Interesting Drug

Trojan Horse targets Google Adsense: “dorkygeek writes ‘The Register reports that nogoodniks have developed a Trojan horse program that produces fake Google ads posing as the real thing. The as-yet unnamed Trojan replaces legitimate ads served via Google AdSense with promos for penis pills, porn sites and the like. Techshout says the Google AdSense team confirms ‘that these are fake Google ads, formatted to look like legitimate ads. We agree that this phenomenon is likely the result of malicious software installed on your computer.'’

DSC00080: “jakedobkin posted a photo:

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Tom Jones knighted: “The singer is named in New Year’s Honours list”

The Polite Umbrella: “The Polite Umbrella, by Joo Paek, respects people’s personal space in a public area. This shrinkable umbrella enables users to morph its shape like a jellyfish in order to reduce occupied space and to increase user maneuverability.

The user can adjust their umbrella by pulling a handle so that one can protect themselves from harsh winds or bumping into others. Additionally, graphic images printed on the umbrella have animated effects which create gestures of politeness such as bowing or hand gestures. Furthermore the umbrella has readable quotes related to good manners in order to initiate communications. Check the video.

Originally from we make money not art, ReBlogged by djacobs on Dec 30, 2005 at 04:22 PM

Every #1 song ever to appear on Billboard Top 100 squashed into one long song: “Mark Frauenfelder:
R. Luke DuBois has created an interesting piece of music out of the 857 songs that have appeared at the top of the charts in the Billboard Top 100 since 1958. The result, called ‘Billboard,’ is 37 minutes long.

Billboard allows you to get a birds-eye view of the Billboard Hot 100 by listening to all the #1 singles from 1958 through the millenium using a technique I’ve been working on for a couple of years called time-lapse phonography. The 857 songs used to make the piece are analyzed digitally and a spectral average is then derived from the entire song. Just as a long camera exposure will fuse motion into a single image, spectral averaging allows us to look at the average sonority of a piece of music, however long, giving a sort of average timbre of a piece. This gives us a sense of the average key and register of the song, as well as some clues about the production values present at the time the record was made; for example, the improvements in home stereo equipment over the past fifty years, as well as the gradual replacement of (relatively low-fidelity) AM radio with FM broadcasting has had an impact on how records are mixed… drums and bass lines gradually become louder as you approach the present, increasing the amount of spectral noise and low tones in our averages.

Link (Thanks, Arwen!)

10 Web Trends That Should Die in 2006: “”

Mouse Wars: “

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The world’s largest ball of paint: “The world’s largest ball of paint is a baseball covered in 19,100 coats of paint, weighs 1700 pounds, and has taken 28 1/2 years to get to this stage.”

100 things we didn’t know this time last year: “”

Mobile Phones To Announce ‘You’ve Been Indicted’…: “SEOUL - South Koreans may look at their mobile phones with some trepidation in the new year because prosecutors will start telling people they have been indicted via text messages, an official said Monday.

In a country where about 75 percent of the population carries mobile phones, prosecutors felt it was time to move away from sending legal notices on paper and send them electronically instead, said Lee Young-pyo, an administrative official.

top 25 for 2005: “The 25 Most Interesting Webcams of 2005.“

Scary Love hurts — especially in India, where if police find you out on a date, they will beat the living crap out of you while TV cameras roll: “Reuters”

Stupid German firm fires employees for exceeding “two moans per employee” rule, and other weird regulations at the workplace: “Reuters”

Arianna Huffington: 2005: Things I Want To Forget: “The older I get, the more I’m convinced that the key to happiness is starting every day, if you can, with a clean slate. But it should certainly be done before the start of every new year. This task is particularly easy for me this year since forgetfulness seems to come along with the Bora Bora breeze here.

So here is my list of things from 2005 that I’d love to forget — that, indeed, we’d all be better off never having cross our minds again:
[…]

Letterman’s psychic influence restrained: “David Pescovitz:
A New Mexico judge granted a temporary restraining order against David Letterman based on a statement by a woman named Colleen Nestler who claims that the talk show host has caused her ‘mental cruelty’ and ’sleep deprivation’ over the last eleven years. According to Nestler, Letterman seems to have employed a form of remote influence via television. From the Associated Press:

Nestler’s application for a restraining order was accompanied by a six-page typed letter in which she said Letterman used code words, gestures and ‘eye expressions’ to convey his desires for her.

She wrote that she began sending Letterman ‘thoughts of love’ after his ‘Late Show’ began in 1993, and that he responded in code words and gestures, asking her to come East.

She said he asked her to be his wife during a televised ‘teaser’ for his show by saying, ‘Marry me, Oprah.’ Her letter said Oprah was the first of many code names for her and that the coded vocabulary increased and changed with time.

Link

Everything I Need To Know About Men And Women, I Learned From The Hit Songs Of 2005: “

Do not let this woman borrow your car

2005 was a watershed year with regard to how pop lyrics have enlightened us about the differences between men and women. Here below are my highlights.

TOP 10 THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT MEN AND WOMEN FROM SONGS OF 2005

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Scientists Find ‘Sweet Tooth’ In Brain…: “ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Researchers at the University of Michigan have found a ‘pleasure spot’ in the brains of rats that may shed light on how food translates into pleasure for humans.

The spot in rats’ brains makes sweet tastes more ‘liked’ than other tastes, biopsychology researchers Susana Pecina and Kent Berridge found.

Google, Time Warner strike $1 billion deal for AOL: “The deal, worth a 5 percent stake in AOL, expands the companies’ partnership to include advertising, video and instant messaging.”

2005 Year End Google Zeitgeist: “”

En Garde! The Safe Bedside Table: “

Let’s get all hypothetical for a second. Pretend you’re sleeping at home and some dude breaks in and is going to rob you/kill you. How will you defend yourself quickly? Enter the Safe Bedside Table, a genius creation from designer James McAdam. What looks like a simple, basic table at first, quickly becomes a shield and sword ready for your defense. We’re talking King Arthur-style, though, because you’ll be greeting those attackers with a medieval-style shield and wooden club. No sharp swords or maces here. Remember to call 911 first before you start screaming things like, ‘Have at you, blackguard!’ The whole thing is made of cherry and steel so it won’t look hideous, either.

Product Page

PicoPad - Easy Writing: “

My father always used to carry around a pen and crumpled pieces of paper in his coat so he could write things down—songs on the radio he liked, prices of things in stores, and other useless hunks of information. It wasn’t very handy, though. Luckily for him, there’s the PicoPad. PicoPad is a little credit card-sized (if not smaller) notepad complete with a minuscule pen for jotting down notes on the little blue sheets. It fits perfectly into a card slot in your wallet and doesn’t get in the way at all. The paper included comes out easily and has a sticky back for using it like a Post-It Note. You can score a PicoPad for only $3.89 each in a multitude of colors. Extremely handy and a great gift for that dude you know who’s always writing down numbers on his hand.

Product Page [Picopad]

Google School: Find toll-free numbers: “

The Official Google Blog schools us on how to find buried toll-free customer support phone numbers on the web:

OK, here’s a secret ‘the man’ doesn’t want you to know. Some companies have a toll-free number that’s buried deep on their website — but it would take like a thousand clicks to find it, and these days, who has the time? One way to get to it more quickly is to search Google for the company name and the phrase ‘customer support.’ Like this: TiVo Customer Support.

Or you can use the mighty OR operator:

An even trickier way to get at hard-to-reach customer support phone numbers is to search for the company name and the standard toll-free prefixes. That’ll dig up some real gems. For example, ‘[company name] 800 OR 877 OR 888 OR 866′.

This’ll come in handy the moment you start to panic because the gifts you ordered online haven’t arrived yet.

Threat to Jackson’s Beatles stake: “Michael Jackson’s stake in The Beatles’ back catalogue is under threat unless he repays a $200m (£113m) loan.”

Gay Soldier Leaves Army After Having Nose-Broken, Being Threatened With Knife…: “Fear is keeping Pvt. Kyle Lawson awake at night — not of the enemy, but of his fellow soldiers.

For weeks, the 19-year-old Tucson native has been sleeping on a cot in his drill sergeant’s office to protect him from further attacks because he is gay.