Steve Jobs demos Wonkavision.

When black holes spin, they twist spacetime up around it.

Man swept out to sea by the tsunami survives for two weeks. He ate coconuts and built a makeshift raft.

A List of Actual Quotes Taken From the Directions and Mission Statements of Organic Products Belonging to My Vegan Roommate.

Turn any iPod into an iPod Shuffle in 3 easy steps.

Six Apart has published a comprehensive guide to comment spam.

It appears that Justin Hall has stopped publishing on the Web (his front page is blank except for a search box). Missing notebooks. Hmmm.

Answering wrong numbers for Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Shots of NYC with a pinhole camera.

Look at Me. A found photo project.

Great photo of a notebook torn to look like a topographical map.

The Indonesian earthquake decreased the length of each day by 2.68 microseconds. More amazing is that man made features like the Three-Gorge reservoir can change the length of days and shift polar position.

Blogging and source confidentiality

The EFF is doing important work in defending bloggers against Apple’s subpoenas:

On December 13, Apple filed suit against “Does 1-20” in a Santa Clara court. The company obtained a court order that allows it to issue subpoenas to AppleInsider and PowerPage for the names of the “Does” who allegedly leaked the information in question. EFF is defending the publishers against these subpoenas, arguing that the anonymity of bloggers’ sources is protected by the same laws that protect sources providing information to journalists.

“Bloggers break the news, just like journalists do. They must be able to promise confidentiality in order to maintain the free flow of information,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “Without legal protection, informants will refuse to talk to reporters, diminishing the power of the open press that is the cornerstone of a free society.”

The right of bloggers to protect their sources is an issue near and dear to me, and it’s great to see the EFF pursuing it.

Sheet music for Super Mario Brothers’ songs.

The Mac mini.

The iPod shuffle.

Photo of the new Mac mini.

MacMerc is blogging MacWorld live. So far, iWork (Keynote + word processor), new iLife apps, Mac mini ($500-600), iPod Shuffle (small, simple mp3 player, 1 oz., 512 Mb for $99).

100 things we didn’t know this time last year. “Brussels sprouts have three times as much vitamin C as oranges”.

The Library of Congress has made tons of maps from the US Civil War available online.

Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki are discussing their latest books on Slate this week.

Hypertemporality is an online net art exhibit. Peter Baldes’ Hypertemps is my favorite.

Listening with affection and excitement

Brenda Ueland on listening:

I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk, to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject. No. My attitude is: ‘Tell me more. This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive.’

I need to listen more and be listened to better. This is probably as good a New Year’s resolution as any.

All ISBNs will move from 10 digits to 13 digits in 2007. I wonder how Amazon will handle old URLs with the 10 digit ISBNs.

The United States makes people fat.

Faking the Lomo effect, now with an updated link to the directions.

Cory Arcangel has a solo show at the Team gallery, Jan 13 - Feb 12. “The show at Team, for example, marks the launch of dooogle.com, a search engine which only yields results about Doogie Howser, M.D.”

Redemption of a pizza stone scrooge. “You guys are trying to make a pizza fool of me. That pizza she’s making is a big fat round manipulation.”

The previous two links courtesy of the 20 Year Usenet Timeline on Google Groups.

1994 Usenet post from Jeff Bezos looking for developers for Amazon.

Early eBay announcement on Usenet from Pierre Omidyar. “All items are offered by the individual sellers, and anyone is free to bid on any item, or to add items, free of charge.”

Good Daniel Okrent editorial on photography’s place in journalism. “But the untruth - or, at least, imperfect truth - of any single photograph is inescapable.”

Andre Torrez releases TKPal, a set of PHP scripts for DIY micropayments. Lets you charge small amounts for “unlocking” content like individual blog posts, a shareware download link, or to get rid of advertising.

Winners of the “I Look Like My Dog” contest.

A review of how predictive markets fared in 2004.

Photos and descriptions of every Starbucks in New York City.

iHome appears to be a fake. Font is wrong, box looks weird, ports look like those on the 12” Powerbook, etc.

New Apple thingie to be announced at MacWorld is the “iHome Media Center”?.

Some predictions for 2005 from David Galbraith.

Fugitive lived in an abandoned Circuit City for six months, watched Spiderman 2 on DVD and installed a smoke detector.

Photos of the retro future. It’s in Italian, but just keep clicking through to the next “pagina” at the bottom of each page.

The top 20 movie trailers of 2004.

Photographic studies in circles (3/4).

Odd essay by Bill Thompson on how we need to dump the web for something better. People have been saying this for years, and yet here we are.

Book TV has streaming video of Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker Festival talk on Blink.

All of Starbucks’ drinks, explained.

Fox is documenting the return of Family Guy with a weblog. Nice lack of permalinks. Freakin’ sweet!

Kyle Van Horn sent a camera via USPS with a message on it asking the postal workers en route to take photos with it. The camera arrived a week later with 24 good photos.

Let Adidas know that you’d like them to make a Team Zissou sneaker.

The Institute of physics commissioned a BMX bike trick to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s miracle year. The “Einstein Flip”, worked out by pro rider Ben Wallace and physicist Helen Czerski, is what the kids would call a backwards 360 tabletop (I think).