Chrono Trigger Fan Game Crimson Echoes Leaked
Phil Nelson Apparently an alpha version, I’ve been waiting for this since Square Enix cease-and-desisted the project a few weeks ago. Again, way to drop the ball, Square.
Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension
Installing addons to non-Microsoft software without meaningful notification. Anyone who thinks the Zune HD or Windows 7 will be better, remember that this is where their instincts lie.
How the Web and the Weblog have Changed Writing
Our literary culture is impoverished when every idea is stretched or amputated to fit the Procrustean bed made up by magazine and book publishers. When an author runs out of relevant stuff to say after 20 or 30 pages, that’s how long the essay should be.
Quoting the same passage that Gruber did, but fuck it. Bravo, Philip.
Invaders! Possibly from Space!
A video game based on the “Raiders of the Lost Arcade” segment of the Futurama episode “Anthology of Interest 2“.
The Making of Zach Galifianakis
New York Times piece on the rise of Galifianakis, his beard, and failures.
Restoration of the Hubbard Steam-Powered Motorcycle
A steamcycle built in 1970 based on an article published in a 1918 issue of The Model Engineer and Electrician magazine. According to this page, the author of the original article never actually built the bike. See also: video of the engine.
Dovetails nicely with The Case for Working with Your Hands, which is making the rounds today.
Introducing Typekit
A platform for css3’s @font-face. The real test of this will be how many hoops you have to jump through to embed a font, and how it handles failure:
We’ve built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.
The upside is that having a central place to access these fonts will be great for caching.
Closing Tabs 5/27/09
-
Super Mario 64 longplay, grabbing all 120 stars. If you were under the age of 30 when this came out, goodbye afternoon. It’s such an astoundingly well put together game. At every stage, care was taken to make sure it “felt” right. Jason Scott‘s talk about Platform Studies has me rekindling my love affair with it.
-
The Metroid Prime entry on Wikitroid. ’nuff said. Exploring the 3D transition of one of Nintendo’s other major franchises, which skipped the N64 and went straight to the GameCube. With Mario 64, everyone expected it to be mind-blowing. With Prime, everyone expected it to be shit. Sometimes everyone is wrong. Disclosure: I have stock options in Wikia.
-
ANTHEM Platform. A platform for piping Social Networks, IM, email, OEMs, etc, to cell phone applications. Recently acquired by Good Technology.
-
Imified. A service which runs IM bots for you, and acts as a go-between for you and the IM network. You can code up applications that the bot queries with what is said to it, by whom. They provide examples in PHP, which makes me happy.
-
Google is “betting big on HTML5”. Speed of web development accelerating,
canvas,video, client-side databases, web workers, etc. See also: YouTube using the HTML5videotag. -
Sleeping with the NME: how the British music press picked up a dose of the crap, which is about the sorry state of the British music press. From Velvet Coalmine, which has become a favorite blog of mine.
-
Remote-controlled sperm, or more precisely: remote-controller sperm-like nanodevices.
-
CSS-only gradients using CSS3 and no images. Whatsoever. Uses the
-webkit-gradientproperty. Hot shit.
The Vendor Client Relationship
This is how pretty much every major client I’ve ever had does things. It is a lot less funny when you are waiting on thousands instead of dozens of dollars.
Dog-O-Matic
This is an automated dog washing machine. Just set it and forget it! VE HAFF VAYS OF MAKINK YOU TALK, POOCHIE.
Paid Conversations, Credibility & The FTC
TechCrunch’s Brian Solis on proposed FTC guidelines that would force bloggers to disclose corporate gifts. Part of me is very glad to see this. Force the shills to go public.
Five Questions With James Urbaniak
Regarding his experience taping The Office season 5 finale. Fun fact: James auditioned to play Dwight.
Sign Of The Times
If a good exclusive used to provide 10 times the traffic of a standard regurgitated blog post, now it garners a hundred times as much. (emphasis added) That should be reassuring to people. The content market is finding its new balance. Original reporting will be rewarded.
Even considering the source, I’m glad to hear it.
E-Book Reader Eucalyptus Now Available on The App Store
Apple has made it right with developer James Montgomerie:
Earlier today I received a phone call from an Apple representative. He was very complimentary about Eucalyptus. We talked about the confusion surrounding its App Store rejections, which I am happy to say is now fully resolved. He invited me to re-build and submit a version of Eucalyptus with no filters for immediate approval, and that full version is now available on the iPhone App Store.
This hasn’t “fixed” any of the serious issues around the approval process, and it took them way too long to do the right thing, but I’m glad for James. Eucalyptus is an application that was obviously crafted with much care. Previously.
TechCrunch Reports last.fm DID Give User Data to the RIAA
More exactly, CBS (Last.fm’s parent company) got this user data by not telling Last.fm they were going to turn it over. Last.fm responded to TechCrunch’s initial allegation with a blog post titled “TechCrunch are full of shit.”
I wonder how Last.fm feel about the acquisition right now.
Handley, Comics and Obscenity
Newsarama’s Jeff Trexler on what the recent guilty plea of Christopher Handley in his “possessing obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children and mailing obscene material.” case. Handley could be in jail for 15 years for owning some Manga. This is beyond not good.
Apple Screws The Pooch Again, Rejects E-book Reader “Eucalyptus”
It is hard to believe that they’re still getting away with this. Their reason? You can download naughty books on it, like the Kama Sutra. Nobody tell Apple that you can view the same book in Safari for free on Project Gutenberg, or show them the weird porn you can find on Google, because they’ll have to reject their own browser.
Assholes.
Mozilla Labs Jetpack
Extending Firefox with open web technologies like jQuery, HTML and CSS. I am thinking of it as the next generation of Greasemonkey.