BREAKING SURF
| 2003 Weblog Awards Winners and the Best of British Blogging |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| New iTunes 4.2 and QuickTime 6.5 |
| New Winamp 5 Media Player |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Netsurfer Digest Presents: The 12 Sites of Christmas, 2003
Way back in 1996 we had a little fun with bits of the old traditional song "The Twelve Days of Christmas". We took the catalog of items from the verses and linked them to various fun places on the Net, adding some spiffy graphics along the way. The site was widely linked in its day, but from sheer inertia and laziness we did not update it in subsequent years. Until now. Ladies and Gentlemen, we present the completely updated 2003 version (well, the graphics are still the same) of the Netsurfer Digest 12 Sites of Christmas. We're off for the year and will be back during the second week of January 2004. Have a happy holiday season!http://www.netsurf.com/12sites.html
While Netsurfer is on vacation over the holidays, the European Mars Express/Beagle 2 spacecraft will arrive at Mars Dec. 25 to look for signs of life. This is the first of a flurry of Mars related landings, with NASA's first Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, set to arrive Jan. 3, with Opportunity hard on its heels, landing Jan. 24. All this activity should make for some exciting netsurfing since all the landers are set to return plenty of detailed and hopefully spectacular imagery. So while NSD takes a three-week holiday, make sure to keep an eye on the respective spacecraft Web sites - though it's a fair bet that Mars will be very much in the media anyway.
Mars Express: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/
Beagle 2: http://www.beagle2.com/index.htm
NASA Mars Exploration Rovers: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
NASA Proposes New Nuclear-Powered Mission to Jupiter System
Cassini, NASA's nuclear-powered Saturn probe, just passed Jupiter and in the process captured the most detailed portrait yet of our system's largest planet. NASA has also proposed a new mission, the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO), for 2011. This ambitious project would send a sophisticated set of instruments to study Jupiter's three icy moons - Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa. Each moon may have a subsurface ocean capable of supporting life. JIMO is not ambitious because NASA is still grounded in the wake of the Columbia's crash, but because the agency wants to use the mission as a test bed for the development of nuclear-powered spacecraft that might carry humans to the planets in the future. Nuclear power will allow bigger and more sophisticated instrument payloads, but NASA's history with nuclear power sources is problematic. Cassini almost never left the ground because it contains plutonium and protesters feared that any launch disaster might spread the toxic element over Florida. Given NASA's safety record, it's unclear if the agency will be able to sell another nuclear-fueled mission to the public. No matter what happens, it's refreshing to see that someone at NASA is thinking more about the future than about the past.Cassini's Jupiter Photo: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-releases-03/20031113-pr-a.cfm
JIMO: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/
On the 100th anniversarry of the Wright brothers' flight, it is only right that we remind you what's going on with the X Prize. The X Prize is a competition for a $10 million bounty, designed "to jumpstart the space tourism industry through competition between the most talented rocket experts in the world." Currently, 20 teams from five countries are competing with privately funded space ships that have to carry three passengers to an altitude of 100 kilometers and return them safely to Earth to get the money. Progress has been impressive, with the team led by legendary airplane designer Burt Rutan scoring a significant recent success. This week their SpaceShipOne craft broke the sound barrier and reached just over 20 kilometers altitude. The X Prize Web site has numerous breaking news updates and a PDF file with a consolidated update on the progress of all teams vying for the money.
X Prize: http://www.xprize.com/
PDF update: http://www.xprize.com/papers/XPupdate_1203.pdf
To which countries do the media pay the most attention? That's probably not the first question you ask yourself when you arise from bed, but it might be something worth keeping in mind as you read your morning paper. It's a safe bet that much of the media is focused on Iraq these days. Ethan Zuckerman of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School offers Global Attention Profiles (GAP), a series of maps of media attention around the world. You can, for example, pull up a map of CNN's focus on world affairs. If you really want to beat yourself soundly, you can peruse the GAP FAQ, but the Results page explains what's going on well enough. Media attention appears to correlate with economic power across the news services analyzed with the exception of the BBC, which seems to coincide better with population.
http://h2odev.law.harvard.edu/ezuckerman/
Red, Blue, and Other Colors: the American Political Landscape
The 2004 American elections are already on the media landscape, and so is the red and blue election-results map of the US, in which blue represents the Democrats and red, the Republicans. Unfortunately, the world is neither black and white nor blue and red. This article from CommonWealth magazine boasts a multicoloured map of the US that uses actual electoral data to produce a strikingly different view. It may even have some predictive power. The authors use the map to tease out some novel analyses of American electoral polity. Now, let's see if it holds up through the election.http://www.massinc.org/commonwealth/new_map_exclusive/beyond_red_blue.html
Iranian Bloggers Challenge Government at UN Conference
Iranian bloggers are mad and they aren't going to take it anymore. The Iranian government censors much of the Web and Iranian bloggers used a blog associated with a recent UN summit to denounce these practices and try to reverse their government's policies. Whether or not the protest succeeds, the effort is a remarkable attempt to criticize a government that doesn't appreciate internal dissent. It's another sign that the theocrats in Tehran may not be able to control the country forever. Alas, they still have the guns, and blogs are not bulletproof. MetaFilter and BBC have more info.MetaFilter: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/30185
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3310493.stm
WHO's Views on Climate Change and Human Health
It should be no surprise to learn that humans alter environments. Today, thanks to our large numbers, energy intensive lives, and the global range of human activities, our environmental impact is substantial. Just how substantial and how the effects influence health is the subject of this document from the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO notes that climate change will increase threats to human health especially among the poor in tropical and subtropical countries. There's much in this PDF document about sustainability and the concept of living within Earth's limits. As expected, there's also an impressive list of areas that demand a great deal of further research. The report largely reflects the presupposition that global warming is induced by human activity, which is in fact still under scientfic debate - it could turn out to be in some measure a natural phenomenon. Some experts regard prognostications like this document with suspicion; bureaucracies like the WHO can be bastions of political correctness, may have conclusions biased towards intervention, and may assume a scientific consensus that doesn't really exist. It pays to be cautious before embracing sweeping overviews such as those presented here. Still, the report is food for thought, and its 36 pages admirably survey the sweep of the relationship between climate and health.http://www.who.int/globalchange/climate/en/ccSCREEN.pdf
Michael Crichton: Environmentalism as Religion
On Sept. 15, bestselling writer Michael Crichton ("Jurassic Park", "The Andromeda Strain") addressed the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He was asked to name the most important challenge facing mankind. His answer: "the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda." To illustrate this opinion, Crichton chose the environmental movement as his example. Specifically, Crichton argues that the modern environmental movement has passed from the realm of science to the realm of religion. This is an intentionally provocative speech that directly compares bedrock tenets of environmental doctrine with religious beliefs and their terrible failings. Astute readers will note that Crichton is not anti-environment - quite the contrary. His barn-burning speech is a clarion call to disengage environmental policy from environmental religion and bring it squarely into the fold of cold hard science. It's provocative, to say the least.http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote05.html
Apple's Steve Jobs has optimistic things to say about his company's place in the world, but mostly this Rolling Stone interview is about music, what ails the music industry, and how the iTunes Music Store was set up and where it's going. As Jobs tells it, the people at Apple gradually encouraged folk in the music business to accept some highly uncomfortable realities. First, they told them, you can't protect against theft - it's flat out impossible. Downloading is too convenient to ignore. Instead, you must compete and give users a real alternative. The second unwelcome idea was that subscription services will fail. Customers don't want to rent music, they want to own it. The music industry, Jobs says, received these notions frostily and resisted for a while. Is iTunes a success? Ten billion songs are sold annually via CD, so the 25 million iTunes sales are a drop in the bucket, barely a start - but a start nonetheless. Jobs explains how experience rather than cost is the driving force behind online music, and how movies don't fit the paradigm. This is smart talk, sensibly penetrating the fog of nonsense and ignorance surrounding issues like piracy.
http://www.rollingstone.com/features/featuregen.asp?pid=2529
The Onion's Least Essential Albums of 2003
This might just serve as the best-ever list of things to buy for folks you hate. The Onion's Least Essential Albums of 2003 is a compendium of the most horrible, forgettable, irritating album releases of the year. Each selection comes with a few choice nasty words and a link for those with a yearning to purchase the best of the bad. Perhaps the most notorious is Other Ways of Speaking by Russell Crowe's band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, which doesn't sound like anything we'd like to find under a tree, unless that tree were still in the ground. Also scrabbling in the dirt for bottom honors are Benzino's Redemption, scathingly put down, and wrestling's Randy Savage, with Be a Man - viciously bad and phony in Onion's opinion. The "winner" of this thing, proclaimed worst of the worst, is Prince's N.E.W.S, which gains the condemnation for its four long, jazzy, funky, instrumental things named after the four cardinal points of the compass. The Onion's list itself might be in the running for the least essential list of 2003, but it's hard to tell as we haven't hit peak season for listing stuff yet.http://www.theonionavclub.com/3948/feature1.html
The undebatably crowning achievement of the current Bush presidency so far was last December's Barney Cam, in which a camera followed Barney, the First Scottish Terrier, around and through the White House holiday preparations. The sequel to last year's holiday blockbuster has gone live. Barney Cam II: Barney Reloaded once again offers us a dog's-eye view of the holidays at the White House. The all-star cast includes top advisors, the White House chef, and the President himself, who sternly admonishes Barney to quit playing in the snow and get back to work. Former spokesman Ari Fleischer is caught playing poker with Barney, much to the amazement of a staffer who notes, "You don't even work here anymore! What are you doing here?" The heartwarming Christmas tale ends on a happy note, as festivities ensue. Where's Triumph when you need him?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/holiday/
Do Kids' Bracelets Code for Sex?
The so-called jelly bracelets first popularized by the trend-setting Madonna in her early videos have come back 20 years later as a fad among the elementary school and young teen set. A lot of folks swear that they're now called "sex bracelets", but a lot of others swear the whole thing's an urban legend. CNN has a brief story on the story, and they don't know what to make of it any more than professional urban legend debunkers do. The hoax-busting house of Snopes declares the story "undetermined" while waiting for more reliable data, but you ought to check out what they have to say. Are the kids sending signals by wearing bracelets? One word comes to mind, and that word is "marketing", which should probably be a four-letter word. Whether or not the jelly bracelet thing is fact or fiction is beside the point: marketeers are definitely trying to profit by selling sex to kids. Don't believe it? Check out the "back-to-school" clothing offered at your local department store or at Abercrombie & Fitch.CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/12/10/sex.bracelet.ap/index.html
Snopes: http://snopes.com/risque/school/bracelet.asp
Abercrombie & Fitch: http://www.abercrombie.com/anf/index.html
Following in the footsteps of Amazon.com, Google is now experimenting with indexing the content of printed books. Basically, publishers have made excerpts of printed works available for searching by the Google search engine. Google returns a page with the excerpts that match the search, some information about the book (format, pages, publication date, ISBN), and links to shops where you can buy it. Google itself does not get a cut of the transaction, at least not yet, but does include AdWords advertising on the search results page. The FAQ has details, including information on how qualified publishers can join the program.
http://print.google.com/print/faq.html
Netsurfer Books, the Holiday Issue
Our last Netsurfer Books of the year is packed with reviews of books that can still make perfect gifts for the holidays. We've got Pompeii, Antoine St. Exupery, the bitter sweetness of chocolate, the wonders of nature, the horror of battle, and 100 Suns on Earth. And that's just a fraction of the goodness in this issue, our largest Netsurfer Books ever. Give it a browse.http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/sub/v05/nsb.05.12.html
ONLINE CULTURE
2003 Weblog Awards Winners and the Best of British Blogging
And the 2003 Weblog Award winners are.... Well, there's a bunch of them. Little Green Footballs won the Best Overall Blog category. Best New Blog was Allah Is in the House, which also won the Best Humor Blog category. The Wizbang blog has the complete list of winners. Meanwhile, the Guardian has produced its own list of the best in British blogging. The notable winner of the Best Written Blog category is Belle de Jour, the diary of a London callgirl. By the way, Bruce Sterling was one of the judges for the Guardian. You'll find all the links in this Guardian story, which also explains a bit of the thinking behind the judging process.Wizbang: http://wizbangblog.com/archives/001317.php
Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1108883,00.html
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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.
For more selections, check out: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 2
Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather
Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and SpainSURFING SITES
Earth and Mars do not have an entirely happy relationship, what with one invading the other every few years. Every once in a while, we drop those pesky landers on top of the Martians, and they in turn send hordes of flying saucers to destroy our cities, blast our jet planes, and abduct our women. Then before you know it we send our own space marines to reduce their cities to rubble and raise our flag over their dismembered Martian corpses. As we said, it's not a happy relationship. Fortunately, we have the likes of legendary pulp-comic artist Norm Saunders to document this violent history in a series of brilliant bubble gum cards entitled "Mars Attacks" from the early 1960s. If you're looking for the perfect rendering of the stereotypical blaster-wielding, saucer-riding monsters from Mars ravaging the Earth, this is it. Fair warning: the images are violent and sometimes painfully gruesome, but are an absolute must see.http://www.essex1.com/people/zelda/gallery1.htm
Albums and Stories of World War II
Anybody with an interest in the European theater of World War II should check out this site. Items archived here are as diverse as personnel rosters, menus, excerpts from training manuals (e.g. which describe the removal of mines and how to camouflage your vehicle). The extremely detailed documents give the reader an insight into the operation and training of both opposing forces in the west and in Africa. Where else could you find out how each side managed to negotiate the tangled branches of the Normandy hedgerows, for example? The extensive collection of photographs alone makes the site worthwhile. A variety of sources have donated the images, which cover European and African subjects from both a military and a human perspective. This is an invaluable resource for anybody interested in the period for historic research or for the purposes of recreating fine details in artistic endeavors.http://www.lonesentry.com/
Life in the 318th Fighter Squadron
Dennis Parker was an American pilot in World War II. With help from his grandson Philip, he has assembled his three volumes of wartime diaries on the Web. His photo gallery provides images of documents, sketches, and other memorabilia from his time spent training, flying, and pacing a POW camp in Germany. The site includes the actual telegraph sent to Parker's mother when he went missing in action over Austria. The diary is terse as it notes fatalities, near misses, and the leisure time spent at cards, ping pong, and in other pursuits. Parker, in the 318th Fighter Squadron, was based in Morocco and Italy during 1943-1944. Unfortunately, a short epilogue is all that is recorded of his bailing out over Austria and his 13 months as a POW in Stalag Luft III, although the bulk of the artwork seems to come from that period. This is a remarkably honest and unedited account of life as a wartime flyer that can stand alone as a snapshot of the times.http://www.checkertail.com/
Plane Crash Info and Recordings
Although more people die crossing the street than perish in commercial airplane crashes each year, there's something innately horrifying about the thought of hundreds of people dying all at once at the unavoidable whim of the laws of physics. Many people have an obsessive morbid curiosity about the events. Richard Kebabjian is no exception - he has created a site obsessed with plane crashes. The most disturbing section is the Last Words page, which includes transcripts of communication among the doomed and between them and air traffic control and other pilots. In some cases, Kebabjian offers cockpit voice recordings or air traffic control tapes for one end of the conversation as it happened. Do not listen to the cockpit voice recordings unless you're sure you want to hear what happens in an airplane accident.http://www.planecrashinfo.com/
Advertising of the 19th Century
Only in the mid 20th century did Edward Bernays - no doubt influenced by his uncle, Sigmund Freud - learn that advertisers need not appeal to the rational minds of their targets. A far more effective approach was to appeal to their more basic and baser urges. Predating the discovery, none of the 19th century ads from Harper's Weekly on this site seem to suggest that use of the product in question will lead to endless partying with big-breasted blondes. No, a far more straightforward approach was evident back in the 1860s when Costar's Vermin Exterminators simply pointed out that "Rats come out of their holes to die" after being dosed with this pest remedy. Similarly, the advertising of life insurance was a curious business back then - the Travellers Insurance Co. in 1869 advertised their products by referring to actual policies they had paid out on. "Mr Chas M Rogers whose mysterious murder created such a sensation was insured for $10,000. It was paid April 8th," they proudly state. There are dozens of fascinating ads here, none more so than the ad for Dr. Wolcott's Pain Paint that mentions the 1868 impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.http://advertising.harpweek.com/
This site reflects the human fascination with cold, hard cash. If you've ever wondered how much your favorite beverage would have cost you in 1468 or puzzled over what the architect of the Acropolis earned for his work then here are your answers. The site has gathered a wide selection of links to articles and information on currencies worldwide and what they could purchase at various points in the past, such as 1625 in Southampton, England, what a wartime shopping basket would have cost in 1941, and prices of equipment during the California gold rush. The site even knows how much a 19th-century Welsh cattle drover would have paid in tolls. This is an invaluable research resource for history projects and for authors of historical fiction. You will never again have to wonder about the cost of spices in medieval times while seasoning your pizza.
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.html
Some years ago, a pair of parents saddled a guy with the name of Buckminster. With his social life shot, he had no choice but to turn to intellectual pursuits - and he became very good at it. Even Albert Einstein, who seldom dealt seriously with other people, mentioned that the young Buckminster Fuller was amazing. In slightly more than 50 years, the man who may best be remembered as the creator of the geodesic dome was awarded 47 honorary doctorate degrees in a variety of disciplines. Most of us could spend 54 years attending college and manage to end up with perhaps half a dozen degrees at the doctorate level. Based upon this disparity, it seems reasonable to file suit against your parents for not giving you an unusual name. Who knows what gifts you could have offered if you had only been similarly motivated? The bottom line is that Fuller was motivated, and came up with some incredible stuff. The Buckminster Fuller Institute documents and extends his ideas. Fuller was a down-to-earth geek, and you owe yourself a chance to learn from the master.
http://www.bfi.org/index.html
Ever wonder if you could write the next hit love song? Now, you can put your lyrics to song by visiting the Let them Sing It for You site. Created by Swedish artist Erik Bunger, this sound art project makes it possible for you to harness famous voices to sing your lyrics. Simply enter your words into the box provided and click the Let Them Sing It button, then sit back and listen. The site queries a collection of one-word audio clips and strings them together in a "song". Currently, there are over 1,400 words available to be sung from the ever growing database, which the purveyors of this site are constantly updating with requests from visitors. If you dont find your chosen words available, simply e-mail Bunger's team and they'll make every effort to include your requested words. While this project won't get you a Grammy nomination, the concept is both unique and amusing.
http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/p1/src/sing/default.asp
Dr. P's Dog Training and Behavior Links
Dr. P's Dog Training and Behavior site is a complete set of links to dog-related resources. Dr. P is Mark Plonsky, Ph.D., who teaches in the psychology department at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point and also has a dog-behavior consulting business. The links available through the site get readers to everything from the initial acquisition (indeed, pre-aquisition) to basic training and care through all the issues dog owners can confront (and clean up). There are also extensive links to every conceivable sort of activity that dogs and humans can do together. The site is an extremely valuable resource for all people owned by dogs and those planning to take the leap. The only drawback is the last update was over two years ago. Most of the links spot-checked still work, and most of the information is timeless.http://www.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/dog.htm
There's no question that Casey Neistat had a legitimate beef. Apple's iPod may be the coolest thing in the music biz, but consumers can't replace the battery in the thing and when Neistat's iPod battery malfunctioned after a year or so, Apple had no real recommendation for him other than to buy a new one. In response, Neistat and his brother made a short film of Apple's customer service and of one of them (we presume) tagging iPod posters with a warning. It might seem appropriate, but click on the link at the top of the page. Apple has since instituted a battery replacement program that, while still on the expensive side, seems fair to Neistat. It might be fair for Neistat to put those two paragraphs on the main page....
http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/
Everybody has gotten a Big Mouth Billy Bass at a white elephant exchange at work - it just keeps coming back. It might not return, however, after the current proprietors peruse a few Billy Bass-hack Web sites. Marsette Vona teaches you how to hack your Billy Bass to make it say amusing things. Another page lets you know how to outfit your talking fish so that it can network with a desktop computer. We even found a claim that one day the fish will be video conference-enabled. For $10, you can pick up your own Billy on eBay if you haven't been fortunate enough to be gifted with one yet.
Big Mouth Billy Bass Hacking in Linux: http://bigmouth.here-n-there.com/
Vona: http://www.mit.edu/~vona/bass/bass.html
Hacking Big Mouth Billy Bass: http://engineering.rowan.edu/~neyh4326/billy/index.html
In a panic about what to get that special someone in your life for Christmas? Fret no more, NSD is on hand to help with ideas: what about a set of fecal tongs? This site is, as far as we can make out, the only specialist fecal tong site on the Net, with pictures, descriptions, and specs of 24 different sets of tongs. Sadly, not all are on sale, but the exhibits might inspire you to track down your own set. Our favorites are a set of Finnish silver tongs custom-made for the late George Harrison, commissioned to match the former Beatles guitarist's dinnerware, and the Haitian voodoo fecal tongs. Imagine the face of your loved one lighting up on Christmas morning as they receive this unique gift.
http://www.unc.edu/~jdsmith/tongs/
Themed Trivia Quiz Master Site
When a site proclaims itself to include everything from "Seinfeld" to particle physics, you just have to be intrigued. In this case, the claim is justified, as here you'll find more than 40,000 quizzes provided by volunteer quiz authors. The quizzes are grouped into browsable categories such as riddles, geography, and even religion. Alternatively, you can use the search engine to find a quiz on a particular topic. If you think you're up for it, you can play online and vie for the hourly crown of smartest player in the aptly named SmartyPants Hall of Fame. There is also a facility to set up a private quiz area where your friends can play. There is definitely enough here to give you more trivia ice-breakers for the office Christmas party than Michael Caine at the Oscars.http://www.funtrivia.com/
From whistling for your dog in the park through to wolf-whistling construction workers admiring a pretty passer-by, whistling is an almost universal hobby for people everywhere. As Lauren Bacall once famously said, you just put your lips together and blow - which might explain why it was subject of a ban based on witchcraft and devil-worshipping during the Middle Ages. If you've ever considered taking whistling further and doing it for musical effect, you should check out this site. One enthusiast has charted his progress from casual whistler to one who is able to make all his notes sound clear and well articulated. He even describes how he mastered the ability to whistle in counterpoint. Nowadays, he probably calls his pet Fido with a quick burst of Bach, which will be fine as long as no devils show up.
http://home.earthlink.net/~rdmiller3/i_whistling.html
The World's Choice for President
Next November, citizens of the US will cast their votes in the next presidential election. While the outcome of this election will directly affect the lives of Americans, citizens of other nations worldwide will be indirectly affected by the result. At this Web site, people all over the world can register to vote for their candidate of choice next November - not that the ballots cast by those registered with Theworldvotes.org will have any official standing. The only meaning these results will have is as a voice for those living outside the red, white, and blue border. The underlying initiative of this experiment is to test e-democracy and provide a forum for matters that affect all residents of Earth.http://www.theworldvotes.org/
Explore the history and evolution of the United States Postal Service at this online portal sponsored by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Opened to the public in 1993, the National Postal Museum is located in the old post office building next to Union Station in Washington, D.C. This online presence gives visitors a glimpse at the exhibitions and archives housed there. A plethora of information and resources is available at this site, including a wealth of resources about the history of mail delivery in the US. Browse through these pages and learn about the Pony Express, mailsters, mail sleds, and many more curious facts.
http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/
BlowSearch's New Metasearch Engine
BlowSearch, around four years in development, is the latest metasearch engine to hit the feed. It pulls in data from some 20 search engines, and hopes to become the one-stop shopping center for all your data needs. One cool feature is that when you click a link, the display comes up in a separate window. If it isn't relevant, you just close the window - none of this clicking the back tabs to return to your search results. BlowSearch thus circumvents an annoyance that Google users who don't right-click or control-click have simply resigned themselves to. It also displays which engine or engines presented the result you're viewing. It's speedy, and holds the graphics in check for just that purpose. You can also download BlowSearch's free toolbar, if you're running Windows and Internet Explorer. It features a popup blocker, cursor searching, and other tools.http://www.blowsearch.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
"We're on the Fucking Moon, Over."
Sure, there was lots of practice for landing the lunar module, but undoubtedly one of the other bits of training Neil Armstrong and Mission Control had to go through was the, "Please Don't Say the F-Word upon Landing on the Moon" course. They failed.http://www.blogjam.com/neil_armstrong/
What a Crappy Present - CD Gift Advice for Parents and Kids
"I got that on the computer like two months ago." "You could've got me a DVD for 3 bucks more.... Why are you always so cheap?" This site offers timely advice on buying CDs for your kids - in a word, don't.http://www.whatacrappypresent.com/
View this teaser for lots of swinging from buildings, dodging the odd thrown car, battling the occasional metallic tentacle, and a kiss, interrupted.
http://spiderman.sonypictures.com/
The German Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has resurrected its famous 2001 Blinkenlights project (see NSD 7.42). It has again turned a whole building into a computer display. Say what you will, but playing Pong on the side of a building is always impressive.
NSD 7.42: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v07/nsd.07.42.html#BS5
Blinkenlights 2003: http://www.blinkenlights.de/reloaded.en.html
What Not to Do During LOTR Screenings
A short guide to getting kicked out of any theatre screening "The Lord of the Rings" (LOTR). This would be even funnier if the movies were actually bad. As it is, the list is good enough. The Star Wars franchise on the other hand....What Not to Do: http://www.geocities.com/fossilfreak.geo/j03/0312/12.htm
LOTR: http://www.lordoftherings.net/
For those times when you don't want to give out your real phone number, there are actual phone numbers that will let your pathetic pesterer down unambiguously. There are even business cards that deliver the message. It's a boon to pestered women - and others - everywhere (and similar to a site we had in NSD 8.09).
Rejection Hotline: http://rejectionhotline.com/
NSD 8.09: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v08/nsd.08.09.html#FJ4
Having difficulty finding the right words to break off your relationship with a significant other? Not sure how to admit you've met someone new or that you find your other's company a complete bore? Visit the Break-up Letter Generator, fill in the blanks, hit the generate button, and presto.
http://alumni.imsa.edu/~amyyan/php/dump.html
SOFTWARE
New iTunes 4.2 and QuickTime 6.5
Apple has released a new version of iTunes, but apparently the only major changes support AOL-based users. There are also some unspecified performance improvements. Concurrent with the iTunes release, there's also a new version of QuickTime available. The big new feature is support for 3GPP and 3GPP2, which Apple defines as "worldwide standards for the creation, delivery, and playback of multimedia over new, high-speed wireless networks." There's also support for Unicode and some tweaks and additions to various codecs.iTunes: http://www.apple/com/itunes/
QuickTime: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/
A new version of one of the best known music and video player applications on the Net has been released. The last Winamp, version 3 (yes, they skipped a number), was widely panned because its numerous problems made it worse than the much liked version 2. Early reviews seem to indicate that Winamp 5 is stable, feature-packed, and fast - definitely an improvement over the last release. You can download a free version or you can pay $15 for the Pro version which rips/encodes music into MP3 format and burns CDs. There are certainly many free utilities that will do that for you (including iTunes), but you get nice integration, which may or may not be worth the $15 to you.
http://winamp.com/