Today's Links XVIII
Sun 15 Apr 07 23:19 | Tags: Today's Links
What? Another Today's Links already? Yes; sorry, but I have amassed quite a few links in the last few days I want to share with you. I'll have some good, content-packed articles coming in the week ahead, I promise; one of them actually involves writing this Today's Links article, so it sort of had to come first…
I just realized that I did Today's Links XV, then Today's Links XVI, then Today's Links XV again. Whoops! So there will be no Today's Links XVII, and I'll start correctly counting again with this article. Now that I've got those fascinating details out of the way, let's get to the links.
- Google buys DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Here, let me write that out for you; US$3,100,000,000.00. DoubleClick is an advertising company which will likely compliment Google's own AdSense program. Kumiko has some more information on the deal on her very pink website.
- China: Internet porn has "perverted China's young minds". "[A]fter his arrest late last year, Chen Hui, operator of the largest porn site in China, was sentenced to life in prison." Aww, come on, ya commies! Porn is good for the internet! Bah, they usually block Wikipedia with their national firewall anyway.
- China limits online gaming for kids to three hours a day. Boy, those Chinese just don't want anyone to have any fun…
- The Trouble With Home Networking. David Pogue tries to set up a home network using a Netgear router. "My wife has made me swear that I will never, ever review routers again."
- Hamster Shredder. It would be a bit less alarming if this were titled "Hamster-Powered Shredder." One glance at the picture, and you'll get the idea. It's just an art project, though; not a real product.
- Kernel Panic Screensaver! The title says it all; a screensaver that simulates the dreaded OS X Mother Of All Crashes. Check out the video – I can't watch it without feeling a bit panicked myself, though Windows users definitely won't "get it."
- a/s/l? Xerox pantent gives the answer. Xerox has developed methods of interpreting your demographic information based on your internet activity. I bet that the types of porn sites you visit tells a lot.
- Diabetes cured in stem-cell treatment advance. That's Type 1 diabetes (kid diabetes), not Type 2 (grown-up diabetes), as my father has. Definitely a good step forward, though.
- Things Computers Can Do in Movies, and Usability in the Movies -- Top 10 Bloopers. "Okay, I'm hacking into the mainframe… (klackety-klackety) I'm bypassing the security… (klackety-klackety) Security bypassed… (klackety-klackety) Okay, I'm in."
- Thanks, Tim and Jimbo! Another look at O'Reilly's Blogger's Code of Conduct.
- Opera releases version 9.2 of their web browser. Opera for Mac is notorious for being slow and un-Mac-like. I gave it another try with this release, and while the interface and rendering now feels sufficiently speedy, it's still uncomfortably un-Mac-like. For example, triple-clicking on text selects a sentence, not the whole paragraph, and there's no way to drag the selected text… Opera has some really slick features, though.
- Geek Squad guy caught playing Peep Squad by setting up his cell phone to record a showering young lady. Tsk tsk tsk… This does not help the Geek Squad's rampant reputation of unprofessionalism.
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Today's Links XV & the Saturday Spike
Tue 10 Apr 07 03:14 | Tags: Meta, Today's Links
So on the 3rd of April, in light of confirmation of the rumors of the existence of a sequel to the classic Saturn game NiGHTS: Into Dreams…, I made a video of the game posted it in an article entitled "NiGHTS: A retrospective." The next day, video gaming blog Opposable Thumbs posted a new article about the upcoming sequel entitled "Sega releases new NiGHTS details." Seizing the opportunity, I posted a link to my article in the comments section of their article. It looks like someone at Opposable Thumbs was listening, because on Saturday morning, they posted their latest installment of Viddy Well, a series of columns featuring videos of upcoming games, and they linked to my video here at RGR. So later that day, I'm looking at the stats, and I'm like…
Holy cow! Where are they all coming from?
As you can see, normal traffic more than doubled on Saturday… not bad! The spike has died down since then, predictably; it's no surprise that Spike dies. But I've managed to gain a couple more feed subscribers over the weekend; usually, subscription numbers go down over the weekend as fewer people are at "work," so that's not bad at all. Would have been nice if the traffic spike had translated into a noticeable ad revenue spike… but I guess I can't have it all. Here's another graph with less accurate but more dramatic numbers.
On to the links.
- We Wouldn't Be Surprised… How the NiGHTS sequel shouldn't be done. You kinda have to be a Sega nerd to get this one.
- Google caught using third-party software, apologizes. The title of this article is poorly-written; what they actually did is released a program which used another company's copyrighted database. A shoddy move, yes, but this was a Chinese product released in China and presumably coded by Chinese engineers, and, sorry, Chinese folks, but you don't exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to respecting intellectual property…
- Our Little Secret. A typographer talks about his excitement about the upcoming movie about post-war typography and graphic design called Helvetica. Am I nerd for wanting to see this flick?
- Magnetbox. A clever if somewhat illegible design for a blog. More graphic design nerdry. Sorry.
- Rapid Architectural Prototyping in Second Life. Second Life is everyone's favorite way to experience ugly clipping errors at two frames per second. Here's a village in Second Life being constructed from the ground up in fast-motion.
- Malaysian saves 100 from sinkhole. He noticed it forming after he got up to visit an outhouse. It's not very often when your bowels and/or bladder save dozens of lives.
- Every Blog Should Have An Accompanying Ebook. o rly? Should RGR have an e-book? What would it be about? How long should it be? Would you actually read it? Contact me with your thoughts. I'm serious; none of you bums ever get in touch with me. =[
- UCSC Engineering Building Attacked by Giant Gorilla More Post-It art; this time, it's Donkey Kong! Miyamoto would be proud.
- Some Facts About AAC. Reiteration of the fact that AAC is not a proprietary format any more than MP3 is, and it's much less proprietary than WMA.
- A Look At Free Quake3 Engine Based Games. I wasted a whole lot of hours on Urban Terror back when it was a Quake III mod. Now that it's a stand-alone game (and I won't have to dig out and install my copy of Quake III to play it), I'm definitely going to give it another go. I suggest you check it out as well.
- A little side story before I do the next link. I was in Japan a while back during the whole Trapped in the Closet fracas of 2005, so I read a lot about the actual songs before I ever actually heard them, or saw the videos. Reading about the whole concept, I thought it was one of the stupidest things I had ever heard of, but then when I actually got the chance to see the videos when a pop music TV show in Japan played them, the amount of pure dumb still managed to exceed my expectations. Now, here's an article entitled Mims's "This Is Why I'm Hot": A Graphical Dissertation on America's Number One Song, analyzing a hip-hop song that is apparently the top song in the nation, despite the fact that I've never heard it. But something tells me that, when I inevitably do hear it, I am once more going to be floored by its inanity. Popular rap? Meh, I think I'll stick with Lyrics Born and Ugly Duckling, if it's the same to you. Fo' shizzle. Out.
In closing, props to Josh for being my proof reader of sorts lately. Sometimes I'm not always the best at catching my own sleights of the English language… okay, I'm never the best. So it's nice to have someone watching my back. And if anyone else out there ever sees me make a spelling or grammatical error, please don't be afraid to call me on it!
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Today's Links XVI
Wed 4 Apr 07 21:31 | Tags: Today's Links
- The power of Sun in a big Blackbox. Sun's Project Blackbox is a server room in a shipping container; the computing equivalent of a mobile home.
- Kathy Sierra - Chris Locke - Coordinated Statements. Statements released by two people once on opposite sides of the recent blogging snafu.
- Spiked! What happens when a Sony exec tries to take over a rock concert to pitch the PS3?
- How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords. Into the mind of an unethical hacker determined to steal your money -- or ID.
- Sega releases new NiGHTS details. New details on the upcoming NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. Did you see my video about the original NiGHTS game?
- Was Amelia Earhart a doomed castaway? Tracking the last moments of the famous pilot who mysteriously disappeared during her attempt to be the first woman to circumnavigate the Earth in an airplane.
- The seven-figure bottle of brandy, as well as a drawing to win a bottle for yourself. I don't drink, but I entered the contest anyway; if I win, it ought to make good eBay fodder.
- The Time Fountain. Creative use of strobing blacklights and water with iridescent dye.
- Plagiarize This! A museum exhibit about the art of copyright violation in various goods.
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Today's Links XV & a welcome to new readers
Sat 31 Mar 07 13:15 | Tags: Today's Links
A while back, pro blogger and marketing consultant Chris Garrett offered to give free blog reviews to the first few people who asked. I jumped at the chance; not only to get the big fat link from his much more popular blog to mine, but, of course, for the constructive criticism. A couple days ago, he posted his review, and, I'm glad to say, it was quite positive. It succeeded in bringing quite a nice spike of traffic to the site, and a nice boost to that FeedBurner count as well. To all new visitors to RGR; thanks for stopping by. I hope you like what you see. Please skim through that new "Quality Stuff" section in the sidebar on the right there for the best posts RGR has to offer. And don't be afraid to leave some comments to the articles or get in touch with me with questions, suggestions, article topic ideas, job offers, or any other comments you may have. And, of course, subscribe to my feed!
It's been a while since I've had a good, serious hardware article. I've got a project that I put some work into today, but it might be another day or two before I can finish it up.
- Grand Theft Auto IV trailer now available (despite recent "stockholder revolts" against the game's publisher, Take-Two Interactive). It doesn't show much gameplay, but it's still pretty exciting. Click on Trailer Files and download the Windows Media version for the highest quality (fellow Mac users, use this plugin to play Windows Media files). Looks like it'll take place in Liberty City again, but it's a new version of the city which looks much more like New York, with a Statue of Liberty, a Brooklyn Bridge, etc. But there's still lots of familiar names and logos, like Sprunk, Liberty Tree, Cluckin' Bell. As you may know, I'm a huge fan of the GTA series.
- Square "nail household" seeks round solution. A couple in China refuses to move out of their house, so initial construction projects for a new shopping mall is going on around them. Check out the pictures.
- iPods work better in Vista now, thanks to… Microsoft? In the 32-bit version of Vista, anyway. A recent patch fixes earlier iPod-related problems.
- Parker Wallace Company is looking for a Web Developer. A creative job pitch. If you don't get it, then, well, you don't get it.
- UNEASYGiveaway: We Are Giving Away Another Wii. Another linkbait contest with a Wii as a prize.
- Play the BlogBash Match Game and enter to win a Wii. And here's another Wii contest. You have to play some strange game first; I have no idea what the solution is supposed to be, but apparently you don't have to get correct answers to enter the contest.
- AppleTV On The Horizontal. Andy Ihnatko loves his job.
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Today's Links XIV
Tue 27 Mar 07 07:02 | Tags: Today's Links
Well, I think I've finally managed to beat back that cold, or whatever it was. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into a more regular update cycle… and a more regular sleep cycle too. I've been up 'til at least 7:00 AM Pacific the last couple of days… This blog uses the Eastern time zones for its times, so hopefully, when it really is 7:02 AM, I'll be asleep. Wha? Time paradox! Enough silliness. On to the links.
- China Airlines Flight 006. This Wikipedia article about a narrowly-averted air disaster is a very edge-of-your-seat read. Who needs pulp novels?
- Awkward TV. This wiki is a clearinghouse for information on hacking the recently-released AppleTV. Turns out there's a lot you can do with this little guy if you're not afraid of voiding its warranty.
- Review: the Little Laptop that Can't. The FlipStart is an superduperultracompact notebook that falls short of its potential.
- A Very Short Walk Around A Tokyo Apartment. Reminds me of my own apartment in Japan, though mine was a little bigger, I think. The hallway/kitchen, the toilet with the faucet on the tank, the shower room, and the loft; all very similar. Really, though, when you don't have many possessions, living in a small apartment isn't that bad.
- Magnetic Finger: A Sixth Sense. Want to be able to feel magnetic fields? Some people have been able to do it by inserting magnets under their skin; here's a way to do it that doesn't involve self-mutilation.
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