every article on this topic) [via]
Adventure Time with Fionna & Cake preview (gender-swapped episode featuring Neil Patrick Harris as Prince Gumball)
July 23, 2011
12x8 pixel display built in Minecraft (don't miss the ridiculous reveal of the redstone circuits at the 2:10 mark) [via]
Infinite Mario in HTML5 (porting Notch's original to Javascript; source on Github) [via]
July 22, 2011
Mini-doc tells the story behind the Eli Porter rap battle viral video (even if you've never seen the original, watch this now; I want this treatment for every meme) [via]
Rob Ager's detailed analysis of set design flaws in The Shining (obsessively-compiled, he concludes it was deliberate; that Duke Nukem map is neat, but I prefer the N64 version)
The Internet Tidal Wave (Letters of Note reposts Bill Gates' 1995 memo about the future of networking) [via]
Clay Johnson tests engagement on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ (unscientific, but interesting; like Clay, my Google+ followers are rapidly catching up with Twitter)
NYT Magazine feature on Dwarf Fortress (awesome to see roguelikes get some mainstream attention)
July 21, 2011
Etsy promotes Chad Dickerson to CEO (woo, congrats Chad!)
Papers from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (torrent of 18k pre-1923 scientific papers released by an Aaron Swartz supporter) [via]
July 20, 2011
Fake Apple Store knockoffs in China (even the employees think they're working for Apple) [via]
July 19, 2011
Ze Frank revisits the "Brain Crack" episode (possibly my favorite episode from The Show)
Madeon's "Pop Culture" (or watch him perform it live with a Novation Launchpad controlling Ableton Live)
Kickstarter hits $15M pledged, 10,000 successful projects (another interesting data dump; love the video of every project)
Benjamin Shaykin's Lo-Res Books (famous book covers abstracted to the edge of recognition)
A real person, a lot like you (Derek Sivers' call for Internet civility; short version: don't be a jerk, we're all humans here) [via]
Graphic Nothing's minimalist art and album cover remixes (hmm, this reminds me of something...)
Aaron Swartz indicted by feds for scraping academic journal database (unlike his PACER work, JSTOR is all from academic journals; here's the indictment, which includes details of the physical break-in)
July 18, 2011
A slight discrepancy (finding the math behind the otherwise mundane) [via]
Plain Text Offenders (shaming sites that store passwords in plaintext) [via]
Untris (impossible game tasks you with reverse-engineering a Tetris playthrough) [via]
Ironic Sans digs up the Comic-Con 1988 schedule (the expansion into films and gaming started over 20 years ago)
Where I Go At Night (clever mechanic, two-player game pits a character against itself) [via]
A Videogame Tour of NYC (related: 15 Days in Liberty City) [via]
July 16, 2011
The Final Image (guess the final scene from classic films)
Wired on how Stuxnet was deciphered (long, gripping read) [via]
A Geek's Journal, 1976 ("This blog is based on my actual journal kept in 1976.") [via]
July 14, 2011
Craig Hockenberry on the rise and fall of the indie developer (only companies can survive attacks from rampant patent and copyright trolls) [via]
MetaFilter Memories (Matt bought the first site ever linked on Mefi and collected touching tributes from members)
A Day in the Life of John Lasseter (25-minute film following a man who loves hugging almost as much as Hawaiian shirts)
July 13, 2011
Wired releases entire Manning-Lamo chat logs (Alexis Madrigal pieced together a new profile of Manning) [via]
NYT on tomorrow's launch of Spotify in the U.S. (reports say 8am EST, open to all preregistered users)
Willamette Week's cover profile of Matt Haughey (with a nice Waxy.org shout-out; love the deep recursion in the comments)
TIME's Lev Grossman on fan fiction culture (includes discussion on the legality of fanfic) [via]
July 11, 2011
Paul Ford's The Age of Mechanical Reproduction (we love you, Paul)
Anil Dash on the triumph of the animated GIF (the Internet's native art form)
July 9, 2011
Clay Shirky on the new news environment (another must-read missive on the current state of journalism)
Steve Lambert's most awkward 404 page on the Internet (when you're done, go back Steve's new sign project)
July 8, 2011
Kotaku interviews Keita Takahashi and Stewart Butterfield on joining Glitch (pass the No No Powder)
RoboHash (unique robots generated from any text) [via]
Katamari creator Keita Takahashi joins Glitch (incredibly perfect fit)
Cory Doctorow reviews "Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling" (clearing samples for Paul's Boutique today would lose $19.8M on sales of 2.5M albums)
Talking Funny (Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, and Louis C.K. deconstruct comedy)
July 7, 2011
Dan Warren's "Son of Strelka, Son of God," a cut-up story narrated by Barack Obama (thousands of audio clips from Obama's autobiography flawlessly spliced together into an entirely new narrative)
Questions asked by Twitter users vs. White House press (related: we released over 29k questions asked by Twitter users in the last year)
Shuu.sh (resize Twitter messages based on posting activity; noisy people get scaled down)
July 6, 2011
Tesco's virtual supermarket in South Korean subway stations (scan QR codes for home delivery)
MK12's Follow the Sun (if David Lynch made concession stand bumper ads)
July 5, 2011
Jonathan Stampf's touching photo for Dear Photograph (the rest are all worth seeing)
Google may retire Blogger, Picasa names in rebranding (in other news, Ev, Biz, and Jason relaunched Obvious Corp.)
Cinemagraphs of Dogfish Head's strawberry beer-making process (craft beer and animated GIFs go well together) [via]
SVK (BERG-published comic with character's thoughts only viewable with ultraviolet light)
July 4, 2011
Physical GIF (laser-cut zoetropes created from animated GIFs)
Chuck Klosterman interviews Al Yankovic (insightful interview that veers wildly from the typical novelty angle)
Cabel Sasser's Fireworks 2011 roundup (FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE)