December 23, 2005
Animal Crossing character promotes file sharing
— the story seems more suited to a blog post than an 1,100-word NYT article (via) #
Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2005
— some surprisingly accessible choices throughout; also: Rex's growing list of year-end lists (via) #
Federal judge rules intelligent design curriculum unconstitutional
— the court opinion (PDF) is an amazing read; read about the Wedge Document on page 28 #
Ari Paparo on why Delicious succeeded where Blink failed
— design decisions prevented his social bookmarking service from getting popular (via) #
Pokemon gene renamed following legal threat
— Nintendo didn't like "Pokemon" being associated with "cancer" (via) #
Video: Lazy Sunday, the Chronicles of Narnia Rap
— easily the best thing I've seen on SNL in years #
Wife, lover held for murder of former Quark engineer
— bizarre story involving a conspiracy involving an embezzling scheme at Quark #
Bush authorized NSA to eavesdrop without warrants in U.S.
— NYT exclusive finds the administration breaking federal law; also, no more Patriot Act! #
Exclusive screenshots of King Kong for the Xbox 360
— cute riff on the "glitch" with non-HDTV setups (via) #
Video: Mockups of Nintendo Revolution controller demos
— still bizarre, and still very promising (via) #
Vivendi grants "fan license" to unofficial King's Quest sequel
— the name is changing, but the characters can stay the same #
Windows Live Local's overhead shots of Disneyland
— including a peek into the drained Submarine lagoon #
Windows Live Local escalates the maps arms race
— the birds-eye view is insane; the entire world looks like SimCity #
Abusive NYC camera store threatens to break customer's neck
— Thomas Hawk, himself a recent scam victim, reports on a new case with recorded evidence #
Rest Of U2 Perfectly Fine With Africans Starving
— "You don't win 14 Grammys feeding Africans." (via) #
New AIM worm chats with its victims
— it's probably more coherent than most IM conversations (via) #
Mena Trott calls out backchannel critic Ben Metcalfe from the stage
— when drama erupts at a blogging conference, you get video, photos, and tons of commentary #
Alison Mealy's Unreal Tournament art
— artworks combine portraits and data viz from UT games (via) #
Wikipedia to disallow anonymous users to create new pages
— an experimental change to deal with their social scaling issues #
Pre-order Jason Scott's new text adventure documentary film
— support his work, and get three copies and your name in the credits (like me) #
Rex starts his 2005 List of Top Lists
— as always, keep checking back over the next few weeks as it grows #