May 2007
172 posts
Taking a page from the Harry Potter books, there's...
Taking a page from the Harry Potter books, there’s a sign for Platform 9 3/4 (and a lugguage cart that’s half-disappeared into the wall) at the real-life King’s Cross Station in London. (link) (via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)
Top 15 Google Street View Sightings
Google’s Street View feature for Google Maps, which enables users to see certain parts of several big US cities through panoramic images, has caused a new trend: StreetSpotting (we just invented that). We’ve gone through the avalanche of reports about funny, weird or even sexy things spotted on Street View, and chosen 15 that we like most.
15. The Woz
Street named after Steve Wozniak. OK, it’s...
Google Maps zoom: here's the device and vehicle...
Xeni Jardin:
A new street-level zoom feature on Google Maps debuted recently, to much freakout and fanfare (previous BB posts: 1, 2). The company performing the drive-by surveillance and image capture services for Google is Immersive Media, and here’s a blog post from the PR guy who reps them. What a scary/cool little 11-sided camera that is on the “Street Level View-Mobile.”...
Cross-promotion: Steve Jobs' favorite gadget blog
A sweet moment for Brian Lam of Gizmodo at All Things Digital. Standing with his main rival, Ryan Block of Engadget, the dorkier of the two dominant gadget blogs. Lam spotted Steve Jobs on the way to lunch at the Carlsbad conference. Lam goes over to introduce himself, half-expecting to be frozen out by Jobs. “It’s my favorite gadget site,” gushes the Apple chief exec, adding...
Time is the one truly limited resource
We can get greater quantities of every other resource we need, except time. [Peter] Drucker reports that executives spend their time much differently than they think they do and much differently than they would like to. His solution is to begin by measuring how you spend your time, and compare it with an ideal allocation. Than begin to systematically get rid of the unimportant in favor of the...
Mahalo Is Hawaiian for Useless
Mahalo is a “human powered search engine”. Translated from Web 2.0 speak, this means “Wikipedia with less content and Google results”. Jason Calacanis dropped this deuce into the world’s toilet bowl yesterday, and I gotta tell ya, I’m fucking glad he did. Otherwise, I’d have to keep looking at Google search results from the boring old white-background...
Tactics, Targets, and Objectives
If you encounter an aggressive lion, stare him down. But not a leopard; avoid his gaze at all costs. In both cases, back away slowly; don’t run. If you stumble on a pack of hyenas, run and climb a tree; hyenas can’t climb trees. But don’t do that if you’re being chased by an elephant; he’ll just knock the tree down. Stand still until he forgets about you.
I spent...
Two of Us: Bill and Steve at D
By Jimmy Guterman
It’s late evening in Carlsbad, Calif., site of the Wall Street Journal’s fifth annual D conference, an expensive and exclusive meeting of technology and media bigwigs. It has been a day full of acquisition announcements (News Corp. picked up Photobucket, CBS bought last.fm) and the extremely high level of self-regard you expect from technology and media bosses....
My talk at Google about trade policy, copyright...
A couple weeks back, I went to Google and spoke there as part of their Authors@ Google series. I talked about how US trade policy had driven the US to abandon the tech sector and all the enterprises it supports in favor of a doomed plan to replace American industry with Police Academy sequels and Happy Meal toys. They’ve posted the video to YouTube.
Link
(via Jason’s shared items in...
Google Gears Lets Developers Take Apps Offline
Tommorrow, Google will be hosting a developer day for 5,000 developers worldwide. The bulk of developers will be gathering at the San Jose convention center for a keynote by Google’s VP of Engineering, Jeff Huber. At the conference Google will be outlinging their their developer strategy. But the big announcement will be Google Gears, an open source browser plugin that will enable developers to...
GEEK: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: The Big...
Last week, I went to Paramount to film some host wraps for the Star Trek:TNG DVD documentary, and discovered that the old cliché is true: you can’t go home again, especially when your home has been torn down and replaced with sets for a Farrelly Brothers movie.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been to Paramount since Wesley Crusher turned into a magic ball of light and floated out...
Manhattanhenge Tonight?
It is time once again for the first Manhattanhenge sunset of 2007. Or not. amNY is saying that tonight’s sunset will be perfectly aligned with the east-west grid of Manhattan streets. However, NewYorkology received the dates from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s office at the Hayden Planetarium and they are saying Manhattanhenge doesn’t occur until tomorrow night. deGrasse Tyson is...
Repeating matches, a lost wonder of 1933
Cory Doctorow:
In January, 1933, Popular Science reported on a “repeating match” that could be lighted up to 100 times. Like the secrets of the pyramids and the the ancient technique for finding happiness while scrubbing in a field for root vegetables, the details of this technology have been lost to the mists of time.
If you borrow a match from the gentleman pictured at the right,...
POLITICS: Bush Administration Even Sucks at...
Remember the controversy back in 2004-2005 about then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales’ big hard on for the use of torture when dealing with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay? Remember how he wrote memos arguing that the Geneva convention does not apply to the detainees and Gitmo and thus it was alright to torture the everloving heck out of them to illicit information? Remember how Bush’s...
Spinal column gooseneck lamp
Cory Doctorow:
Mark Beam is making these spine-lamps that resemble the human spinal cord — apparently these are pure catnip for well-heeled chiropractors.
Link
(Thanks, Mark!) (via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)
MUSIC: Marilyn Manson Does Justin Timberlake
News of this has been blasting around (and back around) the Internet for a few days now, but it seems that Marilyn Manson took the time to appear on BBC’s Radio 1 last week to chat and drop some hot live tracks. In between discussing the forthcoming record, “lotion,” and the virtues of leather pants, the man formerly known as Brian Warner played a hesitant version of Justin...
Summer Reading
I’ve done a lot of reading the last couple weeks I’ve been here. A ton, in fact. Part of that’s due to the 40-minute subway rides to and from work every day, and part of it’s due to the reading material being really good. It’s called A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, and I finished it today.
A Game of Thrones is the first in an ongoing series of books called A Song of Ice and Fire,...
Creepy kid head candle holders
Mark Frauenfelder:
Candle wax drips on these kid head candle holders, making them look like some kind of Chester Gould villain. Link (via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)
Bring the Mashups to Google Maps
Google Maps API was the most successful API ever created by Google and the tool behind a lot of cool mashups available on the web today. There are sites that collect the most interesting mashups (like Google Maps Mania), but it’s still difficult to remember all of them. Google introduced My Maps last month, a simple way to build custom maps, and now they let you mix your favorite mashups....
Where 2.0: Google Launches Streetside View with...
By Brady Forrest
This morning Google gave their 2D maps an incredible realworld addition. Its a street-view, that in certain cities, will let you get a street side view of the area you are currently in. This is not just a static, A9-style image. It will also let you move along the street in a smooth manner and even more amazing it will let you change your angle and continue moving that...
Where 2.0: Google Launches Streetside View with...
By Brady Forrest
This morning Google gave their 2D maps an incredible realworld addition. Its a street-view, that in certain cities, will let you get a street side view of the area you are currently in. This is not just a static, A9-style image. It will also let you move along the street in a smooth manner and even more amazing it will let you change your angle and continue moving that...
New Tegan And Sara - The Con
Long weekend, lots of leaks to sop up. One of which comes from identical indie pop twins Tegan and Sara, whose fifth full-length The Con sees Death Cab’s Chris Walla on production and sounds decent after a quick spin. Among the more ear grabbing is the title track and its B. Flo synths, while “Nineteen” sounds most like the single with crossover appeal (i.e. expect to hear it on...
LOLCODE: LOLCats meet programming
Cory Doctorow:
LOLCODE: programming using the strange, ungrammatical argot of the LOLCats meme:
HAI WORLD:
HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE “HAI WORLD!”
KTHXBYE
Link
(Thanks to everyone who suggested this link!)
See also: LOLPresidents photoshopping challenge Where LOLCats come from Massive cache of kittah pix (aka LOLcats, cat macros) Pedantic overanalyzer sucks all the fun...
Microswitch keyboard DIY
Cory Doctorow:
Riazm sez, “This guy apparently was permanently dissatisfied with commercial keyboards and the quality of their microswitches, so he designed the massive custom behemoth. He also has a customised mouse, some footpedals and a variety of custom programmable keypads to do stuff with.
Overall his desk must look pretty intimidating.”
I will be goddamned if this...
A Nice Little Weekend
This weekend, Lindsey’s boyfriend Corey and his friend Scott came up to visit. They’re on their way from Atlanta up to Maine, and since their trip took them through New York, and since I live in New York and have ample floor space for visitors, they crashed at my place for the weekend.
Because they were only here for a couple days, they naturally wanted to do touristy things, and since I haven’t...
Re-Enactment Request #3: Full Metal Jacket
This took a while… damn, this took a while. This one kicked my ass.
I failed to put in the “Sir-yes-sirs” in the beginning, simply because I didn’t feel like waiting an extra hour to re-do that an export it for a fifth time. Use your imagination.
In this scene from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, new recruits for Vietnam are being lectured on their...
reCAPTCHA: Making Use of Spam Fighting Images
We’ve all seen CAPTCHAs, those automated pictures of letters and numbers meant to foil spam bots. Some are more diabolical than others, but most are annoying. Now a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have figured out a way to put them to use beyond aggravating users and confusing robots. Their idea: use them to help digitize books.
People decipher over 60 million CAPTCHA...
Thank You, Vim!
Yes, this is a Movable Type weblog. Yes, I accessed it through Firefox. Yet I hate typing in little text input boxes.
I’m writing this (surprisingly post-modern) entry in Vim, a tool I find almost indispensible. It seems like every time I use a computer, I end up wanting to use Vim.
I’ve used Vim to write all of my articles and all of my books. (I’ve used Vim to edit all of the articles...
The TechCrunch Quick Guide To GrandCentral
We’ve followed new telephone management startup GrandCentral since its debut in September 2006. The company has deservedly received a lot of blogger and mainstream press: Tim O’Reilly said “The Web 2.0 Address Book May Have Arrived” when talking about it, and the New York Times did a long overview article in March.
The basic idea around GrandCentral is “one phone number for all your phones, for...
national flags by colors
a collection of national flags as pie charts. each sector of these piecharts is proportional to the area of the color on the respective flag.
[link: shaheeilyas.com]
see also meet the world flags & world cup soccer balls & advertising analytics.
(via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)
Idea: The Hamburdog
It’s Memorial Day weekend, so I thought I’d share a little something I came up with after one of my Memorial Day BBQs a few years back.
You know how hot dogs come in packs of 10, but hot dog buns come in packs of 8? This pretty much assures that there will be leftovers of one or the other at the end of the day. Hamburgers on the other hand can be spread out a little more evenly...
Homework sucks: The case against homework
Cory Doctorow:
Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish 2006 book “The Case Against Homework” is a fine and frightening explosion of the homework myth: that giving kids homework improves their educational outcome. The authors start by tracing the explosion in homework since the eighties, and especially since the advent of the ill-starred No Child Left Behind regime, which has teachers drilling,...
Mazda 3.141592653589793238462643383
[via] (via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)
Detailed anatomical t-shirts
Cory Doctorow:
Medical illustrator Leslie Arwin’s Skeletees feature highly detailed, stark anatomical drawings of the bones, muscles, nerves and digestive tract, printed on the front and back. I picked up a skeleton shirt today and I’m delighted with it — it’s a great, thick, high-quality tee with a nice cut and the design is wonderful.
Link
(via Jason’s shared...
Tonight, I Got Guted.
I read on Gothamist this morning that actor Steve Guttenberg was going to be visiting the UCB Theater in New York tonight for a feature called “Inside Joke.” I guess it’s kind of like an Inside the Actors Studio except without James Lipton.
Hm, I thought, Steve Guttenberg was pretty fantastic in Short Circuit, and the more I think about it, I’ve got nothing else planned tonight. Maybe I’ll go.
...
Noisettes / MACCABEES tix back on sale + Album...
Tickets are back on sale for the June 6th Noisettes/Maccabees show at Knitting Factory in NYC. If you were listening to my Sirius radio show with guest DJ Never Forget on Tuesday, you heard us/him play the “South Central remix” of The Maccabees’ song X-Ray.
Stream the UK band’s whole new album at AOL. All tour dates below…
UPDATE: According to Indietastic, The...
Giant collectively controlled game of breakout...
Cory Doctorow:
MSNBC.com has done a deal with cinemas in the US to replace the dumb pre-movie ads with a giant, participatory game. The game is Newsbreaker, a simple break-out style game that rewards you for clearing lines by dropping real-time RSS news headlines, but the gameplay is the cool part: a motion sensor in the theater allows the entire audience to control the paddle by swaying in...
Steve Guttenberg, Actor
Gutenberg! The Musical! may not have been about the Police Academy star, but tonight’s installment of Inside Joke is. But before The Gute heads off to The UCB Theater to discuss the art of comedy, he sat down with Gothamist to discuss what he’s hiding from TMZ.
You do quite a bit of work with the homeless and foster children. What attracted you to these two causes?
Years ago, I...
I [heart] NY
I know, I know, it sounds cliché and all that, but I really do love New York. Maybe it’s because I’ve only been here a week and a half and I’m still firmly planted in the honeymoon phase, and maybe I’ll decide I hate it here in a couple weeks, but for now I’m really enjoying it.
Three distinct things stand out about the last three days that have made me love the city, and my job, more and more.
...
Idea for urban camouflage vehicle
Mark Frauenfelder:
If I ever do my own Todd Lappin-style urban camouflage vehicle mod, I want to call it Centrifugal Absorption Reciprocating, Inc. Link
(via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)
Man who claims FBI is after him puts entire life...
Xeni Jardin:
Snip from a Wired feature by Clive Thompson:
Hasan Elahi whips out his Samsung Pocket PC phone and shows me how he’s keeping himself out of Guantanamo. He swivels the camera lens around and snaps a picture of the Manhattan Starbucks where we’re dinking coffee. Then he squints and pecks at the phone’s touchscreen. “OK! It’s uploading now,” says...
Real pirate hangouts
Cory Doctorow:
High-seas piracy still flourishes, and it doesn’t have beads braided into its beard, either. Real life pirates use grenade-launchers and speed boats to hijack cruise ships and cargo freighters. Here’s a piece on the piracy hotspots of the world.
Even though the global numbers for piracy is declining, there’s one area that incidents are growing: Bangladesh. In...
Prototype Of Pandora Wifi Device Shown Tonight In...
Pandora made a number of announcements tonight at a press/user event at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, which we covered earlier. Deals with Sonos and Sprint were announced that bring Pandora Internet radio into the home and to mobile devices.
They also made a pre-announcement, however, of an upcoming Wifi music player to be built by SanDisk and powered by Zing. The working prototype...
Idea: You Say You Want An Evolution (T-Shirt)
Today I had an idea for a t-shirt. Here’s the artwork I came up with:
I decided to make it available with or without the caption, in designs suitable for dark t-shirts or light t-shirts. I like it both ways:
It’s Charles Darwin meets Liverpool and it’s available now in dozens of styles and colors for men and women in the Ironic Sans store! (via Jason’s shared...
The .CM Scam
Business 2.0’s Paul Sloan has been digging into the .CM domain name scam. A domain name broker managed to convince the government of Cameroon, which controls .cm, to do a deal where any mis-typed domain name, like Google.cm (instead of google.com), takes the visitor to an advertising-filled landing page (the ads are served by Yahoo).
The .CM pages are served based on a wildcard. If the domain has...
Michael Arrington: The genie is out of the bottle
It’s not all roses for a tech publisher during a bubble, you know. Sure, the advertising buys just roll in. But Michael Arrington, founder of the Valley’s most influential news site, is feeling harassed by over-eager startups. “They show up at our front door with a bottle of wine or flowers. They instruct their PR firms to do anything necessary to get a story. More than once...
[audio] Nation's Wood Nymphs Unveil Plan To Reduce...
Onion Radio News - with Doyle Redland (via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)
JavaScript: The Lingua Franca of the Web
Mike Shaver, a founding member of the Mozilla team, has strong feelings about how the web became popular:
If you choose a platform that needs tools, if you give up the viral soft collaboration of View Source and copy-and-paste mashups and being able to jam jQuery in the hole that used to have Prototype in it, you lose what gave the web its distributed evolution and incrementalism. You lose what...
LineRider meets Super Mario
Cory Doctorow:
This LineRider lever is a nigh-exact replica of the first level of Super Mario Brothers — looks like it would be a ton of fun. Someone needs to make a CounterStrike level based on this level.
Link
(via Jason’s shared items in Google Reader)
The Birth Control of Yesteryear
Approximately 2,600 years ago– around 630 BCE– the Greek island of Thera was plagued by drought and overpopulation. According to legend, an assortment of settlers were selected to sail south to establish a colony in more hospitable climes. The men and women apprehensively put to sea, and the gaggle of enterprising Greeks eventually erected the city of Cyrene on Africa’s northern tip. ...