Aza Raskin announces Algorithm Ink and ContextFree.js, making art with Javascript
— Resig mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but Aza’s video demo is a must-see #Chuck Klosterman asks 100 German college students to name the most interesting 20th Century American
— wide range, from George Gershwin to Jared Leto via Fimoculous #Anil Dash on Bill Gates and The Greatest Tech Hack Ever
— still catching up from vacation, this hit Digg but worth reading if you missed it #Josh Harris tells Boing Boing that Pseudo.com was conceptual art
— don’t miss Douglas Rushkoff’s comment about his Pseudo investment #Habbo Hotel may soon overtake World of Warcraft's total subscribers
— then again, it’s free to register and there’s no client via Delicious #Visualizing 4.5 years of Flickr with code_swarm
— see also: Federated Media and Django via Delicious #No Country for Raising Arizona
— deliberately or not, the Coen Brothers quote from their early work via Daring Fireball #LA Times on YouTube's Fred
— insanely popular with tweens, he has 242k subscribers and a sponsorship deal; here’s an interview #Tom Taylor's Delighting with Data
— presentation about clever parsing hacks, several oriented around Twitter via Delicious #Electronic Arts veteran starts iPhone-only gaming startup
— some insights into what’s attractive about the platform for game developers #Nintendo DS homebrew music apps
— I hope niche apps like these move over to App Store via Delicious #Winners of the Procedural Generation Game competition
— Rescue: The Beagles looks like fun, and some of the other entries are intriguing via GameSetWatch #Boing Boing removes over 100 70 posts linking to Violet Blue
— whether this was a glitch or vendetta, some sort of response would be nice via Fimoculous #Biotech firm Analtech creates viral video to attract the youngsters
— they spent $60,000 and had 44 performers, including a congressman; sounds like a massive train wreck #Anonymous Yahoo employee snarks on the re-org
— pure sarcasm, but sums up the shuffling as viewed from the ground via Delicious #Kevn Kelly on brute-forcing science
— an excellent companion piece to Chris Anderson’s Wired cover story #The Paper Version of the Web
— early paper prototypes for Flickr, Twitter, Vimeo, and others via Delicious #Metafilter's Guide to Indie Platformers
— a brilliant primer with some familiar names to Waxy readers, and plenty of new ones #The Simpsons map for Quake III Arena
— incredible detail, including the Simpsons house, Moe’s, and much of Springfield via Delicious #Gamasutra on Nintendo DS piracy in South Korea
— media piracy of all kinds is pervasive and not stigmatized via GameSetWatch #Jim Le Fevre's zoetrope built from a Technics turntable
— like a real-life animated GIF via @russelldavies #"Where the Hell is Matt?", the 2008 sequel in HD quality
— exactly two years from his first video, Matt returns from a 14-month journey around the world #Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children's Healthcare
— “the majority of respondents shrieked ‘NOOO!'” via jeffrubinjeffrubin.com #Simple Truths, a quiet video of parkour training
— more discipline than sport, this seems truer to parkour values than the over-the-top highlight videos #Ian Rogers unveils Topspin, his digital music marketing startup
— one of the smartest guys I know, I’m keeping a close eye on this #History of the TiVo peanut remote control
— story of the design process with several photos of prototypes via pvrblog.com #Interview with Alan Taylor, Creator of Boston Globe's The Big Picture
With its vibrant oversized photographs and minimalist design, the Boston Globe’s The Big Picture weblog launched on June 1 to instant global acclaim. It’s designed, programmed, and written by Alan Taylor, an old-school web programmer and blogger, in his spare time while working on community features at Boston.com. (You might know Alan from his popular MegaPenny Project, Amazon Light, or his other projects.)
The idea’s simple, but extremely effective. Spend a few minutes with the Iowa floods, the faces of Sudan, or the daily life in Sadr City, and you feel like you’ve opened a window to another world.
I interviewed Alan about the inspiration for the site, his methodology, and what it’s like being a programmer in a journalist’s world.
The Big Picture’s become an essential read for me, and I totally agree with Jason Kottke when he called it “the best new blog of the year.” What inspired it?
Alan Taylor: Lots of things — my parents used to always have Life and National Geographic magazines around the house, I fell in love with the visual storytelling way back then. When I was getting my feet wet in the online journalism world as a developer at msnbc.com, I had the good fortune of working alongside Brian Storm and a few others in MSNBC’s photo department, who were just phenomenal as far as selection, editing and presentation.
I wondered why other sites didn’t reach that level. Many have by now, but I was still frustrated by the presentation — either far too small, or trapped in click-after-click interfaces that were in Flash or just acted as ad farms.
