He brought the flippers and the tilt: Kordek, who died last Sunday, revolutionized what were then called “pin games”, in which a user would drop a ball into a maze of pins, by creating the tilted game-board and dual-flipper system we’re all familiar with today. (Which, by the way, is a totally underrated form of entertainment.) When asked about his invention by the Chicago Tribune, in 2009, Kordek replied, “I was taught to be very conservative to hold down costs. There was no way I was going to put six flippers on a game when I could get away with two.” Kordek retired in 1999, and lost his wife in 2003. He’s survived by two sons, two daughters, two brothers, a sister, six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. (image courtesy of flickr user jlstern) source
After months of rumors, Canonical has unveiled Ubuntu for Android, a version of the ultra-popular Ubuntu Linux kernel that boots from Android mobile devices. We’ll let the video do the rest of the talking. source
“Whether you’re at a conference or at home … you now have storytelling at your fingertips.” Storify co-founder & CEO Xavier Damman’s totally psyched about bringing his popular online story-telling tool to the iPad. While Storify, which pulls content from a variety of social networks, does not contain all the functionality of it’s Internet-based counterpart, the team at Storify is confident that they’ve successfully migrated the core Storify experience to iOS. The team also added an additional function not found on the Storify website: The ability to tweet, inside the app, while creating a story. Have you tried it yet? source
They didn’t say anything about cash or jewelry, but the SEC did side with three AT&T investors — including the Beastie Boys’ Michael “Mike D” Diamond — who believed that shareholders should have a vote in the company’s net neutrality policy, because it has become part of the national debate. AT&T argued that the vote would “directly interfere with its network management practices”, but ultimately the SEC ruled that wireless providers must now allow for shareholder votes on net neutrality proposals. Should such proposals pass, providers would be required to “operate a neutral network with neutral routing along the company’s wireless infrastructure.” source
I’m sure that in the next 2-3 years we’ll see it all translated back to the desktop from the mobile devices. I’m sure it won’t be as cool as Growl, but it’ll be interesting.Growl creator Christopher Forsythe • Discussing the nature of desktop notification systems with The Verge. He was a bit off — OSX Mountain Lion’s recently-announced desktop notification system basically does what he said, and it’ll be out by the summer. Forsythe (in reacting to the news) noted that, unlike Apple’s new system, Growl still gives users a multitude of customization options. Is Growl, which has basically had the OSX notification market to itself for years, a goner? Do you use it and dig it? Would you keep using it? Personally, nothing against him, but Growl’s notifications are starting to wear a little thin for us. source (via • follow)
FCC announces creation of mobility fund: In a press release Friday morning, the FCC reaffirmed its commitment to increasing broadband and mobile coverage in rural areas. The agency announced the creation of a new Mobility Fund, a new addition to the Connect America Fund, created to “accelerate our nation’s ongoing efforts to close gaps in mobile wireless service.” Included in the press release was a reminder that the agency will soon host a $300 million reverse auction, with the winner receiving $300 million to provide rural broadband coverage. They also revealed an interactive map of the nation’s worst coverage areas, created with online map-making tool MapBox. source
The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, claiming that they are the Common heritage of mankind. [Article II] of the Treaty states that ‘outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.’The Outer Space Treaty, of which the United States is a signatory. Sorry, Newt Gingrich, looks like your moon colony idea won’t be happening anytime soon. [Full treaty by the US State Department here] (via producermatthew)
Happiness is trending downward. Great. After studying the Twitter accounts of 63 million users for 33 months, science tells us that we’re not using as many happiness keywords. Users seem to reach their peak happiness on and around holidays and the weekends; happiness “plummets” on Mondays and Tuesdays. All in all, people shouldn’t be using Twitter as their go-to source of human emotions; do they even count Sockington? source
nhaler asks: The most persuasive argument I've read for banning the use of cell-phones—and NOT electronic devices in general—derived not from the airline industry, but from cellular carriers. When a pod of 300 people is loaded with cell-phone users, and you have anywhere from a handful to dozens of these pods overhead, they zoom tower-to-tower with great speed and with great impact on the cellular networks' attempts to keep up with the huge clots of connector-disconnectors overhead.
» SFB says: So in other words, cell phone carriers couldn’t handle the infrastructure issues caused by hundreds of people flying in tightly-packed quarters thousands of feet overhead at high speeds. Hm, interesting take. — Ernie @ SFB
In her last days, my mother occasionally became confused....
”The reporter...
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
One of the perks of being an early employee...
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Newt Gingrich on defense cuts and the cost of weapons development: “If it takes fifteen to twenty years to build a weapons system when Apple changes technology every nine months, there’s something wrong with that system.”
Check out DC Decoder for further coverage!
Diaspora co-founder dies at 22: A year and a half ago, thousands of people donated to the Diaspora project, an attempt to create an open-source equivalent to Facebook. While the initial energy around the product passed, the four members of the group continued their hard work and have a quickly-growing open source project to their credit. So it pains us to say that Ilya Zhitomirskiy, one of the four people in this screenshot (he’s second from left), died on Saturday. (Edit: The cause of death hasn’t been confirmed.) So young. So quickly. And a huge amount of potential there, based on his hard work with Diaspora. Best of luck to that entire team.
We really can hide objects. … We can switch for a short moment and make it disappear.Ali Aliev, a physicist at the University of Texas at Dallas, about his “invisibility cloak” technology • Right now, the “cloak” is only as big as a few threads. Those threads are made of carbon nanotubes which light bends around when heat is applied to the strands. Aliev said that the technology could “easily hide large objects, such as military tankers” eventually. Anyone else get a tremor of terror when they read that? See it in action at the source — it’s pretty freaking crazy. source (via • follow)
![futurejournalismproject:
Pick a site, any site, and “share” buttons are littered all over the place.
Mozilla/Firefox is asking why not bring that basic functionality up to the browser. [more]
Not sure how we feel about this. Here’s why. While browser-level functionality would be great, this feels like it could create a situation where Firefox (or Google) picks the winners, rather than letting the market decide for itself. What if, five years from now, Tumblr is as big as Twitter? Or some social networking site we’ve never even heard of usurps Facebook? (It’s happened before.) One could argue this is why Apple’s Twitter integration in iOS5 is a bad idea. At some point you create an artificial monopoly by integrating directly into the browser. And plus, from a Web designer’s perspective, they want that control. It’s their content; let them promote it. They can do A/B testing to know what works best for them. This, however, is one-size-fits-all. It would ultimately curb, not promote, sharing. Let the users decide for themselves. A good developer knows how to integrate these cleanly. Teach good design; don’t let Firefox excuse bad design.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltskvcKOEs1qedj2ho1_500.jpg)
Pick a site, any site, and “share” buttons are littered all over the place.
Mozilla/Firefox is asking why not bring that basic functionality up to the browser. [more]
Not sure how we feel about this. Here’s why. While browser-level functionality would be great, this feels like it could create a situation where Firefox (or Google) picks the winners, rather than letting the market decide for itself. What if, five years from now, Tumblr is as big as Twitter? Or some social networking site we’ve never even heard of usurps Facebook? (It’s happened before.) One could argue this is why Apple’s Twitter integration in iOS5 is a bad idea. At some point you create an artificial monopoly by integrating directly into the browser. And plus, from a Web designer’s perspective, they want that control. It’s their content; let them promote it. They can do A/B testing to know what works best for them. This, however, is one-size-fits-all. It would ultimately curb, not promote, sharing. Let the users decide for themselves. A good developer knows how to integrate these cleanly. Teach good design; don’t let Firefox excuse bad design.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
