April 9, 2009
NYT blog posts added to the Times Newswire API
— also, they announced their new Real Estate API two days ago #
Everything Is Terrible's compilation of bad introductions
— amazing videoblog of original VHS rips; the first post set the tone, recreating a VHS viral he'd seen in college #
Nate Silver's prediction model for gay marriage bans, state-by-state
— bans are losing support at a rate of 2 points yearly; by 2012, almost half would vote against it #
MPA to challenge Newzbin in court
— baffling since they only host metadata, but not the actual files #
Mad Scientist Labs builds Ironic Sans' concept Bulbdial Clock
— an LED sundial with moving hour, minute, and second hands #
Hand-crafted miniature sets from classic TV shows
— my favorites are Family Ties, Three's Company, Price Is Right and Pyramid (via) #
Hot New Video Game Consists Solely Of Shooting People Point-Blank In The Face
— The Onion built a dedicated website for the game, with an online Flash demo #
Effing Hail
— Flash game in the form of weather infographics in a textbook; awful music, though (via) #
The Beatles entire catalogue remastered, to be released alongside Rock Band
— wait, what's this "CD" they speak of? (via) #
Flickr's Aaron Cope walks through building maps from scratch
— using Stamen's EC2 image for an instant map stack; yet another reason to vote for them in Icon's poll #
Visualizing SF Trees, Crimes, and Cabs with subtractive blending
— Stamen's Shawn Allen explains how it was made in the comments (via) #
Gizmodo's Pirate Code of Conduct for BitTorrent
— in case media companies are wondering, these align to the ethical guidelines for most people I know #
NYT on Hearst's RealAge "test" marketing 27 million medical histories to drug companies
— naturally, Hearst also owns Oprah Magazine; Gordon predicted this back in 2007 #
Amanda Palmer on how Twitter is changing her relationship with fans
— she's been actively trying to get dropped from her label #
Paramount surprises hardcore fans by debuting new Trek film in Austin
— they thought they were watching a new reprint of Wrath of Khan, until Nimoy himself broke the news #
Boxee officially releases new API
— the latest release added a new Mozilla-based browser, fixed Hulu streaming, and Pandora support #
A Visit to id Software in 1993
— home video includes 20 minutes of Romero playing a pre-release version of Doom (via) #
Super Luigi Bros.
— living in the shadow of a famous brother; also: a day in the life of a Goomba (via) #
Joshua Schachter on the dangers of URL shorteners
— interesting that Archive Team is already working on crawling the TinyURL db #
How xkcd's Randall broke his laptop trying to turn off Google's SafeSearch
— fortunately, there were no sharks nearby #
UK village mob blocks Google Street View car
— "how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent?" #
The Music Explaura, powerful music discovery engine
— explains each recommendation and lets you steer suggestions by shifting tag weights or popularity (via) #
Things iPhoto Thinks Are Faces
— finding faces in cookie dough, trees, watches, buttons, church, and pants #
Conficker Eye Chart
— clever way to instantly diagnose PCs for the virus, unless they're on a proxy #
TinyURL/Bit.ly decoder for Greasemonkey
— resolves 13 different URL shortening services, so no more mystery links from Twitter #
Get Down, Goldeneye N64 glitch becomes Japanese meme
— more on tilting and the crooked cartridge trick; hundreds of variations on YouTube, mostly from Nico Nico Douga (via) #
Google reveals details about its custom server hardware and datacenters
— "It was our Manhattan Project" (via) #
Valleywag on layoffs at Wired.com and Ars Technica
— including Lore Sjöberg and Leander Kahney; they cut 25% back in November #
FileFront saved, original founders buy it back from Ziff-Davis
— unfortunate timing, the community's still suspicious (via) #
LeechBlock, Firefox extension to block access to sites you love too much
— a more flexible, cross-platform SelfControl; can block Google Reader but allow Google #
IJD: Paul Lamere on Echo Nest's new "goodness" API
— simulates a Pitchfork music critic, and the demo actually works #
IJD: SEOmoz launches Webfluence, user-generated search engine
— what Google would look like if run by SEO jerks; add or remove any result #
IJD: Google Chrome adds 3D web browsing
— amazingly, it actually works with real anaglyph red-blue glasses #
IJD: Improv Anywhere's Best Funeral Ever
— poking fun at the criticism they received for Best Gig Ever #