Extra Future

Month: August 2010

  • H.264 To Remain Royalty-Free Indefinitely

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [This is good news][link]. I can’t help but think WebM had something to do with it. via [Lukas Mathis][lukas] [link]: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en “MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Not Charge Royalties for Internet Video That Is Free to End Users Through Life of License | Business Wire” [lukas]: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2010/08/26/h_264_update/ “Ignore The Code: H.264 Update”

  • Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight Relaunches as NYT Blog

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [A great pickup for the NYT, and makes a lot of sense for Silver, too.][link] If you’re not familiar with FiveThirtyEight, it is the work of statistician Nate Silver doing his mathamagic on US Politics. He modeled the 2008 US election nearly perfectly. Do yourself a favor and read his [introduction post][intro]. [link]: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/ “Election…

  • Fighting Terror With Freedom

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg has given a second incredibly-well-written speech][link] in support of the so-called “Ground-Zero Moqsue,” which manages to have some lovely pull-quotes such as: >But if we say that a mosque and community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise…

  • Video of Boosters Separating From Space Shuttle, Splashdown

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [The video is 7 minutes long, from separation to splashdown all from a camera attached to one of the solid rocket boosters.][link] Incredible footage. [link]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uk_viH4Unw#t=1m46s “YouTube – STS-124 Launch w/ Sound”

  • Motorola’s Android 2.2 Rollout

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Proving that because you hand them a decent smartphone OS doesn’t mean they’ll know what to do with it][link]: >After a leaked Android 2.2 ROM became available through unofficial sources, Motorola sent cease and desist letters to websites hosting the update, according to IntoMobile. The reasoning may be sound — after all, folks who jumped…

  • Danish Something Awful Forum Goons Build Space Rocket

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [They’re planning to do a test launch on August 31st, 2010.][link] They’ve been answering questions in [this Something Awful thread.][thread] [link]: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-08/23/danish-manned-spacecraft “Danish volunteers build manned spacecraft” [thread]: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3271649&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post372988135 “Something Awful Forum Thread: We’ve made the world’s largest amateur space rocket”

  • Sequoia Voting Machine Hacked To Play Pac-Man

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Without breaking the tamper-evident seals:][link] >We received the machine with the original tamper-evident seals intact. The software can be replaced without breaking any of these seals, simply by removing screws and opening the case. I don’t know about you, but my votes sure don’t feel safe. [link]: http://www.cse.umich.edu/~jhalderm/pacman/ “Pac-Man on the Sequoia AVC-Edge DRE Voting…

  • “Twitter isn’t your audience. It’s your community.”

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Andrew Mayne for Hidden Frequency:][link] >[…] It’s easy to tell the difference: The guy on stage at the concert is in front of his audience. The people in the stands are in their community. When the concert is over the audience vanishes but the community continues; with or without the man on stage. The stage…

  • Introducing Kreskin, A Band/Album Generator

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Kreskin is an album generator][kreskin], which essentially automates the Wikipedia Band Name Game. To wit: [kreskin]: http://kreskin.extrafuture.com “Kreskin” 1. Go to the [Random article page][wiki] on Wikipedia. The page it goes to is your band name. 2. Go to [Flickr’s most interesting photos for the last 7 days][flickr]. Find the third image. That is your…

  • Inkling

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [Interactive textbooks for the iPad][link]. The educational potential is neat, but personally I’m just as interested in the entertainment potential. [link]: http://www.inkling.com/ “Inkling – Interactive textbooks for iPad.”

  • Google Now Charging Developers $5 To List Chrome Extensions, Themes, And Apps

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [How open of them.][link] The changes are: >”intended to create better safeguards against fraudulent extensions in the gallery and limit the activity of malicious developer accounts.” [link]: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/19/chrome-fee/ “Google Begins Charging Devs $5 To List Chrome Extensions, Themes, And Apps”

  • Kove, A Community-Created Choose Your Own Adventure Game

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    Phil Nelson
    in

    [This of it as a wiki-style take on the classic book genre][link]. Just sign in via Twitter OAuth and start adding and editing pages. All content is published under a CC-BY license. There is also [an atom feed of new pages][feed]. [link]: http://kove.extrafuture.com/”Kove” [feed]: http://kove.extrafuture.com/feed “Kove New Pages Feed” Kove is an [Extra Future 6-Hour…