Ads via The Deck
November 30, 2004
Jonathan Franzen on "Peanuts" (

also: the Peanuts box set is gorgeous

) [via]
Screenshots of the new Netscape prototype based on Firefox (

truly ugly, and forces users to choose between IE and Firefox rendering engines

) [via]
Chris Ware and Ira Glass collaborated on a DVD/book (

Lost Buildings is only available to public radio supporters

)
Sony TV forces Jason Kottke to remove Jeopardy spoiler audio and transcript (

even though the Washington Post ran the whole thing!

)
Blogbox (

like Konfabulator widgets for your blog

)
Flickr's roundup of celeb photos on Flickr (

the wallpaper tag is nice, too

)
Rex kicks off his Best of 2004 List of Lists (

like last year, this list will get huge; keep checking back

)
Katamari Damacy sequel in development [via]
November 29, 2004
Google's big secret plans for video search (

yeah, Yahoo and MSN are working on it too

) [via]
Ask Mefi goes straight to the source (

beat that, Google Answers

)
New York Changing (

then & now photos comparing 1930s to present day

) [via]
NY Observer's profile of Pitchfork Media (

they get 115k visitors/day, and pay $20 per review

) [via]
Zach Braff confronts a critic (

my God, his site gets a lot of comments

) [via]
Flash: How To Kill a Mockingbird (

brilliant and stupid

)
Wikinews Demo (

looks like a great start, like the Rachelle Waterman murder article

) [via]
Hacking Wi-Fi on the Nintendo DS (

they're trying to tunnel Pictochat online; more importantly, wireless multiboot from the PC

)
November 28, 2004
G-Man Sightings in Half-Life 2 (

it's details like these that make HL2 the best PC game of the year

)
Image: Life Before the Internet [via]
eBay Pulse (

like Google Zeitgeist for eBay

) [via]
November 27, 2004
Teenage girl murders her mother (

and posts about it on her Livejournal (screenshot)

)
November 26, 2004
Gilles Tran's 3D-rendered "Variations" (

very creative rendering work

)
DirecTV dropping Trio, which may kill it (

too bad, they're an excellent channel

) [via]
Pink Floyd pupils sue for royalties (

we don't need no education; we need a cash settlement

) [via]
November 24, 2004
Carmine Caridi fined $300k for leaking Oscar screeners (

also: the owners of film88.com ordered to pay $23.8 million

)
Veer's top 20 fonts are all scripts (

surprising trend

)
NPR's All Things Considered on BitTorrent (

they talk to Bram Cohen and Lawrence Lessig

) [via]
Video: Mariko Takahashi’s Fitness Video for Being Appraised as an “Ex-Fat Girl” (

inexplicably weird; higher-quality video here

)
Eponymous songs (

songs named after the band name

)
15 Megs of Fame (

promoting indie bands with a CC license

) [via]
Blog Torrent launches! (

pretty impressive for a first release; some great ideas here

)
Wired News on newpapers losing young readers to the Web (

only 3% of 18- to 34-year-olds read a newspaper, compared to 46% online

)
Amazon.com's new Citations feature (

"Small Pieces Loosely Joined" cites 14 books, and 96 books cite Fast Food Nation

) [via]
November 23, 2004
Looking back on Wired's "101 Ways to Save Apple" from 1997 (

some great ideas, but also some terrible ones

)
Dijjer, Ian Clarke's new BitTorrent alternative (

um, except that it quietly downloads and caches files you never requested!

) [via]
Playstation 2 Portable (

badass homebrew handheld PS2!

)
Help find Dan Clune (

BookCrossing's lead programmer went missing 2.5 weeks ago in Idaho

)
November 22, 2004
Metafilter redesign contest (

fine with me, as long as it's #006699

) [via]
Slate reviews JFK Reloaded (

sickening, but well executed "game"

)
Downhill Battle on the Kleptones' Hip-Hopera ordeal (

also, it's the first public demo of the Blog Torrent beta

)
Disney paranoia at Life Aquatic screener (

Defamer posted two other recent examples of screening paranoia

)
Disclaimer stickers for science textbooks [via]
reBlog 1.0 released (

reblogging tool comes with a neat web-based feedreader

)
Google sets up shop next to Microsoft (

it's fun watching the Google VP tapdance around their obvious motives

) [via]
Derek Powazek joins Technorati (

good, because it's ugly

)
The Wikipedia Game (

see also: Six Degrees of Wikipedia

)
Origins of the Hopkin Green Frog meme (

Mike tracks down the frog's owner; I love this kind of thing

) [via]
November 21, 2004
Only 1/3 of Americans believe in evolution (

this is extremely depressing

) [via]
Autoportrait with grandfather (

stunning example of expert Photoshopping

)
Video game simulates Kennedy assassination (

here are some screenshots from it

) [via]
Radiohead, fair use, and the evils of copyright (

an author's tale of meeting Radiohead and licensing their songs for his book

)
November 20, 2004
Album: People Like Us's "Abridged Too Far" (

remixed audio plundered from the Prelinger Archives, among other sources

) [via]
Mom's Cancer (

excellent autobiographical graphic novel

) [via]
Paper CD Case (

instantly generate a PDF label or origami paper case for your CDs

) [via]
Complete Criterion Collection gift set (

241 movies for $5,000, about $20 each

)
November 19, 2004
Auto-generating a graphic novel from blog posts (

this makes me miss Radio vox Populi

) [via]
Flash: 12many, counting game (

tonypa's other games are wonderful, too

) [via]
Dave Winer on RSS advertising (

also: George rounds up some of the current techniques

)
November 18, 2004
Elvis Costello interviews Joni Mitchell (

from the November Vanity Fair

)
MPAA wants to monitor Internet2 traffic (

this Slashdot comment sums it up for me

) [via]
43 Things' Twinkler preview (

when expanded to any topic, this will be very interesting

) [via]
Blogging featured on the West Wing (

the character may have been modeled after Wonkette

) [via]
File Magazine's Screen Series (

photos taken through screen doors

) [via]
Knork, the spork-like knife/fork (

yet another Half Bakery idea finally baked

) [via]
Metafilter turns on new user signups (

membership has been closed for two years!

)
Debate about Firefox not supporting image tooltips for ALT tags (

someone wrote an extension to emulate IE's behavior

)
2.5 gigapixel photo (

a busy city scene would've been more interesting

) [via]
November 17, 2004
Strongbad gets an e-mail virus (

lots of clever stuff here, plus a Livejournal reference

) [via]
Flash: EPIC, a prediction of the Google-enabled future (

if this is the dystopian future, count me in

) [via]
Vicepoker, free strip poker game for the Gameboy Advance (

possibly the first porn for Nintendo's kid-friendly handheld?

) [via]
Textfiles.com gets a threatening letter from a catheter manufacturer (

they want him to remove enema references in years-old BBS text files

) [via]
Mash the Planet (

Philip Torrone's onto something here

)
Mark Cuban fined by NBA for a blog entry [via]
Library of Congress putting 30 million newspapers online (

papers published from 1836 through 1922, and available by 2006

) [via]
2004 Interactive Fiction competition results (

Dan Shiovitz and Andrew Plotkin posted their reviews of all the free games

) [via]
Second Life citizens create Neverlend virtual theme park (

they continually impress me

) [via]
TiVo to add banner ads when fast forwarding (

as Matt said in the article, this is a slippery slope

) [via]
November 16, 2004
Gamespot's Half-Life 2 review (

the only review so far that's not a complete gush

)
The Grey Video (

amazing Beatles/Jay-Z video mashup for DJ Dangermouse's "Encore"

)
Edelman on Grokster's outrageous spyware package (

no less than 15 bundled programs; some install even if you hit Cancel!

)
PDF: Ben Edelman's economic analysis of Google Answers (

many researchers answer questions at night, for around $8-10/hour

)
November 15, 2004
The Sneeze interviews FedEx's logo creator (

have you noticed the hidden arrow?

)
Thoughts on BitTorrent usability (

some interesting ideas, along with a nice mockup

)
Bungie publishing RSS feeds for Halo 2 stats (

get a feed to see all of your own games!

)
MP3: Eddie Murphy's "Boogie in your Butt" (

this should definitely be remixed on b3ta

)
November 13, 2004
How to schedule TV downloads with BitTorrent and RSS (

made possible by TVTorrents

) [via]
US senator's portfolios beating the market by 12 percent (

likely insider trading, but the SEC won't investigate

) [via]
Did Clinton Gut the Military? (

Gordon does some original historical research

)
BBC's search engine shootout (

not very scientific, but Google wins regardless

) [via]
How It Works... The Computer (

full scans of a computer primer from 1971 and 1979

) [via]
BusinessWeek piece on corporate blogging software (

KnowNow is charging $50k to $100k for blog software? insane

) [via]
November 12, 2004
RoboDump (

immature, but funny

) [via]
Gamespot's 25-page "behind the scenes" feature on Half-Life 2 (

I preordered the game last week!

)
PocketBeeb, a BBC Model "B" emulator for the GBA (

the screenshots are very neat

)
November 11, 2004
Halo 2 sales break all entertainment records (

between GTA, Halo 2 and HL2, it's a good year for games

)
EB breaks Half-Life 2's street date (

I'm sure it'll be on Usenet by tomorrow

) [via]
Sex in Second Life (

the adult clubs are the most popular locations in the virtual world

) [via]
The Venn diagram of "getting it" (

no relation to Getting It

) [via]
Rich nutcase trying to collect an MP3 of every song ever recorded (

I posted some thoughts in the Mefi thread

) [via]
How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality (

heavy-handed attempts at neutrality are distorting the truth

) [via]
Usability and users as hungry mice, cheese, and electric shocks (

or: people care less about usability as usefulness increases

) [via]
NYT on San Jose PD's problems with user interface design (

the Windows-based mobile dispatch was designed without officer feedback

) [via]
Bright Eyes grabs the top two positions in the Billboard Hot 100 Singles!? (

this is insane, especially for an indie artist

)
Shaw Cable censoring Internet access (

they're limiting the speeds of filesharing protocols and lying about it

)
Alphabet of blog favicons [via]
Dragon optical illusion (

make sure to watch the video

) [via]
November 10, 2004
Cream reunion in the works
Microsoft launches Search beta (

the site should be live tomorrow

)
l33tspeak on Jeopardy College Tournament (

just when you thought it couldn't get geekier than a Blogs category

)
Video: Leaked Fantastic Four trailer (

this movie will suck, badly

)
Two new Pee-Wee Herman films in the works (

I'm hoping they're more Big Adventure than Big Top

) [via]
New PCSX2 screenshots (

the best PS2 emulator now plays several games, albeit very slowly

)
Video: Japanese McDonald's ad, with models dressed as Ronald McDonald (

there's one for the ladies, too

) [via]
Image: Wired's VoteStation mockup for e-voter receipts (

very clever

) [via]
Downhill Battle's proposal for a secure filesharing plugin for GAIM (

their Blog Torrent project is getting closer, too

) [via]
ICANN to make domain hijackings much simpler (

update: the Netcraft article is inaccurate

) [via]
The only negative review of Halo 2 (

out-of-context quotes from nine different glowing reviews

) [via]
Paul's daily links visualized (

I'd like to do some infoviz with my own link history and vias

) [via]
CiteULike (

a Del.icio.us-like bookmarking tool for academic papers

) [via]
November 9, 2004
Video: Mark Osborne's "More" (

astounding and moving Claymation short

)
Nintendo DS hands-on review (

tons of screenshots, and a quirky thumb stylus

) [via]
How to play flipbook videos on the iPod Photo (

it's like a $600 digital Mutoscope!

)
Google hosting the new Firefox 1.0 start page (

interesting move for Google

)
Mozilla Firefox 1.0 released (

the best consumer product out of the open-source movement

)
November 8, 2004
Koders, a search engine for source code (

search the source of thousands of open-source projects

) [via]
Microsoft's Bedlam DL3 mailing list ordeal (

15,000,000 internal "me too!" e-mails consumed 195GB in less than two days

) [via]
Vintage snapshots from the '50s, '60s and early '70s (

from the always-good Imaginary World

)
Strongbad E-Mail DVD (

the first 100 e-mails on three discs with lots of extras, buy it now

) [via]
Imitating Flickr's annotations in DHTML (

very impressive

) [via]
Google Answers on the economics of coffeehouse wifi (

plus, a good discussion of the free vs. fee debate

)
DJ Riko's MP3 mashup mixes (

the longer mixes, like "Latter Day Taints," are excellent

)
Terrible "Six Feet Under" headlines (

headline writers have a pun field day

)
Celebrity candids on Flickr (

nice recent shots of Peter Jackson

)
Gmail snooping for illegal attachments? (

rumor: one user's account cancelled for keygens and cracks in his inbox

) [via]
IMSmarter, free IM enhancement proxy (

I've been using the beta for months, very cool

) [via]
Pricenoia, on-the-fly comparison of Amazon's global sites (

with real-time currency conversion and estimated shipping

) [via]
Adrian Tomine's New Yorker cover (

Seth's cover was nice, too

)
November 7, 2004
404 error in a textbook (

common Microsoft Word error slips into print

) [via]
Movie: Jon Udell demonstratesvoice dictation software (

hypnotic demo of this software

) [via]
November 6, 2004
Real-life landmarks in GTA San Andreas (

I wonder if they modeled my office building

) [via]
42 Entertainment (

the company behind ILoveBees finally revealed

) [via]
Reuters overview of BitTorrent (

surprisingly, with links to legal torrent sites! yay!

)
When web designers retaliate (

the site was originally designed by this guy

)
November 5, 2004
10x10, hourly snapshot of 100 words and pictures from the current news (

well designed, by the Wordcount guy

) [via]
Half-Life 2 SDK released (

would someone please make a Disneyland mod for me?

) [via]
Our Traditional Non-Traditional Wedding (

Wired's Steve Silberman on being a married gay man

) [via]
Tivo adds show permalinks (

they coincidentally added it the same day George requested it

)
Capture the Map (

a strategic game using the Google API

) [via]
Furdlog on the MPAA's new anti-piracy campaign (

don't miss their delusional glossary

)
Obesity raising airline fuel costs [via]
Blendie, the scream-controlled blender (

also: ScreamBody, the wearable scream recorder

) [via]
Cringely on TV2ME (

is there an open-source howto for doing this?

)
November 4, 2004
Improv Anywhere's Best Gig Ever (

the guerilla improv troupe's other conquests are amazing, like The Hypnotist, Ted's Birthday, and Writers Against Piracy

) [via]
How many cookies are inside Cookie Dough Ice Cream? (

answer: two not very good cookies

) [via]
2004 county election map, with proportional colors (

a very different picture than this

) [via]
Video: New Star Wars teaser trailer (

currently "members only" on Starwars.com

)
Gamestop stop Nintendo DS preorders (

also: DS games will be $30, cheaper than GBA games

) [via]
More details on the MPAA's pending lawsuits against movie filesharers (

they posted several press releases about the actions

)
Sales in virtual goods top $100 million (

Castranova added up auction sales to get the lowball estimate

)
Postal Service agrees to cross-promotion with USPS (

bizarre terms of the band name's settlement

)
Fox reporting that Ashcroft is resigning (

also, they're saying Colin Powell may be leaving too

)
November 3, 2004
Mario Quilt
Canada 2.0 (

this made me laugh

)
Mikester's background on today's Boondocks strip (

their long lead times cause them to sidestep timely news

)
Electing to Leave (

a reader's guide to expatriating on November 3

) [via]
November 2, 2004
Visualizations of five years of Plasticbag blog postings (

looks like Processing is a good environment for infoviz

) [via]
Cartoon Network airing same Harvey Birdman episode 24 times tonight (

to encourage people to watch something more important

) [via]
Andy Baio hates Slurpees (

he's referring to my very first entry; you should read the rest of Otto's site

)
Eagle Scout shoots, kills atheist (

don't miss the last sentence of the article

) [via]
An hour-by-hour guide to election results (

also: what to watch for on election night

)
Eminem's Mosh video is hammering the Internet Archive's gigabit connection (

it's been downloaded about a million times from them alone

) [via]
November 1, 2004
Music.com, login-free music database (

a great alternative to the still-sucky AMG redesign

) [via]
Asian Mack, iTunes Music Store-centric blog (

good idea, also implemented here as a community site

)
Spam torrents appearing on Suprnova (

spammers forcing users to jump through hoops to unlock encrypted files

)
Andy Tannenbaum built the Electoral Vote Predictor (

wow, the Minix creator and tech legend is the brain behind the site

) [via]
Tivo's Hot 100 of Season Passes (

at the bottom is their weekly top 25 most-recorded shows

) [via]
Flash: Hammond Flower (

interactive Hammond B3 organ synthesis

) [via]
Friendster Pachinko (

try someone well connected like Xeni (023680)

) [via]