Wikipedia spin-detector online

27B Stroke6: "Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith just launched an unofficial Wikipedia search tool that threatens to lay bare the ego-editing and anonymous flacking on the site. Enter the name of a corporation, organization or government entity and you get a list of IP addresses assigned to it. Then with one or two clicks, you can see all the anonymous edits made from those addresses anywhere in Wikipedia's pages."

This is absolutely brilliant.. Corporations, governments, individuals caught in the act of "anonymously" editing unfavorable entries. Hats off Mr. Griffith. You have added to our world. :)

Warning Label Generator

What more to say? It's a warning label generator! Pick the ominous tone of your warning template, pick your universal symbol, then pop in up to 6 lines of poetic-scary text.

Fun for literally everyone.

Scientists to create artificial life

Telegraph: "Scientists could create the first new form of artificial life within months after a landmark breakthrough in which they turned one bacterium into another.

In a development that has triggered unease and excitement in equal measure, scientists in the US took the whole genetic makeup - or genome - of a bacterial cell and transplanted it into a closely related species.

This then began to grow and multiply in the lab, turning into the first species in the process.

The team that carried out the first “species transplant” says it plans within months to do the same thing with a synthetic genome made from scratch in the laboratory."


File under "What could possibly go wrong?"

Google spy-vans

Roundup of the Google residential and vehicle spy-van stories... For those not yet in the loop, Google Maps has rolled out a new 'feature' where you can click on a street and get a 360 degree view of that location - including whatever happened to be there when the shots were taken.

People and their faces. Car make, model, and license plates. Through open windows... While it shows what anyone would see while sitting on the street at that moment in time, it's now available to any interwebs user, including stalkers, thieves, or profile builders. (Nice new Mercedes in this driveway, next to house address, including license plate - And hey - there's the owner's face.. Seems to have a nice plasma on the living room wall... etc.)

Here's BoingBoing's look at the spy vehicles being used to make the photos.

And 27StrokeB6's running log of interesting street level views (bikini-clad sunbathers, dude walking out of strip club, etc)...

And the appropriately named "streetviewer"

While limited to major metro areas (SF, NYC, Vegas), the goal is probably to capture everything. They do have a 'this invades my privacy' button, but we're not sure what it does. Here's a flash-back to keeping your house out of the photo database, using the DMCA and a wall sized original poem.

And we're still holding our breath hoping that Elinor Mills of CNet will follow up last year's CNet / Google spat by posting a street level view of the homes of Google's founders.

White House uploads anti-drug commercials to YouTube - Let the remixing begin!

CNN/AP: "The White House is distributing government-produced, anti-drug videos on YouTube, the trendy Internet service that already features clips of wacky, drug-induced behavior and step-by-step instructions for growing marijuana plants."

"The government's YouTube videos include a previously televised, 30-second ad of a teenager running from a snarling dog and bemoaning pressure from his friends to smoke marijuana."


This is comedic gold waiting to happen. Send along any links, and we'll post e'm here. :)

The Stephen Colbert "On Notice Board" Generator

Follow the link to make your own... Brilliant.