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GrandCentral: Have a cell phone, a work phone and a business phone? This free service gives you one number that will ring all of them at once. Reviews: Slate, NYT, CNET
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:53 PM PST - 22 comments

Jess Nevins, obsessive cataloguer of Victorian science fantasy, early-twentieth-century pulp, and forties-era superheroes (all links Geocities) and annotator of certain reference-dense comics, weighs in with an opinionated overview of Han Empire science fiction. (Note: Enjrolasworld hosts several more comic series annotations, including the Sandman annotations previously discussed here.)
posted by ormondsacker at 11:44 PM PST - 10 comments

The Bill and Steve show: Jobs and Gates sit down together and discuss the past, present and future at the D5 conference.
posted by jaimev at 11:22 PM PST - 12 comments

The Unofficial Web Application List has a lot of neat applications. Some favorites include an amazing Ajax newsletter generator, a tool that lets you convert between any file formats, Rogue in Java, a free browser-based VoIP system that can call landlines, a music search engine that accepts humming as an input, and the lovely Flash Earth. You can also generate your own warning signs and use a page that makes browser content seem to be a MS Word document - you know, for work.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:41 PM PST - 13 comments

Looks like the phrase "Enhanced Interrogation" has a History.
posted by delmoi at 9:00 PM PST - 28 comments

Soft drinks for the undecided. Next time you're in Singapore and feeling thirsty yet noncommittal, why not pick up a can of Anything or Whatever? Just be warned that you won't know whether you're drinking Cola, Cloudy Lemon, or Chrysanthemum Tea until...your...first...sip. (Via the effervescent & esoteric Knowledge for Thirst.)
posted by unregistered_animagus at 8:29 PM PST - 17 comments

Misako Inaoka is a Japanese born artist living and working in San Francisco who makes her own ecosystems where the real and the artificial intertwine. She is currently showing at the Johansson Projects gallery. [via]
posted by grapefruitmoon at 8:27 PM PST - 6 comments

This photo has launched high school pole vaulter Allison Stokke into Internet memedom. Her reaction: "I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it's almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees me."
posted by aerotive at 6:54 PM PST - 501 comments

After an abysmal, embarrasing attempt at collaborative fiction by Penguin Books, a new site takes a stab at the Wikinovel, this time, it appears, with a little better organization and planning. Though, still no users.
posted by nospecialfx at 6:09 PM PST - 31 comments

livejournal permanently suspends hundreds of accounts under pressure from "watchdog" group Warriors for Innocence (sketchy, possibly spyware laden site created by pretty shady people). Though the aim of the crackdown is seemingly to protect children from online predators, many suspended journals and communities apparently had nothing to do with promoting pedophilia, and the broad-based approach taken by livejournal has many users irate (over 3700 comments as of posting), especially in light of the fact that that neither livejournal nor the owner Six Apart have publically addressed users, though Six Apart did speak to CNET as linked above.
posted by 6550 at 6:00 PM PST - 153 comments

For months IDT Energy has been accused by Con Edison customers of fraudulant "sales" tactics. The Consumerist decided to hire a journalist to investigate how the company conducts business by getting hired by Midtown Promotions, the company IDT uses to canvas and bully ConEd customers into switching to IDT Energy. Today is Day One in a multi-part series investigating the underhanded practices of an unregulated utility company.
posted by basicchannel at 5:35 PM PST - 11 comments

An Atlanta man caused the U.S. government to issue its first quarantine order since 1963 this weekend, knowingly exposing as many as 107 passengers on two transatlantic flights to a rare, "extensively drug-resistant" form of tuberculosis. "It's regretful that we weren't able to stop that," the CDC's Dr. Martin Cetron said of how the man fled when U.S. health officials tracked him down in Rome and told him not to get on an airplane.
posted by rkent at 4:20 PM PST - 109 comments

An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization. [alternate link] To effectively organize their banditry, pirates required mechanisms to prevent internal predation, minimize crew conflict, and maximize piratical profit. [ssrnfilter]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 4:03 PM PST - 20 comments

Total Grafitti Awareness
posted by geos at 2:35 PM PST - 53 comments

It's been said before that trance, and DJ Tiësto in particular, are evil. Some may've taken that idea a little too seriously.
posted by flaterik at 2:13 PM PST - 29 comments

Imagine your monitor as one side of a cube. Yod'm (download) is an incredibly simple and intuitive desktop manager application that allows you switch between different sides of said cube. For those of us stuck on one monitor, it's an elegant solution that eases the pain a bit. (DirectX 9 required)
posted by ODiV at 2:12 PM PST - 35 comments

Some tech company releases something shiny
posted by cillit bang at 2:12 PM PST - 58 comments

Crawdaddy, one of the first rock criticism magazines, has made a comeback online, including some selected articles by the magazine's founder, Paul Williams. The SF Weekly has mixed feelings about the magazine's return. (via largehearted boy)
posted by sleepy pete at 2:07 PM PST - 7 comments

First Global Peace Index Ranks 121 Countries
posted by acro at 1:10 PM PST - 66 comments

Magnum Photos turns 60 this year. A retrospective of some of their best photos is featured on their site, and over at Wallpaper.
posted by chunking express at 12:35 PM PST - 15 comments

Not cringing enough? This gallery of photos of street dentists in India should solve that problem for you.
posted by jonson at 12:11 PM PST - 37 comments

al Qaeda's "Legitimate Demands". Azzam al Amreki (aka Adam Gadahn) appears in a newly released al Qaeda video to recite his group's demands and promise more bombings and destruction if we don't comply. (previously)
posted by scalefree at 11:58 AM PST - 106 comments

Hey! Isn't that the guy from that movie? The 20 best "that guys" of all time -- according to Cracked. (via)
posted by fallenposters at 11:34 AM PST - 157 comments

"He asks each of them to write down...any dollar integer between 2 and 100 without conferring together. If both write the same number...he will pay each of them that amount. But if they write different numbers, he will ... pay both of them the lower number along with a bonus and a penalty--the person who wrote the lower number will get $2 more...and the one who wrote the higher number will get $2 less.... For instance, if Lucy writes 46 and Pete writes 100, Lucy will get $48 and Pete will get $44."

What amount would you choose? And what does your answer tell us about the limits of Game Theory?
posted by empath at 8:56 AM PST - 246 comments

iTunes Plus has been released. Following EMI's announcement that it would begin offering its entire catalog DRM-free (and a barely-averted torpedoing of that plan), Apple has released an update to iTunes that offers DRM-free, 256kps AAC songs for $1.29. Entire albums are the same price as their DRM-laden counterparts. Those who have purchased EMI music can upgrade their files for $.30/song, $.60/album, or 30% of the album price. Currently only EMI is on-board, but Apple is perfectly happy to bring other labels into the DRM-free universe.
posted by mkultra at 8:49 AM PST - 99 comments

Hear them all...... The most famous version of the early synthesizer hit "Popcorn" was played in 1972 by a studio group called Hot Butter, led by legendary session musician Stan Free. Few people know that the song was actually written by electronic music pioneer Gershon Kingsley. If you'd like to hear excerpts of Kingsley's original version, along with scores of cover versions, here ya go.
posted by metasonix at 7:27 AM PST - 47 comments

Felix Pappalardi was a famous arranger and producer for the likes of Cream, the Youngbloods and the Vagrants, where he met Leslie West with whom he formed the legendary hard rock band Mountain who had hits with "Mississippi Queen" "For Yasgur's Farm" and a masterful reworking of Jack Bruce's "Theme From An Imaginary Western". In 1983, Pappalardi's wife shot him, in what she claimed was an accident. She was convicted of criminially negligent homicide and sentenced to four years.
posted by jonmc at 6:26 AM PST - 40 comments

Social networking/music discovery site Last.FM has been sold to CBS for $280 million. Much as love the service, I can't help thinking that this feels like 2000 all over again...
posted by Cobbler at 4:34 AM PST - 73 comments

Joel and Ethan Coen rarely disappoint. Their new film, No Country for Old Men (based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy), is no exception. See also: Cannes.
posted by chuckdarwin at 2:19 AM PST - 55 comments

Surface. A multi-user touch table. How curious that this happens some time after Apple revealed their own multitouch interface. More info here, here and here.
posted by Memo at 12:30 AM PST - 64 comments