Extra Future[LuckyImage is a Mac OS X service that replaces any given text with the first result on a Google Image Search][link], inline. It works in pretty much any rich text area. Works great for iChat sillyness.
[link]: http://pozdena.net/luckyimage/ “LuckyImage”
[Microsoft’s new, absurdly-named, search engine has launched][link]. Two things: How is this better than their own live.com, and how is this better than Google.com? It seems to bring nothing new to the table aside from the little popups on the right side of the results (which I’m sure is where “bing” came from. Bing! Bing! We’re lucky they don’t have a sound effect with them. It plays in my head, regardless.) and that isn’t super useful. It’s cramped, and boring at the same time.
The text-search engine space desperately needs some serious competition. Something like [TinEye][tineye] is doing for image search. The question is: What else do you do to search? I have a feeling the answer is not going to look anything like Google or Bing or even [Wolfram Alpha][alpha].
[link]: http://www.bing.com/ “Bing”
[tineye]: http://tineye.com/ “TinEye”
[alpha]: http://www.wolframalpha.com/ “Wolfram Alpha”
* [Super Mario 64 longplay, grabbing all 120 stars][sm]. 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][textfiles]’s [talk about Platform Studies][scott] has me rekindling my love affair with it.
[sm]: http://longplays.ath.cx/site/modules/movie_categoryb/index.php?id=4 “Super Mario 64 Longplay”
[scott]: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/04/jason_scott_on_platform_studie.php “Jason Scott’s Talk”
[textfiles]: http://textfiles.org “Jason Scott’s Textfiles.org”
* [The Metroid Prime entry on Wikitroid][prime]. ’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.*
[prime]: http://metroid.wikia.com/wiki/Metroid_Prime “Wikitroid: Metroid Prime”
* [ANTHEM Platform][anthem]. A platform for piping Social Networks, IM, email, OEMs, etc, to cell phone applications. Recently acquired by Good Technology.
[anthem]: http://www.intercastingcorp.com/anthem/overview.php “Anthem platform”
* [Imified][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.
[imified]: http://www.imified.com/ “Imified”
* [Google is “betting big on HTML5”][goog]. Speed of web development accelerating, `canvas`, `video`, client-side databases, web workers, etc. See also: [YouTube using the HTML5 `video` tag][youtube].
[goog]: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/google-bets-big-on-html-5.html “O’Reilly: Google Bets Big on HTML 5”
[youtube]: http://www.youtube.com/html5 “Youtube HTML5 demo”
* [Sleeping with the NME: how the British music press picked up a dose of the crap][brit], which is about the sorry state of the British music press. From [Velvet Coalmine][coal], which has become a favorite blog of mine.
[brit]: http://velvetcoalmine.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/sleeping-with-the-nme-how-the-british-music-press-picked-up-a-dose-of-the-crap/ “Sleeping with the NME: how the British music press picked up a dose of the crap”
[coal]: http://velvetcoalmine.wordpress.com/ “Velvet Coalmine”
* [Remote-controlled sperm][kurz], or more precisely: remote-controller sperm-like nanodevices.
[kurz]: http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html?id%3D10648 “Sperm-like nanopropeller is smallest swimmer ever”
* [CSS-only gradients][grad] using CSS3 and no images. Whatsoever. Uses the `-webkit-gradient` property. Hot shit.
[grad]: http://tools.westciv.com/gradients/ “CSS3 Gradients”
[So announced Garrett Murray on twitter][link]. The API was [launched by Google today][api]. Glad to see it.
[link]: http://twitter.com/garrettmurray/statuses/1578598062 “Twitter / Garrett Murray: I guess I can say now that …”
[api]: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/04/attention-developers-google-analytics.html “Google Analytics API”