BlogJunkies

Swiss Government Issues Bill of Rights for Plants

Microsoft to appeal $1.35B EU antitrust fine

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Is the Drive for Sustainability Killing Creativity?

Ben Heck maintains his reputation with Guitar Hero pedal controllers

Filed under: Gaming

Modder extraordinaire Ben Heckendorn could easily be resting on his laurels by now but, thankfully for us, he continues to churn out console mods and accessories like noboby's business, and his latest creation easily meets the high standard he's set for himself. Designed for the Games for Health conference, this one continues his line of one-handed controllers, with the pedals in this case replacing the strum and whammy bar from a standard Guitar Hero controller, letting you use a single hand for the chords. As you can see, everything is also obviously done with Ben Heck's usual fit and finish, and even a bit of clever salvaging, with an Atari Jaguar controller cable used with one of the pedals -- Ben just hopes that "doesn't jinx anything."

A. Siegel: One hand clapping …

Al Giordano: Five Stages of Grief for the Winning Side, Too

Wii Fit: the 30 day test starts today

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

• I'll be working with Wii Fit out about 20 game-minutes a day, 7 days a week.
• My program will consist of five minutes each of routines and games from the four fitness categories: strength training, aerobics, yoga, and balance games.
• As a control, I won't be dramatically changing up my eating habits. I'm already a reasonably healthy eater, so any physical changes will be more easily attributable to the Wii Fit regimen.
• I have about a week of travel scheduled this month, so for whatever days I miss on Wii Fit I'll be extending the trial.
• I'll chart my changes in weight, BMI, coordination, etc. and thoughts on the experience in a weekly update for the next five weeks.

oEmbed: An Open Format for Embedding Media

oEmbed is a newly released spec from Cal Henderson (of Flickr), Mike Malone and Leah Culver (of Pownce), and Richard Crowley (of OpenDNS) that allows web sites to quickly and easily embed media when a user posts a link directly to that resource. oEmbed is an open format which standardizes the process of embedding photos, videos, links, or other media and circumvents the media provider's API (or the need for screen scraping if they don't offer one). It works by turning a link to, say, a photo or video into XML or JSON that tells the user how to embed that media.

"oEmbed is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third party sites. The simple API allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly," says the authors on the oEmbed web page.

As an example http://flickr.com/services/oembed?url=http://flickr.com/photos/bees/2362225867/ returns:

<oembed>
	<version>1.0</version>
	<type>photo</type>
	<title>Bacon Lollys</title>
	<author_name>bees</author_name>
	<author_url>http://www.flickr.com/photos/bees/</author_url>
	<cache_age>3600</cache_age>
	<provider_name>Flickr</provider_name>
	<provider_url>http://www.flickr.com/</provider_url>
	<width>500</width>
	<height>375</height>
	<url>
		http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3040/2362225867_4a87ab8baf.jpg
	</url>
</oembed>

Early adopters of the oEmbed spec are Flickr, Viddler, Pownce, Qik, and Revision3. Viddler has created a form to test the web service, so you can see it in action.

Essentially, oEmbed makes it easier to access photos and videos with a simple URL. Standardizing how things are embedded means that, for example, a social network could allow users to simply embed media from oEmbed enabled sites just by entering a URL to a photo or video -- and the "customer" site wouldn't need to deal with multiple APIs from each provider.

Robert Schlesinger: Barack Obama’s campaign is losing its bearings

8 Ways To Green Your Mother This Mother’s Day

Plame asks court to resurrect lawsuit against Bush administration in CIA leak case.

Outed CIA operative Valerie Plame “is trying to resurrect a lawsuit against those in the Bush administration she says illegally disclosed her identity.” While a federal judge dismissed Plame’s case last year, her “lawyers asked a federal appeals court Friday to send the case back before the judge and force him to consider its merits.”

Dell makes Core 2 Quad Q9300, Q9450 available in XPS 420

Filed under: Desktops

Max and the Marginalized: Consider the Source (A Song and Cartoon for John McCain’s Credibility)

Carl Pope: A Good Day for the Critters

Roofarena: Bringing Million Dollar Homepage to Manhatten

Roofarena is basically the Million Dollar Homepage concept built as a graphical layer on top of Google Maps. The idea is that any roof in Manhattan is for sale and users can "virtually" purchase a roof and add their own design. In a post about copycat ideas last year, we advised that if you "do feel the need to borrow an idea, you should definitely make changes and try to innovate and push the concept in new directions." Roofarena definitely does that, but we also advised that you do something to "ensure a greater chance of success" -- we're not sure that the site does that.

One problem with Roofarena is that it requires too much user interaction to view ads. Google maps isn't built to see all of Manhattan at close range at once, so users have to scroll to see the ads, which seems like an unlikely expectation.

The bigger problem, though, is that this idea has been done to death. While each iteration, to our amazement, seems to have some moderate success -- especially given the extremely low barrier for entry -- they'll never equal the success that Alex Tew enjoyed for Million Dollar Homepage in 2005. The basic idea behind these sites is that advertising is sold on the premise that the method of advertising is so unique or wacky that it will garner mainstream press attention just for being sold -- and thus make the ads themselves worthwhile.

We wondered in February just how many times this can work, and the answer is probably not very often anymore. Roofarena is a fun concept, and perhaps it is an interesting social commentary on the skyrocketing cost of New York real estate (though, probably it isn't), but the idea just doesn't have the pull anymore to really work.

UGOBE “shocked and appalled” by destruction of Pleo at Maker Faire

Filed under: Robots

Uh oh, it looks like we've got a full-fledged robot controversy on our hands. At the heart of it, as you might have guessed, is the recent obliteration of a harmless Pleo by a so-called ComBot known as Vicious Verdict at Maker Faire 2008. According to a UGOBE rep posting on the PleoWorld forum, the company is having none of it, saying that the "stunt" was done without its authorization or approval, and that there was "quite a ruckus" about it in UGOBE's office after they learned of the incident. The rep went on to add that many people, including the UGOBE reps at their Maker Faire booth were "shocked and appalled" by the act, and that they "make emotional bonds with Pleo too." The rep did seemingly confirm that the Pleo in question was in fact provided by the company, however, saying that, "it is perhaps a small consolation to know that the Pleo destroyed was a factory prototype." A cuddly, cuddly factory prototype.

[Via Tech Digest]

Robert Guttman: “Nobody drops out of a presidential race. They just run out of money” Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio

5 Cutest Animal Videos Of The Week (WATCH)

Giant working NES controller/coffee table

John Ridley: Spare Me Your Exits Polls

Kids’ game adds 500-1000 words to its forbidden list every day

Merrifield also thinks that there is an over-reliance on technology that ignores the human element, which is why they've decided to devote two-thirds of the company's staff to positions such as safety moderators and customer service.

"We know the limits of technology, even though I would put our filtering software up against anybody's, especially because of that human element - we're adding 500 to 1000 words every day to the filters, simply because of slang that works its way into the language.

"And every new pop song that comes out is inevitably going to reference something that was innocent the week before, but isn't so much now," Merrifield said.

Russia Joins Global League of Climate Obstructionists, Putting Future U.N. Treaty in Doubt

Robin Maxwell: The Swiftboating of Anne Boleyn

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle: Unearthed: News of the Week the Mainstream Media Forgot to Report

Batman in Vietnamese

Ethan Persoff of Comics With Problems says,

This fantastic new item comes to us from Saigon, 1966. A truly one-of-a-kind sort of surviving Batman and Boy Wonder knockoff bootleg. For you psychologists in the crowd, Robin becomes invisible and there's a submarine.

Huff TV: Roy Sekoff on Dan Abrams Discussing Obama, Bowling, Beer, and Hillary’s Exit Strategy

Study Finds Meat and Dairy Create More Emissions Than Miles

Paige Donner: Greening Hollywood Meets Opportunity Green

Zune headquarters mini-tour

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Gallery: Zune HQ mini-tour

Cheney: Bagdad?s Disneyland-Style Amusement Park Is Evidence That Things Are Going ?Swimmingly? In Iraq

Today, Vice President Cheney appeared on The Paul Gallow Show in Mississippi. During the interview, he and the host lamented the media’s alleged bias in its Iraq coverage, suggesting that they should cover more good news — such as the Disneyland-style amusement park being developed for Baghdad:

GALLOW: You know, I look at this, and every once in a while, we’ll see a story, Mr. Vice President, things like an amusement park opens in Iraq or in Baghdad, which is totally counter to what we’re hearing over here, as far as the marketplaces being open, the schools, and things such as that. But I saw a story several weeks ago about an amusement center maybe over there, and I’m thinking this is not what you get in today’s media.

CHENEY: No, that’s true. It’s — what gets covered obviously is bad news. That’s — you know, if everything is going swimmingly, then that’s not news, so it doesn’t get the kind of attention.

Cheney and Gallow must be living in Never Never Land. This amusement park is not good news. The Pentagon is fast-tracking the development of the “Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum.” The firm designing the project also developed Disneyland. The financier, Llewellyn Werner, has admitted that he is doing the project not to help Iraq, but because he wants to make boatloads of money:

After explaining skate…boarding, Werner tells the assembled Iraqi business and government men, “I’m a businessman. I’m not here because I think you’re nice people. I think there’s money to be made here.”

More significantly, the Pentagon is also now backing a $5 billion plan to create a “zone of influence” around the new $700 million U.S. embassy. The area will include luxury hotels, a shopping center, and condos in an effort to “transform” the Green Zone into a “centerpiece for Baghdad’s future.”

In Iraq, however, many people are opposed to the plan. Some U.S. embassy officials have called the plan “unrealistic.” One added that Iraqis, a majority of whom oppose the U.S. presence, are unlikely to want the U.S. to “turn this area into downtown Kansas City.”

It’s hard to report that things are going swimmingly…when they’re not.