Public Domain Slide Rule
The PD Slide Rule, thankfully, is protected by Creative Commons not Copyright. (via Austin Kleon)
Twitter News, etc.
A-ha! So this USA today article might be the cause of Jason’s frustration. Puzzle pieces are starting to come together.
Related, it turns out a guy I hang out with at my cafe is one of the co-creators of the site Pick of the Twitter which I first heard of through fellow flocker Patrick Burleson (who, I believe, got picked sometime last month). The idea is simple, they feature a tweet every hour using some secret-sauce algorithm.
Oh, and would somebody please make an iPhone app for Twittermap, a Google maps and Twitter mash-up? If you do, then I’ll give you clusterlove.
Typography as Art
Typography as Art allows you to play with the 21 different parts of characters in the Roman alphabet. The idea is use these different parts to create atypical forms.
My little contribution. Don’t worry. I won’t quit my day job:
Why the ’Possum?
The opossum is a noble beast, though much maligned in common thought. Sad to say, most residents of North America see the opossum as of little more use other than to decorate the shoulders of our nation’s highways and to serve as examples of why one shouldn’t cross the road at night. Others see him as a “giant rat,” though he isn’t a rodent at all. And nearly everyone seems to think he is a filthy critter because of his habit of rooting through neighborhood trash cans.
These are all malicious myths that sully the reputation of a princely creature. Please traipse through these pages and see if your estimation of the opossum is what it ought to be. Vive l’opossum!
Scraper
Search for a word and Scraper creates a typeface based on the Google news rss. It doesn’t have much use but it is a fun single serving site.
Proof print media is far from dead.
John Hendrix did a piece in the NYT Op-Ed that is just gorgeous. I am sorry I missed it until today (my usual Sunday NYT’s routine had been disrupted this weekend). Just compare the below picture with its online (red-headed, step-) brother.*
(click to enlarge)
*Apologies to red heads and step-brothers everywhere.
Do you goosh?
Goosh is not an official google project but uses the google search engine in a UNIX-like shell. It’s not my cup of tea but I am sure some folks out there will love it (Patrick Burleson?).
Thsrs
A thesaurus for short synonyms. Ironic Sans:
Popular new social networking services like Twitter, where users write extremely short messages about whatever’s on their minds, present a challenge: How can you intelligently get across a complex thought in just 140 characters without needing to use ugly abbreviations (e.g. “w/o needing 2 use ugly abbrev’s”)?
If only there were a service that helps with the struggle of rewriting a 146-letter message to fit in a 140 character limit. Well now there is: Thsrs, the thesaurus that only gives you synonyms shorter than the word you’re looking up. Just enter one of the longer words in your message, and Thsrs will suggest shorter words to use instead.
(Hat tip to fimoculous)
Text to Speech from AT&T Labs
A cool little web application that converts 300 characters into a Widows media file.
For example: .
Update:: There are multiple voices!
Branded in the 80s!
A blog about 80s paraphernalia, for example, a post on stickers.
Business spam evolves
I found an interesting spam email in my inbox this morning that’s basically a personalized approach that hints at a risk to an online trademark (domain name) due to a foreign application being made for the trademark name in country-specific versions (.asia, .biz, .cc, .cn, .com. cn., .hk, etc.). It looks valid enough to hook a reader at first glance, and only when some research is done do you discover what it’s all about.
This approach is obviously personalized to the owner/manager of a commercial Internet brand and hints at risk to our online trademark (miproconsulting) due to a foreign application being made for our trademark name in country-specific flavors (.asia, .biz, .cc, .cn, .com. cn., .hk, etc.). Being the nice foreign domain registrar they are, the sender of this message, SK Holdings, is asking us if we want to do business with them and secure all of the miproconsulting variants listed below so that we can protect our Internet brand from this foreign applicant.
This is pretexting: it takes a known fact or truism about an individual or business and uses that piece if information to get someone to divulge information or carry out some other action. In this case, the spammer wants the victim to purchase the extended domain names before the foreign applicant does, thereby allowing the victim to protect his Internet trademark. Not exactly the most aboveboard way to do business, but it is clever. I’ll grant them that.
“Jac Mac & Rad Boy Go!” as it should be seen
Seeing various low-grade copies of this posted on YouTube was the inspiration for my web site. This film was leased to Night Flight in 1985, included in the Outrageous Animation movie in 1988, licensed for use in Back to the Future Part 2 in 1989, and finally leased to Liquid Television in 1992. I own the copyright and now you can watch it in better picture quality. I own all of the master negatives, and will strike a clean print one day. [Wes Archer].
Primo. Look here. Ultimato.
The Associated Press vs. Everybody Else
Additionally, the AP made clear to all and sundry it would charge fees every time its copyrighted material is excerpted, alluded to, or dreamed about.
Bloggers around the world expressed their outrage about the AP’s action by using strong words, street-smart wisdom, and merciless quoting.
Shameless Plug
I would like to take a moment of your time to announce something that I hope, over time, will become something rather successful.
As many of you know I have a personal blog in addition to writing for this here Clusterflock thing. However, I’ve recently started another blog, called Unfiltered, that serves as my employer’s blog. I want it to be everything most company blogs aren’t: interesting, authentic, transparent, fresh, relevant, not boring. My goal is to make it worth reading on a daily basis, even if you aren’t wholly interested in the consulting business, PeopleSoft or SaaS technology.
So, if you’re inclined, stop on by. Tell others about it if you feel the prospective subject matter would be interesting. Grok the RSS if that’s your thing. The kickoff post pretty much lays out what the blog will and will not be.
Thanks. We now return to the regularly-scheduled ideological chaos.
Do you remember Hypercard?
I do. Tilestack is a web app that riffs off the old mac software.
Rhythm
There’s a rhythm to this bloggish thing. Ever notice that, y’all?
Yes. (The multitude answers, rolling its collective eyeballs. [Sound of k-nacking and rattling.])
But I was just now walking backwards, maybe twelve or twenty-four hours. And there’s all this good stuff!
Postcrossing
I love the idea of receiving real objects from the intertubes:
The goal of this project is to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world, for free. Well, almost free! The main idea is that: if you send a postcard, you’ll receive at least one back, from a random Postcrosser from somewhere in the world.
Update (from Deron): Hey, this is our 10,000th post!
Play the Next Track
Play the Next Track is a surreal collaboration between two artists. A song is selected and a graphic, guided by the music, is volleyed back and forth between the artists to continue an overarching story.
Not that I’m volunteering
It’s not like I’m volunteering or anything like that. I’m just asking. (And I think that maybe someone suggested this back when Chris Glass was redesigning clusterflock.)
What if, in addition to telling people who we are and what we’re about and linking to our selves and our raving faves and all, we had a clusterflock Guide for the Perplexed? A quick (and dirty) reference to catchphrases and coinages (SOS), recurring themes (donkey love), and all-purpose phrases and quotations (”I don’t want your bourgeois divorce”).
Not that anyone new to the site would actually use it to spare embarrassment. But we might amuse ourselves in compiling it.
Not that I’m volunteering or anything like that.
Your Mom
Did you know there was a Dickipedia?
Latest dicks:
Oil
George Lucas
R. Kelly
Steve Jobs
Ann Coulter
Antonin Scalia
Your mom
Nevada Test Site Oral History Project
Courtesy of the National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office.
In December 1950, President Harry S. Truman approved the establishment of a continental nuclear proving ground 65 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. Between 1951 and 1992, 1021 nuclear detonations took place at the Nevada Test Site — one hundred explosions were in the atmosphere and 921 were underground. It is estimated that the test site employed 125,000 during the Cold War. The photograph [above] shows the De Baca test, detonated on October 26, 1958. Five days later the U.S. and U.S.S.R. agreed to a nuclear testing moratorium which stayed in effect until the Soviets resumed testing in 1961. In 1992, a second nuclear testing moratorium went into effect. Subcritical tests and other national security programs are ongoing at the 1375-square-mile Nevada Test Site.
I am a rocket builder.
The internet is a strange but wonderful place sometimes.
Free Money
Revolution Money Exchange is a Paypal competitor that is giving $25 just to sign up. I am generally pretty skeptical about “free internet stuff” but I got my $25 bucks today without a hitch or sketchy, spam-giving agreement.
Brilliant advertising, if you ask me, give money to the consumer rather than paying outright for ads on websites. People will just spread the word (e.g.).
Also, a referral gets you a sawbuck. All the money from the above link referrals will go to the sock puppet fund.
The September 11 Television Archive
The September 11 Television Archive is a fascinating collection of news reports from the day (and the days following) the 2001 terrorist attacks on America.
Starting with an introductory video . . . showing how the attacks were reported in the US and around the world, it also offers the moment-by-moment coverage that the US TV networks and the BBC conducted at the time.
Will you pay $10 for something?
SomethingStore is a fun new website that operates simply: We will send you something, an item selected randomly among many things from our inventory, for $10 (free shipping) and you will find out what your something is when you receive it. What will yours be?