Valve ports game library and Steam service to Mac
— Portal 2 will be released for Mac simultaneously with PC, along with “all of our future games” #Maciej Ceglowski on the discovery, loss, and rediscovery of the cure for scurvy
— fascinating story of bad science and the unintended effects of new information #8-Bit NYC, Brett Camper's videogame map of New York
— he’s using Kickstarter to expand to 15 other cities worldwide #Sleep Is Death, Jason Rohrer's new conversational two-player game
— watch the slideshow for details; I just wish it was on the web instead #Echo Nest and SCHED's guide to SXSW Music
— very nicely done, uses Echo Nest’s recommendation engine #GameInformer's Portal 2 exclusive cover story
— scans, since it’s not on GameInformer’s site yet; Valve hired the TAG: The Power of Paint team right out of Digipen #Cal Henderson on gaming probability in World of Warcraft
— he’s collected 118 pets, some of which only drop 1 in 10,000 attempts #NYT on Chinese "human-flesh search engines"
— very similar to the H+ article on the topic from last year #YouTube launches auto-captioning for all videos
— a free, automated audio transcription service based on YouTube should be viable now #Yelp's official response to the business extortion accusation
— nicely lays out the case against the conspiracy theories #Valve updates Portal with mysterious achievement and ARG trailhead
— radio transmissions convert into Morse code and images pointing to a telnet BBS with ASCII screenshots #Unit Testing Achievements
— I’m still waiting for a ticket tracker with game mechanics via Delicious #NYT's auralization of crossing the Olympic finish line
— hear the women’s 1,000-meter speedskating gold medalist win by .02 of a second via FlowingData #Activision shuts down 8-year King's Quest fan project
— even though Vivendi, the former IP owners, granted them a non-commercial license via Slashdot #Bioshock's lead level designer remakes Arcadia in Doom 2
— don’t miss his companion article about Doom as Robotron #Nieman Labs tallies original reporting vs. rewrites for the Google/China hacking story
— 121 different versions of the story, but only 13 did any original reporting #Joel Johnson's extremely painful, personal story of sexual abuse
— so horrible I hesitate linking to it, but I will, if only for Google justice #Casey Neistat's excellent short film about Chat Roulette
— includes demographics, vernacular, and how men and women are treated differently #NYT on Bloom Energy's public debut
— groundbreaking fuel cell tech used by Google, eBay, others; Mashable liveblogged the launch #Yelp accused of extortion in class-action lawsuit
— I maintain that business owners are confused over both sponsorship and the algorithm; a former Yelp account exec debunks the claims #YouTube removes most popular, fan-uploaded Rickroll
— update: it’s back, Google says it was a mistake #Neurosonics Live
— real-time holographic projection synced to turntables and drums via aaronmeyers.tumblr.com #Andrew vs. the Collective's "Search Engine Optimization"
— short fiction about an alternate-reality Internet gone amok, using words and phrases created by Kickstarter backers via Snarkmarket #Italian court finds Google Video guilty of privacy violation for uploaded video
— astonishingly terrible decision, here’s Google’s response #Interview with the manager of Coney Island's Cyclone
— from Last Summer at Coney Island, a documentary about Coney’s revitalization #The Gruber 10 at Macworld
— thoughtful look at the top issues facing Apple, with an eye to their past via mrgan.tumblr.com #Auto-Tune the News #10
— a return to form after autotuning ads for Kotaku (great) and Sony (awful) #Twitter releases growth stats for first three years
— 50 million tweets per day; compare to Kottke’s cumulative estimates from 2007 #Matt Haughey's updates on Mechanical Turk human spam
— the numbers are relatively small compared to the amount of spam, I wonder where the rest’s coming from #Interviewing Ted Rall on Comics Journalism in Afghanistan
I’m a huge fan of both indie comics and indie journalism, so I was thrilled to see Pulitzer-nominated cartoonist Ted Rall start a Kickstarter project last month to fund his return to Afghanistan. I may not always agree with his politics, but I’ve found his long-form foreign reporting to be unique and thought-provoking.
He graciously agreed to an interview over Skype, which we posted late last week as the second episode of the Kickstarter Podcast. I thought it came out well, though I clearly still need to work on my audio mixing skillz (sounds better on headphones!) and perfecting my NPR voice.
You can stream and download the MP3.
Rall’s a controversial figure, especially reviled among political conservatives, even though he’s leveled some of his toughest criticisms at the Obama administration. While most attention’s focused on his syndicated cartoons, he’s also written six non-fiction books, half of those focused on his travels across the ‘Stans — Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In 2002, he published To Afghanistan and Back, a mix of written dispatches, cartoons, and a graphic novella documenting his experiences on the ground during the U.S. invasion after 9/11.
All of Ted Rall’s previous trips were funded by news organizations, but with budgets for foreign correspondents slashed, he’s turned to his fans to fund his return trip. We talk about the changing media landscape, his previous books, and what it’s like being a NYC cartoonist in one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
Slate on the government's alcohol poisoning during Prohibition
— by some estimates, over 10,000 Americans were killed drinking tainted alcohol #Filipinos scared to sing Sinatra after "My Way" karaoke murders
— superstition stemming from the song’s popularity in karaoke bars via hearye.org #Regarding Foursquare and Please Rob Me
The more things change…
“… Anyone who wants to can see a list of all the events you are planning on attending? It’s like a stalker’s delight.”
— Comment about Upcoming.org from September 23, 2003, six days after launch
“It’s bad enough we’re using real names and telling people where we’ve been. Now it’s like prepping someone for the best times to try robbing your apartment.”
— Comment from June 2005
Further back, from the Montreal Gazette, September 1983…
From 1977, don’t list your weddings or funerals in the paper, unless you want to get robbed…
