Category : web

Your day has not been as bad as these folks. F****My Life.

I’ve never grown a goatee, but if I could I’d probably use the Goatee Saver to keep it trimmed nice and neat. Remember “your goatee helps fashion your identity,” so keep it tidy.

Where do fashionable hipsters go to get their couture-vintage fashions. No, not to the local vintage store– after their post-brunch stop off at their secret Mission thrift mill there’s really nothing cool left. Ebay? Too many Eddie Bauer sweats, Mom. Sometimes they stop off at Market Publique. Nothing fer fellas yet, though.

A new kind of search engine is coming to the web. In May, scientist Stephen Wolfram will launch Wolfram Alpha, a search engine that promises to actually answer your questions. For example, when you ask Google a question, the search engine answers with links that give you answers to your question. But when you pose a question to Wolfram, it will actually compute the answer. One simple input field that gives access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms.

Along with being one of the largest, most established news organizations in the English language, The New York Times also continues to do a good job of trying to be as innovative, flexible and supportive of developers as a young startup company. The Times recently made their Article Search API and the Times Newswire API public to developers to encourage NYT content in new web or mobile applications. And The Times even supported developers with a Times Open event a few weeks ago and a Developer Network website to help build a little community around the Grey Lady’s content. What this means, is that you’ll hopefully be seeing more interesting uses of NYTcontent, like the way Newsmap uses Google News content or the Trackplaying app uses info from live BBC Radio content. Also, the NYT’s tried their hand at their own new skinning of their content with a new way to recreate the experience of reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning, with the Article Skimmer. Read even more on the NYT Prototypes site.

Instant Watcher is a much better way to search and browse watch-instantly Netflix movies.

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Umbrella Today keeps it simple. It only answers one question, Do I need an umbrella today? If you want to get fancy, it’ll send you a text message in the mornings.

New-to-twitter technology columnist David Pogue learns how to cure the hiccups in seconds.

Pittsburgh artists Benjamin Kinsley and Robin Hewlet and the Mattress Factory museum teamed up with Google to create an interactive art piece using Google Streetview. They created scenes along Sampsonia Way in Pittsburg that could have taken place, but probably could never have all happened at the same time. A ten-foot plucked chicken sits behind a chainlink fence, two men have a medieval sword fight, a faux marathon runs by, firefighters save a cat in a tree, a garage band plays in a garage, and a high school marching band parades by in just a few blocks of Sampsonia Way at the same time. Read more or watch video of how they pulled it off.

At precisely noon yesterday a change happened in this country. The whitehouse.gov website has changed with the new President and it brings a few touches of clean design and function from Obama’s campaign site. Another thing under the hood has changed too, the robots.txt file for the whitehouse.gov website is different now too. The last robot.txt file under the Bush White House prevented search engines from indexing more than 2400 files and directories on the site. The new administration’s site prevents the indexing of only one directory. This is an encouraging, if small, sign of a more transparent government from the Obama administration.

Gentrify is a bitchin Gmaps mashup of Craigslist and Yelp. And it’s a great way to watch the gentrification of San Francisco in almost real-time. SF-only for now.

Here’s a collection of the most spectacular images of the sun you’ve ever seen.

Futz around with this Kaleidoscope from Brooklyn webnerd Zefrank, whom you might remember from his interweb phenom guide to How to Dance Properly.

Where have all the updates gone? My Summer of Sloth has allowed me very little time for blogging.

Yo slacker, if you can’t get away with cracking open a book at your desk, but still want to slack off and read at work, then try readatwork.com where several public domain classics are readable in a convincing XP-looking faux Powerpoint presentation.

Another way you could browse the web is by thinking of it as one big subway map. Next stop Gmail, transfer here to Gmaps, Gdocs and iGoogle. Standcleardaclosindoors.

Here’s a couple of reasons why it’s really all about Garfield lately. If Garfield minus Garfield doesn’t inspire, try LasagnaCat.

A new API from Google lets you dynamically generate information charts. Along with pie charts, like this useful one, you can create line charts, bar charts, Venn diagrams and scatterplots. Learn how at the Googles.

From Airtight Interactive, the folks who brought us the awesome Simple Viewer photo gallery flash app., comes Tilt Viewer. It may not be better, but it’s more fun.