O'Reilly roundup of BBC Backstage mashups with Google Maps
— see also: gMapTrack, a tool to easily create custom Google Maps like this one #Christmas Day With My New Girlfriend's Family As a Circa-1982 Text-Based Computer Adventure Game
— I wouldn’t mind reading an entire book in this format #Improv Everywhere fakes a U2 rooftop concert
— I’m mirroring the slow performance video via coudal.com #First look at Google Earth
— holy cow; 3D buildings, public transit, and driving directions via Kottke #Concerned, a comic made with the Half-Life 2 engine
— if you’ve played the game, this is funny via slumbering.lungfish.com #
David Lynch gives the weather report
— updated daily; eat your heart out, Nick Nolte via Delicious #Ex-FBI official states he's Deep Throat
— he denied it to Slate back in 1999, but he’s been the likely culprit for years #Videocrab's E3travaganza
— entertaining photos and stories from E3 2005, including the classic gaming exhibit #Phrack publishes final issue
— end of an era; I’ve been reading the hacking e-zine since 1991 via Slashdot #Ringtone beats Coldplay to top of UK charts
— it’s a dance remix of a ringtone mixed with Axel F; the video #
All Consuming joins the Robot Co-op
— how did I miss this last week? a natural move for Erik and company via feeds.feedburner.com #JWZ on the Royal de Luxe parade
— massive French marionettes with beautiful backstory; see the insanely cool photos and video #Abused Amazon Images
— some new net art made using the recent Amazon URI hacking guide via Eyebeam #Fabricating video game objects in real life
— uses HijackGL; I’d love to see sets of videogame object miniatures like this #Blake Ross's roundup of college newspapers link farms
— including, sadly, my alma mater’s daily newspaper #MP3: Interview with Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair
— they cover the history of Boing Boing, from zine to Xeni #Blake Ross digs up link spam on the Stanford Daily site
— there are many spam blog entries linking to Stanford Daily with the “diet pills” keyword, too #Yahoo! Mindset
— brilliant idea, a slider moving from commercial to non-commercial web results via O'Reilly Radar #Wikitrivia adds categories and images
— a little quirky, but I got 8 out of 10 in the Blogs category #NYT on falling box office attendance
— they blame DVD sales, PVRs, video-on-demand, video games, and the Internet #Mike Doughty busks outside his own Seattle concert
— one of my favorite live performers, this should be a good EP #Andrew Leonard commentary on Star Wars BitTorrent busts
— hit this link after viewing the page to read the whole story #Rojolicious
— Greasemonkey script adds Del.icio.us linking to the Rojo feedreader via O'Reilly Radar #E3 Underdogs 2005
E3 isn’t the best place to find innovative new games, largely because it’s a massive marketing event driven by “sure-thing” multimillion dollar blockbusters and movie/TV franchises. But every year, there are a few underdogs that somehow make it onto the show floor, along with a couple inspiring big-name titles.
Last year, Namco gave an obscure Japanese title called Katamari Damacy a tiny space in the back of their booth. I fell in love, and dubbed it the Best of Show in my 2004 Oddball Roundup. Katamari ended up being the biggest cult hit of the year.
With that in mind, a little late, here’s a roundup of my favorite underdogs from this year’s E3. (G4TV has their own video underdog roundup. For a more mainstream roundup, try 1UP’s detailed list of the best games at E3.)