BREAKING SURF
| Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality |
| Spam Wars: My Short Life as an Unintentional Spammer |
| On the Internet, Everyone Knows You're John Lott |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Japanese Emoticons |
| A Pair or Two of Boobs |
| What Operating System Are You? |
| Ad Slogans on the Cheap |
| Half-Faced Wholes |
| Konfabulator for Mac OS X.2 |
| Opera Bork Release |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Microwave Anisotropy Probe Returns Landmark Results
These may well turn out to be the most important scientific finding of the year, if not the decade. For the past year, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has been in Earth orbit studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the radiant heat left over from the Big Bang. The fine structure of the CMB is packed with information about the beginning, current nature, and future evolution of our universe. The WMAP's data place important constraints on our cosmological theories and provide much improved measurements of several cosmologically important parameters. Whether you prefer to peruse the results as lucid popular science or in the available technical scientific papers should depend on how familiar you are with astrophysics. On the Technical Papers page, "Maps and Basic Results" has the overview of significant findings.WMAP: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Mission Results: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm.html
Technical Papers: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/pub_papers/firstyear.html
The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) has obtained the draft of proposed legislation to beef up the USA PATRIOT Act passed in haste after the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001. The draft is a hefty 12-MB PDF download, but you can do it in parts, or read it as text at EFF. The real patriotism here isn't in the proposed legislation but in the act of whoever leaked it. Rather than reinforcing the real strengths of the US, which include its robust protection of individual liberties and vigorous democracy, the proposed law would provide the power to deport any foreigner, including permanent resident legal aliens, to keep certain arrests secret, and to bypass courts and the judiciary to conduct surveillance. Many of the measures restore powers to security forces that were earlier removed because of abuse. The Justice Department's reaction to the leak is disingenuous, claiming that it routinely considers all manner of possible legislation to protect the American people and it's all just talk, folks, move along now, nothing to see here. It's enough to get your conspiracy juices flowing. PBS has a revealing interview with Chuck Lewis, executive director of CPI, who comments that although some things in the legislation make sense, others smother freedom from within. Doesn't terrorism win this way?
CPI: http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0
EFF: http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Terrorism_militias/patriot2draft.html
PBS: http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/lewis.html
Photos of Death from the First Gulf War
Do you wonder what war really looks like, what the technology of war is capable of doing to the human body? Maybe you want a sense of what American soldiers are going to see if the US invades Iraq. Peter Turnley offers an excellent exhibit of his photographs from the first Gulf War in the Unseen Gulf War. The majority of Turnley's photos come from the infamous highway of death or nearby, and several cover a common subject from various angles. The photographs capture the horror and anonymity of modern warfare. The dead are unknown to us, lying about the desert in various states of disarray. The most striking images juxtapose the reality of death with the activities of the living. What makes the claim of the apolitical nature of the site untenable is the constant mentioning that Iraqi soldiers were killed while retreating; as if this were not somehow a standard action of war. These images are graphic and thought provoking and are not for children of any age.http://dirckhalstead.org/issue0212/pt_intro.html
AOL Silent on Privacy of File Sharing
In NSD 9.03, we wrote about the recent ruling that favored the RIAA's quest to reveal the identity of a Verizon customer who traded music files online. The court told Verizon to turn over the customer's name but Verizon is appealing the verdict. This week, Salon followed up with a good analysis of the issues raised by the case, particularly concerning the point of view of a company like AOL Time Warner. As both ISP and holder of a huge number of digital properties, AOL must be of two or more minds over this case, which may account for its resounding silence. As an ISP, AOL doesn't want to have to comply with the millions of subpoenas that may force it to unmask its file-sharing customers, which could hasten the decline of its already-shrinking subscriber base. On the other hand, AOL presumably doesn't want people sharing its copyrighted digital content, like "The Matrix" or Missy Elliot songs. What to do, what to do.... Read the story for an exposition of the case's complex and far-reaching implications.Salon: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/10/aol_file_sharing/index.html
NSD 9.03: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.03.html#BS2
Acacia Says It Holds Streaming Media Patents, Demands Cut
Despite its small size, Acacia Media Technologies is making big waves in the streaming media business, and may affect cable and satellite companies as well. It claims to own the patent to the digital transmission of compressed media and it has started to demand a percentage of the revenue streams from companies that use the technique. And the target companies are starting to pay. Radio Free Virgin recently agreed to license the technology, and last week a Mexican satellite telcom did the same. A number of porn sites have banded together to fight the claim, although most companies prefer to buy a licence rather than pay to fight in court. A legal tangle is risky in another way, too. A legal judgement in Acacia's favor brings it additional leverage. That a major corporation like Virgin analyzed the patent claim and decided to pay bodes well for Acacia's success. CNET notes that Acacia's strategy is a harbinger of things to come. Companies are staking claims on all sorts of basic technology with increasing frequency. This may be one of the rare cases in which it's justified.http://news.com.com/2100-1023-983552.html
Fantasy Economies Hold Real-World Lessons
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as Ultima Online, EverQuest, and the new Project Entropia (q.v.) have spawned some interesting effects in the real world as well. In fact, the most popular downloadable economic analysis at the online Economics Research Network is a 40-page study of the economics of EverQuest's virtual world, Norrath. The study seems to indicate that, as conservatives and libertarians have claimed for some time, an economy thrives when government stays the heck out of the way. It appears that this occurs as a result of government-imposed mandates of complete equality among participants, so liberals who call for such reform may take heart as well. Slate has a brief and interesting description.http://slate.msn.com/id/2078053
Here is a definitive list of the best "The Simpsons" episodes. Excellent! Number one is <drumroll> "Last Exit to Springfield" </drumroll>. D'oh. The best way to handle this is to go off by yourself and think deeply about which episodes you like the best. List them, rank them, put them in order and then come back here and groan as you see how wrong you are. The picks include "Rosebud", "Cape Feare", and others, 25 episodes in total. There's even a bonus selection at the end, the worst episode of all, and we will taunt you by not revealing it (don't expect us to do all the work...). With some 300 episodes, the odds of your getting at least one right, or discovering that Entertainment Weekly has only got 24 wrong, aren't too bad. If you can't do something original and brilliant like "The Simpsons", at least comment on something original and brilliant (that's what keeps us going week after week, although some may consider creating NSD was original and brilliant in the first place). The list has already caused some wails and gnashing of teeth here at NSD HQ.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/commentary/0,6115,417748~3~0~25bestand1,00.html
French Court Clears Yahoo in Nazi Item Auction Lawsuit
Long time readers will remember when, three years ago, French human-rights activists sued Yahoo for hosting auctions of Nazi paraphernalia. As a result, a French court ordered Yahoo to block French netsurfers from accessing such material in what was the first clear case of attempted cross-border controls on Net content. Yahoo eventually decided to prohibit auctions of such material; the company denied that its decision had anything to do with the court's ruling but insisted that it just did not want to profit from auctions of Nazi goods. Yahoo continued to pursue its case, and a California court ruled in its favor, saying that as an American company, Yahoo did not have to abide by court orders from other countries. Yahoo did not have to filter anything from France, or from anywhere else in the world with free speech laws more restrictive than those in the US (remember when...). The French activists also continued forward on their side of the Atlantic. This week, a French court finally threw out the lawsuit on the grounds that French law requires a defendant to glory in Nazism to fall afoul of the relevant laws, and Yahoo did not. The controversy has set precedents while it has run its course.http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57633,00.html
Boston College Student Caught Swiping Keystrokes
Usually, keystroke-capturing software or hardware is placed on one or two computers, most often by people who want to know what the kids are up to. At Boston College, however, a student studying computer science placed such loggers on dozens of public systems around campus last year. He built a database of information on some 4,800 people, but as he only managed to steal around $2,000 for his efforts, we deem him kind of a piker. Facing a year in jail for every $100 he stole, and freshly indicted, he's cooperating with authorities. He's feeling depressed. Who wouldn't? As for public computers, such as you may find in libraries and on campuses, we hope that reading this tale will inspire your sense of caution. Wired and CNET have more.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57587,00.html
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-983717.html
Spoof CNN Page Fools Media, Crumbles before Real CNN
Once again, the Internet makes a hoax easier than ever. Last week, CNN legal threats forced Spo0fed to remove Web pages that generated fake CNN-style stories with information fed in by users. Some media outlets were taken in by spoofed stories - reports of Dave Matthew's death were premature and the Olsen twins are not going to be enrolling in your local university. CNN put the hammer down on the basis of trademark infringement, but no one seems to be coming down on the various news sites that swallowed these fake stories hook, line and sinker. You'd think someone would have thought to doublecheck the facts but, atrociously, no one did. A Wired story has links to another site from which you can still send a fake CNN or MTV story. Go on, you know you want to do it!Spo0fed: http://66.111.43.11/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,57506,00.html
The Online Suicide Meeting Place
There are no secrets on the Web, no topics that are taboo. That is its strength but also why it sometimes upsets people. One site that upsets quite a few folk is ASH (alt.suicide.holiday), a Web site that provides information and chat about suicide, and which is blamed for dozens of suicides, mostly by young people. It's clear that prolonged depression, with its inescapable despair and unrelenting blackness, causes some people to seek lasting peace by killing themselves. For some, that desire never goes away. ASH provides a place where such people can talk openly about how they feel and find advice on methods of suicide. Whether this is bad or good isn't the point. Parents of some of the people who apparently used information found at ASH to commit suicide are understandably angry that the site exists, but others are more understanding. A Wired three-parter covers the topic sensitively and in detail.Part 1: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,57444,00.html
Part 2: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,57480,00.html
Part 3: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,57548,00.html
Interesting Blog Newcomers and Other Blogosphere Stats
The blog universe is expanding so quickly that it's virtually impossible to keep up with all the content out there - which is probably at least partly why you read our e-zine, to find out what's worth your attention out there in the vast ocean of information. We do it the old-fashioned way, with sweat, tears, and bloody fingers, but there is another way, a more automated way. The Technorati Web site datamines all those blogs out there. They extract various bits of information about the blogosphere, like all blogs that link to a given Web site, or the number of people who are linking to a specific blog. Technorati's latest feature is the Top 100 Interesting Newcomers, a list of blogs "people are talking about.... It should bring up relatively less-known blogs that have new, interesting content posted on them." Read Clay Shirky's "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality" (see the article in Online Culture) to understand some of the theory behind the Technorati's newcomers list.Technorati: http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/interestingnewcomers.html
Open-Source Music Recognition Database Goes Live
MusicBrainz has officially launched its open-source database of music metadata. Music metadata is information such as artist, album title, and list of tracks that appear on an album. MusicBrainz allows any party, commercial or non-profit, to access this data for any purpose whatsoever. MusicBrainz will accept data from anybody who agrees to use the open-standard tagging scheme. MusicBrainz also provides software that can figure out the metadata for digital music files automatically by using file-fingerprinting technology. This would be useful, for example, to generate a database of metadata from a collection of MP3 or Ogg Vorbis music files that might lack such information. Note that MusicBrainz doesn't have any music files, just metadata and the tools with which you can access it in person or via programs. You can find more information in the press release and on the site.MusicBrainz: http://musicbrainz.org/
Press release: http://musicbrainz.org/news/pressreleases/20030211-1.html
Photobloggies Finalists Await Your Vote
After collecting a great schwak of nominations, the Photobloggies are ready for the final vote. As you may recall, the Photobloggies are a new set of awards for the best photoblogs. If you don't know what a photoblog is, visit the site, start browsing through the entries, and the concept should immediately become obvious. In fact, the nominations are a netsurfer's bonanza, particularly if you have any interest in photography. The entries range from odd to spectacularly artistic. You can vote, but before you do, you're in for a genuine treat as you check out all the nominations.http://www.photojunkie.org/photobloggies/
Nude Weblog Awards Also Await Your Vote
We quote the Web site: "Sure, it's a ripoff of all the other awards popping up and taking up valuable webspace. But this time, there's nudity involved." Doesn't that make you want to start that nude blog you always wanted to? Just give us credit for the idea, OK? Oddly enough, some of the blogs nominated for the Nude Weblog Awards don't have much nudity in them. That's easy to understand in a category like "Should Contain Nudity" or "Weblogger We'd Like To See Nude", but there's just no excuse for non-nude entries in "Nudity in Design". In any event, the nominations are in, and if you're not scared of a little tittilation you can go and vote for your favorites. Fair warning though, there's a lot of time sucking netsurfing to be had here.http://www.blissfullybitter.com/nudebloggies.html
The musical "Chicago" is the big winner this year with 13 nominations. Individually, John Williams, who's already got five of the gold statues, received his 42nd nomination, for the score of "Catch Me If You Can". Does the man ever sleep? Weirdest nomination: "The Time Machine" for Best Makeup, presumably for Jeremy Irons's admittedly cool gothic turn as head Morlock.
http://www.oscar.com/nominees/nomineelist.html
Remember Xupiter, that annoying toolbar that is installing itself on computers without users' permission? Wired has a great follow-up on the annoyance and shows how it is the product of some of the Internet's most famous spammers, Saeid and Daniel Yomtobian. We eagerly await the first court case.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57553,00.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
Clay Shirky ponders the evolution of the blog social system and notes a common phenomenon whereby an egalitarian social system inevitably decays to a cliquish collection of A-list players who dominate the discourse and wield a great deal of influence over their peers. This happens in MUDs, BBSes, online communities, and, of course, in blogs. It turns out that this kind of self organizing behavior of community networks is inevitable, though only recently recognized as a natural phenomenon arising from the interaction of many agents - bloggers, in this case - exercising free choice. Shirky does an excellent job explaining this phenomenon and illustrates it with graphs and empirical data from the blogosphere.http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
Spam Wars: My Short Life as an Unintentional Spammer
A couple of months ago, Mike Masnick got hit with a nasty spam attack. A porn spammer had put Masnick's e-mail address as the return address in a spam mailing. Within 36 hours, Masnick had received around 500 messages in his mailbox - bounce messages, autoresponders, and angry rants from the angry spam recipients. This kind of indirect attack does not get a lot of publicity but it is becoming more common and is difficult to defend against unless you control your own mail server. Masnick took the time to write up his experiences for our edification, making particular points about lack of standardization in the format of bounce messages and the nature of the people who actually bother to reply to spam. Yes, there are indeed still foolish or ignorant souls who reply to spam and Masnick has some insight into who they are. It's a good story.http://www.techdirt.com/fotr/20030211/0230225_F.shtml
On the Internet, Everyone Knows You're John Lott
One of the neat things about the Internet is that it makes it relatively easy to ferret out certain types of deception. In this case, John Lott, a rather vehemently pro-gun scholar of gun control - got that? - apparently was not satisfied with the public reaction to his statistical research on the subject. He concocted Mary Rosch, an alternate, fictional identity, to promote his research on various online forums, but being relatively inept about Net technology, Lott got caught. Ordinarily, this story of chicanary to create a buzz would not be that big a deal, but the subject of gun control and gun use statistics is so politically loaded that any allegations of personal misconduct on the part of the researcher pretty much kill the credibility of the research itself - not that Lott's research is all that credible in the first place, as shown by some detailed analysis linked to in the story. You can shill, but you can't hide, particularly in politically sensitive grass.http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/2/6/111014/4476
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
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Mambo Sinuendo
The Dante Club
Sex, Drugs & Economics: An Unconventional Introduction to Economics
Perl & LWPSURFING SITES
The Man Who Predicted Sept. 11
An interview with the head of security for investment firm Morgan Stanley Dean Witter was filmed in 1998 on the 44th floor of the World Trade Center. In the film, Rick Rescorla, who was killed in the Sept. 11 attack, describes events that will lead to an attack and the subsequent war on terrorism. The segment was to be incorporated into a documentary on the nature of warfare, but the documentary was never completed and the footage sat hidden away until sometime after the Sept. 11 attack. A colonel active in three wars, Rescorla is brutally honest and eerily prophetic. It appears from online user reviews that the only people reviewing the film who've not been impressed are those who have been unable to play it. One notes that a "daft" JavaScript effectively prevents Linux users from viewing the content. For most of us, the usual players will work just fine.http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/voice_prophet
President Bush recently described the unfolding events in the Gulf as the re-run of a bad movie. How right he was, on so many levels. Well, come and see Gulf War 2, a Flash cartoon. It's a dark tragi-comedy with a cast of millions of Iraqis, Americans, Iranians, and others, with cameo roles for Bush, Cheney, Powell, et al. The action begins in Iraq with the UK and US bombarding the country, but rapidly spreads throughout the region. From Turkey to Saudi Arabia and from Egypt to Pakistan all hell breaks loose as virtually everyone is sucked into the carnage. The site claims to use "sophisticated temporal algorithms and historical semiotic analysis to achieve an accuracy rating of 99.999%" to predict the outcome of the war, but we suspect that there is a hint of tongue-in-cheek. After all, it's just a cartoon. This couldn't really happen, could it?
http://www.idleworm.com/nws/2002/11/iraq2.shtml
The Home Despot site certainly looks to be a visual and textual parody of a certain large home improvement chain's site. Unfortunately, as you click the many categories on the home page, you'll find the site is still under construction and only a page deep in most links. The concept seems to make sense in today's chaotic world. Maybe there is such a place as Home Despot. It might be an arm of the CIA, or possibly MI-6. The colors are wrong for a Mossad operation. There are questions: Are franchises available, or is the chain strictly company owned and run? Most important, do John Ashcroft and Don Rumsfeld know about or control Home Despot? Or do they simply shop here?
http://www.homedespot.com/
The Award-Winning Humor of the Van Gogh-Goghs
The Van Gogh-Goghs are a sketch comedy group who describe themselves as "six dweebs dedicated to bringing you the finest in Web comedy". Humor is a subjective thing but their Rocklopedia Fakebandica, which documents all the fictional bands and singers from TV and movies, was Yahoo's top site for 2002 and it's easy to see why. There are more than 500 bands listed, from the Amazing Marvin Suggs and his Muppaphone ("The Muppet Show") to Wyld Stallyns ("Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" - ever wonder if the post-Matrix Keanu Reeves regrets that one?). Other features include their dare to prove them wrong on such venerable topics as "Movie Popcorn: Eaten sooner? Or later?", a rant about the subversive Canadian and British invention of Boxing Day, and a collection of the most useless uses of a time machine. One of best was "Going back to the 1800s to tell your ancestors about eBay."http://www.vgg.com/
The Beginning of Do-It-Yourself
For those of us in the computer generation, it's hard to imagine a time when small fixes around the house weren't classified "do-it-yourself". Although today we might have an entire cable station dedicated to nothing but, at the turn of the century, home improvement was a concept just coming into existence. The National Building Museum has an online piece to accompany its exhibit that studies the social and economic drivers that pushed this move toward self-sufficiency and the reshaping of the concept of "home". It's interesting reading.http://www.nbm.org/Exhibits/current/Do_It_Yourself.html
Were you alone again on Valentine's Day? No cards or flowers delivered except for the badly forged one from your mom? Consider participating in the global International Rejection Project being co-ordinated by Harlan Cohen, the popular relationship advice columnist. He declared Feb. 9-15 to be Rejection Awareness Week and although that has probably passed by the time you read this, it's always easy to take part. Take a risk, tell someone you care about how you feel (after a suitable amount of rejection training of course), and record the results. Sure, you might get a rejection, but it is all in the interest of international research. You can even check out how the other researchers fared. Whether it gives you a new sense of hope or it just makes you feel better to see that someone out there is a bigger loser than you are, it sure beats crying over another romantic comedy re-run.
http://www.helpmeharlan.com/rejectiondiary.html
If you're a crossword fan who likes using a compass then Letterboxing could be for you. It started when a gentleman left his calling card in a bottle on Dartmoor, England but now has grown to encompass several continents. This Web site provides clues in 50 states and seven countries but mainly focuses on Northern America. The basic idea is that someone hides a waterproof box in a beautiful or remote location. The box contains a logbook, a carved rubber stamp, and perhaps other goodies. The hider then writes a clue, which can be straightforward, poetic, or cryptic. Hunters armed with clues attempt to find the box. When successful, they stamp the logbook in the box with their personal stamp, and stamp their own logbook with the box's stamp. Clue solving may involve research, riddle-solving, cryptology, using a compass, triangulation, pacing, and map reading. This is a geocaching treasure hunt without the use of a GPS.
http://www.letterboxing.org/
This Vampire Game Will Suck Your Time
The object of the online "Vampires!" game is, not surprisingly, to drink blood. Lots of it. The more the merrier. Well, for you, at least. You move one square at a time around a virtual city, looking for dinner. You can only move so many times in an hour before you have to rest, which ensures that the server doesn't get overloaded. Interestingly, if you send the creator of the site money towards server support, you can overcome this handicap, which is a brilliant idea. It allows the players to understand the direct correspondence between their use and the site creator's monthly Internet hosting fees. This game is so simple and so mindless, and yet it keeps sucking us back in.http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=balaam
Allows us to introduce you to Project Entropia. The goal, here, is to colonize the virtual planet Calypso. Ah, but once there, you won't survive long without tools and supplies. You can buy them with Project Entropia dollars (PEDs). And you can buy your PEDs with real-world cash. Not that it's a one-way street: once you get yourself set up, you can form companies that provide value-added services or products, which could allow you to earn PEDs without investing cash. Moreover, if you really get going well, you can convert PEDs back into real-world cash. In theory, you could end up running a cyberbusiness on a virtual alien planet. You could earn enough to quit your day job and still be able to pay the mortgage, get the braces for the kids, and buy those botox injections you've been thinking about. Theoretically. The software download (Windows only) is free. Good luck.
http://www.project-entropia.com/
Rock and Roll All Night - and Photoshop Every Day
KISS Your Face is a bit of a misnomer. It leads one to believe there's a Java applet or a Flash file that's going to allow visitors to upload their pictures and try out the various makeup styles of the KISS boys on themselves. Rather, you suffer the amusement of seeing Henry Winkler or Donna Reed in full KISS regalia, in the same way that that Osborne/Osmonds Pepsi Twist commercial works. The pictures are incredibly well done. The artist takes requests, although not for personal transformations. If you have a public figure you'd like to see KISSed, you can suggest it. It'd be interesting to see world leaders. For instance, how would the Dalai Lama look in Paul Stanley's makeup or George Bush (either one, come to think of it) as Gene Simmons?http://www.kissonline.com/kissyourface/body.html
There's a lot of weird stuff here. Pastaroids, a Flash-enabled, Italian-cuisine-influenced version of the old Asteroids arcade game, is highly addictive. You've been warned. There are some wonderful animations as well -- Macolytes will definitely want to view a demo on how to start a Quadra 950. The Trippy Mirror can hypnotize you. There isn't a lot of content here, but if you don't find something you like, it's probably your good fortune that heartbeat and respiration are involuntary.
http://www.mantasoft.co.uk/showcase/
Collective Good works in conjunction with several charities to reuse, recycle, and refurbish old cell phones. Cell phones that arrive in good working order are recycled and sent to organizations in Latin America for redistribution. Its a rival to Cell for Cash, which we covered in NSD 9.02. Many people in developing countries can not afford the luxury of a cell phone. This process initiated by Collective Good brings cell phones to developing countries at affordable prices. If your cell phone really is trash, Collective Good will scavenge it for useable parts and then send all toxic elements to an environmental agency that will dispose of it safely. This process is truly a win-win situation for all parties involved. Not only will you be helping someone in a developing country and protecting your environment, you'll also receive a charitable donation tax receipt for your gift.
NSD 9.02: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.02.html#SS19
Collective Good: http://www.collectivegood.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Who knew that smileys from the land of Hello Kitty would be cute enough to kill at 20 paces? They're also just about as complicated as you would expect from a land with an ideographic alphabet and an anime tradition.http://club.pep.ne.jp/~hiroette/en/facemarks/index.html
Chris Pirillo is renting his - yes, his - chest for advertising. Then there's Michel who wants you to buy her - yes, her - a new pair of boobs. Naturally, our first thought is to buy advertising on Michel's new boobs....
Pirillo: http://www.rentmychest.com/
Michel: http://www.giveboobs.com/
What Operating System Are You?
Simply answer a series of detailed questions and this site tells you the operating system it thinks you are most suited for. No, 90 percent of testees do not wind up as Windows people. There are lots of possibilities, and, despite being pegged as an Amiga personality, our Mac-fanatic reviewer thought the results fair and reasonably accurate. Now, to just find a used Amiga store....http://www.bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz.php
Why pay Madison Avenue hotshots millions to come up with a slogan for your product? Just tap the name of your product into a box and the Slogan Generator spits out a slogan. Sometimes it'll tell you something you already know - "Life's pretty straight without Netsurfer."
http://thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan/
Eric Myer took portraits of 20 people, synchronized their faces at a point between the nose and lips and divided them horizontally. Visitors can meld the top half of one face with the bottom half of another. The results are entertaining. This site requires JavaScript but, amazingly, that's about it.
http://www.ericmyer.com/stereotypes.htm
SOFTWARE
The Mac world is abuzz with word of this new utility development tool. Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Mac OS X that lets you run little files called widgets that can do just about anything you care to program. Konfabulator's main claim to fame is that it is closely integrated with Apple's Quartz rendering engine, which allows you to create widgets outside of traditional window borders. The Konfabulator Web site already has several widgets that can do stuff like catch news feeds, display the time, play games, and load webcam images. The possibilities are endless, and graphically pretty. Wired has some background on the developers.Konfabulator: http://www.konfabulator.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,57620,00.html
Normally we don't blindly parrot press releases, but in the case of this very special release of the Opera browser there is really no reason not to. "Two weeks ago it was revealed that Microsoft's MSN portal targeted Opera users, by purposely provided them with a broken page. As a reply to MSN's treatment of its users, Opera Software today released a very special Bork edition of its Opera 7 for Windows browser. The Bork edition behaves differently on one Web site: MSN. Users accessing the MSN site will see the page transformed into the language of the famous Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show: Bork, Bork, Bork!" The PR has more details about the whole MSN situation, and you can download the software from the FTP site.
PR: http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2003/02/14/
Opera Bork: ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/custom/win/bork/