Holy Schnikies! Broadband video that doesn't look too bad. I don't know what they're using for the tech behind this (besides some shockwave 7 and a plugin of their own design), but the video is compression-free and clear (well, if you ignore the stupid scanlines). If you're on a fast line, by all means check it out, pretty amazing stuff (now they just need to stream some good content, like the simpsons :).
posted by mathowie at 1:10 PM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

Harry Potter and the Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Via obscurestore. I think it bears repeating. Also, I'm hoping to spark Eggers-related conversation and link-posting. My obsession knows no bounds. Oh, and -- what was this all about, again? -- the book's good, too.
posted by lbergstr at 12:19 PM PST - 3 comments - Post a Comment

Nannybots and mailing lists don't mix - especially nannybots that have gone insane!
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 11:01 AM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

Derision 2000 (Y2Komedy Department)
The best thing about this satiric "secret memo" from the Dubya campaign is the date at the top of it: February 29, 1990. A Slate story, so obviously written with MS Word...
posted by wendell at 10:36 AM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

I found these FUTURE JOES (GI Joe 2010 series) while following a link from Rebecca Blood's site for the Navajo Code Talker GI Joes. Perhaps it's showing my age, but I really want one. Of course, I also want some of the Nisei soldiers so that I can reenact those POW camp scenarios that I used to subject my GI Joe to as a kid. I know where the bodies are buried. Hey, how come The Grim Reaper Site didn't have questions about GI Joe? Was your GI Joe a) home on leave when you were concieved b) 12" c) 12" with lifelike hair and beard and realistic scar d) 12" with Kung Fu Grip e) really an Action Man f) a little pussy 3" action figure g) $50 and from the "Collectible Collection"? h) dolls are for girls.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 10:34 AM PST - 4 comments - Post a Comment

Slashdot has an interview up with Chris Lehmann, a good friend of mine that teaches High School in New York. Chris somehow has managed to marry hyper-energy, geekiness, and a Stand By Me teaching attitude to make Beacon a great example of how public school can still work. Chris rocks. You should tell him so.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 9:11 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

5k gets wired the .ultimate design kontest gets notived by wired.

the result is a comment by a despaired jason...
Hey, man, don't be too sad, there is far too much good webdesigners that will compete already :)

i just can't think of the shame i would have experienced after watching veen's, jason's, alice's... or granp-pa Zeldie's entries.

What makes me wonder is :: can k10k's team win ? i'm curious to see what they can do with accessibilty and low-fat in mind, it would definitely bury the 'ala affair' that made some hot-talks weeks ago in some dark areas of the web.

another interrogation, will judges be cruel enougth to view them through some funky toy...
posted by deboute at 6:32 AM PST - 8 comments - Post a Comment

Camille Paglia in full flow at Salon: "In the three weeks since my last column, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been up hill and down dale, beating the bushes in upstate New York to try to convince someone somewhere that she is a woman of substance rather than a raisin-eyed, carrot-nosed, twig-armed, straw-stuffed mannequin trundled in on a go-cart by the mentally bereft powerbrokers of the state Democratic Party."
posted by Markb at 1:25 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

The new google bookmarklets are amazingly simple and useful. I've been wanting to do something like this for a while, and after seeing them, I decided to rework the code to make the web-based spellchecker I always wanted. If you bookmark this: Dictionary.com bookmarklet, highlight a word on a web page, and hit the bookmark for it, it will load that word into dictionary.com's site. It's IE-only, but I'll redo the Netscape one too.
posted by mathowie at 10:35 PM PST - 7 comments - Post a Comment

Sad but True. For me its a toss up between Hessian #5's vulnerable charm, and Hessian #6's straight-forward honesty.
posted by Awol at 5:33 PM PST - 6 comments - Post a Comment

While we're still mulling over possible country-wide internet taxes in the states, the European Union is proposing a digital sales tax on any downloads of music, software, or videos from outside the Europe. It's just a proposal though, we'll have to wait and see if it actually goes through.
posted by mathowie at 1:26 PM PST - 5 comments - Post a Comment

Irony King and Staggering Genius Dave Eggers after reading from his book to a banjo and spoons accompaniment, talking about elephant art, and having panties thrown at him [no, I am not joking, though I suspect a publicity stunt by our local hipster newspaper] revealed what some may have already known: that he is the voice behind McSweeneys favorite, Lucy Thomas! The Trib article says he's buried the link to her articles, but I've tracked it down in all its resplendent glory.
posted by jessamyn at 12:56 PM PST - 3 comments - Post a Comment

Quitting? Again? Here's an interesting interview with Robert Smith, full of contradictions as usual. The most interesting part is the supposed trilogy of Pornography, Disintegration, and their newest album, Bloodflowers.
posted by Awol at 10:36 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the web. Now it turns out that the damned ad companies can inadvertantly learn a LOT about you that you didn't realize you were telling them.

You know, I'm really glad I use AtGuard and have closed off DoubleClick and FocaLink and all those other guys in my firewall by blocking their IPs. (It's now part of the Norton Internet Security 2000 package, and I recommend it highly.)

From me, they learn nothing because they never even see the requests.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:44 AM PST - 16 comments - Post a Comment

Silly Putty turns 50. I suspect I'm older than most of you, and I grew up with Silly Putty, "The toy with only one moving part".
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:30 AM PST - 3 comments - Post a Comment

Indie Planet 's design is impressive, though a little overbearing and CPU-intensive (and somehow, "next page" takes me to the "top of the page"). Its humor section features some McSweeney's writers, including Neal Pollack, who I learned to love from his work at the Chicago Reader.

The site launches next week, and I'm not sure who is behind or what exactly its motives are. Its manifesto says it's all about "freethinking individuals," but since creating a "storefront" is giving the same weight as creating a "home page," I guess it's more about "selling" "stuff." How indie.
posted by luke at 1:12 AM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

Phallic sandstorm leaving Europe, headed for US. More news at 11.
posted by mathowie at 11:21 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Stickin' it to the man has just been made easier, thanks to the wonderful Internet. This PR dude's site TellThemNow.com is basically going to act as an anonymous gateway to industry movers and shakers... letting you tell them exactly how you feel. Kickass. Someone tell Ev to get his Dell gripe ready. :)
posted by othermatt at 10:45 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

You couldn't plan a funnier headline than this. This is another keeper quote "[one of the employees] said she resented being treated like a sexual object." Treated like a sexual object in a strip club? Who would have thought that'd happen? I'm sorry, I'm all for worker's rights, but in a strip club? You gotta draw the line somewhere.
posted by mathowie at 10:16 PM PST - 28 comments - Post a Comment

Not even canines are safe from road rage. God I hate San Jose. Even if the guy's from Virginia, there's just something about this place that turns people into monsters, and not the good kind like mummies and werewolves.
posted by luke at 7:43 PM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

Much in the spirit of the ASCII Star Wars site, Neale over at wetlog has unveiled an short ASCII version of American Beauty (when is the academy going to finally recognize the brilliant work of ASCII illustrators everywhere?). He's also running a contest for players of The Sims. I've been thinking about getting this game since I first saw it, but Neale's contest is enough to push me over the edge and actually buy it. I'd like to try getting my Sims to perform either Magnolia or The Ice Storm.
posted by mathowie at 6:19 PM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

I think ICANN, I think ICANN...
I'm one of 2600 North Americanskis to apply for an "@large" membership in the first 5 days (but they're using snail mail to send me a PIN number I need to access memberstuff in addition to a password they e-mailed me... )
Will joining give me a chance to get my voice heard? Or a feeling of webgeek belonging? Or just something to put on the resume to impress the internet-clueless?
Is this an example of (cliche #1)"keeping your friends close and your enemies closer"? Or (cliche #2) "I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member"? Do I have any idea what I'm talking about?
posted by wendell at 10:07 AM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

Whoa! Computer consultants working hourly or as temp workers in California are now required by law to be paid overtime when working more than 8 hours per day. This is good news for workers, but I'm sure businesses will find a loophole soon.
posted by mathowie at 9:43 AM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

What can you do with 5120 bytes? syllage.com is giving away 5120 pennies for the most clever, original and functional answer. (And hey, some of those judges sure look familiar.)
posted by sandor at 7:53 AM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

Wendi, of slumberland.org, gets to keep her house! I don't think it's actually on her website yet, but these days the only way to be weblogger #1 is to log something before it happens. If you see Wendi and Jason at The Speakeasy, be sure to buy them a latte.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 8:47 PM PST - 4 comments - Post a Comment

Dave Winer , it appears, is mentioned in the new April issue of Macworld. I just picked up the new issue, and looked to the last page, and David Pogue wrote about how different media outlets predicted Apple's demise, and then he went about humiliating them by reprinting portions of their articles or quotes, and responding. Yes, Dave Winer was one of the people quoted.
posted by premiumpolar at 6:12 PM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

My wedding photographer has a website up. but it's not her "wedding photography" site...
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 4:10 PM PST - 3 comments - Post a Comment

Stupidity Abroad. Apparently Americans aren't relying on our amazing capacity for atrocities at home anymore.
posted by Awol at 9:43 AM PST - 6 comments - Post a Comment

Man, this guy is desperate. Missed out on the Fox pageant? Here's your chance to be the next Mrs. Rockwell. "Last of the true romantics"? If that's true romance, thank god he's the last.
posted by sandor at 8:06 AM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

Virtual Dub. No, nothing to do with music. Virtual Dub is open source capturing software with built-in capture support which can often use as much as 90% of your hard disk's maximum sustained transfer rate -- as high as 10 megabytes per second -- without dropping a frame. We just tested it at work with our ATI All In Wonder 128 and were impressed with the crystal clear results.
posted by prolific at 5:54 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Japan hit by leap day glitches Looks like y2k wasn't a total bust. I want to know what happens in seven decades, when all the people who implemented a is post-1972, is not post-1972 solution still haven't updated.
posted by alan at 3:15 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

The VW vs. Virtual Works case is a lot like the eToys vs. ETOY battle. The vw.net site is owned by a small ISP that has been using it for the last few years, but VW is saying that their brand is diluted and their trademarks infringed when another company uses the initials "vw". Like the eToys case, it looks like Volkswagon has convinced a court of this and will be taking the domain soon. If you remember the different top level domains, .org is for non-profits and organizations, .com is for commercial ventures and corporations, and .net is for network companies and network providers. One would think an ISP qualifies for a .net, and that VW should be perfectly happy with their .com domain, or am I missing something here?
posted by mathowie at 12:17 AM PST - 8 comments - Post a Comment

Weblog essay genres:
Statements of intention.
Announcements of suspension.
Letters of resignation.
posted by jjg at 8:41 PM PST - 6 comments - Post a Comment

Well, this won't last long. It appears to be streaming video of every single Simpsons episode. Ay, carumba!
posted by luke at 2:30 PM PST - 24 comments - Post a Comment

Today's Davenetics (it's a newsletter) noticed a flurry of wireless deals came about today. AOL is planning mobile versions of instant messenger, email, and other AOL services, Microsoft is working on mobile MSN and Hotmail, while Amazon has unveiled their phone portal to shopping. Looks like we will soon be reminiscing about the good old days when the internet used silly wires and cables.
posted by mathowie at 1:45 PM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

This explains (choose one)
(1) The real trouble with Globalization, or
(2) Why Germany has started so many wars.
(yes, Wittler is a German name; you wanna make something out of it?)
posted by wendell at 11:18 AM PST - 3 comments - Post a Comment

The fact that there's a tool like this available just blows me away. Customize your blue screens of death on windows to any color combo you want...as if that helps anyone out (actually the other apps on that page are pretty useful, I just don't know what good a custom BSOD tool is).
posted by mathowie at 10:59 AM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

Moon Land Registry! Is this a scam or what? Prices on the upper east side too high for you? Get an out-of this-world deal here.
posted by fbeach at 4:55 AM PST - 6 comments - Post a Comment

Two Against Nature, as it always has been.
After all this time, I thought Rikki HAD lost that number...
posted by wendell at 12:40 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Through a random series of events, Jamie Zawinski (oooh, I'm such a name dropper :) sent me some very old archives of the Mosaic/Netscape sites and their beta browsers. Chuck Lau, the originator of the Netscape Museum has cleaned up some of them and has just put October 1994's entire mcom.com site online. Chuck's working on getting the others online (there's at least 5 or 6 more archives of the site at different points in 1994 and early 1995), and will also be putting up a page linking to an archive of the very oldest of Netscape/Mosaic's browsers. The browsers are currently sitting in dissarray on my workstation here. I tried out Mosaic 0.4 beta on my windows machine, about the only site that worked in it was Yahoo's.
posted by mathowie at 12:25 AM PST - 6 comments - Post a Comment

ABC reports on Napsters usage on University Campuses.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 6:28 PM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

Carl's synopsis of his thoughts on "Web Weaving," a book he contributed to a few years back, is a hilarious and eye opening read. I continue to live in awe of The Carl
posted by mathowie at 3:45 PM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

censorship hmm.. one of my posts seems to have disappeared... are you censoring this weblog?
posted by efader at 3:27 PM PST - 21 comments - Post a Comment

Slashdot has some good discussion about purchasing domain names. As always, there's a lot of crap in the discussion, but a few informative posts.
posted by fil! at 1:32 PM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

eBay may buy Sotheby's. I can see it now: online bidding for Picassos and vintage automobiles, right next to the guy selling his old computer and the one trying to sell a kidney.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 12:51 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

how to get around the recent napster embargo
posted by efader at 12:17 PM PST - 3 comments - Post a Comment

napster code here is the code and schema behind napster
posted by efader at 12:14 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Amazon is approved for a patent on the technology behind their affiliate program. Wow, this really has the potential to shake things up a bit. Will software patents like this destroy internet commerce?
posted by webshaping at 11:47 AM PST - 3 comments - Post a Comment

New street signs have been proposed for New York City in an effort to make that city a safer place for its residents.
posted by mathowie at 11:32 AM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

Mars, the next version of MSN, is just around the corner. It's obviously an AOL clone, giving new users a view of the internet filtered for ease of use. My opinion of it is split. On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with making a useful, straight-forward interface that anyone can use. In fact that's a holy grail for UI designers. But the interface is a bit much, taking up over a third of the screen real estate, and it will no doubt funnel users into all of the MSN websites. Will MSN users know the rest of the internet is out there?
posted by mathowie at 12:30 AM PST - 3 comments - Post a Comment

An even weirder guessing game is the Grim Reaper's Age Guesser. Got me within one year asking questions like "How many years has it been since you last hopped?". [from julia's journal]
posted by jessamyn at 11:07 PM PST - 7 comments - Post a Comment

Oh my lord. The Guess the Dictator/Sit-com character site works by asking a series of questions about a person you have to think of. I selected an obscure sit-com character, Chris Elliot from Fox's ill-fated "Get a Life" series. If you would have asked me to bet money on it before proceeding, I would have gladly put $20 on the site not figuring it out. After about 15 questions, it guessed right. This is scary stuff. [via rebeccablood]
posted by mathowie at 6:25 PM PST - 15 comments - Post a Comment

I love The Industry Standard, especially their daily emails like the Media Grok and Intelligencer. Friday's Intelligencer email spotlighted a story on credit card fraud, but if you click on the link in the email, it redirects to the Standard's main page. I searched for the article and you can see it in the results at the top, but it is dated two days into the future and clicking on it redirects to the front page. I wanted to read that article, too bad I don't have a time machine around...
posted by mathowie at 6:04 PM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

Interpol's Most Wanted are now on the web! Interestingly, no U.S. nationalities on their Top 20 list, but a few with dual citizenship in Canada.
Blame Canada? No, America must catch up and start producing better international criminals. Of course, I could be wrong...
posted by wendell at 6:04 PM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

The Half-Human, Half-Silicon Chip sounds like something out of a movie I saw on MST3K. And the reference to the "cell in the hole" sounds like an old catchprase from Seinfeld. In other words, TV Comedy Technology.
posted by wendell at 6:00 PM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

What is it with Time and images of the Devil? A few years ago they give Clinton horns on their cover, and now they invite Beelzebub to the Democratic presidential debate.
posted by sandor at 10:49 AM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

Hadn't seen this mentioned anywhere, but it looks like Adobe is trying to hook designers (Web and otherwise) up with gigs. You can post a resume and an online portfolio, and get searched by location, name, or specialty. Seems kinda neat.
posted by endquote at 3:22 AM PST - 1 comments - Post a Comment

Jason thinks he can set a new world record or something with the most obscene or porn-related posts in a row. Well we'll see about that! Let's challenge him! Let's beat him at his own game! Post porn on your weblog. Bring the goliath down! Just kidding, Jason, we love you! [get him, guys]
posted by premiumpolar at 12:32 AM PST - 7 comments - Post a Comment

The Simpsons' Mike Scully is interviewed in this week's Onion. He briefly addresses the whole a.t.s. I-hate-the-show-but-I-keep-watching-anyway syndrome, along with the symbolism of the Comic Book Guy. It was amusing until I realized that I'm guilty of the exact same attitude when it comes to The Onion each week. Is it me, or is the paper just not as funny as it used to be?
posted by sandor at 11:55 PM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

If you're tired of candidates dodging the issues or sugar coating their positions, it's time to consider the straight talking candidate, Duke. He's got interesting positions on universal health care, abortion, and wildlife conservation.
posted by mathowie at 8:07 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Another domain battle begins, as the Honda Motor Corp. is suing the owner of honda.net, a fan site owned by a web designer. The owner has his own take on it, and Alan Herrell wrote a nice summary too. Come on Honda, let it go, this is a pointless fight.
posted by mathowie at 7:41 PM PST - 2 comments - Post a Comment

If you were to draw one stick person every second 24 hours a day, it would take you 200 years to make 6 billion drawings. The YouDraw exhibition will show 6 billion drawings of the world's people together for the first time ever. 500,000 drawings of people will be collected from the internet. These 500,000 drawings will be compiled in a book of which 12,000 copies will be produced. 12,000 books will represent a total of 6 billion drawings and will be in shown in an installation, to be exhibited internationally.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 3:55 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment