I was out of the country at the time, but this got passed around the team reddit email. You know you've done something right when you've entered the subconscious of Randall Munroe. Bonus points for making the title attribute, too. Thanks for the reddit.com shoutout and thereby making our day.
You don't need to speak Korean to get this, just geek.
Catching up on my bloated inbox after a couple weeks of vacation, I found this solicitation from none other than Guy Kawasaki. We've never spoken, but we did share a plane ride together once. Ergo, I became eligible for this email:
I’d like to show you my latest project: Alltop. Alltop is a website that functions as an “online magazine rack” with the latest from a wide variety of news sources and blogs covering “all topics.” Many of the Alltop sites are very useful to entrepreneurs, investors, and everyone else in the high-tech community:I'd just finished watching my beloved DC football team upset our arch-rivals, the Cowboys and could use a nice aggregation of Skins news since sports.reddit doesn't quite have my obsessive narrowmindedness. I'm also very web-lazy, so when I got to Alltop, I gave search a try.
And on a search for "redskins" I got 0 results. Alltop could find no topics.Pol Pot's barbarous regime used this equipment for an advanced interrogation technique to torture captives in the Tuol Sleng prison (aka S-21) over the roughly four years of the Khmer Rouge's rule.
It's known as waterboarding.
While here, I've been reading a very good book on the subject of the Cambodian genocide - First They Killed My Father.
I thought just the breadpig blog wouldn't be enough, so I'm letting you all know, too.
Set your DVRs: September 13th, 11:30pm EST on SpikeTV. Prepare to be rocked. The band reunited for this show.
I was reminded of this on Monday when I settled down in my seat for this afternoon's Virgin America flight back to SF. They've got a "welcome to this airplane, here's how it works" video that's actually tolerable. In fact, it's the best I've seen thanks to a creative hand-drawn style and a good sense of humor.
To that latter point, check out what the bull sitting beside the matador is reading.
See that? It's a magazine with OLE on the cover and a cow udder on the back.
That's right, it's a bovine titty magazine.
The artist probably didn't expect anyone to notice it, but I guess I was just that interested in my pre-flight movie. Kudos, Virgin America. Somehow I feel like an American carrier would find this little gag too raunchy.
Point this out to the person beside you on your next VA flight and you'll look really observant... or odd.
I can't thank Joel Spolsky and Neil Davidson enough for putting on such a great conference. Granted, I was only able to stay for the first day of it, but if that was any indication, day two could have been presented entirely in Coptic and it still would have been interesting.
Be sure to catch up on what you missed on the Business of Software wiki and keep your eye on Neil's blog for video and future updates. I do hope you two will do this again next year.
I should also divulge that I'm a bit biased, as this was the first conference I came back from with a prize. Well, I didn't win it, exactly, but Pierre Francois did. Admittedly, whereas the rest of the presenters opted for intelligent, helpful presentations, I chose something much less useful.
Pierre Francois (of 74 Signals) gave a Pecha Kucha presentation (that's 20 slides with only 20 seconds a slide - also not pronounced like you think) entitled Keeping it Real: Starting, Running, and Selling a Web 2.0 Startup. A number of folks asked me to put it online, so you can find it all at 74 Signals, including the very first Pierre talk from 2006. I'll blog about the video of this most recent presentation once it goes live. I've also been advised to create t-shirts. We'll see...
The audience voted it the winner and Pierre walked away with a brand new MacBook Air that he loves almost as much as he loves himself, which is saying a lot.
This is not the Metallica from a decade ago; I'm happy you guys learned your lesson. Don't worry, you're not unforgiven in my book. Maybe for St. Anger -- that album really sucked.
The new album sounds pretty good, though.
Meet Cappuccino. No relation to the drink I'm effetely sipping right now.
There's a new web framework in town with all the sex appeal of your favorite Apple apps, but for producing those desktop-caliber apps in your browser. The YC team behind 280North stopped by the reddit office to give us a sneak peek and we were all quite impressed.
They launched it last week to much fanfare, which you can find here on their reddit. It'll be fun watching this project evolve.
See what I did there? It's not true, but I crafted an attention-grabbing headline.
The actual piece just consists of an email he received as a "tip" from a concerned TechCrunch reader who was dissatisfied with the coverage. Not for legitimate reasons, but merely to plug his own startup. So Michael indulged him. This startup has a promising pitch, from John the tipster himself:
Its [sic] the first dating service in the world that allows you to meet and date real celebrities as well as find people who bear a facial resemblance to the love of your life.Michael, I know we haven't always seen eye to eye in the past, but I'm just happy to know that we all share in the joy that is feedback fail.
The Modern Materialist has the best LOLmagnetz review I've read yet:
What ever happened to the ambitious Emily Dickinsons of our generation? The Bukowskis, Plaths, Whitmans, and Miltons? When did the English language itself devolve into missplaced [sic] consonants and smiley faces?Indeed, we've won a great victory against the English language.
Perhaps the English language officially died at the time when LOLMagnetz became available.
full of win!If that (and the downafll of the English language) wasn't enough to convince you, the profits from LOLmagnetz are donated to the SF SPCA to ensure there will be future generations of pets to be LOLified.
LOLmagnetz just went on sale at ThinkGeek. They're apparently selling well and a slew of sites (including Mixx?!) have been spreading the word.
A few other sites (non reddit competitors - hehe) also appreciated the LOL-ramifications of this innovation. ThisNext, Kaboodle, and the Swedish Fascination.se -- I salute you all with a mighty glass of lingonberry juice.
And the most exciting news of all, LOLmagnetz.com is now online, entirely thanks to the hard work of Chris Slowe. Once you've got your LOLmagnetz kit, photograph some of your creations and submit them to this reddit-powered site for fellow LOLfans to vote and discuss.
Disclosure: This startup is in Y Combinator.
I'm consistently impressed with this company. The founders are diligent and earnest, but I could say that about most YC startups. They don't even have a mascot (wtf, guys?) but they do have a clever revenue model. And now they're getting some love in the AP.
In case you don't want to read the whole thing (but you should), here's a blurb:
Being a trendsetter can be pricey. As any fashionista or gadget hound knows, the latest frocks and tech toys don't pay for themselves. But a new Web site is trying to make it profitable for music lovers to stay ahead of the curve — by paying them when other people purchase MP3s they've bought.It shouldn't come as a surprise that they also gave Breadpig the band an early entry into the PopCuts artist library. Sales haven't quite taken off yet, but we're giving the maximum amount possible to our early adopter fans. Get in on the ground floor.
Sure there's a Wookieepedia, but when Wired asked its readers to plot the Star Wars galaxy, the Internet stepped up to the challenge. Doomeru was able to capture this screenshot before it was taken down.
He also pointed out that, judging from the aliens, I have a feeling the reddit community was a bit involved...
