How to use your cell phone anywhere in the world
How to use your cell phone anywhere in the world. Get a GSM phone, pay through the nose for roaming, or unlock your phone and use local pay-as-you-go SIM cards wherever you are.
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
Entries for June 2005
DataTiles project from Sony Computer Science Laboratories
DataTiles project from Sony Computer Science Laboratories. Watch the movie for how it works…reminds me a bit of the computer systems in Minority Report.
Money Magazine on the 50 smartest things you
Money Magazine on the 50 smartest things you can do with your money. Also includes a list of 15 dumb things to avoid.
The scoring of movies and the -atsi
The scoring of movies and the -atsi movies scored by Philip Glass.
Giant-Ass Image Viewer
Giant-Ass Image Viewer. Python script (+JavaScript and CSS) for cutting up and viewing large images, a la Google Maps.
Allan Tannenbaum’s photos of NYC nightlife in the 1970s
Allan Tannenbaum’s photos of NYC nightlife in the 1970s. Discos, Studio 54, Andy Warhol, porn stars, etc. NSFW.
Neal Pollack on how his literary persona
Neal Pollack on how his literary persona got out of hand. “For the last five years, I’ve lived with a dark, obnoxious fictional version of myself. It’s been an irritating time.”
Cory Doctorow’s new book, Someone Comes to
Cory Doctorow’s new book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, is out today. As usual, the book is available for download under a Creative Commons license.
Google Wallet
Word on the street (via waxy) is that Google is set to release a PayPal competitor called Google Wallet. A thread at Techdirt notes that Yahoo!, Microsoft, and eBay have all tried to launch similar services that met with little or no success in the face of competition with PayPal.
I doubt Google is focused on competing with PayPal, at least in the short term. This move, if true, makes a lot of sense for Google. They already have an internal payment system set up to collect and distribute AdSense revenues, a store selling t-shirts, bean bags, search hardware, they sell software, and they’ve indicated that with Google Video, people will be able to charge others to view videos uploaded to Google’s servers (with Google taking a small cut). Taking the core of that internal payment system, it would probably be technologically trivial** for them to open it up for anyone to pay money to anyone else (instead of just individual —> Google or Google —> individual). The line above about their Google Video plans — “people will be able to charge others to view videos uploaded to Google’s servers (with Google taking a small cut)” — already sounds a lot like what PayPal does. This is the Andre Torrez school of product development…build something that solves a problem you’re having and it’ll probably be useful to a bunch of other people if you let them use it too.
Plus it leverages their existing user base. If you’ve already got an AdSense account or are going to charge for your video through Google Video, you’re already a GWallet user…and signing people up through their GMail/Orkut/Blogger accounts would probably be pretty easy as well. This move may also indicate that Google is planning to charge a wider range of people for products/services — maybe a “pro” version of Gmail, a robust, commercial API to their search results, or even a music store? GWallet would be needed infrastructure for ramping up from paying relatively few AdSense users to (potentially) anyone who uses Google. It makes sense for them beyond trying to gain a foothold in the online payments space.
** Getting the banking stuff sorted out is another story though…but as PayPal has shown, if you can get that set up, there’s plenty of revenue to be had.
Check out the moon illusion for yourself
Check out the moon illusion for yourself this week; it’s the lowest-hanging full moon in 18 years.
Nokia.com comes up first in a
Nokia.com comes up first in a Google search for “motorola mobile phones”. I suspect it’s because Motorola’s site isn’t optimized for Google (lots of Flash, little text) and a difference in usage: it’s “cell phones” in the US versus “mobile phones” in Europe (where Nokia is from).
The Contagious Media Showdown Awards are Saturday
The Contagious Media Showdown Awards are Saturday night at Eyebeam, 6-8pm. I’ll be presenting one of the awards, so stop by and (please don’t) heckle.
A project to offer free textbooks (as
A project to offer free textbooks (as opposed to the $120 ones you get at the college bookstore) is looking for some web design help. “In response to the textbook industry’s constant drive to maximize profits instead of educational value, I have started this collection of the existing free textbooks and educational tools available online.”
Neal Stephenson on the larger lessons of Star Wars
Neal Stephenson on the larger lessons of Star Wars. “Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out.”
Weblog detailing a journey across Russia on the trans-Siberian railway
Weblog detailing a journey across Russia on the trans-Siberian railway.
Shuffle
While walking through Chelsea Market to get some lunch, I ran across a band comprised of more than a dozen 10-12 year olds with trumpets, clarinets, flutes, guitars, and percussion instruments. They were playing Superfreak by Rick James when I walked in and segued from that right into Hava Nigila. Awesome.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes now engaged
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes now engaged. What the hell? This is shaping up to be a monster of a train wreck.
Finding a rough model for how films
Finding a rough model for how films fare at the box office. “They assume that revenue relies on three major factors: the size of the possible audience, the initial desire of audience members to see the film (which is often dictated by the amount spent on marketing and publicity), and audience response to the film.”
50% of the world’s population will soon live in cities
50% of the world’s population will soon live in cities.
Coffee in Paris sucks?
Coffee in Paris sucks?. I don’t drink coffee myself (vile, vile stuff), but I’ve never heard anything bad about the coffee in Paris, aside from the complaint of some Americans that you can rarely get it to go.
Stats on the BBC’s Beethoven downloads
Stats on the BBC’s Beethoven downloads. “Live performances of Beethoven’s first five symphonies, broadcast as part of The Beethoven Experience on BBC Radio 3, have amassed an incredible 657,399 download requests during a week long trial.”
Bernie Goetz is running for public advocate
Bernie Goetz is running for public advocate on a platform of vegetarianism and, uh, squirrels. Goetz shot four youths who tried to rob him on the NYC subway in 1984. (Is this campaign for real?)
Track and field records: how are they
Track and field records: how are they measured and can we trust them?.
Photos of all the Futurama taglines shown
Photos of all the Futurama taglines shown at the beginning of each episode.
Panel on food and weblogs tonight
Panel on food and weblogs tonight. “Panelists include Adam Kuban of SliceNY, Alaina Browne of A Full Belly and Josh Friedland of The Food Section. Andrea Strong of The Strong Buzz moderates.”
Flickr to partner with Qoop to offer on-demand photo books
Flickr to partner with Qoop to offer on-demand photo books.
Having close ties to friends (but not
Having close ties to friends (but not family) may result in longer life.
The Teenager’s Guide to the Real World
The Teenager’s Guide to the Real World. The actual real world, not the MTV program.
Book critic Tanya Gold reads Rebbecca Ray’s 1000
Book critic Tanya Gold reads Rebbecca Ray’s 1000-page Newfoundland in one sitting. Hour 13: “I think my eyes are bleeding. Even commas make my face ache.”
WSJ: we should fund PBS, but remove anything remotely liberal
WSJ: we should fund PBS, but remove anything remotely liberal. “But real history, meaning something that happened in the past as opposed to the recent present, with which PBS, alas, cannot be trusted.”
A man’s letter to the music industry
A man’s letter to the music industry detailing what he’s stolen from them and why. “I refuse to pay you to play these pointless games with arbitrary dates and obsolete borders.”
The Apology Line
The Apology Line. “The way it worked was that you could call and confess to anything that you wanted, and you’d be recorded, or you could call and listen to other people’s confessions.” Sounds sort of like a phone-based message board.
A gallery of casino carpeting photos
A gallery of casino carpeting photos. “Many of the carpets use flowers and wheels, both suggestive of a cyclical life: flowers bud, bloom, and then die, and their beauty is only ephemeral.”
Some additional questions and answers from the
Some additional questions and answers from the previously linked David Sedaris interview.
Last 100 posts, part 5
Last 100 posts is a semi-regular follow-up to stuff that I’ve posted about on kottke.org recently. The last such update was from May 10. Now, on to the shiny and new.
People seemed to like the site refresh. The most popular question I received in response was, “why the heck don’t you change the color on visited links?” This is a good question that I don’t have a good answer for. I recall having a good answer for it several years ago, but I can’t remember what it is. Or maybe it was never a good answer. At any rate, changing the color of the visited links is something I’ll be looking into.
I removed the dropdown menu from the front page. From the emailed reaction to its absence, it is not missed. (But it will still be back in some form soonish.)
Apple switched to Intel chips. I suspect you’ve heard more than you care to about this, so I’m going to leave further research on the topic as an exercise to the reader.
Unsurprisingly, your music collections are a lot more diverse than mine. Galego, Uzbeki, Putonghua, Gujarati, Swahili, and Phil Collinese were among the languages that people found in their music collections.
Look ma, I was in Time magazine.
When I got back from Ireland, I posted a picture to Flickr of an Irish breakfast we had one morning. That got quite a discussion going about if the breakfast was in fact Irish or if it was English or even Scottish and which nation was ripping what breakfast idea from whom. In the end, Flickr user esteban speaks the truth when he says, “God bless the fry up no matter what you call it.”
In case you missed it, reader Peter vanDerbeek made a 2005 summer movies calendar for us all to enjoy.
Still pursuing various rural internet options. The only thing we’ve learned for sure is that Verizon employees are quite nice and helpful. I’m planning on compiling all of the responses and information into a handy guide for folks looking for internet access in the rural US.
The 50 Fun Things to Do with Your iPod feature was quite popular, despite its non-appearance on Slashdot. (What, they don’t like fun? Time to read How To Get Slashdotted again, I guess.) Someone suggested that with the addition of 50 more items, it would make a good book(let)…which isn’t a bad idea at all.
In compiling the ordering strategies for How to order food in a restaurant, I neglected to include Chris Anderson’s forthcoming book on The Long Tail. The LT ordering strategy would probably only work in a place like Shopsin’s, with a menu of hundreds of different items or at places with really large wine lists.
I got sick earlier this month (I’ve still got a cough I can’t get rid of) and wondered who got sick in June. Turns out quite a few of you, including a fairly high proportion of my friends. Many blamed allergies, which probably had something to do with my own ailment as well.
The friendship and rivalry of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg
The friendship and rivalry of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
Text of Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address
Text of Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address.
Cassette tape DJ mixes music with his custom-built cassette decks
Cassette tape DJ mixes music with his custom-built cassette decks.
Entries in the first annual Art of Science Competition
Entries in the first annual Art of Science Competition.
Interview with Errol Morris
Interview with Errol Morris. He says he’s going to be doing some more commercials for Apple.
Drawing Restraint 9 is the first collaboration by
Drawing Restraint 9 is the first collaboration by super-couple Matthew Barney and Bjork.
Socials & More