Waxy.org: Links Archives: April 2012

The Data Journalism Handbook (free, collaborative, open-source guide)

MAXGIF (silly tool to make GIFs fullscreen, click to get another one)

Nyan Waits

Yancey Strickler digs up never-before-seen Kickstartr (sic) designs (to commemorate the third birthday; related: Perry writes about the origin story)

NYT visualization of three years of Kickstarter projects (companion piece to this article on the insane success of the Pebble watch)

Dan Hon on beating diabetes with data (interesting look at the state of quantified health)

Go Right

Original Atari developer ports Star Castle to the Atari 2600, 30 years later (why this is impressive; order a one here with optional box) [via]

First two seasons of Star Trek played simultaneously (that'd make a great screensaver with this as the background audio)

Music for Programming (hour-long textural mix tapes designed for "prolonged periods of intense concentration") [via]

Nieman Lab on Gawker's new commenting system (seems awkward to navigate and moderate to me, but interested to see how it plays out)

Steven Levy on algorithm-generated news articles (they argue it frees up journalists for actual reporting, instead of routine grunt work)

Light Table, a reactive coding IDE (interesting prototype video)

Microscopia (Ludum Dare game by a first-time game developer)

Building Animusic's Pipe Dream in the real world (making the classic music visualization real; incredible work, though it sounds very different in person)

CSS 3D Tilt (bookmarklet turns any page into a 3D object, with the DOM representing depth) [via]

Descriptive Camera (camera wired to Mechanical Turk; reminds me of Image Search for the Blind)

Best of Metafilter (new blog surfaces the most interesting stuff from the community)

Google Drive launches (5 GB free, and Gmail goes up to 10GB free)

"That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends." (I could've used that speech when I was 14, but I never went to gyms) [via]

A Super Mario Summary (every level from the original SMB, recreated on a single screen each) [via]

Scape (made for the Ludum Dare compo; over 1,100 games were entered!) [via]

VIM Adventures (ingenious short tutorial on vim key controls)

Tweenk (a passively-multiplayer game built on Twitter activity)

MMMMMM (I know the controls seem insane, but stick with it; the level design is devious)

Valve's Handbook for New Employees (fun and interesting glimpse inside their crazy flat structure)

Grow A Face (try evolving the biggest head possible)

5th Ave. Frogger (Frogger cabinet modded to use real-time car traffic from NYC streets)

Ludum Dare 23 interactive keynote (very cute; I'm hoping some people make Playfic games)

Botanicula released (new game from the creator of Machinarium and Samorost; the bundle is a steal)

People Who Don't Know How to Spell "Cologne" (countdown until someone writes a Twitter bot)

Chinese hierarchies of snobbery and contempt (ranking everything from sneakers to World of Warcraft classes)

Summarizing the UC Davis Pepper Spray Report (communication failure at every level in the chain of command)

The History of #1 Projects on Kickstarter (a capsule history of Kickstarter itself; the Pebble watch is up to $4.4M)

Marco Arment on Twitter's patent agreement (agree with the issues, but defensive patents exist to ward off potential attackers with countersuits)

How Fark's Drew Curtis fought a patent troll ("don't negotiate with terrorists")

Twitter introduces the Innovator's Patent Agreement (a contract that guarantees any filed patents will only be used defensively, even if sold)

The centuries-old tech behind the Tupac "hologram" at Coachella (pioneered by Hatsune Miku)

The Republia Times (Flash games puts you in charge of editing a state-run newspaper, with a twist) [via]

SymbolHound (coder-centric search engine that searches punctuation)

Image Error Level Analysis with HTML5 (spotting Photoshop trickery with a few lines of Javascript)

Ten Years of farbrausch Productions on GitHub (one of the demoscene's legendary groups open-sources a decade of work)

MADMEN Bittorrent Edition (on Metafilter, Rhomboid breaks down how the video glitches work ) [via]

Google BBS (functional textmode interface to Google using termlib.js and the Google REST API) [via]

Tug of Store (click as fast as you can; an experiment with the Svpply API by OK Focus)

Why Netflix never used the algorithm that won the Netflix Challenge (with DVD rentals, people were aspirational; with streaming, immediate gratification)

Snowball (Pixeljam takes on pinball)

Printer, an open-source kit for Internet-connected thermal printers (like Little Printer for hardware hackers)

The Intelligent Encyclopedia (visions of an always-connected device from 1982, drawn by Glen Keane) [via]

The Oatmeal's How to Get More Likes on Facebook (funny, that's my strategy too)

Incredibox (animated beatbox engine)

ASCII art animation on Twitter (hold down "j" to advance) [via]

The Listserve (the email version of Twitter's Fame game)

Long, thoughtful interview with Peter Molyneux (extremely frank discussion of why he left Microsoft to start a small indie studio)

Campbell Whyte's 8-Bit Dreams (376 daily drawings inspired by NES games) [via]

InstaBackup (David Smith's free Mac app to download all your Instagram photos)

PONGS (Pippin Barr's 36 experiments with Pong)

Chairlift's "Met Before" (choose-your-own-adventure music video)

Paul Ford on Facebook and Instagram ("Facebook bought the thing that is hardest to fake. It bought sincerity.")

Github adds support for Notch's virtual CPU in 0x10c (I can't believe I haven't mentioned his new game yet)

Hillary Clinton responds to Texts from Hillary Tumblr (memeception)

Froggatto level editor (responsive coding inspired by Bret Victor's Inventing on Principle talk )

Adrian Chen tracks down the history and identity of Goatse (with updates from Jay Stile, Anil Dash, and the person who registered goatse.cx)

Disasterpeace's FEZ soundtrack now on sale (beautiful album from one of Kind of Bloop's talented musicians)

Caine's Arcade (the Internet discovers 9-year-old boy's cardboard DIY arcade in East L.A.) [via]

MMO Asteroids, for real (remember that April 1 joke? someone built it for real) [via]

Metafilter's link-rich primer of the demoscene (the Scene.org awards are always a good place to start)

RIP Jack Tramiel, Commodore founder (the Vic-20 and C-64 were my first computers, and changed my life forever)

Facebook buys Instagram for $1B (a small team getting bought by an Internet giant; does that story ever end well for the users?)

Ze Frank's An Invocation for Beginnings (first episode from the reboot of The Show) [via]

LaserTube: Trapped in the Closet (something like this could turn supercut creation into a social game)

Photo Timeline (neat hack using the deprecated Google Image Search API; try it with Apple)

Rev. Dan Catt on the New Aesthetic (best explanation of the trend I've seen so far)

Projection mapping on a human face (here's their demo reel) [via]

Microsoft Research Cliplets (a free Windows tool for making cinemagraph animated GIFs)

Justin Watt discovers Javascript injection on his hotel's wifi (the Courtyard Marriott's wifi provider is inspecting traffic and inserting their own ads)

Jonathan McIntosh's history of subversive remix videos before YouTube (fascinating playlist of 30 videos created between 1941 and 2005)

ADmented Reality (Jonathan McIntosh remixes the Google Glasses concept video with Google Ads)

Google announces Project Glass, their augmented-reality glasses (finally, something to do while riding in my self-driving car)

Why $7.99 beats $0.99 (ending the race to the bottom for iOS apps)

NYT Mag on casual gaming with an interactive illustration (based on Erik Rothoff Andersson's open-source toy)

TypingClub (well-designed touch typing tutorial) [via]

Math for Makers (Greg Borenstein's new project to turn CS research into practical tools for coders and artists; interesting Twitter feed) [via]

Twitter in 1985 (related: text-mode on Tumblr)

Joystiq on Molyjam ("Death magenta is transparent.")

Linux Tycoon (simulating the creation of a Linux distro as a game) [via]

Rear Window remixed into a single panoramic shot (time lapse of a 20-minute installation stitching together all the stabilized backyard footage from the film) [via]

You Are The Road (my favorite of the nearly 300 games created at What Would Molydeux?)

Kill Screen interviews Leisure Suit Larry's Al Lowe (yesterday, Al came out of retirement on Kickstarter to remake the first Larry game)

Subtle Sans (lovely pay-what-you-want typeface)

wanderdrone (downsampling the world; related: Aaron's New Aesthetic talk at SXSW)

Codecademy adds HTML/CSS lessons (perfect first step for Internet beginners)

Floating Shiny Knot (WebGL environment mapping using Street View photos)

I hereby resign (fictional resignation letter on the liability of Facebook background checks)

Kinect Star Wars dance party (what is this, I don't even)

How Etsy ships (every engineer deploys to production on day one)

Soundtap (browse shows from independent and college radio stations; their March Madness is fun)

MapsTD, tower defense game on Google Maps (brilliantly done and surprisingly fun; try battling in your city with various map tilesets) [via]

Mike Davidson on the Readability controversy (agree with every word of this)

FFFFFAT's subpixel (grid of razor blades turns subway ads into pixel art) [via]

MMOsteroids (a subtle April Fool's prank; spoiler alert) [via]

Criterion Collection releases Kindergarten Cop (about time this understated classic gets the recognition it deserves)

Reddit Timeline (amazing collaborative roleplaying project, transcending April 1 pranks)