Guardian UK on the grassroots UK music boom — how the Internet and word of mouth is launching indie acts and singles into the top charts (via) #

I'm Feeling Silly — Googlers order 250 pounds of Silly Putty; hilarity ensues #

Gaming Digg — story of one jerk who used a bookmarklet and fake accounts to ruin Digg for a day #

Google to release feed reader API — don't like the Google Reader UI? roll your own with the underlying data (via) #

Regret the Error's year-end roundup of media mistakes — most are funny, but several upsetting (via) #

Flying Spaghetti Monster tree topper — or put it on your Festivus pole (via) #

Acquisitions and the Big 3 — that's us: fun, jagged, and dangerous #

Typographica's favorite fonts of 2005 — some very flexible choices; Garda is beautiful (via) #

DivX browser plugin for Windows released — Mac and Linux versions coming soon (via) #

Video: Pac-Man Puppet Show — lovely viral ad for the Gametap emulation service (via) #

Brett Tabke's robots.txt blog  #

Metafilter members on Google Earth — nice screenshots; also, I updated the Mefi Stats through December #

Million Dollar Homepage creator on verge of reaching goal — at this rate, he'll hit a million in a week; also, there are quite a few cheap imitators (via) #

Khoi Vinh joins NYTimes.com — they must have liked the Onion redesign (via) #

Xbox 360 costs $715 to manufacture? — they may be losing more than $300 per sale #

Rex Sorgatz' 2006 predictions — more predictions from Blake Ross, Tristan Lewis, Cameron Moll, John Battelle, Jason Calacanis #

Do you get less wet if you run in the rain? — the BBC does the math; reminds me of the shower curtain puzzle #

Top 50 Music Videos of 2005 — generally good songs, too (via) #

How shows on DVD suffer from music licensing — mentions the massive WKRP music changes (via) #

Video: Pants Pants Pants, "Fabio Salsa" — SF indie band recreates the opening sequence from Full House #

Double Feature Finder — nicely designed tool for theater hoppers (via) #

C64 PSP — Commodore 64 emulator for the PSP #

Animal Crossing character promotes file sharing — the story seems more suited to a blog post than an 1,100-word NYT article (via) #

Wikipedia founder edits own bio — and insists others stop editing it without contacting him (via) #

Google's 2005 Year-End Zeitgeist — the growth of Wikipedia queries reflects their traffic #

Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2005 — some surprisingly accessible choices throughout; also: Rex's growing list of year-end lists (via) #

Homebrew Lumines for the GBA — one less reason to own a PSP (via) #

Digg Spy v2 released — real-time view of Digg activity; very nice #

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) #

Sloncek's story of the Suprnova shutdown — a year ago today (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 #

MP3: Dog Eyed Welders – My Hump — best cover of the worst song ever #

43 People adds year-end calendars — aggregates info across all the 43 sites (via) #

Tim Berners-Lee starts a blog — first post! #

Bush authorized NSA to eavesdrop without warrants in U.S. — NYT exclusive finds the administration breaking federal law; also, no more Patriot Act! #

Animated Singing Santa Hack — hack a Wal-Mart Santa to be evil; don't miss the videos #

Facebook doubling as a CIA front? — some fun conspiracy theorizing #

Exclusive screenshots of King Kong for the Xbox 360 — cute riff on the "glitch" with non-HDTV setups (via) #

Alexa opens up search index and API — the pricing model is interesting (via) #

Google Homepage API — create Javascript modules that can be shared with others (via) #

Official Katamari t-shirts — collect all seven! (via) #

Video: Mockups of Nintendo Revolution controller demos — still bizarre, and still very promising (via) #

NYT on Rocketboom — whoa, I just found out about the TiVo/Rocketboom deal; some analysis #

A Yahoo Company — all your startups are belong to us #

The Museum of Modern Betas — needs more Under Construction icons (via) #

Myspace Deaths — something like this would be meaningful if they'd drop the morbid humor #

Vivendi grants "fan license" to unofficial King's Quest sequel — the name is changing, but the characters can stay the same #