Apple Tops Amazon.com Bestseller Lists: "Amazon.com's best selling laptops, desktops, and MP3 players this holiday season were all made by Apple Computer.
According to the online retailer's rankings for popular items by category, 6 iPod models were in the top 10 in the MP3 Pl..."
(Via MacRumors.)
Holiday iPod Sales May Have Beaten Expectations: "Hitwise has issued a report stating that the market share of visits to Apple's iTunes website was up 413% on Christmas Day 2006 when compared to Christmas Day 2005. Hitwise attributes the spike to new iPod owners flocking to download iTunes.
..."
(Via MacRumors.)
Bunnies Can't Stand Christmas: "Aww, we thought bunnies were done for now that Rayman is in stores. Guess not. Merry Christmas, anyway, in spite of humbug bunnies. Damn bunnies. In Game|Life."
(Via Wired News.)
Omakase linkdump: Merry Craftsmas: "Xeni Jardin:
A roundup of festive crap sent in to BoingBoing by you, dear readers:
• Evil Christmas Carols (audio). How beautiful! With 'sinister' key changes to minor, they sound menacing, like soundtracks to silent movies about damsels in distress on Christmas eve.
• Weird nativity in FL retirement community, above (WTF? Raelians?)
• Top 10 DIY Christmas trees
• $600 upside-down Christmas tree
• Flickr pool: your strangest holiday ornament
• Roombas singing Christmas carols (video)
• Rankin-Bass Santa + Rudolph rescued (previous BB post)
• Ultraviolent Star Trek holiday office diorama
• Baby Jesus kidnapped, returns with snapshots
• A Very Cthulhu Christmas (audio)
• sf-themed holiday story collection (+ 2, 3, 4, 5)
• 101 Classic Christmas Videos
• Gingerbread Katmari Damacy (above)
• Video: horribly Bad Star Wars Christmas: part 1, part 2
• Iranian political asylum applicant mom jailed in NC after applying for permit to sell street art (BB reader Pembdasi, who submitted this item, says, 'I am her half-brother. I just found out about this today, the day before Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas I suppose.')
• Silent choir sings 'Silent Night' in sign language
• Retro ads: shopping mall Santas arriving by copter, parachute
• Boymongoose: 12 days of Christmas, Indian-style (video). Re-blogged by popular demand -- everyone I've showed this to in person squeals, then emails it to 20 people. About: Link, and you can buy the boy-band's 'Christmas in Asia Minor' album online, in CD or download form: Link. Includes such classic carol faves as 'Hark the Herald, Angel Singh,' and 'We Are Wishing You A Merry Christmas.'
(Thanks and happy hols, Huw Bowen, Rob Nachbar, Mark Vadnais, John/Disney Blog, Scott, Wil, Justin, Human, Mark Wu, Tay, Tobias, and Santa's Helper!)
(Via Boing Boing.)
Carl Jung: "'Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.'"
Erich Fromm: "'Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.'"
Could we stop laughing at Microsoft?: "
Since January of this long, very long year, Microsoft has been the target of all laughs and criticism. Vista is late, the Zune is a disaster, the company does not innovate… The list of all they do not do, in the eyes of the public, seems to grow daily. Yet, we seem to have forgotten to ask ourselves what we, in the Mac world, have done.
This year, Apple has talked about innovation like never before. The iPods are better, brighter thinner. The iTunes Store (notice the new name) sells movies. Intel chips are in every Mac and Mac OS X now runs smoothly on them. Countless improvements have been announced to the next version of the operating system, both in its server and client versions. The future, as marketing sees it, has never been so bright.
Yet, I have never so much been bored out of my mind with Mac news. Mac OS X is still Tiger, still the operating system that is so revolutionary we have reached new heights in Tiger-only security patches. iPods may be thinner and shinier but they have, fundamentally, changed little. Intel chips may be into every Mac but they have been into every PC for a long time, without anyone cheering or applauding innovation. Leopard certainly looks awesome but it has not yet been born and it comes with just too many features to be reassuring. In fact, a lot of people attending Mac conferences this year have reported a feeling of gloom and doom, of standstill, they had not felt for years, despite the glitter and glamour of trade show marketing.
Of course, far from me the thought of denying Apple what they did do. They did release some great products. The iPod Shuffle is a jewel, the built-in iSight in laptops a great little add-on, the iTunes movie service a sound improvement. None of these things however are revolutionary or, in any way, really ‘new’. Components get smaller, thinner and more powerful. Internet connections have become faster: did we need bold banners and bad puns (’Hasta la Vista, Vista’, anyone?) to tell us that?
Maybe the Zune is a disaster, maybe Vista is a bad copy of Mac OS X. But maybe not. When did we become self-sufficient enough to take such things for granted? How many of us have actually held and used a Zune? Used a stable release of Vista? And how many of those have have held the first iPod or used Mac OS X v. 10.0.3, the operating system that could not burn CDs?
Microsoft has spent the past year taking first steps. Apple has almost arrived. Problem is, of course, that the market happens on more than one road and we do not know where we stand on all those that extend beyond the iPod, the iPhone and the iTV.
(Via MacDevCenter.)
Analyst: Look for Apple to Gain Market Share in 2007: "With the Intel transition complete, the Mac is poised to gain additional market share in the coming year.
(Via eWEEK Macintosh.)
“New MacBook is the same — only better”: "Gary Krakow writes for MSNBC, ‘Overall, I found that the new MacBook is just like the old MacBook — only better.It seems faster and has some new bells and whistles — all for the same price.’"
(Via Apple Hot News.)
Greatest cartoons of all time (video link roundup): "Xeni Jardin:
Cityrag has compiled video links for a list of The 50 Greatest Cartoons as voted on by the animation industry in 1994. Here's an excerpt:
1. What's Opera, Doc? (1957)
2. Duck Amuck (1953)
3. The Band Concert (1935)
4. Duck Dodgers in the 241/2th Century (1953)
5. One Froggy Evening (1956)
(Via Boing Boing.)
Last Gasp: "I want you to know, for the record, that all of this is your fault. Take a breath, look around, see the endless expanse of nothing all around you. How can they call you a nihilist when it's plain as day that there is nothing here? As plain as the day is long. Empty. Make sure you take note of the abysmal emptiness of a one family house with a two car garage, a perfectly cut green lawn, and a white picket fence. A wife screaming at you, two kids crying at you, two cats hiding from you, and a goldfish that lives in abject terror. I want you to know, for the record, that I don't feel sorry for you."
(Via Kuro5hin.org.)
Fun way to browse Google Image Finder: "Mark Frauenfelder:
'People Doing Stuff' is a site that automatically inserts a random name and verb into Google Image Finder each time you hit reload. The resulting image sets always have something interesting in them. Here's a cool picture that showed up in a search for 'victor wanders.' Link
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Photographs from the Arkansas State Prison 1915-1937
• Japanese cosplay photos
• Photographs of pregnant animals"
(Via Boing Boing.)
Greatest cartoons of all time (video link roundup): "Xeni Jardin:
Cityrag has compiled video links for a list of The 50 Greatest Cartoons as voted on by the animation industry in 1994. Here's an excerpt:
1. What's Opera, Doc? (1957)
2. Duck Amuck (1953)
3. The Band Concert (1935)
4. Duck Dodgers in the 241/2th Century (1953)
5. One Froggy Evening (1956)
(Via Boing Boing.)
Top Ten Creepy Fossils of 2006: "David Pescovitz:
At Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman posted a wonderfully weird list of his 'Top Ten Creepy Fossil Finds of 2006.' From his post:
1. Volaticotherium antiquus - Ancient Gliding Beast.
Discovered in Mongolia, this little half a pound squirrel-like animal is a whole new order of animals. It is a mammal that glided 70 million years before any other mammals—and maybe before birds flew.
(Via Boing Boing.)
Bionic Gloves make gardening a bit less painful: "
Green thumbs out there know that gardening gloves are a necessary evil when it comes to doing serious work out in the garden. While you need them to keep your hands from getting all cut up and filthy, the gloves tend to reduce grip strength and cause calluses.
The Bionic Gloves look to change that. They've been designed to give both improved grip and more comfort to gardeners, golfers, and equestrians who frequently complain about the crappy gloves they usually have to wear. By placing special grip pads strategically on the inside of the fingers and on the palm the gloves increase grip strength. Meanwhile, there are extra-stretchy areas on the back of the glove, allowing it to remain tight while having some give where its needed to prevent calluses. Now you have no excuse to not grow the biggest pumpkin in the entire county. Go on, get out there!
Bionic Gloves, via Book of Joe
(Via SCI FI Tech Blog.)
Airplane-Treadmill problem: "Mark Frauenfelder:
David Pogue at the NYT has presented this classic airplane on a giant treadmill problem, and people are arguing about whether or not the plane would take off or not. Here's the problem:
‘Imagine a plane is sitting on a massive conveyor belt, as wide and as long as a runway. The conveyer belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction. Can the plane take off?
‘I say no, because the plane will not move relative the the ground and air, and thus, very little air will flow over the wings. However, other people are convinced that since the wheels of a plane are free spinning, and not powered by the engines, and the engines provide thrust against the air, that somehow that makes a difference and air will flow over the wing.’
(Via Boing Boing.)
Breakfast of the Gods webcomic: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Joey says:
The webcomic 'Breakfast of the Gods' by Brendan Douglas Jones is a
pitch-perfect spoof of contemporary grim'n'gritty superhero crossovers like (mostly) 'Identity Crisis' and (a little bit) 'Infinite Crisis' and 'Civil War' -- featuring old-school cartoon cereal mascots.My favorite part is where the crazed Frankenberry beats the Honey Nut
Cheerios bumblebee to death in Count Chocula's dungeon. Also the scene
with Sugar Bear out by the pier, where he's all Wolverine-ish in his
attitude, drinking beer and bitching about how hard it is to carry a
beast around inside him.
(Via Boing Boing.)
Classic Christmas specials dubbed and youtubed: "Mark Frauenfelder:
10 Zen Monkeys has an excellent selection of treasured classic Christmas TV specials that wisecrackers have edited into foul-mouthed and cynical spoofs. Link
(Via Boing Boing.)
"Juxtaposition" - Results from Photo Assignment 9: "The November Photo Assignment was 'Juxtaposition,' and we have quite a gallery for you. Twelve images submitted by The Digital Story members demonstrate the collective keen eyes of our virtual camera club shooters. These images are downright clever. To produce the gallery, the pictures were first loaded into Aperture. I then added the accompanying stories to the IPTC caption field and combined it with the EXIF data from the photograph. The final step was to create a web gallery in Aperture and upload it to the Digial Story server. You can view this month's photo assignment here. The December..."
(Via The Digital Story.)
Charitable giving guide for the end-of-year: "Cory Doctorow:
It's time to donate -- the time of year when you have to give your money to charity or turn it over to the gubmint. I've just done a marathon round of end-of-year charitable giving:
US Charities
Electronic Frontier Foundation: EFF always gets my largest annual donation. No organization works harder, spends smarter and gets more done for your personal long-term technological liberty than EFF. I spent years inside the org and I know for a fact that every dime donated makes a difference.
Creative Commons: Just four years after launching CC has turned into a global movement. More than 160,000,000 works have been released under CC licenses. It's good news for creators and audiences -- but it's amazing news for the public interest. The proof that there's more than one kind of rightsholder using technology today has stayed the hand of more than one regulator. CC keeps getting better, smarter and more global.
Free Software Foundation/Defective By Design: It's wonderful to see a campaigning group based on fighting DRM. Defective by Design has pulled off a number of audacious and clever actions that have raised public awareness of DRM. The fight starts here.
The Internet Archive: What would we do without it? I use it every day. Its mission: Universal access to all human knowledge. What could be more noble?
The Gutenberg Project: The world's leading access-to-public-domain project. They have truly created a library from nothing, and oh, what a library.
The MetaBrainz Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which oversees the MusicBrainz project. MusicBrainz is a free and open alternative to the evil (dis)Gracenote, which took all the metadata about CDs that you and I keyed in and locked it away behind a wall of patents and onerous licensing deals. The org that controls the metadata controls the world -- this needs to be in the public's hands.
The Participatory Culture Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which produces ass-kicking media software in the public interest. The best-known of these is Democracy Player, an Internet TV program that just works -- add feeds based on YouTube keywords, or published feeds from creators, and new video arrive automagically and just play. Because TV is too important to leave up to Microsoft and Apple.
The Clarion Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which oversees the world-famous Clarion Writers' Workshop, a bootcamp for sf writers that has produced some of the finest talents in our field, including Octavia Butler, Bruce Sterling, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, and Lucius Sheppard. I'm a graduate myself, and an instructor (I taught in 2005 and I'll be back in 2007) -- I received a substantial scholarship to the workshop in 1992 and it changed my life. I will pay that debt forward every year.
Hospice Net: I make a donation to this charity every year in memory of my dear friend, former Boing Boing guestblogger Pat York. Pat was killed in a car accident, and her family nominated this charity for memorial gifts.
ACLU: For the liberties the EFF doesn't cover, here in sticky meatspace, we have the ACLU. Fearless upholders of the Constitution -- an org that knows that you have to stand up for the rights of people you disagree with, or you aren't in a free society.
Consumer Project on Technology: CPTech was the first copyright activist group to take the fight to WIPO, the UN agency that makes copyright treaties (you can thank WIPO for the DMCA -- they have the same relationship to bad copyright laws that Sauron has to evil, a kind of origin-node for all the crap that's destroying the infosphere). They marshalled a huge and effective activist opposition there, and are presently turning the agency upside down with a progressive treaty called Access to Knowledge.
Public Knowledge: Public Knowledge are the best copyfighters on the Hill, real DC insiders who know the ins and outs of fighting in the halls of administrative agencies like the FCC. We never could have killed the Broadcast Flag without PK, and I'm grateful that someone else is willing to be the person who puts on a suit and explains things in plain language to Congressional staffers. It's a thankless task. These days, they're leading the charge on Net Neutrality, a fight that we have to win if we're going to have any online future to speak of.
Canadian Charities
Online Rights Canada: ORC (awesome acronym, huh?) is Canada's leading cyber-activist group, a collaboration between EFF and CIPPIC at the University of Ottawa. They really mobilized during the last Canadian federal election and managed to kick out a corrupt politician who took campaign contributions from huge multinational media, software and pharmaceutical companies and then wrote laws in their favour.
Youth Challenge International: YCI sends young Canadians abroad to work on sustainable, community initiated development projects. Challengers work in international teams that include Costa Ricans, Guyanese, and Australians. I'm an alumnus, having done a hitch in a Nicaraguan squatter village in rural Costa Rica when I was 21, and it changed my life forever.
Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation: My aunt Heather died of breast cancer when she was only 41. My whole family is now involved with the society. I don't live in Toronto and can't join the annual run for the cure there, but at least I can donate to the cause.
UK Charities
Open Rights Group: Danny O'Brien and I co-founded ORG a couple years ago and I continue to serve on its advisory board. ORG has done stupendous work since its founding, culminating in its aggressive lobbying of the Gowers Commission review of copyright. The Gowers Report is out now, and ORG won -- the Commission has strongly recommended that UK music recording copyrights not be extended to 95 years. This is the first time that I know of that a copyright term extension has been shot down, and it's in no small part thanks to ORG.
NO2ID: As the UK sleepwalks into a surveillance state, NO2ID stands as the nation's best, last bulwark against an Orwellian nightmare of universal tracking. NO2ID has won substantial victories against the Blair regime's compulsive move towards a national ID card, keeping it at bay for years.
MySociety: Software in the public interest -- it's a damned good idea. MySociety produces software like Pledgebank ('I will risk arrest by refusing to register for a UK ID card if 100,000 other Britons will also do it') and TheyWorkForYou (every word and deed by every Member of Parliament). It's plumbing for activists and community organizers.
(Via Boing Boing.)
Lessig's Code v2.0 - a croudsourced update: "Cory Doctorow:
Larry Lessig has just posted the whole text of the second edition of Code, called 'Codev2' (natch). Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace was one of the seminal books on regulation, law and the Internet, organized around the central hypothesis that 'code is law' -- when AOL writes a chat-room that limits the number of chatters to 12, it's like a nation passing a law limiting public gatherings to 12 people.
For the second edition, Larry posted the whole text of the original on a wiki and invited his readers, fans and detractors to help him edit out and add in material that had changed in the years since the initial publication.
Now, Codev2 is out as a genuine print book, and, as befits the co-founder of Creative Commons, as a liberally licensed CC download that even allows for commercial remixing of the text.
Link
(Via Boing Boing.)
An Open Letter to the Democratic Party: "First, I'd like to say congratulations. Prior to last night, I had been only cautiously optimistic about your chances of taking the House. As of the time I am writing this, you are on the cusp of taking senate as well. In the world of politics, expectations are as real as the raw numbers, and you have certainly exceeded mine and many others. A quick scan of the over-dramatic flailing on conservative blogs and the despondent tone of Fox News fills me and many others with a profound sense of schadenfreude. Enjoy your victory, but enjoy it quickly. For tomorrow you inherit the corn-flecked shit sandwich currently known as our government. Here are some things you can do to further redeem yourselves in our eyes..."
(Via Kuro5hin.org.)
Alarm coffin makes it easier for zombies to get out: "
You know when you're just sitting around, minding your own business, when suddenly you get buried alive? It sucks, trust me. Well, you won't have to worry about having your last moments ruined by a frantic clawing and digging if you get yourself set up with one of Vitaly Malyukov's alarm coffins. Yes, now you can have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that when you're buried, if you happen to wake up, you can push a button and have people come dig you up. It really helps you eternally sleep better at night knowing that some horrific, unimaginable ways to go just won't happen to you, no matter how drunk your doctor is when he declares you dead. No word on pricing or availability as of yet, unfortunately.
Via Ubergizmo
(Via SCI FI Tech Blog.)
Tele-operated Christmas light display: "David Pescovitz:
In 2004, Alek Komarnitsky hoaxed the online public into thinking they were controlling thousands of Christmas lights on his house. Then last year, he actually rigged up a real tele-operated system of Christmas lights. (Previous BB post here.) Alek just emailed me to say that they're up again. Or so he claims. Again. From his email:
Three live webcams allow you to view the 15,000 lights and
giant inflatable Elmo, Frosty, Santa, and Homer Simpson plus
X10 power technology allows you to turn 'em on and off - D'OH!
Over $14,000 raised so far for Celiac Disease.
Merry Christmas and HO HO HO,
alek
P.S. Few more bells & whistles this year - one example is Google Mapp'ing the 100+ countries that have come by.
(Via Boing Boing.)
