Like it's never been touched before
Posted: Friday, June 01, 2007 8:09 AM by Will Femia
Filed Under:
Games
Everyone's buzzing about Microsoft's new Surface computer. To be honest, I'd put off watching all the videos about it because we've already seen a few multi-touch demonstrations and everything I've read puts it way off in the future. But not only is Surface not some distantly futuristic technology but they're talking about turning these out to commercial partners within a year! And when you see the demonstrations they have for actual practical uses, the mind reels with the obvious cascade of follow-up applications. It's so easy to imagine these being part of every day life. If you're looking for something to feel excited about (as I was in the wake of seeing the sea water combustion idea trashed yesterday) sit through these videos. There's only reruns on TV anyway.
P.S. I love that it reminds me of the flat table Pac Man game that used to be at the local pizzeria.
3 tips to profit from casual games - It's about our little favorite, Desktop Tower Defense. Check out this line: "Though he has no professional experience with game development, the Visual Basic programmer is now making, by his estimate, high four figures monthly for his ferociously viral little game."
Speaking of games and the fact that it's Friday, here's a recent Ralph's Recommendation:
Lone Starship: Defender of the Planet - Imperial troops have decimated your star fleet, and you're the only starfighter left on the planet. Thousands of citizens are depending on you. You are their last, best hope...
I should have added, speaking of flat table games I used to play at the pizzeria. Good one Ralph.
Jason Calacanis has launched Mahalo as the world's first human-powered search engine. What makes it people powered is this note I see at the bottom when I try some test searches: "Mahalo's goal is to hand-write the top 10,000 search terms. You can help by recommending your favorite links."
Genes might help you learn Chinese - I was ready to resent the implications of this (one language being "naturally superior" to another, one race of language speakers being superior to another) but the article gives a really fascinating sense of how different languages are processed.
Getting Access to Gmail Accounts of the Deceased - Or: Why you should include your passwords (to the things you actually want your surviving family to have access to) in your living will.
Commuter Click/Weekend Beach Read: This excerpt from "Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America."
Other Commuter Click: Yesterday I spent much of the day working on a recommended-reading list of important pieces to read if you want to catch up on the current state of the Web. In hunting down Jay Rosen's Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over I started reading the current entry there, an excerpt from "When the Press Fails..."
What the heck is vote caging, and why should we care? "Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war)." More important to the theme of Clicked, this article quickly gets to the reporting of Greg Palast, whose name keeps coming up in liberal blog circles. (There's so much "they stole/are stealing the election" noise out there it's nice to have this Slate piece to sort out this particular story.)
Facial recognition slipped into Google image search - Add &imgtype=face to the end of your image search link and it gives you results that are faces.
The Freeaire checks when the outside air is as cold as your refrigerator and turns on a fan to use outside air in your refrigerator. It's like when there's a black-out and you have to put all your food in a snowbank outside.
Whenever I investigate something going on with LiveJournal I always feel like I've just walked into the middle of someone else's family reunion. The communities there are so intimate and rich with jargon and context it can be difficult for an outsider to catch up. The latest something-going-on is the deletion of a considerable number of communities over accusations of inappropriate content. Briefly, and at the risk of receiving a lot of correction notes, some fans of science fiction and fantasy like to write their own stories using characters and other elements from the shows/movies/comics/books/video games they like. These stories can sometimes be sexual in nature and occasionally depict situations that would be illegal or just inappropriate or unacceptable in real life. An anti-pedophile activist group poured through these fan-fiction writing communities and reported the ones they didn't like. LiveJournal axed them. CNET has a more detailed summary. Having said all that, apparently there are now also "mass reinstatements." NOTE: In the course of clicking through this story I saw very little visual NSFW material, but do recognize that this story is about overtly sexual writing. Just move on if you can't handle it.
...Feels somehow related to the above: "More than one in eight men do not volunteer to work with children because they are worried people will think they are a paedophile, a survey suggests."
Can this be true? The claim is that the Marines want to recall an honorably discharged Marine back to service only to discharge him again, but this time dishonorably, as a punishment for being outspoken against the war.
You knew that as soon as Google and Microsoft released those street level map images we'd start seeing funny captures and glitches. I looked at all of my previous addresses but didn't see anything really remarkable. One reader sent me this link with the comment, "I for one, welcome our new Pink Cloud Overlords..." And I saw this one that's supposedly a guy leaving a strip club, but that seems like a bit of a stretch (and who cares). Then finally I clicked Boing Boing's round up of reader contributions. Looks like there are a lot of solicitations out there for interesting stuff so hopefully we'll see that bear fruit soon.
ADDING (here it comes):
Colored water drops
A master class in online snooping
I had read about the weird tanning reality show in this bit of TV commentary. I haven't seen it on TV yet, but I recognized it in this clip of a woman pressuring her kid to get a tan like Lindsay Lohan. What a twisted world.
I'm not sure why people care so much, but the story you may have heard of an 11-year-old boy killing a giant pig has sparked passion in a lot of people. I arrived at this site through another site claiming to debunk the whole giant pig claim, but it looks like the pig-hunters are embracing this and other criticism so this one link gives a pretty complete picture of the debate.
Speaking of debating something that barely matters, how many people in this video/audio do you think are acting?
CEO of electric car company, Tesla Motors: "Every year spent on fuel cell programs by GM, Ford, Honda, and the rest is another year we at Tesla Motors can build our technological and market lead in the obvious winning technology: battery electric vehicles. We therefore sarcastically and enthusiastically encourage you to maintain the hydrogen bias and keep our competitors in the quagmire."
I also watched the videos here.
Squirrells with light sabers. The caption is the best.
Ron Paul widget
Mike Gravel widget
Funny HTML earrings - I saw this on Digg, which means the artist who's making these can pretty much buy a yacht and retire by next week.
Nine wines under $10
Doctored magazine covers
