Virgin Galactic unveils first commercial spaceship — $200,000, cheap! don't miss Branson's introductory video (via) #

Crunchpad renamed to JooJoo, goes on sale Friday for $499 — Fusion Garage claims no contract with Arrington existed at all; note that TechCrunch isn't covering the news at all #

Dean Allen elaborates on why he shut down Favrd — a peek into the dark and needy side of social media; I just wish he'd left the archives online #

WPA Cracker, cloud-based WPA cracking service — 400 CPU cluster runs a network capture through 135 million words in 20 minutes (via) #

Google tests real-time search from Twitter, Facebook, news sources — try it here; it's like a live, expanded version of this Greasemonkey script I love (via) #

Beatles 3000 — reminds me of Idiocracy's Time Masheen (amazingly, not on YouTube) #

Dean Allen shuts down Favrd without notice — good discussion on Zeldman's entry #

Effect Games — web-based toolkit for making and sharing hosted JS games; see the platformer tutorial for an example #

Phoenix on La Blogotheque's Take Away Shows — directed by Vincent Moon in Paris #

Michael Jackson anonymously co-wrote music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 — a gaming urban legend confirmed; here's some audio samples #

Paul Spinrad's unpublished 1988 Ayn Rand "interview" for Wired — culled entirely from quotes from her published work, interviews, and marginalia #

Said the Gramaphone's 75 Favorite Songs of 2009 — great list, wonderful writing, and a 315MB download #

Sports Illustrated's design concept for a tablet-based magazine — also, the NYT's Article Skimmer is a more practical experimental UI for online news #

Google launches Public DNS service — lookups are permanently logged but not shared inside Google; 8.8.8.8 is a great IP #

CutCopyPasteGnome — other games I've enjoyed recently: The Next Floor, Saut, and Continuity #

Too Much Joy's Tim Quirk details a Warner Bros. royalty statement — is the lack of transparent accounting due to malice, stupidity, or both? (via) #

Little Green Footballs' Charles Johnson no longer identifies with right-wing — feels more like he shifted his own priorities, from foreign policy to science #

Craigslist blocks Yahoo! Pipes — Pipes makes it hard for them to stop commercial use of the feeds, but this is excessive (via) #

Mark Coleran's portfolio of fake interface design for films — I liked his comments on designing the Bourne Identity UIs #

Google Zeitgeist 2009 — Paranormal Activity was the fastest-rising U.S. query this quarter!? #

Khoi Vinh on the design of Basic Maths, his new WordPress theme — I love seeing his design process #

Hollywood vs. New York — scenes of NYC getting destroyed in film, set to Rhapsody in Blue (via) #

Internal disputes kill the CrunchPad — Arrington claims Fusion Garage decided to sell it without them; I'd like to hear their story #

Automatic Mario cover of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" — the amount of work here just hurts my brain (via) #

Roger Avary taken off work furlough, back in prison after Twitter notoriety — too bad, it was shaping up to be a great read #

David McCandless visualizes the safety/efficacy of the H1N1 vaccine — a ton of research boiled down into simple charts; see also: Kottke's explanation of how it's made #

A Life Well Wasted episode 5: "Help" — the best gaming podcast interviews Desert Bus for Hope, plus a lovely Olly Moss poster #

Waze turns crowdsourced mapping into a game — agree with the commenter, it's unfortunate they're not contributing to OpenStreetMap #

27b/6's David Thorne responds to a client about spec work — he's on Twitter #

Wikileaks releases 573,000 private pager messages from 9/11 — a massive privacy breach, Declan McCullagh's trying to find the source; Reddit users are discussing the interesting ones #

Quake 1 ported to Flash with Alchemy — ported by Michael Rennie, source is on Github #

Neven Mrgan's Pie Guy, impressive web game for the iPhone — installed from a webpage, swipe controls, and works offline; 3GS only, older iPhones are too slow #

An academic history of chiptunes — related: 8bitcollective visits CSIRAC, a digital computer that made music in 1951 #

Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young singing the Fresh Prince theme — was hoping for Neil himself, but this is a great impression #

Director/screenwriter Roger Avary's tweeting his experience of life in jail — he's on a work furlough, tweeting during the day and serving his sentence at night #

Bioshock cosplay at the Georgia Aquarium — the drill actually works, and the costume's for sale on eBay; how it was built #

McSweeney's: Has Bell Invented the "Telegraph Killer"? — Gizmodo circa 1876 #

Simon Willison on Node.js — best explanation I've seen of why it's exciting and how it works #

Nicovideo Redirector — search or watch Nicovideo without registration (via) #

Back to the Future DeLorean mod for Crysis — including support for time travel and flaming tire tracks #

Regretsy gets a book deal — the anonymous author turned out to be April Winchell, collector of audio oddities #

Google Chrome OS Demo — a world without a local filesystem and apps; also, the Chrome UI concept video (via) #

Patrick Moberg's Internet Vices — funny, Tumblr feels more like beer than wine to me #

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck's "Heaven Can Wait" — Keith Schofield's surreal video and insane treatment were inspired by FFFFOUND and Reddit, but maybe too explicitly (via) #

YouTube adds machine-translated automatic captions — starting with some partner channels, but auto-timing is available to everyone today #

Microsoft tries to patent Edward Tufte's sparklines — they were recently added to Excel #

Leonard Lin's Retweet Avatars for Greasemonkey — a subtle change, but a big improvement #

Web-ops god John Allspaw leaves Flickr to join Etsy — he's the last of the original Ludicorp team to go (via) #

Laptop Steering Wheel Desk — don't miss the product photos #

Interview with Ralph Eggleston, Pixar's production designer on WALL-E — from last February, but new to me; I didn't know the Axiom had three passenger classes #