March 19, 2009
Craft by Ift, graphic demo running on a 20mhz microcontroller
— generating real-time video and sound signals with a $3 chip #
Study finds creditworthiness can be gauged by physical appearance
— they claim the original paper is the first academic study to use Mechanical Turk #
NYT on the rise of mistrials from jurors' Internet usage
— related: Ars interviewed the juror who used Twitter in the courtroom #
Paul Ford's six-word reviews of all 1,302 SXSW MP3s
— interspersed with charts and other interesting trivia about the bands #
ABC News' Charlie Gibson blames students, Google, and social media for newspaper's demise
— addressing a room full of college journalists, he said Clay Shirky was "full of crap" #
Toby Barlow on artists moving into Detroit's $100 homes
— I can totally imagine Detroit turning into a massive artist and net nomad collective (via) #
Gizmodo's guide to iPhone OS 3.0's new features
— the biggest announcement of SXSW was in Cupertino #
Trent Reznor on the state of ticket reselling and scalping
— Ticketmaster could easily prevent reselling, but they're happy to take a cut #
Clay Shirky on the death of newspapers and reinvention of journalism
— the single best essay on the topic I've read #
Aardvark, social search over instant message
— pipes questions to friends-of-friends; works surprisingly well in my initial test #
Foursquare launches with iPhone app
— the spiritual successor to Dodgeball, but with game-like elements #
SXSW 2009 Twitter Visualizer
— five different visualizations, but the real-time map is particularly nice (via) #
Washington Post's horrific article about infant deaths in hot cars
— Pulitzer-Prize winner journalist looks at a uniquely modern tragedy, when a slip of memory becomes fatal #
Wired's untold story of the world's largest diamond heist
— after six years in prison, the mastermind told Joshua Davis his story for the first time #
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon's Bryan Binkman Experiment
— 23,000 followers in 12 hours; pretty geeky for network TV, featuring Engadget on Monday and Diggnation last night #
Techcrunch on Grand Central's relaunch as Google Voice
— they're using speech-to-text to automatically transcribe voicemail #
Revision3 exec liveblogs someone breaking into his house
— he broadcasted the ordeal on Ustream and Twitter (via) #
Aimee Mullins and her 12 pairs of legs
— for some, prosthetics are no longer a disability; she can change her speed and height with augmentation #
Michael Wesch on the Livescribe smartpen in education
— see the pen demo, and "pencasts" shared by the community #
Bicycle Built for 2,000
— Aaron Koblin asks 2,088 Mechanical Turk workers to sing parts of "Daisy Bell" without hearing the whole song #
Fortunebird, mechanical bird automaton that tweets your fortune
— also debuting at Etech: Lensley Automatic, the photobooth that Flickrs and tweets #
TED performance of Pattie Maes' wearable tech demo
— like an iPhone with a projector, dangling around your neck and providing context for everyday activities #
Guardian UK opens API platform and Data Store
— the Data Store uses Google Spreadsheets for data access #
The Morning News behind-the-scenes report of the controversial Gandhi auction
— filmmaker James Otis tried to call it off after Indian protests and death threats #
The "Raiders of the Lost Ark" Story Conference
— 125-page transcription of a week-long brainstorming session with Spielberg, Lucas, and Lawrence Kasdan #
Rock Peaks, database of live music videos culled from YouTube
— user-editable, including performances from late night talk shows #
Cam Marlow's breakdown of maintained relationships at Facebook
— elaborating on his findings discussed in The Economist #
S.F. may crack down on urban prank events
— city officials said last month's Pillow Fight cost over $40,000 to clean up #
Topps brings augmented reality to baseball cards
— surprising they went with a Windows plugin, instead of Flash ARToolkit (via) #
BackTweets, search for links on Twitter
— unlike Twitter Search, this dereferences links from URL shorteners like TinyURL #
Unofficial mirror of Kutiman's Thru-You
— the official site resolved their earlier bandwidth issues (via) #
Seattle P-I to become first daily metro newspaper to go web-only
— related: Mike Davidson's great piece on saving newspaper journalism, while letting print die (via) #
Pun-Colle, Japanese anime voice actresses cover punk classics
— about as horrible as you'd imagine, every song is on his profile page #