USPO rejects Amazon's one-click patent after reviewing blogger's prior art — Peter Calveley's persistent efforts were chronicled on his blog #

Jonathan Coulton on his work with Portal — spoilers; if you haven't played Portal yet, trust me and buy it #

I Played Through Episode Two Holding A Goddamn Gnome — the hypnotizing power of game achievements (via) #

Call and Response — repeating ad jingles in overlapping intervals builds a droning soundscape #

Wired News interviews StSanders about his Shred videos — including a quote from Steve Vai #

Gabe & Max's Internet Thing — share your thoughts with up to 10 people using The Online Blogopolis! (via) #

Vimeo adds HD videos — I'm floored by the quality #

Pillar — Flickr in-jokes galore, and now #1 on Explore #

What single book is the best introduction to your field for laypeople? — brilliant Ask Metafilter thread showcases the diversity of the community #

Zappos brings customer to tears (in a good way) — the only way a shoe store could thrive online is with insanely incredible customer support like theirs (via) #

Hype Machine redesign launching soon — cute, they're waiting until they have 10,000 people viewing the page at once #

People Getting Punched Just Before Eating — reading the comments (never a good idea), it looks like Andy Samberg's pretty divisive #

Video: Font talk with Pat Sajak and Vanna White — hmm, Vanna uses Arial and Helvetica (via) #

New York Mag's cover story on Gawker and "the rage of the creative underclass" — long rant, with a response by Denton (via) #

Introducing Penelope Frances Trott — congrats, Ben & Mena! #

Details on Brütal Legend, new game from Psychonauts creators — metal-themed game starring Jack Black, Rob Halford, and Lemmy #

Ze Frank's "A Social Network for Two" — we could lie about our ages and customize our pages #

Followup on the Mutating Pictures project — the hive mind is great at drawing samurai faces #

Covering cancer in Funky Winkerbean — interesting to see how the fans respond to serious issues in the Sunday funnies #

GameSetWatch's highlights of the 2008 IGF entries — most of these games sound insanely good #

Breath Wars — Flickr's slightly more disgusting followup to Faceball #

Interactive Fiction Comp '07 entries released — IF author Emily Short is publishing reviews as she plays them #

The Believer interviews Adrian Tomine — long, good interview #

Sony Bravia ad borrows from Kozyndan? — after seeing the ad, I assumed they were involved #

Details on the Threadless retail store — much more on Flickr (via) #

TiVo uses PayPerPost for fake grassroots video campaign — later that day, they killed the program and are now trying to remove all the videos (via) #

Flo Control — using image recognition to prevent unwanted houseguests through a cat door #

A Night In With MAME — NSFW review of "Swinging Singles" arcade game from 1983 (via) #

Mike discovers an unusual seatbelt fetish on Flickr — 822 826 pictures of women wearing seatbelts in the back seat, culled with loving, creepy care #

Rsizr, intelligent image resizing — complete Flash implementation of the content-aware seam carving demo #

San Diego mayor announces change of heart on gay marriage — a Republican strong enough to admit he's changed his mind (via) #

Eric Clapton shreds — mocking guitar wankery with overdubs; don't miss the angry fanboy comments to every video in the series #

Google to open social network on November 5? — I love how Arrington talks to people "off record," and then completely spills it #

Fun with Robots.txt, a survey of 4.6 million domains — if you like that, try Andrew's Fun with HTTP Headers survey from 2005 #

$1 US = $1 Canadian for the first time since 1976 — for a brief moment, the Canadian dollar was worth more (via) #

Lev and Thumpbot play "Crazy" — theremin-playing robot built from a floor lamp, plumbing supplies, and some microprocessors #

Flickr community responds to pirate easter egg — many hilarious responses from the clueless and/or humorless; some of my faves #

Flickr's Arrrr! localization for Talk Like A Pirate Day — hurry, the amazing easter egg's only up until 9pm tonight; don't miss the "Pirate Code," "Poop Deck," and "Land ho" #

Hearst buys RealAge, acquires medical background of 8 million people — voluntarily provided in the form of an online quiz; be grateful it wasn't acquired by a life insurance firm #

Chief of the U.S. Copyright Office doesn't own a computer — how can a self-proclaimed luddite make policy decisions involving copyright in the digital age? (via) #

Joni Mitchell discusses each song on new album — first album of original songs since 1998, but her production's stuck in the Geffen era #

Online couple cheated with each other — if you like Pina Coladas... (via) #

Multiplayer Asteroids back online — it was down for months and can now support thousands of users #

Ponoko — on-demand, social manufacturing; design, share, and buy laser-cut products from a variety of materials #

Double-Toothpicks — funny, we used to say "kick-ass" on the Upcoming homepage until we got complaints from prudes #

MediaDefender's internal emails leaked to BitTorrent — the last six months of emails expose every project to track P2P activity and snare pirates #

Cringely on Google's master plans for the 700mhz spectrum — some fascinating speculation, with some rumored iPod classic problems thrown in #

John Gruber on the Ringtones Racket — "the distinction between ringtones and songs is an artificial marketing construct" #

Satisfaction launches — lovely people-powered customer service, like Ask Mefi for every community #

Amir escalates the Prank War by forging a marriage proposal in Yankee Stadium — the latest in an increasingly uncomfortable high-stakes prank war between two College Humor employees #