Tuesday, October 31, 2006


Chicago's first virtual news anchor
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Virtuosity

The Internet Metaverse continues to inch into reality. News At Seven is an NU project that has been referred to as robonews. Totally autonomous, it collects, parses, edits and organizes news text and images from the web and then text-to-speeches the formatted content to an artificial anchor (Alex Vance from the game Half-Life 2) for presentation. Less comprehensible is the need for the search engine avatar at Ms. Dewey. Synthravels also debuted this month as the first online Virtual Travel Agency where you can tour virtual worlds like Second Life or Active Worlds.

News At Seven

Ms. Dewey

Synthravels

Second Life

Active Worlds

Wednesday, October 25, 2006


Homemade Terror
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Halloween Fear Mongering

After seeing the above on a website and in keeping with pre-midterm election advertising, I set out to find a terrorist costume. With the exception of Osama Bin Laden I'm out of luck. There are some leftover Saddam Hussein masks but he doesn't really count anymore. There's no Mohammed Atta, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ayatollahs, nor Kim Jong Ils; no Miss Underestimateds nor Timothy McVeighs; and definitely no suicide bombers (although I did find instructions for a homemade one). There's Nixon, Dubya, Clinton(s), Cheney, et al but Spreadshirt has a nice tee for the ultimate political terror costume. I've also included a link for arguably the worst costume of 2006, sort of a Freudian terror number. And I'll leave you to find out if last year's Chicago's Pumpkin-Go-Round still exists.

Osama Bin Laden Mask

Saddam Hussein Mask

Suicide Bomber Terrorist Costume

Spreadshirt

Worst Costume of 2006?

Pumpkin-Go-Round

Tuesday, October 17, 2006


From Peoria
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Yahoo! Time Capsule

Submit images, drawings, words, videos, and sounds to the world's first digital time capsule that will be sealed up in Smithsonian Folkway Recordings. You have until November 8th to make submissions. In addition to submitting your own content, you can access and comment on content contributed by users from around the world. As of today there are about 30,000 contributions from 160 countries

Yahoo! Time Capsule

Tuesday, October 10, 2006


Strafing the White House
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Goggles Flight Simulator

A flash Google Maps flight simulator game from the United Kingdom. Your keyboard controls banking, altitude, speed, and a machine gun. There's a reasonable selection of US and foreign locations including Washington, Disneyland, the Moon, and Mars. No Chicago preloaded but after a number of requests from people who want to shoot up their exgirlfriends house, workplace, etc. the author added instructions for how to link to your chosen location (or hometown) as a start location for Goggles. This game is a beta (test version), but it is fun.

Goggles

Tuesday, October 03, 2006


Smells like bread baking at 5th Ave-53rd St
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New York City Subway Smell Map Debuts

Whiffed up from e-mails sent in by Gawkerphiles, the map charts smells; horrific and sublime, encountered and endured throughout New York's subway stations. Beyond the scatological there's some interesting descriptions like "High School Chemistry class" and "the smoke that comes off the grill when you put on a cheap steak". For more conventional gawking, be sure to check out the Gawker Stalker Map.

Gawker New York City Subway Smell Map

Gawker Stalker Map