Friday, March 4, 2005

Three Words: Internet Pinball Database Pinball Wizard Meets AARP. The Internet Pinball Database. The Internet Pinball Machine Database — also known as the IPD or IPDB — is a comprehensive, searchable listing of virtually every pinball machine ever made. It is an ad free, popup free, registration free resource. The database is constantly expanding, but currently includes 24,740 images of 4,728 games and 2,282 other game related files, as well as links to other pinball websites, all arranged by machine. The database also includes pitch & bat baseball games, cocktail table machines, bingos, and payout machines, when they have a pinball theme. It may also include information on some obscure games that are not pinball machines but sometimes are confused as them. [via Kotaku]... [datacloud] 8:21:05 PM

Dave Winer MCN Logo The graphics/logos for Dave Winer's Morning Coffee Notes bear a resemblance to Arizona's State Flag. A cosmic connection? Is it a reflection of the deep deep roots of Phoenix bloggers? Nobody knows for sure... More MCN logos from Kosso. Neat-o! [Scripting News] 7:11:35 PM

Via Mobile Burn Virgin Radio Launches on Mobile Phones. Virgin Radio have launched a great new service for GPRS and 3G phones. You download a simple J2ME app and you're listening to Virgin Radio. [Mobile Burn] 6:50:46 PM

Re: Analogy and Cellular Homeostasis Crossing McLuhan and Biology? Boy, things sure can get interesting in my Mind, Media and Society II class . Take this entry from one of the seminar participants. The cellular Homeostasis process is worth probing further from a language/culture perspective (Tissue Culture?). The cellular membrane serves as what McLuhan would call the "Break Boundary" The point at which one mode of existence separates from another. It is a turbulent interface where effluent material from one (let's say for arguments sake, the exterior) environment serves as the influent material of the internal environment and is absorbed and constituted in the host environment which then processes its own effluent materials and excretes them into the exterior environment. This move towards homeostasis--keeping a stable and predictable interior constitution--has the effect of changing both the organism and its environment simultaneously such that, as an organism empties the contents of itself into the environment that environment then has been changed. ... What constitutes the "membrane" in our new wired environment? If it is ideas that are being allowed to permeate this membrane then what is being kept out? - Mark [What is The Message?] 6:44:31 PM

Sublime Information Revisited Dave Winer on Radio UserLand. Dave Winer: "We're a commercial software developer and have done the product that we feel is appropriate for a commercial developer to do, in the Summer of 2000. What this will all look like in the coming months and years is anyone's guess. (That's why it's so interesting!)" Nearly five years ago in the summer of 2000, Radio UserLand was an application that allowed you to play MP3s and share music playlists, all with an "open backend" that anyone could hook into with software or web services. While the app's primary purpose is weblogging instead of playing music, we're still building communities around central themes: podcasting, citizen journalism and more. Take a moment to read through the discussion group message thread (start here) and you'll find a fascinating time capsule of pioneers brainstorming about their new frontier. In fact, this message from Vince Outlaw in the thread describes what podcasting has become and might grow to. Finally, Mar nails it with a post later in the thread that says: "As I see it, Radio Userland is about creating content. It is about documenting and publishing sublime information about music and how people experience it in their daily lifes. It collects information about what music people listen to and in what context they listen to it. The key difference between the Radio Userland software and companies like Real (as in Jukebox), and MP3.com who collect the information into proprietary databases, is that Radio Userland makes this information available to anyone to aggregate and put into use." While the music reference doesn't apply any longer, it still makes senses. Radio allows you create, edit and aggregate content. That really reflects our goal for Radio in the future: Remove the barriers to get your content online. Become your lightweight personal content manager. I heard a famous quote on Adam Curry's Daily Source Code--I'll have to paraphrase: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." [house of warwick] 6:19:31 PM