Ads via The Deck
December 31, 2003
Sonata for the Unaware (

commuters become generated music, watch the Quicktime demo

)
2003 Year-End Google Zeitgeist (

also: Yahoo's top searches for 2003

)
Using the Treemap control to visualize weblogs (

borrows from the Netscan Usenet mapping project

)
Charting the trajectory of 2003's #1 pop singles
Security weak at social networking sites (

Livejournal, LinkedIn, and Tribe.net respond

)
Subtly Simpsons (

subtle jokes with accompanying explanations

)
Japanese corporate anthem becomes unlikely hit single (

We will destroy houses! We will destroy bridges!

)
Rich Girls and Silver Spoons comparison chart (

yeah, but Ally Hilfiger doesn't have her own video arcade

)
Real-time comment previewing with Javascript (

very clever

)
Elliot Smith's death may not be suicide
Kazu Kibuishi's Copper, beautiful web comics (

see also: Clive and Cabbage

)
December 30, 2003
TinyURL Roulette (

view a random TinyURL

)
The Man Behind the Motion (

mockumentary about the egos of motion capture

)
Tim Berners-Lee gets knighted (

Sir Tim should be granted sainthood next

)
BitTorrent download traffic for Return of the King
George Chen, the Internet Guy (

story behind the ubiquitous clip art image

)
Pirate Radio in the Barrio (

hobbyists bringing sonido music to the Bay Area via microradio

)
Social software ideas (

Matt's full of ideas, but I like the Epinionster one best

)
Ben Affleck is parking in Google's space (

more photos here

)
USA Today discovers weblogs, again (

this story is so awful and error-ridden, I don't know where to start

)
Depenguinator (

remotely replaces Linux with FreeBSD; a bit scary

)
Skewering indie rock's sacred cows (

very funny writing

)
December 29, 2003
Al Sacui's new comic thing (

more inexplicable nonsense, from the Nosepilot guy

)
Cartoons and Social Networks, from 2000 (

Sally Forth and Family Circus take on the field of social network analysis

)
Man and Dad review the year's hit singles (

a lot of rhythmic banging

)
Dear Neighbor letter (

local kids toilet paper his house, neighbor freaks out

)
Metafilter gave Matt a trip to Iceland for Christmas (

over $2100 raised, with nice photos

)
Detailed views of the PSX internals
Background about Chikan, the railroad groping fetish (

they even have support groups and hands-on training; here's one guy's journal

)
If the Library were like Amazon.com
December 28, 2003
Stark Effect's Mic in Track (

setting found audio recordings to music

)
Rex's Year in Review keeps growing (

the number of best-of lists doubled over the weekend

)
1930s-style Cartoon Violence (

traumatic events retold in the style of early-1930s cartoons

)
Tinygrow, grow a surreal garden (

reminds me of Vector Park

)
December 27, 2003
Unpopular boy makes valedictory speech (

"A lot of you were jerks"

)
MPAA takes a softer approach to movie piracy (

they give it 18 months before movie sharing becomes ubiquitous

)
Interview with Soulseek's lead programmer
eventSherpa, iCal for Windows
December 26, 2003
Bill Hicks bootleg MP3 archive
Today is Free Listing Day on eBay (

sorry, U.S. only

)
December 25, 2003
Phillip Torrone's Option3 (

he took a self-portrait every 30 minutes for three weeks

)
December 24, 2003
Turn your cubicle into a house
December 23, 2003
Brooklyn cop investigated because of his weblog entries (

he deleted all the posts on his Xanga site, but Google cached it

)
Apple to announce mini iPods (

2GB and 4GB models, starting at $100

)
The Future of Adventure Games (

is the genre dead?

)
December 22, 2003
Chipmunks' Christmas Song slowed down to normal voices (

Duff Man says, oh yeah!

)
Boing Boing's traffic stats (

about 20k unique visitors per day

)
Monster.com adds social networking (

the bubble gets bigger

)
Basecamp, 37signal's project management suite (

launching January, will likely be great

)
Alf to get new talk show on Nick at Nite
Internet iTunes Registry (

like Audioscrobbler for iTunes, with nice stats

)
Howard Dean tattoo (

it's good to have convictions

)
The 8bits of Christmas (

holiday chiptunes made on the NES, Vic-20, C-64, Atari 2600, Gameboy, and more

)
Huge 6.5 earthquake hits San Simeon, CA (

I felt it 200 miles away in L.A., and other people felt it in S.F.

)
Neo-Nazi inventor of Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Specs, dead at 77 (

Harold Von Braunhut was a strange man

)
DVD-Jon acquitted in DeCSS retrial (

all sorts of good news lately

)
Dave Sim ends Cerebus (

the comic started the same year I was born

)
On Blogdex exploitability (

don't try it, or Cameron will drop bows on your ass

)
December 21, 2003
American Brandstand 2003 (

the most popular brands mentioned in the Billboard Top 20 this year

)
First-person account of the Saddam raid (

follow the hoax debate on Metatalk

)
Match.com expands into Friendster territory
December 20, 2003
365 Days Project finishing soon (

MP3s will go offline on January 5th

)
Mat's story of his S.F. mugging (

and the death of San Francisco artist Daniel Price

)
Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2003
Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools book free on Archive.org (

or just read his weblog instead

)
Screenshots and Movies from 1989's The Wizard (

the female lead is Jenny Lewis, the lead singer of Rilo Kiley!

)
Five-film Narnia series to be filmed in New Zealand (

with effects by Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop

)
December 19, 2003
Aggregate mood of Livejournal users over time (

currently: tired, happy and amused

)
Psychotic Minesweeper speed run videos (

more on the speed runs homepage

)
MUTE, new P2P app protects privacy (

routes all search and download traffic through peers, hiding your IP address

)
Maciej's essay on the Wright Brothers and their patent war (

the patent system has been stifling innovation for 100 years

)
Appeals court rejects Net music subpoenas (

RIAA can't subpoena ISPs to reveal user info anymore

)
Online gamer in China wins virtual property theft lawsuit (

spent two years and $1,210 amassing virtual WMD

)
Johnny Cash's Desperado, But With Monkeys (

exactly what it says

)
Knoxville News' Black History coloring book (

don't miss MC Hammer, Arsenio, and Billy Dee

)
December 18, 2003
Photos of yesterday's Wright Brothers hack at MIT (

see also: other hacks on the Great Dome

)
Dodgeit, free receive-only e-mail to an RSS feed
Law & Order: The Coloring Book
Livejournal adds Atom support (

I'll add it to Upcoming.org and this site soon

)
Turn your Gameboy Advance into an engine tuner
FluxBlog spotlights new MP3s daily (

the Zooey Deschanel & Leon Redbone duet from "Elf" is lovely

)
Gnewsgroups = Usenet + Gnutella (

peer-to-peer mirroring of Usenet newsgroups

)
Vonage goes wireless (

supplanting the phone companies, one step at a time

)
HugeURL (

tired of TinyURL and Shorl? make a bigger URL instead

)
11 minute Mario Bros 3 was fake (

this seemed obvious to me, but fooled others

)
December 17, 2003
PETA to distribute anti-fur flyers to kids (

no longer raising awareness, they're only alienating now

)
What A Crappy Present (

"The company that makes this just sued my friend."

)
MagicBikes, mobile wireless access points (

they should mount a laptop on the handlebars

)
Jack Black's Computerman (

the first five episodes, but it's no Heat Vision and Jack

)
Amazon: Qwert Iggle (

don't miss the product manual PDF

)
Gillmore excited about BitTorrent meets RSS (

here are a couple torrent feeds for jam band and anime fans

)
Frauenfelder on WINKSite's moblog tools for the masses (

definitely worth looking into

)
Amazon wishlist of stupidly expensive gifts (

what's the most expensive item sold by Amazon?

)
December 16, 2003
Gawker, Gizmodo, Fleshbot redesign with borrowed code (

Denton responds in the comments with IM logs, you decide

)
Globulos (

multiplayer Flash silliness

)
FolderShare, private file-sharing (

new WASTE-like app from the Audiogalaxy crew

)
Google Print, book searching (

they're already indexing thousands of books

)
Augmented Reality Quake (

superimposing Quake objects in the real world

)
Winamp 5 released (

much better than the crappy v3.0 release

)
Secret Service calls secret confession site creator (

someone posted a presidential death threat on Grouphug.us

)
Fun with MP3 and Perl (

writing an ID3 autotagger

)
KITT Saves Christmas (MP3) (

also: more Star Wars Christmas cheese

)
Ben Fry, amazing computer art (

don't miss: organic log analyzer, Mario Soup, ZipDecode, and more

)
Amazon browser for Mozilla (

read more about the project

)
December 15, 2003
Omar the Klingon (

Apple's spokesman makes scary faces

)
Playable LEGO harpsichord (

everything but the piano strings is pure LEGO

)
Some retailers may stop carrying PC games (

I wonder how much piracy is affecting PC game sales

)
Deconstructed NES emulator for Java
Creative Commons milestones (

nicely done Flash animation

)
Titanium Rhapsody (

characters from Mega Man Titanium sing Bohemian Rhapsody

)
Everquest launching in-game casino (

Shirky brings up the regulation issue

)
December 14, 2003
Bitzi and Jigle join to form P2PFiles.com (

it's a P2P search engine, but searches are timing out for me

)
Black Mirror (

pretty Director animation, hover your mouse over the pieces

)
Extreme Segway (

Tony Hawk, eat your heart out

)
WMD found (

in other news: Saddam captured alive

)
December 13, 2003
Spiderman 2 marketing templates to Blogger and LJ users (

interesting marketing tactic, but a tiny target market

)
Google automatically searching variations (

similar to 37BetterGoogle's suggestions

)
Media Lab's Memory Prosthesis (

software to record, tag, and transcribe every conversation of your life

)
NYT Year in Ideas 2003
New Google features from the future
December 12, 2003
Bad essays on weather (

bizarre, but inexplicably funny

)
Ben Trott on the minimizing of Mena's role in Six Apart (

designers don't get the respect they deserve, and there's sexism at play too

)
Virtual prostitution in The Sims Online (

trading virtual and real cash for cybersex, Penny Arcade's response

)
Canada deems P2P downloading legal (

first gay marriage and pot, now this

)
QuickTeddy, amazing free-form 3D modeling program
Guardian: We are all nerds (

speak for yourself, I'm a geek

)
Soundflavor, new music recommendation engine (

from the ZDNet writeup, sounds like a commercial version of Audioscrobbler

)
Wesley Clark on the Daily Show (

he has a sense of humor

)
December 11, 2003
Garfield movie trailer (

boy, this looks terrible

)
Jason Shiga's Fleep (

a serial comic entirely in a phone booth

)
We Love the SCO Information Minister (

"The silent majority is behind SCO."

)
How Jerry Pournelle got kicked off the ARPANet (

I can think of a few more people I'd like to boot

)
Google opening R&D lab in India
Virginia arrests two spammers under new anti-spam law
Collage of eating contest photos (

gluttony: it's the American way!

)
Google testing out new look (

no more tabs!?

)
Geeky job posting for EA Canada (

I guess that's one way of filtering out non-nerds

)
Accidentally Kansas (

lovely photos of natural disaster dioramas

)
Pentrix, trick pen/pencil spinning videos (

you'll poke your eye out

)
Star Wars Kid model for Quake 1 (

also: a character in last night's episode of "Ed" acted out the SWK ordeal

)
Clippy for Quake III Arena (

"I see you're trying to capture the enemy flag... Would you like help?"

)
So you'd like to... Go Completely, Irreversibly Insane (

Jorn Barger writing Amazon guides under a pseudonym?

)
Corey Feldman actively campaigning for Goonies sequel (

come on people, he needs the work

)
Gizmodo redesigns (

now with more prominent ad banners!

)
NPR: Codrescu's analogy of blogs as spiderwebs
"Killing is awesome," U.S. soldier clip from CNN (

disturbing content, or read the unedited transcript instead

)
Ask Metafilter (

smarter than Pud, cheaper than Google

)
Intelligent 404 pages for weblogs (

very slick

)
December 10, 2003
Mugging caught on audioblog entry (

via Boing Boing

)
Legal Torrents, legally downloadable music (

5GB of complete catalogs from electronica labels

)
Steering wheel-mounted laptop (

takes wardriving to a new level

)
Miller Lite human dominoes ad (

with TiVo, I never see good commercials anymore

)
Santa Yoda, Lucasfilm Christmas card from 1981 (

high quality close-up from Heilemann

)
AOL launching AIM-based dating service (

the Love.com beta is up

)
Update: Tori Amos journal sells for $10k (

her fans are insane, I tell you

)
Mid-Atlantic wrestling photo album, 1977 (

looking good, Andre

)
Aerogel, the lightest solid in the world (

some amazing high-res photos and videos

)
Secrets of Rankin-Bass' Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (

explains Yukon Cornelius' icepick licking

)
Bizarre autogenerated weblogs (

all content, links, and templates are computer generated, via Andre

)
SCO delivers source code on paper (

one million pages, those jerks

)
RIAA Radar Top 100 Indie Albums (

Amazon's top-selling RIAA-safe albums

)
The Onion's Least Essential Albums of 2003
December 9, 2003
Bill Clinton drops by Google (

Kevin has the phonecam sighting

)
Dean supporters embrace tech in revolutionary new ways (

love him or hate him, this level of tech-savvy in politics is unprecedented

)
Veen switches to inline links from del.icio.us (

I may try using the same setup soon

)
Memigo, personalized news article recommendations (

based on other user ratings

)
Project Looking Glass, Sun's 3D desktop prototype (

watch the demo, skip to 1:50

)
New generation of Trojan horses create P2P network for profit
Homeless lawyer challenging Texas over a Ten Commandments statue (

may argue case to the Supreme Court, if he can get a ride to D.C.

)
Spamhole, fake open mail relays to nowhere (

tricks spammers into wasting time and losing money

)
Jeremy Zawodny's tech predictions for 2004 (

he's a smart guy

)
December 8, 2003
Accusations of simulated child porn in Deus Ex 2
Fan-made trailer for Peter Jackson's The Hobbit (

more background on the rumors

)
My Mom gets her Master's degree in Journalism (

fucking A, indeed. congrats, mom

)
Rosa Parks sues Outkast (

she's a public figure and it isn't libelous, so where's the case?

)
Religious interpretations of Groundhog Day (

the movie is popular with Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist leaders

)
Highlights from the 2003 Japan National Yo-Yo Contest (

insane yo-yo tricks video

)
Delacour on the social dynamics of blogrolls (

how the six principles of persuasion apply

)
3D visualizations of Linux kernel development
December 7, 2003
Rotary Phone Dial Web Browser (

builds an IP address from the numbers dialed

)
Robert X. Cringely doesn't exist? (

1996 WSJ article about the origins of the pseudonym

)
Eurekster, social search engine (

see what your friends search for

)
iRate Radio, collaborative MP3 downloader (

everyone rates free MP3s, the good stuff rises to the top

)
Rex's fanatical collection of Best of 2003 lists (

he keeps it updated, so check back

)
Audioscrobbler redesign (

my stats, which I haven't updated for a while

)
December 6, 2003
Alterslash, the best of Slashdot posts/comments digest (

good idea, but the interface needs work

)
Stephen King shot John Lennon (

finally, the truth comes out

)
New Mad magazine illustrated by comic greats (

including Jim Lee's Captain Infringement and J.S. Campbell's Scantily Clad

)
2D remake of 3D Zelda game (

N64's Ocarina of Time gets the SNES treatment

)
December 5, 2003
KazaaLite shut down by Sharman Networks (

ironically, for copyright infringement

)
Little Green Footballs trying to defeat Kottke.org (

I voted for Jason, even though he hates America

)
Historical events in the style of classic arcade games (

funny, but prepare to be offended

)
Miniature iMac modeled in clay (

the Japanese illustrator reminds me of Loobylu

)
Psycho Pong (

addictive and evil pong variations

)
Marlboro Baby (

I'm feeling undersmoked today

)
Blogshares is up for sale (

some paid subscribers are angry

)
Pancake Mountain, DC's indie-rock laden kid's show (

cameos by Bob Mould, Vic Chestnutt, and members of Fugazi and Bikini Kill

)
3D paper airplanes (

fly with arrow keys, change camera with spacebar

)
Namco releasing 25th anniversary Space Invaders/Qix machines (

nice pic, but 50 cents is blasphemy

)
Jennicam closing after 7+ years
December 4, 2003
Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze divorce
Houston Chronicle's Build Your Own Comics page (

what, no RSS? (via Steve)

)
Compulsive packrat forced to clean house (

great reporting on an OCD-like illness

)
Hotlinks, link list aggregator (

with screenshot thumbnails and link popularity ranking!

)
Gamespy and IGN merging (

expect obnoxious clickthrough ads on Gamespy any minute now

)
Mimi Smartypants, the book (

sure, but will it be printed in reverse chronological order?

)
Screenshots: MAME for the N-Gage (

too bad you'd have to own one to play

)
Payloadz, broker for selling intangible goods through eBay
Police conclude investigation into Santa Monica farmer's market tragedy (

human error is the only possible cause

)
Creating pixel fonts from scratch (

Cal has made many

)
tunA, Media Lab Europe's social Walkman (

shares music with people near you

)
Public domain Americana sheet music (

some beautiful vintage typography

)
Salon's layman's overview of RSS (

doesn't point to any readers besides Bloglines, though

)
December 3, 2003
Get Out on Parole (

like an interactive Shawshank Redemption

)
Video game endings database (

pick your platform, from Arcade to Turbografx-16

)
Great profile of Earth Station 5, the Palestinian P2P app (

nice work, Mat

)
Penny Arcade has collected $30k in their toy drive so far (

that's a whole mess of toys

)
Programmers as starving artist (

but unlike musicians, their day jobs pull in $80k

)
Knight-Ridder and WaPo invest $6.3m in Tribe.net
Steve Gillmor on RSS predictions for 2004
c|net pulls the plug on MP3.com (

as promised

)
December 2, 2003
New edutainment game targets file sharing (

don't miss the press release for MGI's Music Pirates

)
Echinacea doesn't do anything but cause rashes (

next up: Ginseng, St. John's Wort and Ginkgo Biloba!

)
Wil Wheaton signs three book deal with O'Reilly
Blogshares closes down
Billie Jean bootleg remix project (

with bonus Simpsons sound clip

)
Jorn Barger is missing, but doesn't want to be found (

he's probably just off somewhere reading Finnegan's Wake

)
Godawful new Netscape Navigator screenshot (

like a scene from "Winamp Skins Gone Bad"

)
Flavorpill Los Angeles, weekly event highlights (

I didn't even know they published an L.A. version

)
Analyzing Cathy's sweat beads
Rael Dornfest's Mobilewhack (

weblog about nothing but mobile

)
Screenshots of Cocolog, the new Typepad-powered service in Japan (

created for Nifty, one of Japan's biggest ISPs

)
Top 11 indie albums of 2003
SimpleQuiz discussions about semantic markup
Back of the new $20 bill (

connect the dots to find the secret message

)
Japanese bus advertisements
December 1, 2003
Bill Watterson still retired (

tantalizing rumor of a Calvin & Hobbes movie

)
Ridiculous DSL bill from New Zealand (

for only 25GB, a scary glimpse into a metered future

)
Slashdot trolling phenomena (

Amazingly detailed Wikipedia entry, with many references

)
Suggestions to improve Friendster (

answers to an MIT exam question

)
Acclaim's new billboards ooze fake blood (

bloodvertising in the UK

)
Mojo Mail vs Mojo Mail (

free software forced to change name in dumb trademark dispute

)
NYT predicts live and obscure downloads will be big online (

it's a huge market, mostly unexploited

)
Story behind Paul Ford's Harpers website (

Everything is in the Taxonomy

)
Digital sundial
Nine crazy ideas in science (

time travel, two suns, and no big bang

)
eBay: Tori Amos book of handwritten lyrics (

my wife is lusting after this, the holy grail of Tori collectibles

)
Amazing series on San Francisco homelessness (

Mat explains the political subtext of the story's timing

)
Intricate egg sculpture (

pretty intense

)