Twitter’s Admin Interface
Phil Nelson Screenshots from a hack of their admin section. It makes me feel a lot better about some of the admin UIs I’ve shipped.
The Cover Project
Hi-res scans of cover and box art for video games. They carry scans of newer games, which to me is a bit unnecessary, but they have a wealth of covers for NES, SNES, 3DO, Intellivision, etc.
Jason Scott’s Presentation on Platform Studies from Notacon 6
In short: Context is king. His central theme seems to be that simply looking at the rulesets of old games is missing the point. The platform itself informs the game to a huge degree.
LostLevels Dumps Superman Prototype for NES
Which means you can download it. This Superman is a prototype which was eventually renamed Sunman, with the logo changed. Sunman was never released, but it is fully playable. It is not at all the same Superman game released by KEMCO for the NES. Gameplay is very similar to another Sunsoft superhero game Batman: Return of the Joker.
Everyblock Releases Free iPhone App
Everyblock is a great project, and this makes it better. I cannot wait for the main Everyblock code to go open source.
DreamHost’s Josh Jones on the History of WebRing, and the Fall of GeoCities
WebRing was started by a co-founder of DreamHost. Then sold to GeoCities, which was then sold to Yahoo, and, well, read the article. Josh thinks it’s a sort of micrososm of the web:
It went from a tiny ad-free community service, to hyper-growth, to showing ads, to being acquired for an INSANE price, to being forsaken, to doing anything to survive, to “social networking”, to “web 2.0″, to today!
They’re also offering free hosting for 1000 GeoCities users, should any be found.
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an attempt at modern, crowd-sourced fundraising. Post a project or idea with a set timeframe, and people can pledge cash. If your fundraising goal gets reached, you get the money. If it doesn’t, then everyone gets a refund. Check out the introduction video.
I could really see using this in the future.
Last.fm Introduces Radio Subscriptions
Users outside of the US, UK, and Germany will now have to pay 3 euros per month to keep streaming music from the popular site. The user backlash has already begun.
As more and more VC-funded startups have to start showing balance sheets, there’s going to be a lot fewer freebies around.
How to Brew Beer in a Coffee Maker, Using Only Materials Commonly Found on a Modestly Sized Oceanographic Research Vessel
Now that’s what I call science. Ingredients include: Raisin Bran, Vegemite, Alfalfa, and baker’s or brewer’s yeast.
How moot “Won” the Time 100 Poll
Paul Lamere’s coverage of the Time 100 hack continues with this in-depth examination of the how-they-did-it variety. It includes a lot of Time-bashing, as evidenced by the following parenthetical:
(And if you have any doubt about Time’s incompetence, take a close look at the Poll. Notice that Oprah Winfrey and Ratan Tata have the exact same number of votes. That’s because they both shared the same ID in the poll. A vote for either one was a vote for the other. Same goes for Michael Bloomberg and Gustavo Dudamel. If you vote for one, you vote for the other.)
Previously: 4chan’s precision hack of the Time 100.
Intercounty Baseball League
Canada’s answer to minor league baseball, established 1919. The Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Club play 5 minutes away from my house.
A Crank 2 Review Done In The Style of… Crank 2
Awesome! Awesome! Where are my wraparound mirrored sunglasses?
How the Other Half Writes: In Defense of Twitter
This is the best, serious, essay smacking down the Twitter-hate going on among the terrified old guard media. It’s note-taking technology:
Imagine a world where everyone uses typewriters: they write novels, manifestos, historical surveys, and so on, but they do it all using typewriters.
Now the ball-point pen comes along. People use it to write down grocery lists and street addresses and recipes and love notes. What is this awful new technology? the literary users of typewriters say. Ball-point pens are the death of humanism.
Old Woodworking Machine Logos
High-quality downloadables, for refurbishing your Old Woodworking Machine, or what have you. These are all beautiful.
iPhone Anthology Fiction
Warren Ellis’s recent postings about Papernet and my always-on interest in Print-On-Demand gave me this idea, which I’m jotting down here in case I never get to do it.
So you’ve got your iPhone, and they sell tons of old books and comics and even new eBooks. Why not magazines? I’m not talking about Better Homes and Gardens, really, but new, modern, magazine-like content.
I think there’s definitely room for, as example, a monthly sci-fi ‘zine posted on the iTunes store or available as a PDF download for the same, reasonable, price or just post the plain text for free. You could commission new work and pull from the Public Domain or Creative Commons licensed works to fill the thing out, perhaps make each issue themed, with some art for each story. I’m talking Weird Tales or the like. Short stories to read on the ride home. Sell it for a buck or two.
You could even give the thing away, and just sell art prints or print-on-demand copies or shirts or, every 6 months, a nice perfect-bound edition of the previous 6 issues.
All you’d really need is a cover artist and enough time to lash the thing together each month.
Yes, it seems to me like you could make some very interesting iPhone Anthology Fiction…
PBS Video on demand
This is fantastic. PBS, in honor of it’s 40th anniversary, is putting up tons of content onto it’s site, viewable on-demand. Including: American Masters, Frontline, and the biggest draw to me right now: Nova.
The problem: Like most video sites, it’s region-locked. Can’t be viewed outside the US. Shame.
by way of the blue
Maureen Dowd’s Absurd Interview With Twitter’s Founders
Biz gives the best answers to her dismissive/hostile questions. A sample:
ME: If you were out with a girl and she started twittering about it in the middle, would that be a deal-breaker or a turn-on?
BIZ (dryly): In the middle of what?
They really turned it around on her, and I love it.
Last Year’s Model
Their tagline is “Saving the planet through sheer laziness,” but I think “and not having tons of expendable cash” counts, too.
via, as it so often is, Andy Baio
Amazon.com Now Selling WiiWare Game Codes
Following the Xbox Live Arcade codes, this is no surprise, but nice to see. Also of interest to me: Amazon does not allow their associates to get commissions on these cards. Profit margin must be close to zero, if not into the red.
Tal Leming on Embedded Web Fonts
A rare take on embedded web fonts from someone who actually makes fonts and sells them for a living. He suggests a DRM system using a “root table” that says what fonts can be used on what domains, but then says this:
There is nothing that can be done about this. All we can do is present a person with a fork in the road. The person can license the font to give the designer the respect he/she deserves for creating something that the person likes and wants to use. Or, they can ignore the Golden Rule and hack the font.
If that’s the case, and he knows it’s the case, then why not forget the DRM entirely? Why not trust people to do the right thing from the start, and call them out on it when they don’t?