Wow, MTV bought Neopets for $160 million dollars- this is a site where kids (generally) make their own virtual pets online. They have 25 million subscribers, 5 billion page views per month and probably are the most successful social software site on the web, go figure. It was founded in 1999 by two British college students. I’m still working on my virtual pets for iPods project. Link.
There are a few “design your own” shoes sites out there- and now there’s the new Converse One design your own “Chuck Taylor Basketball Shoes”. I went through the entire design process and at the end when I wanted to add “makezine com”, it wouldn’t let me- a space and com must trigger some type of filter. Here’s a screenshot
. Ah well, I didn’t plan on ordering- but it’s always neat to see the filters they use on these things so no one will say anything too offensive to be on a shoe. Link.
On Michael Gartenberg’s blog he shares a problem many of us have had with DRM’ed ebooks (Microsoft’s .lit format in this example). Once you buy these there are all sorts of wacky activation issues, limited number of machines you can have supported, and the experience, even for the enthusiast is often the opposite of what you’d want in an ebook experience. He points to a good solution (Amber LIT) that exports the .lit files out as PDFs. [via] Link.
ROM Color are visual maps the data of Nintendo Entertainment System ROMs. But instead of only constructing sprite data, ROM Color paints a picture of the entire ROM contents; the sprites, music and logic of an entire game. So far, Mega Man 6, Shadowgate, Wario’s Woods, Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario Bros. 2 have undergone the process. Link.
The free multi-language, cross platform, GPL’ed podcast fetcher is out with a new version! The latest features include: Subscriptions support, syncing via remote OPMLs, auto cleanup, genre overriding in iTunes, new languages, visually impaired support, security fixes, one click options for feeds and more. Link.
There’s new diesel bike called the Thunder Star 1200 that gets 150 mpg, the folks over at Kneeslider points out it might make a good candidate for some biodiesel action. I’ve been on the look out for all things new and interesting with biodiesel, so I’m adding this to my list. In our 3rd issue we’re going to have a lot about biodiesel, modding your cars and some pretty amazing transportation “hacks”. Link.
If only you could replicate this. Farrell Eaves calls it his magic camera. It takes the darnedest pictures. Sometimes it creates pastel auras or adds symmetrical streaks the color of rainbows. Sometimes drips or blobs of color will magically appear that change a well-composed snapshot into art. It’s like a digital kaleidoscope. Link.
