Friday, April 27, 2007

Amoled


Very slick website. Seems to be about a new type of monitor. Excellent blending of multiple interactive media methods.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Passing of Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut died last night at the age of 84. He will be greatly missed.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Neil Gaiman's How to talk to Girls at Parties

Neil Gaiman reading a short story he wrote in under a day. I've never heard Neil Gaiman read his own work so that was interesting. He's british. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet but so far so good.

Box.net

Free online storage complete with neato options. Pretty snazzy.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Meat Cake!


A cake made out of meat with mashed potato frosting plus other tasty ingredients. Ingenious.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Design is Kinky


A great design site I frequent from time to time for inspiration. Especially cool is the mugshots page which links a designer mugshot with their work.

Kermit sings Hurt

Wildy inappropriate, in a good way.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

younanimous meta search




younanimous is a meta search engine that's fast, filters spam out of search results, and gives various statistics about each link (digg rating, del.icio.us results, alexa rankings etc.) One of the only meta search engines I've actually enjoyed using.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Advertising in Tokyo's train stations.

An interesting article that details some of the more unique methods advertisers use in the tokyo subways.

Desktopography

Really really cool website. It's about nature themed desktops. An excelent mix of music and design. The whole thing is really well done.

Web Creme

A very nicely designed site that links to other very nicely designed sites. Very spare but effective.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Consumer Psychology

An interesting article from, the LA Times. The articles deals with how expansion of what was once a local store into a national chain at too fast a rate can have very nasty side side effects. Used as examples of this are Starbucks, Krispy Creme, and Snapple. Not everyone does it wrong though. Trader Joe's is given kudos for their well thought out and methodical expansion.

Cartoons, Now and Then

Scans from Look magazine published in 1939. It talks about censor ship in cartoons. It's interesting to see what they could and couldn't do back then as compared with today's cartoons. Metalocalypse, an animated show on Cartoon Networks Adult Swim, makes an especially interesting comparison.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Ottobib

Provide the website with the books' isbn and it will give you that books bibliography in whatever format you want.

Chocolate & Zucchini

A very descriptive food blog. Content better then the design.

Vixy.net

You give it a streaming media link (youtube, google video, etc) it gives you a downloadable link in an .avi.

Friday, February 9, 2007

Yahoo! Pipes


"Pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment."

Hard to explain. Basically a new way of filtering data. For example there is one pipe that will search Flickr and pull images from it that correspond to the New York Times.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

piratebay.org to Buy own Island?

A popular torrent website (www.piratebay.org) is attempting to buy an island and form their own government so as to allow them more leeway in what they due. Regardless of how this turns out there is something extremely cool about a website called piratebay buying their own island and forming their own nation.

Lamps

A few images of some cool looking lamps. The intricate design makes them look like old concept sculptures of what lamps may one day look like, if one where living in 1840.

Internet Tiny Awards

A website that points out particularly complex flash sites. Mainly.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Service or Product?

USC rated #1 by RIAA for copyright infringment.

RIAA sent school 914 copyright infringement notices this year; Clemson received 71.

Go USC.

Cameron Moll

Nice portfolio site using css.

Famous quotes on Sex

Amusing quotes.

Robin Williams.
"Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet."

Maybe I just have too many teachers quoting latin at me.

Monday, January 22, 2007

A Gentlemen's Duel


Forthcoming CGI movie trailer from Blur Studio (they are making the new Simpsons movie). Cheesy voiceover talent on the trailer but the CGI looks pretty good. Looks like Shrek but more for adults. Click "A Gentlemen's Duel" under "work/animation".

Web Gallery of Art



An incredibly extensive collection of Renaissance art and artists. For example searching for Botticelli returned 174 pieces of art, all in large resolution.

Pandora Internet Radio


Pandora is a streaming flash based online music project. Basically you just create a "channel" by telling Pandora a band you like. Based on that band Pandora will then start playing music that you may like. If you like the song you can give it the thumbs up and if you don't like it you can give it the thumbs down. From these thumbs up's and down's Pandora can further narrow down what music may appeal to you. Pandora's music collection is extremely extensive and the music suggestion software is very intuitive and complex. Here's an example of how Pandora chooses what music to play. "Based on what you've told us so far we're playing this song because it features midwest rap roots, basic rap roots, a repetitive song structure...". Pandora does eventually require registration but is otherwise totally free.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Nietzsche Family Circus


A website that randomly combine one Family Circus cartoon with one Nietzsche quote. They're all strangely fitting.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Jen Wang


Really great illustrations by Jen Wang. The comics are especially cool because they force you to scroll your browser window to continue the narrative.

KeepVid


This is an extremely awesome website. What you do is provide it with a link to a video from Google Video, YouTube, etc. KeepVid will then give you a download link for the video! It downloads the video as a .flv but it's a simple thing to download a .flv player or something to convert the .flv to a more common file type.

Metalocalypse


A good show from Brendon Small (Home Movies). Like Home Movies the best part of Metalocalypse is the dialog. Just like Home Movies the clever dialog finds it's way into all the music. Skwisgaar Skwigelf is the lead guitarist. That's a fun name. The music featured in the show has similarities to Dragon Force, Archenemy, Nevermore, King Diamond, and Cannibal Corpse. Kinda sorta.

$600 Router from $60 Router


Sound magic? Chances are, if you have a Linksys router, that it's not working nearly as hard and well as it could/should. The secret to making it do so is simply new firmware. Looks like a very worthwhile endeavor, even more so when you consider how shitty Linksys routers are.

A few things this will do for you:

  • Increased Stability
  • Increased Security
  • Ease of setting up static IP address's
  • Better signal strength
A tutorial site is available. (Link). Included are directions on what to do if you brick (totally fuck up) you're router.

Ubuntu


Distributed by Linux, Ubuntu is basically linux for the common man. Aesthetically pleasing and simple. Reminiscent of the MCx OS X operating system. Bears looking into further. Another plus, they are clearly sufficiently multicultural, as proven by their homepage. (Link). If only I had the free time.

Ubuntu is packed with:

Open Office 2
Firefox
Calender (all that calender jazz stuff too)
Media player (audio/video)

There's plenty more free software for Ubuntu too.

MPAA Fucking with People


As has been going around the torrent forums a while it's finally been confirmed. . The MPAA is uploading fake torrents to get people's IP's and send letters to those persons ISP's. (Link). It's a good example of how this sort of internet policing simply does not work. No matter how smart or clever they are about trying to nab people downloading music etc. there will always be people who are more intelligent and clever playing for the other team. As to who is financing this...“I really think this is being done by professionals with a budget, that’s a lot of servers to setup and it takes some expertise to setup in the manner that they did it,” says the btjunkie admin. “I don’t think I really need to say who would spend money on something like this.” Link to some of the fake films that are being uploaded which include X-Men 3, Children of Men, Miami Vice, House and the recent The Good Shepard (which I recommend btw). If this is something that worries you add 66.172.60.XXX, 66.177.58.XXX, 66.180.205.XXX, 209.204.61.XXX, 216.151.155.XXX to peerguarding or whatever you use.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Wikileaks?


Heard about Wikileaks? (Link). I haven't taken too close of a look at it yet but as I was glancing through the FAQ I was reading sentences like "Instead of a couple of academic specialists, Wikileaks will provide a forum for the entire global community to examine any document relentlessly for credibility, plausibility, veracity and falsifiability.", "Wikileaks was founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists", and "Our advisory board, which is still forming, includes representatives from expatriate Russian and Tibetan refugee communities, reporters, a former US intelligence analyst and cryptographers.". Sounds interesting.

Mark Ryden


An artist I have been following for a while. Creates fanciful and disturbing imagery. Last I had heard Mark Ryden lives in California. Various celebrities are fans of Ryden's work including Leonardo Di'Caprio and Stephen King. He's also done album covers for Scarling, Ringo Starr, Oingo Boingo, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Butthole Surfers, Jack Off Jill, and Michael Jackson. Mark Ryden is also fond of Blood Orange Juice.

iPhone Announced


Apple released details to the long awaited iPhone a few days ago. (Link). While it does have some very impressive technology the largest hard drive it comes in is 8 gigs. While this may be plenty of space for some people if you're like me the point of having a portable mp3 player is constant access to your entire music library (or at least a good chunk). I think I'll wait. Cisco is concerned because they own the trademark to "iPhone". People are also noticing how similar the iPhone is to the LG KE850 which some people thought was a leaked iPhone before Apple made the official release statement. As of now the iPhone will only work the the cingular network.

Conan O'brien 1864 Baseball

Conan visiting playing a bit of ball. Link.

More Conan.

247 Media Studios

This is a design company that I have followed for a while. Their integration of music is especially good.

http://www.24-7media.de/