Topix is another entry into the admittedly-crowded news aggregator / portal market … but with a key difference. Instead of searching feeds by topic or keyword, you search by “target” – specifically, the location that the story refers to. Type in “Courtice, Ontario” for example, and you get a wealth of info from the ongoing problems with the town’s crosswalks (lethal for seniors, apparently) to the first ever Newfie Dance (cod kissing and the screech). The promise here is in the easy access to different viewpoints on the same topic – while international news gets more and more commoditized, local news still remains the domain of the local reporter.

If you do want to deal with keywords and the like, you can use the “advanced search“, but it takes some of the fun out of it. Play around, have some fun.

Back when we mentioned the latest annoyance in spam – the viral stock tip – one sort-of-important question was missed: Do the companies involved have anything to do with this?

The answer, apparently, is no. These companies, who are already fighting the aura of illegitimacy that goes with having an over-the-counter stock offering, are getting tarred and feathered by pissed-off recipients of this new breed of spam. They want it stopped as badly as anyone, but seem to be hitting dead ends. Interesting.

Who says money can’t buy friends? If you indulge in the whole MySpace thing, and you feel like a big loser because you have no friends, now you can buy some. Of course, they are fakes, but they will still post tags on your profile and stuff, and I suppose you could claim that you are banging them. Beyond that, if you have to spend 99 cents for this then you probably have deeper woes than can be cured here.

Honestly, I am struggling to find the words to describe how incredibly pathetic the whole thing actually is. Yuck.

This right here is exactly the reason that Babelfish was invented.

However, there still remains the need for a program that can tell us exactly what the fuck the Germans are actually thinking. Jeezus.

Apple has just released security update 2006-07 for OSX – which would not be huge news except that it also includes fixes for third-party portions of the X/unix package (perl, OpenSSH. samba, etc.) … something that you rarely see addressed in an integrated distribution. This is how you paint yourself as a Good Corporate Citizen, and distance yourself from the mopes up in Redmond once again.

Kudos.

18: The number of months in the lifespan of the average umbrella.

A long time ago in These Very Pages there was the mention of Flow, a “non-game” that functioned more like an interactive toy and was indicative of the concept that Nintendo was trying to chase with their non-traditional offerings on the DS and the Wii. It appears that certain other parties in the gaming biz have taken note and are trying to claw back into this previously ignored battleground. Flow has just been picked up by Sony as an interactive PS3 title, which is pretty funny – they have optioned a flash-based game with primitive graphics to be run on their 700 dollar graphics powerhouse.

Why? Because the crazy mad success of the DS and the Wii have shown that Nintendo is quite possibly right: People want “fun” and “interesting” and “engaging” more than 17,000,000 polygon renders over particle-imaged backgrounds.

Luckily, you don’t have to spend big Ebay bucks to get a PS3 – you can still play right here.

The lid is off and the next great installment of the Bookworm series is Bookworm Adventures. The concept is fabulous – you battle your way through a gauntlet of beasties, dealing out blows that have a punishing potential based on the length of your words. The longer the words, the bigger the kabong.

Yes, the concept is top notch. The execution, however, can be summed up in three words: Pretty fucking weak.

Guitar Hero + Beer + Raising Money For Charity + More Beer = Good.

If you happen to live anywhere within spitting distance of Brooklyn (this means you, Tazz) then you would be remiss in not attending.

4023: The distance in meters of the longest recorded “single-hop” flight by a flying squirrel.

As “approachable” and “casual” games suddenly become big business (see: Wii) the current purveyors of this particular genre are now taking steps (watch out, pun coming) to ensure that they remain (pun imminent) “in the game”.

Oh, ha ha.

Anyway, one of the pioneers of this sort of thing is PopCap. They have millions of fans, but are not taking things for granted, and have been developing a sequel to their most popular game – Bookworm – for some time now. This is no half-assed effort – they have pumped two and a half years and $700,000 into the development. Will it be worth it? We find out tomorrow … despite a veil of rather odd secrecy, the wraps are supposed to come off on Tuesday.

Click, click.

It has become apparent that minds greater than mine are reading this blog. I know this because a number of them took me to task for failing to mention the amount of money that has been raised to get this thing off the ground. Or, more to the point, failing to mention what could have been done with the money.

Point well taken. With 3 million bucks raised so far, there is a lot of good that could have been done here. Plus, that money didn’t flow up out of the ground, there would have been a lot of time and effort involved in scratching it up.

So the choice was easy. These people could have used all of their time and resources to make the world a better place for a lot of people. … or they could build an edifice to ensure that their children grow up to be another generation of poorly-educated narrow-minded imbeciles.

It would appear that they made the “Christian” choice.

Everyone needs some diversion on a Monday. This is a Universal Fact Of Life. Fortunately, there is an interesting little piece of flash-based fun called Scribble that can provide just that.

Scribble is the bastard child of Lemmings and Kirby – Canvas Curse. You help your hapless little lemmings blots to the goal by drawing bridges, walls, ramps, whatever with your mouse. Just like in Canvas Curse, you have a limited amount of ink, and the things you draw fade away after a few moments. The game is interesting and infuriating and will probably help you waste most of the day. Plus, as a bonus for those in the office space, both the music and the sound effects can be toggled off on the options screen. The sound effects are kind of awesome, though, so keep those on if you can.

This is from Nitrome, the same outfit that brought you Hot Air, so you know that the quality is high. Enjoy.

400,000,000: The number of people worldwide that count English as their first language.

Over on my DS Wifi site I have posted very bare instructions on how to build a component video cable for your Wii if you are not willing to wait until the idiots at Nintendo actually get some of them into distribution. If you are interested (and since currently your choice is between “games that look like vomit” and “nothing”, I am assuming that interest is high) head on over.

UPDATE: I have cobbled together a “diagram” (okay, its a picture, it was easier that way) of the pinouts and have expanded on the assignment list. Hopefully this is all anyone will need.

Crossword is an excellent little diversion that breaks down into the following equation:

Simple and familiar premise + interesting twist = fun and rewarding game

You start with a partially filled-in crossword grid. There are no clues, but there is a list of letters at the right side of the screen. If you click on any of the blanks in the grid, all of the instances of that same letter will light up. Then you click on one of the letters on the right-hand side to fill in all those blanks with that letter. It’s easier to see than explain, so maybe you can just go check it out for yourself.

This game more about logic than vocabulary – one of the nice touches here is that these are all words that an english-speaking person would actually use as they go through life, as opposed to the obscure and useless “trickster” words that populate the average pencil-and-paper versions. Also, there is a really nice difficulty progression here – you start with a really easy puzzle at the beginner level, and then once you are hooked, things get a little dicey.

Important thing: Not all all of the letters on the right are used in the puzzle.

Other important thing: If you get hosed, you can click “give up” to see the solution and then you can click “reset” to get a new puzzle at the same difficulty level.

Enjoy.

114,000,000: The number of people worldwide that count French as their primary language.

I have been pimping the Child’s Play campaign to my cronies and acquaintances on a fairly regular basis. I will continue to do this, because it is an awesomely good cause and it is run by some even more awesomely good people. But there are times when you step back and realize that the levels of inequality in this world span vast orders of magnitude – sometimes the leap from the “haves” to the “have-nots” is across a staggering gulf that our daily lives do not equip us to comprehend.

Case in point: Child’s Play is trying to bring some comfort and smiles to kids stuck in hospitals. This is a good thing. And yet … in other parts of the world that very medical care – the hardship that we are trying to make more bearable for the young ones – is something that can only be dreamed of and wished for. Wishes that will probably never come true.

Can you just turn around any pony up the money to build hospitals here and there? No, of course not … not unless you are Mark Cuban and happened to stumble across this page today. But what you can do is spend 10 bucks and buy a mosquito net. Every 30 seconds a small child in Africa dies of malaria. One died when you were reading the first paragraph, and by the time you got to here another one is dead. These are little kids – mostly 5 years old and under. And it’s something that we can actually fight without medicines and doctors and other complicated and expensive things. All it takes is a mosquito net. They are reliable and last for about 5 years. But the 10 bucks that they cost is probably beyond the lifetime earnings of the families that need them.

So this is where Spread The Net comes in. They distribute nets to families with small children and show them how to use them. Each net can protect two or three kids. Think about it. 10 bucks. 3 kids. It doesn’t seem like it is a very difficult choice.

Especially since by now another one of those kids is dead.

So this is me, telling you that it would be great if you could donate to both Child’s Play and Spread The Net. But if you have only a few bucks and have to make a choice, well, that 10 dollars = 3 kids equation seems like pretty simple math.

PS to Mark Cuban: If you are reading this, how about springing for a few nets? Thanks.

A tiny part of me wants to write long ranting paragraphs about this. But the rest of me says “hey, free speech, these people can say whatever the hell they want.”

And besides, there is nothing at all I could possibly write that could make this seem more stupid than it already is.

I was startled by the number of people who wrote to ask just what the hell Mailinator is … considering that many revenue-by-spam sites ban the entire domain, I thought that it was one of those things that everyone just sort of knew about.

For those people: Mailinator lets you use throw-away email addresses so you dont get spammed for registering at web sites.

There. Is that clear enough?

Also, one dude wrote to say that one of the stranger ways to kill time is to type in random mailbox names at Mailinator and see if there is anything waiting to be read. If you are really really really bored at the office today, you could give that a try – but I bet that you just end up finding the same spam that collects in your own junk folders anyway. If you get anything good, let me know.

Those baked Lays things are completely vile.

The title above is a question I get asked a lot. Everyone uses torrents, some people seed torrents, but try to explain torrents to them and you get a lot of glazed eyes and blank looks. I even went so far as to use little bins and a pile of pennies one day, but it was to no avail.

You may be one of these people – one of the great mass of humanity with no idea of how those torrent dealies actually work, and no inclination to sit thought my stupid penny demonstration. If this is you, then head over here for a wordless-yet-effective demonstration of how the whole thing works. Put 2 or 3 seeders into the system, and then add a leech. Wait a minute or so and then add 2 more leeches. The whole thing will become instantly clear. More to the point, wait until all the files are transferred and then add one more leech. See how cool that is? You’re welcome.

And next time you suck back a torrent, you will know to leave your client seeding when you are done.

When did For Better Or For Worse become Mary fucking Worth?

70: The weight in kilograms of fish that the average baby pelican eats in its first three months.

The sort of people who read this blog are a definite sub-set of the population at large. This particular sub-set tends to indulge in a digital lifestyle that requires ponying up an email address a few times each day in order to register for various online content, features, pages, whatever. And whether the service you are “registering” for is something you plan to use every day or something you are going to peek at once and never return to, you just know that the inbox at the address you give them is going to be plagued with some variant of spam.

Some people – like myself – get around this by using a “disposable” email address via Mailinator. Mailinator is great, but it has recently developed one crucial flaw – many of the sites that depend on selling your address to spammers have banned the domain. You try and signup with a Mailinator address and you are told to go fuck yourself. What to do?

Why, use 2Prong, of course. 2Prong is the same sort of thing – it provides you with a disposable email address – but it has a couple of tweaks that make it worth checking out. The big one is that the domain of the email address it generates for you cycles every couple of days – this keeps the addresses out of the lists of banned domains. Additionally, the email address you get only lives for as long as you keep your browser window open – when you close the window, all traces of that inbox and your connection to it are gone forever. And, through the magic of Ajax, the email address it generates for you is placed into your clipboard for quick and easy pasting action.

Is 2Prong better than Mailinator? No, not really – Mailinator has the huge advantage of not needing to know the address in advance – you can give a made-up Mailinator address to someone at a party of business function, and then check it later. But 2Prong does have an additional level of anonymity, and you can use it in places where Mailinator will get you tossed out on your ear. The clever person will use both.

And since you are reading this, you must be clever. Enjoy.

There is a staggeringly vast array of iPod chargers out there. However, as far as I can tell, there is only one (thus far) iPod charger that comes complete with flashing disco lights that are synced to the music you are playing. It’s a “light organ” gone bad …

NOTE: I am under the impression that this product is way off the map for Debenhams – a store that is normally bound by an unchanging and conservative bent that makes Marks & Spencer look like the freaking Gap. Can any readers with some U.K. experience confirm this?

The inevitable (and probably painful) wave of punnishly-named Wii products / services / what-have-you has started. First out of the gate: SWiitSpot, a web portal that has been jigged for easy browsing with the Wii’s remote control. The channels that appear on the list and the order that they appear in is based on a suggestion / passive voting system. Off the top, this seems like both an awesome and (annoyingly) obvious idea. Annoying because I should have thought of this first, dammit. However – the payoff here will depend on two things: One, the quality – or even existence of – Nintendo’s own portal, and how much traction the Opera browser gets on the new console.

Personally, I hope this thing works out for them – good ideas should at least generate some sort of reward. Also, I am struck by they fact that the big happy buttons and the giant logos make this a natural for both the “new to computers” and the “visually impaired” demographics on regular ol’ workstations. Certinaly this concept is worlds more approachabe for a senior than the sort of portal that Sympatico or MSN or whatever gives the average user. Could this migrate from the videogame console to the ‘net at large?

Quite possibly there is money to be made here.

ADDENDUM: As per the comment from the gang at SWiit, there is a discussion blog of sorts starting up to tackle all of these subjects and more. Thanks for the note, guys.

1872: THe year that drunk driving became illegal in Britain.

I have no Wii. At this point life seems … empty.

Nintendo has been pimping the features of the built-in network connectivity of the Wii, and showing bits and pieces of the WiiConnect24 service here and there, but they have been typically secretive as to the big picture of their online plans. This has let to wild speculation about the workings of the networking service, with more than a few dark rumours that there would be a delay – lengthy enough to piss everyone off – between the Wii going on sale and it actually being able to find a valid connection.

This, at least, is unfounded. The Wii internet servers all came up just a few minutes ago, and while the Weather and News channels will be dormant until December, the basic connectivity and Virtual Console services are up and running. If you get a box tonight at midnight and rush it right home, it will connect right out the box.

Could they actually be getting this right?