September 11, 2008

Road Trip: Southwest USA — Penn & Teller's Desert Bus remade as a 1980s text adventure #

Sasha Frere-Jones on the use of laptops in live music — Gregg Gillis covers his laptop with saran wrap and reconstructs his mix nightly (via) #

Being a List of Songs Related to the Switching-On of the LHC — and, just to be sure, no and nope (via) #

September 10, 2008

Freestyle Rap Battle, Translated — here's the original #

Simon Carless announces FingerGaming, new iPhone gaming blog — promising site from the same group that runs GameSetWatch, Indiegames, and Gamasutra #

Schulze & Webb commercially releasing the Availabot — and it's "almost ready"! (via) #

Girl Turk: Mechanical Turk Meets Girl Talk's "Feed the Animals"

Posted September 10, 2008November 16, 2020 by Andy Baio

Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals is one of my favorite albums this year, a hyperactive mish-mash sampling hundreds of songs from the last 45 years of popular music. Gregg Gillis created a beautiful, illegal mess of copyright clearance hell, which you should download immediately. (It’s free, but I kicked in $20 for Gregg’s legal fund and a copy of the CD.)

Last month, Rex Sorgatz asked about collecting metadata on the album for data crunching. After spelunking through Billboard’s chart history, that sounded like my idea of a good time.

So I compiled all the data into spreadsheets, used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to collect some additional information, and pulled out a few charts. As always, I’ve provided CSV downloads for all the data along with the original output from Mechanical Turk, for those interested in experimenting with the platform.

Update (October 30): Here’s the official sample list.

Continue reading “Girl Turk: Mechanical Turk Meets Girl Talk's "Feed the Animals"” →

World Names Profiler, find people with your last name globally — also shows the name's roots, top cities, and most common first names (via) #

Little Hands, documentary short vocalizes the daily conversation of deaf children — mesmerizing to watch; I liked the kids caught "whispering" on camera at 2:55 #

Atmosphir, collaborative 3D platform designer — announced at TC50 today, still in private beta; watch the demo for more #

September 9, 2008

MoreCowbell.dj, add cowbell to any MP3 — built on the lovely Echonest API; this Paul Simon remix is perfect (via) #

FlowingData announces winners of the Personal Visualization Project — see also: Daytum and Mycrocosm #

Adam Savage inhales sulphur hexafluoride — I'd never heard of the gas; more demonstrations on YouTube #

Google Turns 20, speculative fiction by Philipp Lenssen — blog posts from a parallel future world #

Audio Puzzler, game that creates timestamped audio transcripts — like Luis von Ahn's Games with a Purpose (via) #

Rock Paper Shotgun on the Spore anti-DRM activism on Amazon — for better or worse, it's an effective protest; my aunt bought a copy as a gift, but is returning it today because of DRM fears #

September 8, 2008

John McCain gets BarackRoll'd — or: what happens when you speak in front of alternating blue and green screens (via) #

September 6, 2008

Craigslist Missed Connections, Visualized — also, maps by hair color, age, and by exact location; from the very talented Dorothy of Cat & Girl (via) #

September 5, 2008

Bloons Tower Defense 3 — Friday afternoon Flash fun (via) #

Viddler's 15 Seconds, short videos twittered — records from your webcam, then tweets the link and note #

Bre Pettis's pilot on history hacking coming to History Channel on September 26 — set your DVR, he hacks historical inventions using stuff in his closet #

September 4, 2008

Microsoft debuts new Vista ad with Gates and Seinfeld — aside from Bill's mugshot, a rambling and unfunny ad (via) #

Jason Scott on Phil Lapsley's upcoming book on the history of phone phreaking — wonderful goodies within, including the YIPL/TAP FBI files and readable guides to filing FOIAs and reading FBI files #

Metallica thrilled new album leaked online a week early — "happy days" #

PDF Format's 8-bit cover of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" — see also: Julia Nunes' uke cover, and even more (via) #

John McCain and Tina Fey's LIFE cover photo from September 2004 — yes, it's totally real #

September 3, 2008

Tomorrow Museum on Elitism in the 2008 Elections — I've been reading way too much about the elections, but this resonated with me #

Unplug Your Friends, Meetup.com's viral video about "screen addiction" — beautifully made #

Amazon's Mechanical Turk used for fraudulent activity — I've noticed the search engine spam myself #

The American People — time to revisit Greg's project, extracting mentions of the cliched phrase from the news #

The Reemvoweler — came in handy trying to read the modified comments in this Boing Boing thread #

New Yorker's candid profile of Alec Baldwin — Kottke left off an underrated favorite of mine, Prelude to a Kiss #

"about:internets" Easter egg in Google Chrome — don't clog the tubes! (via) #

Wired documenting the development of a feature article in real-time — emails, pitches, assignment, design, editing, and production for a Charlie Kaufman profile in November's issue (via) #

Aether, thoughtful art game from Gish artist — solve each planet's unique puzzle (via) #

September 2, 2008

Picasa adds facial recognition for tagging photos — watch the demo for an example #

September 1, 2008

Google leaks details on Google Chrome, new open-source browser — with a comic book drawn by Scott McCloud #