This is some really excellent work. Kudos to these dudes.
I wasn’t even born when it happened, but I find the video game crash of 1983, and the subsequent years, to be one of the most fascinating stories in the history of American business. Here’s a great piece on the subject. Cliff notes version: publishers cranked out tons and tons of horrible-quality atari games, leaving [...]
The idea of autonomous robots that communicate with each other brings to mind the horrors prognosticated in The Terminator and The Matrix. But are cooperative robots really so foreign? They also present themselves in much more likable and human ways. Here’s some robots working together to play soccer. Cooperation of semi-sentient beings has achieved incredible [...]
My friend, Lisa, has started a new tumblr. I know what you’re thinking– “WHAT! Nobody ever starts tumblrs!” Hear me out. Hello, Jell-o is the funniest tumblr I’ve ever read, and it only has two posts. I can’t wait to see what startling discoveries and Eat-Pray-Loveish revelations visit her as she embarks on this journey.
I love Kirby. I grew up with the character, and have played each of his games that have been released in the West (and a couple that haven’t). I feel like someone at Nintendo loves him, too, but isn’t in a position to secure adequate funding or marketing for a PR event to celebrate the [...]
Note: I rarely editorialize here, but I feel especially passionate about this, due to my extensive history as a warranty voider. Apps. All anyone talks about today are apps. But do we remember a time before apps existed? For the first year of the iPhone’s life, the only people using “apps” were garage enthusiasts, who [...]
Nothing more to see here, besides this cat .gif.
Google, in collaboration with Larva Labs, has released Androidify, an avatar-creation application for Android. It’s incredibly easy to use, and the results are just adorable. There’s me to the left. Google is smart to try to cultivate the Android brand, and has done a great job with some of its partners. At the forefront of [...]
Just over a week ago, I tweeted that I was ready for life in the cloud. I use web-based IM, Twitter, music, as well as Google-powered e-mail, calendaring, docs, and RSS reading. That sums up my list of needs, basically, and 99% of my computing is in Chrome. I could handle eschewing the other 1%. [...]
The tablets are coming! Over 100 of them, in fact. Over 101 if we include the inevitable iPad 2. I wrote an article early last year comparing iOS 3.1.2 to Android 2.1, but I’d like to take the fight to slates, the most exciting battleground of innovation in 2011. Google gave the world a preview [...]
Excellent blog that asks artists to write in with cases of corporate misappropriation of their art. Most examples are blatant copyright infringement, but it seems that few of the submitters have taken legal action against the purloining parties. This artist explicitly disavows any legal remedy, simply wishing that their art was not further used to [...]
The work of industrial designers is unique in that it lies at the intersection of copyright law and patent law. They create objects, and marry form (an expressive, artistic choice) and function (the useful purpose that the object is supposed to serve). What part of their work is protected under copyright? Surely we wouldn’t want [...]
Dollree Mapp was a central figure in the history of the 4th amendment (which controls what the cops can search, and what happens if they cross the line). And never has Constitutional law had such a sassy ambassador! On a sunny afternoon in 1957, Miss Mapp answered the door to find police officers. They aggressively [...]
Justice Brandeis, dissenting in Olmstead v. United States (1928), in which the Supreme Court deemed a wiretap not to constitute a “search” or “seizure” under the Fourth Amendment: The protection guaranteed by the Amendments is much broader in scope. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They [...]
I’ve reskinned my blog, and decided to give it a hearty dose of Century Schoolbook, my favorite font. Also Richard Posner’s. The Seventh Circuit highly recommends it. The Supreme Court demands it. What’s the deal? Surely you recognize the font. It was in most, if not all, of your schoolbooks in elementary school. The font [...]
Ten years on, this is what Wikipedia looks like.
I’ve always been fascinated with prosthetics. I know it’s sort of grim, but the technology that has been developed to replace the functionality lost to an amputation always has seemed ahead of science. Gizmodo had an excellent feature, This Cyborg Life, documenting some fascinating fusions of biology and hardware. This feature was guest-edited by Aimee Mullins, world [...]
I’ve been accused of being a philistine and bibliophobe because I prefer digital volumes to paper ones. Let me make my case for ebooks.by flickr user hiperactivoWhen people explain why they like paper books, they invariably bring up a few things. The way a well-bound book feels in your hands. The texture of the paper [...]
I wrote this 6 months ago, but I spent like 20 bucks on it, and there’s still nothing better on the market. So, I’ll repost it. One of the coolest possibilities of the iPad is that it can become a backpack replacement. It can hold your textbook, it can record lectures, you can type on [...]
