Extra Future

Month: April 2009

  • Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch ROM Released

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    [The unreleased sequel to Punch Out!!][link], now available for download or purchase in the form of [a reproduction cart][cart]. [link]: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/04/mike_tysons_intergalactic_powe.php “GameSetWatch – Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch ROM Released” [cart]: http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=71 “Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch”

  • iTunes Price Changes Hurt Some Rankings

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Glenn Peoples, writing for Billboard][link]: >On Wednesday, one day after the price increase, the iTunes Top 100 chart had 40 songs priced at $1.29 and 60 with the original $0.99 price point. The $1.29 songs lost an average of 5.3 places on the chart while the $0.99 songs gained an average of 2.5 chart positions.…

  • Birdhouse — A notepad for Twitter

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Birdhouse][link], co-created by [Adam Lisagor][adam] of [You Look Nice Today][ylnt], is a great example of an application made for a niche audience, with the application’s authors being a part of that niche. [adam]: http://lonelysandwich.com/ “Adam Lisagor / lonelysandwich” [link]: http://birdhouseapp.com/ “Birdhouse — A notepad for Twitter” [ylnt]: http://youlooknicetoday.com “You Look Nice Today” Birdhouse is for…

  • Hacker-Troll “Weev” Taking Credit For the #amazonfail Controversy

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    [I don’t know if I buy it][link], but it makes about as much sense as Amazon being suddenly homophobic. [link]: http://valleywag.gawker.com/5210142/why-it-makes-sense-that-a-hackers-behind-amazons-big-gay-outrage “Gawker – Why It Makes Sense That a Hacker’s Behind Amazon’s Big Gay Outrage – Amazon.com”

  • The LA Times on Amazon’s “De-Ranking” of Books Deemed Too Adult

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    [This is quickly turning into a PR coup for Amazon][link]. The gist of this is that most of the books labeled as “adult” and made hard to find on Amazon’s site are lesbian, gay, transgender or bisexual-themed, or even just LGBT-friendly. This is extremely bad form on the part of Amazon, as not showing up…

  • Presenting Software Features and Understanding User Unrest

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    Adding features to applications is a constant trade-off between opposing forces. Sometimes adding to or changing software can be a hinderance both to the user and the developer in several ways. [Ego][ego], Garrett Murray’s excellent iPhone application, was blocked by [Google Analytics][ga] yesterday. Since support for GA is one of Ego’s advertised features, paying users…

  • The Old Rickrolling

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    Apparently, [the co-writer of “Never Gonna Give You Up” has made a total of about 16 dollars from YouTube views of the song’s video][link]. The article doesn’t say how much he’s made from other revenue streams. I find it impossible to believe that the Rickroll meme didn’t make him plenty of money from things like…

  • Good HTTP citizenship for DiggBar protesters

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Aristotle Pagaltzis suggests some changes][link] to John (and my) implementation of the DiggBar block. [link]: http://plasmasturm.org/log/538/ “Good HTTP citizenship for DiggBar protesters // plasmasturm.org”

  • Introducing Diggbarred, a WordPress Plugin for Blocking the DiggBar

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    As a big fan of telling people when they’re Doing It Wrong, I’m happy to announce Diggbarred. Diggbarred is [a new plugin][link] from myself and [Shawn Medero][shawn], using [John Gruber’s original blocking code][john] in an easy-to-activate form. You can [fork, modify, or otherwise mutilate the code on Github][git]. [link]: http://extrafuture.com/projects/diggbarred “Official Diggbarred Page” [john]: http://daringfireball.net/2009/04/how_to_block_the_diggbar…

  • How to Block the DiggBar

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    [John Gruber has a decent solution for blocking the DiggBar][link] on his site, Daring Fireball, if you’d like to completely block all Digg traffic. I’m going to whip up a WordPress Plugin for this today. [link]: http://daringfireball.net/2009/04/how_to_block_the_diggbar “Daring Fireball: How to Block the DiggBar”

  • The Associated Press Follies Continue With YouTube

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    [The AP threatens an AP affiliate for embedding videos from the AP’s own YouTube account][link]. It’s like watching a drunk vomit on himself. [link]: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/08/ap-exec-doesnt-know-it-has-a-youtube-channel-threatens-affiliate-for-embedding-videos/ “A.P. Exec Doesn’t Know It Has A YouTube Channel: Threatens Affiliate For Embedding Videos”

  • Popular URL Shortener tr.im Is Down

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    by

    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Thousand of Twitter links][link] are now broken, and nobody knows for how long. This is exactly the kind of thing I talked about [earlier this week][prev], and I hope it will spur adoption of [short_url auto-discovery][short], even though I’m not crazy about the name. [link]: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=tr.im “(5) tr.im – Twitter Search” [short]: http://sites.google.com/a/snaplog.com/wiki/short_url “Short_url wiki”…