May 19, 2005

David Cross' "Albums to Listen to While Reading Overwrought Pitchfork Reviews" — David Cross writes on Pitchfork about Pitchfork writing about David Cross #

BitTorrent goes trackerless — less reliable, but only requires one active seeder and no tracker #

Star Wars EP3 Workprint Leaked Online

Posted May 19, 2005 by Andy Baio

Though the original rumors of screener copies of Star Wars Episode III spreading via BitTorrent turned out to be fakes, a new workprint of the film was leaked online yesterday. Watermarked with timecodes on every frame, the workprint was made available as a DVD-R by a pirate group named VISA by Wednesday afternoon.

To get an idea of the quality of this workprint, the video below is a 19 second sample excerpt, posted along with the complete film to Usenet newsgroups. (Thanks for mirroring, Leonard.)

Download: starwars_ep3_leaked_workprint_sample.avi (7.3 MB, XViD)

Mirror #1: starwars_ep3_leaked_workprint_sample.avi

(Note: I don’t have the movie and have no plans to download it, so please don’t ask me how to download it. Also, please don’t post torrent links in the comments.)

Update: This entry is linked in a new Reuters article and many media outlets that use the Reuters feeds, like CNN Money, News.com, and ZDNet. The story is also on the front page of Yahoo right now. In the blog world, it was linked by Boing Boing, Fark (indirectly), and Kottke, among others.

The results? My bandwidth is going through the roof. Downloads of the sample video are pushing 82 Mb/s. That’s pretty insane, and it’s a testament to EV1 Servers that the site is still online and speedy.

May 18, 2005

OpenID, an actually distributed identity system — looks very cool #

E3: Gameboy Micro hands-on — still looks too small to be useful, but it is sexy #

Cheap Gas, mashup of Google Maps and Gasbuddy — also: Google Maps Movie Search by same guy (via) #

Namco developing Katamari for cellphones — like most cellphone games, this probably won't port well #

May 17, 2005

Google launches Adsense for RSS feeds — the best practices recommend only using ads in full-text feeds (via) #

Del.icio.us pioneers — spotting the Del.icio.us trend makers (via) #

Image: Venice drawn with Microsoft Paint — also: two early versions of the 500 hour pixel drawing #

Backpack API — Backpack just got more interesting; here's a great real-world usage (via) #

Image: Star Wars' Last Supper — from Giant Magazine #

Nintendo announces Game Boy Micro — a GBA with a 2 inch screen; are games even playable at that size? #

Playstation 3 technical demos — all real-time, very impressive #

Nintendo Revolution revealed — first pics, but not focused on performance increases (via) #

Video: Killzone 2 trailer for the PS3 — looks pre-rendered to me; I'll believe it when I see it (via) #

Chicago Crime — amazing database of publicly-reported crimes; here's a first-degree murder Google Map #

NES emulator for the PSP released — SNES and Gameboy Color emulated already; is the GBA next? (via) #

May 16, 2005

Episode III hits BitTorrent? — sorry, I don't buy it; if anyone can confirm this isn't a fake, let me know #

Newsgator buying FeedDemon? — two of the biggest client-side Windows feedreaders merging (via) #

Joystiq's live coverage of the PS3 press conference — more powerful than the new Xbox; other photos in the comments #

50 Fun Things to Do with Your iPod — a great roundup #

Halfbakery idea for Google Minus Button — badly needed, and would also provide aggregate stats to Google for removing spam #

SNES9x emulator ported to the PSP — all these hacks require the Japanese 1.0 firmware, which Sony is quickly forcing out (via) #

Ariel Atom 2 — don't miss the video review (full-screen torrent); I've never lusted after a car before this (via) #

May 15, 2005

Adam Kempa's roundup of vinyl video — video encoded on grooved albums and neat zoetrope animations on records #

Elizabeth Gilbert on the worst wedding toast ever — just finishing up a toast for my mom's wedding tonight (via) #

May 13, 2005

Flickr switches from Flash to Ajax — that was quick! the notes work well with heavily annotated photos #

Nintendo DS demos to be distributed wirelessly at E3 — exciting use of the technology (via) #

May 12, 2005

Why Lichtenstein sucks — I posted a refutation with some research in the comments #

Outfoxed, Firefox extension to socially annotate the web — extensively documented and clever thesis project; read the nutshell intro (via) #

Flash Is Ajax at the Ajax Summit — the Flash-Javascript graphing demo is nice #

UFOs on Google Maps — a commenter posted link to several other identical UFOs, all in a grid (via) #

Scientology losing ground to new Fictionology — "we offer our preclear followers procedures to erase overts in the reactive mind" (via) #

Xbox 360 to debut on MTV tonight — here's the TiVo link (via) #

Photos of 28 course, 7.5 hour tasting menu at Alinea restaurant — read more about this remarkable new restaurant (via) #

Broadcast Machine preview released — publish RSS video channels, distributing the bandwidth with Blog Torrent #

Google ponders Blogger, Gmail integration — also: privacy options and native photo uploading (via) #

May 11, 2005

OpenStreetMap — a wiki world map, created and hand-drawn by users (via) #

E3's "I Love Katamari" ball — a giant ball of stuff to be contributed by E3 attendees; should be fun (via) #

Del.icio.us starts a blog — I wish every corporate blog posted cat photos (via) #

Fundable launches — like Dropcash for groups; if the goal isn't met, everyone gets refunds #

Google buys Dodgeball — some interesting possibilities with Blogger and Google Maps (via) #

Video: Chronicles of Narnia trailer — also: Zathura, aka "Jumanji in Space," could be good too #

Monkeywire mailing list — since October 2000, the #1 source for monkey-related news online #

Frank Zappa's Proposal For A System To Replace Ordinary Record Merchandising — from 1983, he saw the future of streaming digital audio distribution from the network; as seen in the Frank Zappa Book (via) #

BBC Backstage — open API, feeds, and tools for remixing BBC content; if only all media was this open (via) #

May 10, 2005

Video: Katamari Damacy creator's lecture from Game Developers Conference 2005 — hour-long discussion of the game design, with hand puppets! (via) #

Thoughts on Apple's video plans — spurred by the insightful Apple insider's Slashdot comments #

Apple granted patent for Mac touchscreen tablet — with simple illustrations (via) #