October 20, 2003

Mandy Moore has decent taste in music — covers XTC, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens on new album... who knew? #

October 19, 2003

New Strokes video for "12:51" — WMV, heavily Tron-inspired #

Original Albini mix of Nirvana's "All Apologies" #

McLuhan's Medium Is The Massage — explains the origin of the book's title #

October 18, 2003

Foo Camp interview videos — that's me walking behind Ben and Mena #

Britney Spears look-alike — don't forget to scroll down #

CSS art, no images — like ANSI art for the new millennium #

October 17, 2003

PSA: iTunes for Windows moves and renames MP3s — looks like Adam got burned, too #

Winamp 5 Beta #

Banned Schwarzenegger mural — and you thought L.A. traffic couldn't get any worse #

Website users legally changing names to match usernames — it'd be nice to write "Wax Pancake" on my tax forms #

Tall people earn more — $789/year per extra inch #

ESPN Sportcenter pranked by "Cubs fan" impersonator #

Baton Teleplay Modem — unreleased 2400 baud modem for the NES, SNES and Genesis #

Time Warner's new logo — the usage guidelines are cute #

iTunes Link Maker — search the store from the web #

Free web hosting for 3 years — 500MB space, 5GB/month transfer, no credit cards, no catches #

Black Like I Thought I Was — take the test yourself for $158 #

Social Software Mind Map — messy, but shows how far it reaches #

October 16, 2003

iTunes for Windows — and it's not crippled at all #

Subjecting today's children to yesterday's gaming classics — "I'm sure everyone who made this game is dead by now." #

GBA adapter for NES cartridges — includes authentic "blowing in cartridge" action #

October 15, 2003

Arcade Ambience MP3s — 1-hour-long collages of arcade sounds created with MAME! #

Lady Liberty and the Three Impossible Dreams — 101-chapter fan-fiction epic, a Buffy/Harry Potter crossover set during the American Revolution #

Bayesian spam filter for MovableType #

Great profile of Linus Torvalds — Touches on the SCO lawsuit, but mostly about his personality #

Bit Spirit, new BitTorrent client — Powerful manager for serving/downloading multiple BitTorrent files #

Cubs Fan

Posted October 15, 2003 by Andy Baio

The Smoking Gun unmasked the name of the Cubs fan that interfered with a foul ball in Tuesday night’s Cubs game, and the Chicago Sun-Times printed far more information. The entire world now knows his name, age, employer, Little League team, and neighborhood. They also published a neighbor’s name, Ron Cohen, which exposes the fan’s home address, as well. ~~A quick glance in Usenet shows that he has a long posting history, so we even know his likes and dislikes.~~ (Update: It’s not the same Steve Bartman… Thanks, Jon.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t he still considered a private person? And doesn’t the Chicago Sun-Times article tangibly endanger his life? I’d love to hear from someone familiar with privacy law. Is he considered a limited public figure by appearing in a public place and trying to catch a foul ball? I’d say he has a decent case against the Smoking Gun and the Sun-Times for negligence.

At any rate, he’s rapidly turning into the net’s newest celebrity. The Photoshop remixes are coming fast and furious… I’ve compiled a list of them below. (My personal favorite.)

Update: DPS notes that SteveBartman.com/org/net domains have all been registered in the last few hours.

Continue reading “Cubs Fan” →

Cubs Fan identified by name — coming soon: Chicago man torn apart by wild mob #

Yahoo Serious resents Yahoo website — he made the cover of Time!? #

Firebird 0.7 released — nasty font treatment, though #

Salon on the "dolling" subculture — I have one too #

October 14, 2003

Man.cx — a work-safe alternative to Goatse.cx #

Every Second Counts — Flash, try to meet the target time #

The Clay Eaters — Pregnant women compelled to eat dirt #

The Woman Who Vomited Frogs — Compulsive swallowing and eating habits #

CNN covers darknets like Waste and Freenet — Ian Clarke looks sad #

Six degrees and the Bacon/Erdos number #

Danny O'Brien on Foo Camp and the death of the private register — Also: Andrew Orlowski pokes fun at us #

October 13, 2003

Amazing treemap of Usenet — or delve into the rest of the data #

Massive collaborative hypercomic — featuring 20 great artists, including Chris Ware #

St. George, Patron Saint of Photo Opportunities — Strange caption... Is he appearing on BET and the Food Network? #

Sony may drop PS2 price to $99 in mid-November — Target in-store advertisements reveal possible price cuts #

Open Video Project — 2,000 videos and growing, similar to Archive.org's movies library #

Justin Hall's gallery of emerging Japanese cellphone tech #

Bio-chips for detecting dengue fever in South America #

Paypal Challenges BitPass

Posted October 13, 2003 by Andy Baio

Paypal has frozen the account of micropayment service BitPass. Scott McCloud, one of their advisors and its most prominent user, stated that Bitpass was given seven days to provide Paypal evidence that their service isn’t a violation of the U.S. Patriot Act. Is this because Paypal is genuinely concerned that Bitpass could be used for money laundering, or are they interested in shutting down a potential competitor?

Scott reported this information at this O’Reilly’s Foo Camp over the weekend, and doesn’t appear to have hit the web anywhere yet. Please let me know if you find any more information about this story.

Update: Abe Burmeister spoke to Bitpass and confirms the report.

October 14, 2003: Paypal employee Patrick Breitenbach posted a comment on my site, stating that Paypal reactivated the Bitpass account this morning. Patrick said that Paypal didn’t intend to disrupt payment process, and claimed the decision to suspend their account was unrelated to competitive issues. Though the End of Free points out that their Senior Manager for Biz Dev is speaking a micropayments conference next month.

Stupid Dreams — Exploding Dog on The Morning News #

NYC city guide written by people on PDAs #

Clay Shirky on file-sharing and darknets — The move toward trust-based P2P #