February 24, 2009
BackGames, videogame plots in reverse
— Tetris: "player must break apart a giant rectangle, sending the pieces into space" (via) #
Visualizing the number of links on 98 popular websites
— 36,128 total links, with Techmeme on top (via) #
Pirate 2 Pirate Kopimi Station
— insert USB thumb drive into kiosk, get Oscar nominated films; this has potential for legal uses, too #
GOOD Magazine's visualization of fuel use by mode of transportation
— the comments on Flowing Data point out some of the flaws #
Billboard releases Chart API
— that would've made The Whitburn Project much easier, but I wonder how their licensees feel about it? #
Cursor*10 2nd session
— sequel to the best single-player cooperative game I've ever played; see also: Chronotron (via) #
Sched.org releases SXSW 2009 schedule
— the best conference scheduling app ever returns; related: their API for all event and user info #
UserFriendly comic plagiarized multiple punchlines from Metafilter comments
— the author's a long-time Metafilter user and apologizes here, while people keep finding more #
Last.fm blogs their response to the false Techcrunch rumor
— I love these guys; the original article was updated with some weak backpedaling #
Nate Silver on why his Oscar predictions missed
— it's difficult to know which factors to model, and the criteria can be very subjective #
Josh Freese's very unusual giveaways to promote his solo album
— busy guy; he's the drummer for A Perfect Circle, The Vandals, and Devo #
Jumpman, reinventing the retro platformer
— this is a must-play for Mac/PC, the game gets increasingly clever and complex #
The Big Picture highlights photos of people at work
— the Bulgarian nuclear control panel is gorgeous #
Quicken Online puts foot in mouth after accusing Mint of incredible growth
— great advertising for Mint, and reveals that Quicken's growth must be pretty flat #
Aviary releases Raven, first full-featured online vector editor
— very impressive; like their other tools, any public illustration can be forked at any revision #
Very Small Array charts Billboard vs. Pitchfork's Top 100 of 2008
— indie geeks love bands (especially duos), while the mainstream loves young solo artists #
Jason Grigsby on the history of Cup o' Noodle and embracing constraints
— a very entertaining five-minute presentation from Ignite Portland #
Eurogamer's detailed review of Noby Noby Boy
— the game was released on the PS3 today for $5; Panic is selling the official shirts #
Flickr interviews the Astrometry.net Flickr bot creator
— it analyzes sky photos added to the Astrometry group, and tags them with celestial bodies #
Available Online for Free, the Sticker
— Evan Roth's free PDF book is brilliant too, blending technology and art in clever ways #
East Bay Express' long hit piece on Yelp
— Yelp's response, which I completely agree with; someone needs to record a sales call to settle this #
Marc Hedlund on Hulu, Boxee, and "content providers"
— "someone else -- not you, someone smart -- will win instead, or you can change your mind" #
Home of the Underdogs goes offline for good
— the essential abandonware site is abandoned; thanks for the memories, Sarinee (via) #
Hulu content providers demand Boxee remove Hulu support
— here's Boxee's blog post; that's a great way to drive Boxee users back to BitTorrent #
Dirk's Accident, very graphic images of a Neodymium magnet collision
— crushed finger after two magnets with 700 lbs. of force came within 20 inches of one another (via) #
Rex Sorgatz interviews Moot
— this is the best idea I've seen for making money off the site, with more here #
Matt Webb's retweeting Carl Steadman's 99 Secrets from 1996
— someone needs to do Two Solitudes for the Twitter era with @replies #
Wired reviews Retro Game Challenge for the DS
— game about playing games, inspired by Japanese reality show about playing games #
Facebook reverts to previous Terms of Service after outcry
— best quote: "like you were going to write Finnegans Wake on someone's wall or some shit?" #
Steal This Film, The Trial Edition
— early cut of the anti-copyright documentary's third part; see part 1 and part 2 on Google Video (via) #
Facebook's TOS changes compared to MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and more
— while I'm sure Mark means well, Facebook's lawyers are still overreaching (via) #
Washington Post profile of 4chan's moot
— they spend four pages in backstory, leaving the interesting personal stuff for the last page (via) #
TorrentFreak summarizes the Pirate Bay's first day in court
— their coverage is great; also, their writeup of the press conference #
Pirate Bay trial starts Monday in Stockholm
— BitTorrent trackers don't host any infringing material, but clearly aid infringement; should be an interesting trial #
Twitter's "Don't Click" clickjacking, explained
— the most coherent explanation and how Twitter resolved it #
Winners of Information Aesthetics' paper-based visualization competition
— Charlene Lam's Petals and Britta's watercolor map are particularly nice (via) #