Ninite is an incredibly nifty website/service that packages and lets you choose and install the correct versions of 59 of the best free Windows software packages in one click. It joins its mass-installing brethren: the venerable Google Pack (10 applications) and the Lifehacker Pack (22 applications), as well as a variety of specialized packages for Installpad, including those specializing in PC rescue or media.
posted on Dec-14-09 at 8:15 PM

Behind the growing Steven Pinker vs. Malcolm Gladwell feud (Pinker criticizes Gladwell, Gladwell snarkily replies) is a debate over the value of IQ, specifically, and intelligence, broadly, in success. Recent research has generally shown little link between intelligence and success within fields, and that there are multiple kinds of intelligences that drive achievement. On the other hand, scholars of psychometrics claim the opposite, showing that IQ at an early age can predict achievement, and no amount of study will help. Maybe everyone is right, with enough caveats.
posted on Nov-16-09 at 9:03 PM

A polymath and a mathemagician without a math degree, Martin Gardner turns 95 tomorrow, and he is celebrating by publishing a new book of essays, which joins over 100 he has written on math, philosophy, literature, magic, and skeptical thinking. A wonderful documentary covering the overlapping circles of math, magic, and science in which he travels is available from Encyclopedia Britannica [mp4 version here]. His thousands of puzzles and mathematical diversions included building a learning machine out of matchboxes that could beat you in a simple game, science fiction puzzle tales (can you solve the first couple?), many mathematical tricks, and the first general introduction to the Game of Life. A fascinating interview with the man is available from Cambridge University Press.
posted on Oct-20-09 at 9:26 AM

You may have heard Walt Whitman on TV recently. A 39-second recording from 1890 is possibly an early Edison recording of Walt Whitman reading his poem America. Now, the recording is being used in a Levi's campaign [YouTube version] (the Whitman poem "Pioneers" in the second commercial is read by the blacklisted actor who once played Grandpa Walton); a campaign which some critics think is far too romantic for today's jaded youth.
posted on Oct-7-09 at 9:44 PM

Timelines: Time Travel in Popular Film and TV is a beautiful visualization of that most favored science fiction gimmick. For a more thorough, but less pretty, view of science fiction that messes with history, there is a chronology of when 1,800 different alternate history stories deviate from our own time line. Also, a brief look at the logic of time travel in science fiction, and how it should work.
posted on Sep-7-09 at 9:12 PM

The iconic image of Tienanmen Square protests was that of the "Tank Man," a lone individual who stepped in front of a column of armored vehicles at the height of the massacre. On the eve of the anniversary of the protests, the New York Times interviews the four photographers who took images of the event, including how they got their film out of China, and there is also a video of the event, where you can see the man blocking the tanks. In a program available in full online, Frontline tries to find the identity of Tank Man, and finds that China has been remarkably successful in erasing the image from public memory. [prev.]
posted on Jun-3-09 at 10:20 AM

The Cartography of Recession. Act I, The Collapse: Slate's interactive map of vanishing jobs by county, The Fed's maps of subprime mortgages, USA Today's housing bubble maps, Gini coefficients by state, budget deficits and foreclosures from CNN. Act II, Intervention: The data of Stimuluswatch, mapped, and expected job gains by state, while newspapers and the auto industry die. Act III, the Future: A terrific interactive map from the Atlantic (and accompanying article) hints at the future, showing the evolving patterns of population flows (also see the amazing New York Times immigration map), innovation, and income by city over time.
posted on Apr-19-09 at 9:30 PM

Carousel is one incredible, continuous two-minute tracking shot of the deadly and eternal fight between cops and clowns [high definition versions here with additional interactive features]. Directed by Adam Berg, apparently 90% of the amazing stunts were captured in-camera.
posted on Apr-18-09 at 8:59 PM

Fifty photographers you should know from Hongkiat, range from the abstract underwater marine life of Nicholas Samaras, to the heavily finished concert scenes of David Lindsey Wade, to the horrific Birds of Lyndon Wayne, to the staged Hollywood scenes of Alex Prager, to the 100 meter picture "We're All Gonna Die", plus a lot of interesting fashion and commercial art. Be warned, lots of portfolios use flash, with UIs ranging from interesting to the annoying.
posted on Apr-17-09 at 9:28 AM

It is the Mountain that Eats Men, and it killed millions of people, and is still killing them today. It built and then destroyed the Spanish Empire, brought low the Ottomans, and helped lead to Dutch power. Its mint-mark may be the source of the dollar sign (the mint mark is by the date). It is the highest city in the world, and it holds on to its traditions, like ritual fighting and respect for El Tio, the Lord of the Underworld. It is Potosi, the Silver Mountain.
posted on Feb-4-09 at 7:23 AM

The GeoEye-1 (aka "The Google Satellite") took pictures of the inauguration from 423 miles up. The crowds of over a million around the Capitol and spilling up the Mall and around the city are a sight, even from space. GeoEye also offers a gallery of other impressive high-resolution satellite shots, including themed sections ranging from world universities (featuring great shots of the Head of the Charles Regatta) to natural disasters.
posted on Jan-20-09 at 7:16 PM

Everything. Right. Now. Sprint presents an overwhelming, sprawling, entertaining dashboard that both mocks and plays into data overload. See how many people are stuck in elevators while you play pong, hear the latest music, and observe internet buzz - all at the same time (and yes, it is an ad for something). Overwhelmed? A more sedate text-only version of live world statistics can be found at worldometers.
posted on Nov-12-08 at 9:39 AM

Fashion meets classic children's fantasy: Vogue UK has photographed some amazing scenes inspired by the poems and other works of Roald Dahl, and featuring Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter. For more, see Annie Leibovitz's fashion-filled take on the Wizard of Oz with Kieira Knightley as Dorothy. Also Vogue does Alice in Wonderland, also by Annie Leibovitz with many of the odder characters played by fashion designers. And, in a slightly more sweet vein, the same photographer uses many famous faces to illustrate Disney fairytales. Finally, and a bit darker, are these takes on fairy tales.
posted on Nov-11-08 at 8:23 AM

Turn your name into a face is a tool that creates icon-style faces based on your name. It is an example of an Identicon, automatically generated avatars that serve a security purpose. Another cool example is Monster ID, which each name creates a unique monster.
posted on Oct-26-08 at 11:58 PM

The Money Meltdown is an excellent site clearly summarizing the banking crisis, with links to articles of varying complexity, including an dry (but readable) economics paper summarizing the lessons from 42 previous banking crises and a guide from the Brookings Institution on what the next President needs to do. And yes, they also reference the podcast just discussed.
posted on Oct-6-08 at 8:58 AM

100 skills every man (or woman) should know (with videos!) from Popular Mechanics - learn how to split firewood or solder a wire, among others. Before you look, take the quiz and see how you stack up against people like our own Adam Savage. Need more? Esquire offers a more touchy-feely list of skills; the Art of Manliness has a list that includes how to land a plane and how to survive a street fight; and also a (PDF) book listing medical skills for surviving the end of the world. And if you prefer the fictional, there is also the classic list of skills from Robert Heinlein and the skills of a certain TV stuntman.
posted on Oct-2-08 at 12:03 PM

Playcrafter is now in open alpha. Playcrafter allows you to easily create Flash games with a drag-and-drop online toolkit. Some of the neater ones to play include games like Unstack and Matcheroo, and, of course, my original creation MeFi Plate of Beans. Do you think you can do a better MeFi game? [God, I should hope so.]
posted on Aug-26-08 at 12:15 PM

Fantasy cartography collects scans of maps and charts from video games, comics, and novels. Take a look at the doll-house like maps of the Fantastic Four's Baxter Building from various comics (a Trophy Room and a "TV Sending Room"!), the Legend of Zelda's Hyrule, Asimov's Foundation galaxy, lots of Lovecraft locations, the lands of the Princess Bride, the Discworld, and lots of Star Trek maps and ship schematics. Also, some thoughts on how "serious fiction" writers often start with maps, from Joyce's use of the ordinance maps of Dublin to Pychon's use of aerial photographs. More fantasy maps (many in German) are available from the Fantasy Atlas. Also, from my previous post on the subject of maps of fantasy worlds, see the extensive listings in the Dictionary of Imaginary Places.
posted on Jul-25-08 at 10:13 AM

Knol, Google's single-author answer to Wikipedia, has gone live. Or at least beta. Early beta. While there is a great Knol (defined by Google as "a unit of knowledge") on unclogging a toilet, it still has a way to go, as can be seen by contrasting Wikipedia on Knol and Knol on Wikipedia.
posted on Jul-23-08 at 12:38 PM

A tasty chocolate cake you can make from scratch in five minutes. In the microwave. In a mug. Other 5-minute variations include peanut butter chocolate cake (picture), jello cake (picture), and spice cake
posted on Jul-21-08 at 9:15 AM

Humor goes back a long way. The oldest recorded joke in the world was told 4,600 years ago to Pharoh Snefru by the magician Djadjamankh: "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish," and there's lots more ancient Egyptian humor (some quite dirty) as well. Humor really got rolling with the Greeks, however, and the Philogelos (Laughter Lover) a joke book from the 4th century. A representative joke: “An intellectual was on a sea voyage when a big storm blew up, causing his slaves to weep in terror. ‘Don’t cry,’ he consoled them, ‘I have freed you all in my will'."
posted on Jul-16-08 at 9:18 AM

Earth is not a quiet planet. It transmits a rather hideous sound [flash] into space that is 10,000 times greater in strength than any man-made radio transmission. The Earth also quietly hums with seismic Love Waves (hear them), while the Magnetosphere is alive will all sorts of sounds (check out the creepy-sounding Chorus Emissions). Also, stars sing out in middle C before they explode as supernovae, and the Perseus Cluster black hole has droned a B-flat for the past 2.5 billion years.
posted on Jul-2-08 at 7:51 AM

Colors have many names. The online color thesaurus will recognize 20,000 of them (and let you see which is most popular). You can also browse a page of colors and associated names (yes, "goose turd" and "dead Spaniard" were once common color names). Of course, the most popular color names probably come from our childhoods.
posted on Jun-20-08 at 12:20 PM

An old professor of mine used to ask graduating students, "What is the single most important true proposition or fact (not theory) that you learned in university?" This question has been aimed at many fields, and social scientists have long and famously struggled to find good answers, while scientists have had a large number of options, and those who study the humanities wonder if they can even answer similar questions. What is your most important (or interesting) fact?
posted on Jun-19-08 at 11:53 AM

HotPads has one of the cooler interfaces to the real estate world. Especially worth looking at are the heat maps that show you scary, scary foreclosure rates across the country and the rent ratios that tell you whether it is worth buying in a particular area, among lots of other data.
posted on Jun-16-08 at 12:09 PM

How much sleep do you really need? Six and a half to seven and a half hours. People who sleep eight hours a night are 12% more likely to die in a six-year period than those who sleep less. If your new lack of sleep means you get tired mid-afternoon, recent research says the solution is, shockingly, to nap. And if you can't nap, at least learn the optimal way to dose yourself with caffeine.
posted on Jun-11-08 at 9:59 AM

Warren Buffett bets a hedge fund manager $1 million that the S&P 500 will outperform hedge funds over the next 10 years. Buffett has argued vociferously, sometimes using parables, that the smartest way for the average person to invest is to put money in simple no-load index funds. The bet is being overseen by the Long Now Foundation's Long Bets, where previously Ted Danson has won a bet about the Red Sox and Brian Eno one one politics. And there's more on the Long Now blog, which is generally interesting reading.
posted on Jun-9-08 at 2:22 PM

The fifty greatest comedy sketches of all time from Nerve and IFC. All with video. Some highlights: SNL's consumer probe & word association; Mr. Show's pretaped call-in show, Upright Citizens Brigade's ass pennies, The State's porcupine racetrack, lots of Monty Python, some classics, and the inevitable winning sketch.
posted on Apr-10-08 at 8:20 AM

In a coincidence that happens less than once in a millennium, over half the world is celebrating a holiday. It is Good Friday; the Jewish festival of Purim, where getting drunk is often an obligation; the Persian new year of Narouz; Eid Milad an Nabi which the birth of the Prophet celebrated by some Sunnis; and Small Holi for Hindus, among many others.
posted on Mar-21-08 at 9:17 AM

Dozens of the web's best visualization tools. Neat choices include TuneGlue's music map using data from Amazon and last.fm, Packetgarden's weird world grown from your websurfing habits, Akamai's real-time network visualization, the many widgets of last.fm, the hypnotic maps of the mood of blogs from We Feel Fine, the beautiful galleries of Visual Complexity, and a neat list of tools for drawing diagrams. [some prev]
posted on Mar-14-08 at 8:45 AM

One of the most amazing user-led projects out there, CHDK firmware turns cheap Canon cameras into photography powerhouses. You can take take time-lapse movies as in this stunning sunset example; automatically photograph lightening; easily make pretty HDR images and stereograms; have unlimited depth-of-field; and, perhaps most impressively, take photographs with shutter speeds of 1/60,000 of a second!
posted on Mar-13-08 at 8:18 AM

The editor of the New York Times Book Review asks "do others have favorite signature passages in books they love — a sentence or two that seem to convey the essence of a complex, beautiful work?" after giving his own example from To The Finland Station. Hundreds respond, often with some wonderful passages (as well as some not so wonderful ones). Any examples from the hive mind?
posted on Mar-9-08 at 9:18 PM

A nifty one minute "personality video game" shows the unique approach to gaming taken by Cecropia, whose first effort, the highly-praised "The Act" was an interactive sitcom of sorts that was controlled with a single knob. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, Cecropia never could find a market for an intelligent coin-op game with a single control in 2007, so The Act was canceled.
posted on Mar-7-08 at 6:38 AM

How would the military really kill a giant monster? The excellent Danger Room blog considers the problem in a two part post. Of course, if you want to find out how giant your monster is first, you may want to consult this discussion comparing monster heights.
posted on Mar-5-08 at 7:59 AM

One Thousand Monkeys, One Thousand Typewriters is the largest online source of free role playing and story games. With so many choices, you may want to look at the winners of the 2006 Game Chef contest, with its interesting rules: Crime and Punishment, the RPG about being a writer for a crime procedural TV show; Liquid Crystal, about a robot with no memory; Time Traitor with its mysterious Factors; and the haunted house story Merryweather.
posted on Feb-15-08 at 11:16 AM

Weth wins lots of contests. And you can win with Weth too. [Second link has a brief, but well-worth-it, sound clip]
posted on Feb-13-08 at 9:33 AM

The most widely-distributed photograph in history may be The Blue Marble, a shot taken in 1972 by an unknown crewmember on Apollo 17. In 2002, NASA released a new Blue Marble photograph, familiar to desktops everywhere, using a composite of many photographs. In 2005, Blue Marble: The Next Generation offered even better views and some spectacular animations of the seasons from space. In the same spirit, the Discovery Channel just launched Earth Live, which lets you see the dynamics of weather and climate through a well done interface.
posted on Feb-11-08 at 8:34 AM

The Falling Sand Game is an engrossing but hard-to-describe online toy/game that lets you create environments using falling streams of sand, water, oil, and salt by adding fire, plants, clay, and other substances. Inspired by The Falling Sand Game are a number of variations, such as PyroSand, featuring many kinds of explosives, and Hell of Sand, with little people who you can torture. One of the most interesting versions is The Powder Game, which lets you paint with superballs, adjust air pressure, and build very satisfying volcanoes and gardens. For even more, WxSand [downloadable .exe] is a Windows version with lots more options and many interesting mods. [Games are Java applets and are incredibly addictive, especially The Powder Game]
posted on Feb-7-08 at 11:38 AM

In these days of high-powered graphics, there is a ASCII gaming renaissance underway. Among the most interesting are: ASCII Sector, a remake of the classic Wing Commander Privateer; the fast-paced Doom RL; the Ultima V influenced Legerdemain; and the much-discussed strategy game/frustration simulator Dwarf Fortress (now with a new unofficial tileset and experimental 3-D visualizer that may prevent some eye-bleeding), And, of course, the classic, complex Rogue-like RPGs continue to go strong, those interested may want to check out this list of the best new rogue-like game releases from ASCII dreams or the list of releases from Temple of the Roguelike.
posted on Jan-24-08 at 11:12 AM

A visual history of floating prisons shows that using ships at prisons did not end with the infamous prison hulks along the Thames. Today, New York (home to the Prison Ship Martyr's Monument commemorating the most deadly part of the Revolutionary War) uses the impressive Bain, anchored off the Bronx, as a prison barge, while the Australians have the sleek-looking Triton as a mobile prison ship patrolling national waters.
posted on Jan-10-08 at 8:24 AM

In a quite funny video, Bill Gates looks for the next big thing after retirement with help from Jon Stewart, Jay Z, Bono, George Clooney, and others; while Letterman earlier gave his own tribute. Gates is retiring to spend more time on his massive charity, which is already helping push child mortality to an all-time low, despite some controversy with its for-profit investments.
posted on Jan-7-08 at 10:09 AM

OPENhulu has copied many of the shows featured on hulu, the NBC/Fox joint internet television service that is still in closed beta. While it lasts, watch all of Firefly, the first seasons of Buffy and Arrested Development, and the second season of Heroes. There are also several recent episodes of The Office, Family Guy, House, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, and more, plus new shows from hulu's list will apparently soon be added. For bonus points, compare the original Battlestar Galactica to the new series, or just watch every darn first season A-Team episode.
posted on Dec-17-07 at 9:55 PM

It has been awhile since we had an iPhone post, but for the couple million people who own one, and despite Apple's best efforts, there is lots of exciting (if hard to find) free software being developed for people have have jailbroken their iPhone: read comics and manga; play NES , Gameboy, or LucasArts adventure games; experiment with crayon physics; download files; emulate HP calculators; and sync without iTunes. In early form: send an MMS, Playstation emulation, and video recording. There are also many web applications. [Yes, you need an iPhone to run these applications]
posted on Dec-16-07 at 9:40 PM

The Enigma of Amigara Fault is an absolutely compelling and terribly creepy short manga story by Junji Ito about mysterious human-shaped holes exposed in a cliff by an earthquake, each perfectly matching the outline of someone who is then compelled to enter the confining, claustrophobic darkness. For more of Ito in English, there is Falling. Make sure to read from right to left.
posted on Dec-10-07 at 9:57 PM

The Muppet Show featuring performances: by Johnny Cash (and two more), Steve Martin on banjo, Elton John (and two more), Alice Cooper (also some skits), Debbie Harry (and another), Liza Manelli singing Copa Cabana, REM, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Rich vs. Animal, Rita Moreno vs. Animal, Harry Belafonte (vs. Animal), Julie Andrews and more, Mac Davis, Nureyev singing and tap dancing,Sandy Duncan, John Denver, Paul Simon (on lute!), and a somewhat freaky version of The Gambler.
posted on Dec-2-07 at 11:56 PM

Rails of War is a terrific flash game, where you equip a train with ever-increasing combinations of weapons and guide it through various missions. It is a representative of the growing number of Defense-style flash strategy games started by Tower Defense and friends, which we discussed before. Now you can try Age of War, where you try to destroy an opponents base through five distinct eras; Invasion Tactical Defense where you must manage a nuclear missile plant and its anti-aircraft defenses; the inevitable and previously mentioned zombie defense games; StarCraft FA5, where you are the Zerg defending your base; and the lovely and abstract Red. These is a particularly addictive class of games, so be warned...
posted on Nov-29-07 at 10:53 PM

Trevor Paglen, the "underground geographer," documents the Black World, offering brief glimpses into the most secret programs and installations of the US military. He has uncovered the ominous and geeky patches used by classified projects, taken long-range photos of secret military installations, traced the mysterious Janet flights of unmarked aircraft that shuttle workers to hidden bases, as well as documenting many other fascinating and hidden things such as the secret rendition programs of the CIA, as discussed previously.
posted on Nov-28-07 at 12:23 PM

Definr is an incredibly fast online dictionary. It joins other cool Web 2.0ish word applications, such as Wordie [prev.] with its hot words and great blog (see also their glossary of glossaries); the collective Madlibs-like idea generator that is Seedy; the TagCrowd word cloud creator; and, most importantly, the blog devoted solely to the word literally [prev.].
posted on Nov-26-07 at 7:12 AM

This house at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn has been replicated around the world to odd architectural effect: Montreal, Sao Paulo, New Jersey, Buenos Aires, Milan, Tel Aviv, and seven other locations. Why? Because it was the home of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This sort of geographic dislocation is not unique to 770 Eastern Parkway, however, as photographers Andrea Robbins and Max Becher show: German buildings in Namibia, the Old West in Almeria Spain, the last French colony off Newfoundland, the town in Washington that was transformed into Bavaria, and others.
posted on Nov-15-07 at 7:00 AM

Play 666 Nintendo games in your browser with Virtual NES. (some suggestions of the best games) It joins the extensive EveryVideoGame , the slow GameBoy Online, and the beloved Virtual Apple. [prev. and prev.]
posted on Nov-6-07 at 10:33 AM