The New York Times has a nice piece on the inscription of the new corner stone for the World Trade Center site. The inscription will be set in the lovely Gotham type face, from this blogger's favorite type foundry, Hoefler & Frere Jones.

In other 9/11 related font news, New Jersey chose Times New Roman for their memorial. Times New Roman was designed by Stanley Morison and is a lousy font in its digital form unless it's used properly.

(Articles require free nytimes.com registration)

Here's a lovely illustrated story about one man's experience with a beef tapeworm. As one might expect of a story about a giant worm living in a man's intestines, this story is not for the squeamish. Nor is it for people who have a fear of tapeworms. This blogger, for instance, may never sleep again.

With Bob Woodward spreading about all this talk of Colin Powell and the Pottery Barn, isn't it about time that the people at Pottery Barn had their say? Absolutely. Pottery Barn's head of PR would like you to know that "In the rare instance that something is broken in the store, it's written off as a loss."
(via The Morning News)

McSweeney's has higlights from the over 600 comments left by readers of a story about laser cheese-cutting (blogged here).

If you're running Mac OS X and you're looking for an amusing way to kill some time, check out Sproings. You can make your own springy things out of nodes and lines and then throw them around and watch them bounce. This software doesn't do anything at all useful but it's vastly more interesting than, for instance, attending to any classwork this blogger might have due in the next few days. Here's a video of Sproings in action.
(Link via macosxhints)

John Gruber over at daringfireball has posted an interesting rant in response to a prominent open source advocate and his troubles configuring a printer on a linux system. Gruber proposes that an inherent problem in linux/open-source development is that usability is treated as a tertiary feature rather than an integral piece of functionality. Usability, he argues, won't be getting any better until it becomes a top priority. It's interesting stuff, check it out.

That's over six hundred quitillion! Cockeyed offers up this nice explanation of why friendly promotional mailings for those little blue pills keep making it through our spam filters.

Sean Palmer was lucky enough to get picked as a trial user for Google's new Gmail service and was kind enough write up this review for the rest of us. Gmail is a web-based mail service that, among other things, will offer 1GB of free storage space. Perhaps most notably, Gmail steps away from the idea of mailboxes and replaces them with a classification system. Messages can be assigned one or more user-defined "labels" which can be used in conjunction with a built-in Google search. Nifty.

Wired is carrying an article on an incredibly confusing service that allows users to spend real money on imaginary gifts That part is straight forward enough, the confusing bit is that people seem to be doing it.

In related news, if anyone is interested, this Scout blogger would be more than happy to spend your money on imaginary gifts. I will fake-purchase anything and fake-deliver it anywhere.

It seems that Windows isn't the only foul-mouthed operating system out there. Here are swear words in the Linux kernel graphed by kernel version and number of occurences. Be warned, this page contains between five and seven instances of actual swear word use.

It sounds really garbled, and it seems like the kind of thing that could destroy a monitor, but if you've got an old CRT and the technical prowess to install the software, you can broadcast AM radio. Now we just sit back and wait for thousands of creepy robot-voiced political pundits to take over the AM radio dial ...

(via whatdoiknow.org)

"Crazy Aaron" sells putty in 25 different colors, and forget those tiny little Silly Putty eggs, this nutty Aaron fellow will sell you his stuff in one pound bags. The black putty is magnetic (1MB mpeg).

After a mere decade of research, Stanford University statistician Persi Diaconis has discovered that coin tosses performed by humans have a slight bias towards heads. Mechanized coin tosses are completely non-random.

Yesterday a supportive twin cities man decided to send a bouquet of flowers to a couple, any couple, lined up to get married at San Francisco's city hall, today another supportive citizen has started a flower buying pool. All collected money will be used to buy bulk bouquets which will be delivered to random gay couples wainting in line to get married.

The nice people at Hasbro have done it again! Now you can have your very own Play-Doh George Forman Grill. Mold Play-Doh into "bacon" or "french fries" and listen as the grill emits convincing "sizzling" noises. To answer the question of every toddler in the world: no, you cannot eat the Play-Doh. The delicious lumps that come out of the sizzling grill, which is marketed to three year olds, should not be eaten.

Scott Douglas, a librarian at a small public library in Florida, is writting a series of dispatches for McSweeney's. They include accounts of stange things found in the book drop and experiences with patrons. Good stuff.

Get ready for waves of nasty new Windows viruses: the source code for MS Windows 2000/XP has apparently been leaked all over the internet. On a related note, Microsoft programmers apparently need to put a few quarters in the swear jar. (CAREFUL: cursing and swedish)
(via memefirst)
Update: The first exploit has arrived.

This site has instruction manuals for, what would appear to be, every transformer ever produced.

The Mozilla project has released a new version of its stand alone browser Phoenix ... I mean Firebird ... I mean Firefox. That's it, Firefox. The new version of the fiery-animal-metaphor-browser-thingy seems to be largely a bug fix release, though it does come with the latest in brand confusion technology. (Kidding aside, it really is a top-notch browser.)

For weblog readers out there running OS X, the Omni Group has released a beta version of its OmniWeb browser which is definitely worth taking a look at. Beta 5 introduces a whole bunch of nifty features that you won't see anywhere else. To name a few: tabbed browsing with thumbnail images, preferences on a per-site basis, and "workspaces" which save window and tab locations. It also has an ad-blocking option which works a bit like PithHelmet (a fantastic plugin) for Safari. If you'd like more info, John Gruber has a lengthy write-up.

The US State Department has officially changed the standard font for almost all official corespondence from Courier New to Times New Roman.
(link via kottke)

A recent Microsoft Knowledge Base article addresses url spoofing, the latest worry in the gaping security hole that is Internet Explorer. The upshot seems to be that IE is perfectly secure as long as users don't want to click on links. That's right, don't click on the links, "rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself." An alternate method would be to get a browser that you can trust.
(via boingboing)

The Morning News is running a great series of illustrations by Dan Gregory who spent a day at Martha Stewart's public trial.

The New York Post is carrying a story on Morgan Spurlock who decided to eat a McDonalds-only diet for 30 days. The result? A toxic liver, higher cholesterol, diminished libido, headaches, depression and more!

As an interesting follow up to his previously blogged piece, CBS Market Watch's Chris Pummer goes through the most underpaid jobs in the US.

Scientists right here in the Scout Project's backyard are cutting patterns into cheese slices using lasers!
(link via boingboing)

Pictures of attractive women from Hot or Not make men stupid.

Those clever folks in the porn industry have come up with a new trick to boost their placement in Google: they've created fake weblogs which in turn create links to non-fake porn sites, thus boosting the non-fake PageRank of the non-fake site.

This Flash-based Etch-a-Sketch emulator is every bit as much fun as playing with an actual Etch-a-Sketch.

"266 front pages from 35 countries...." Updated daily.
(via kottke.org)

This blogger has seen a lot of three year olds playing the xylophone over the years, as such, this blogger is not easily impressed by such things. That said, this is without a doubt the cutest three year old playing a xylophone ever.
(Requires Quicktime 5)
(Warning: Pop-ups)

Until today, as a holdover from the days of metal type presses, the NYT used as many as six different type faces for headlines on its front page. Henceforth all headers will be in a variant of Cheltenham, designed in 1896.
(Free registration required.)

The Register is carrying an interesting, if somewhat angry piece discussing how "trackback" technology included with the Movable Type / Typepad weblogging software is littering Google search results with empty pages. In this search, for instace, six of the first seven results are trackback pages (as of this posting).

Update: here's a response from the nice people at Six Apart.

The Bush administrations has devised a clever new plan to save the world's dwindling populations of endangered species: kill more endangered animals.

Here's a great collection of CNN news graphics. Some are of obvious subject matter, others ... not so obvious.

Jim Gray (of Microsoft's research team) has realized that, when you're transfering a lot of data, those brown trucks are faster and cheaper than the internet.

In response to a confusing jumble of loosely specified RSS versions and potentially nasty problems stemming from those specs, a week or so ago Sam Ruby started a conversation about a better format. Sam has created a wiki and many developers have begun hammering out the "anatomy of a well formed log entry". The emerging spec, possibly named Pie, looks like it could work. The list of potential supporters includes Mena Trott of Movable Type, Tim Bray (an editor/author of the XML spec), and people from LiveJournal and Blogger.

Pictures of Harrison Ford pointing at people.

Google has launched a beta version of Google Catalogs. Scanned mail-order catalogs can be searched and browsed. Nifty.

Last week, as part of a large settlement, Microsoft licensed its Internet Explorer browser to AOL, royalty free, for seven years. What does this mean for the internet? Probably Bad Things. Jeffrey Zeldman and Todd Dominey both have interesting comments on the imminent death of Netscape and other nasty consequences.

MSN UK is developing the iLoo, an internet enabled portable toilet for festivals and the like. If all goes well, we shall soon have an answer to the age old question: "Would you rather surf the internet while suffocating on the fumes of strangers' leavings, or be outside?"

As if an internet enabled refrigerator weren't reason enough to get ethernet jacks installed in your kitchen, Tonight's Menu Intelligent Ovens (TMIO) will soon allow you to cook dinner from anywhere in the world. Alternatively, it could be used to explode potatoes from the relative safety of one's living room.

The nice people who keep track of everything you use your tivo for have released reports on the most paused and rewound moments of the Academy Awards.

Last week Pyra, the creator of Blogger, sold to Google. After a long week of speculations, Wired is running an article with an interesting explanation of Google's motivations for the purchase: "The secret ... is in the scores of links webloggers create every day to content on the Web."

Nifty: "Googlert is an experimental free service that keeps you updated ... by performing regular Google searches on your behalf and sending you email alerts of any new results that appear."

US customs recently intercepted a man carrying a suitcase full of exotic birds and wearing a pair of pants full of monkeys. [free LA Times registration required]

Weblog readers who haven't quite gotten over the excitement of Google's new News search might want to take a few deep breaths before continuing. ... Okay? ... Google is introducing a brand new shopping search! Froogle! It rhymes! Yeah!

A large fire ripped throug the University of Edinburgh's Informatics library Tuesday destroying, among other things, an unmatched collection of AI literature. [More here]

Tens of thousands of German citizens are sending shirts to Chancellor Schroeder with the message, "...I am sending you my last shirt. This will end the need for further tax raises as I don't own anything else..."

Apple Switch ad star Ellen Feiss (who's spawned a rather odd cult following) breaks her media silence in an exclusive interview with The Brown Daily Herald.

GreyMagic Software has released a report detailing security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer versions 5.5 and 6. These vulnerabilities could allow "an attacker to steal private local documents, steal cookies from any site, forge trusted web sites, steal clipboard information or even execute arbitrary programs." Until Microsoft releases a security patch, GreyMagic suggests that users browsing with affected versions of IE turn off Active Scripting.
(Of course you could also switch to a browser that doesn't have such problems ... like this one, or this one, or this one ... for instance.)

If you've gotten tired of looking at the covers of albums you already own, you'll no doubt enjoy looking at some that you probably don't.

Wired has just launched a brand new redesign using squeaky clean XHTML and CSS. This redesign is great news for supporters of web standards, as Wired is one of the first large commercial sites to commit to standards compliance. The new design uses a table-free layout and displays well on all manner of browsers (including PDAs and cell phones).

Here's an interesting note about why the site doesn't quite validate.

Curious about what happens when you drop 50lbs of Silly Putty from the top of a six-level parking garage? Of course. If you'd like your own huge quantity of Silly Putty (3179 Dilatant Compound), here are some helpful instructions.

Google has launched a beta version of Google News. Google News groups search results by subject, allowing users to view coverage of a story by multiple sources. Users can sort by relevance or date.

A team of Dutch computer scientists armed with a 72 server cluster has created a program that can play a perfect game of awari. If you'd like to lose a game: have at it. (The applet there can be adjusted to allow the user some chance of winning.)

KartOO's flash-based metasearch interface returns results in an interesting, if not entirely intuitive, map-like format that allows users to add and subtract related search terms. A non-flash version is available for users who either don't have Flash or would like to explore KartOO's search string manipulation without participating in an experiment in information architecture.

Tyorganism's Flash powered ASCII-O-Matic converts 60x50 pixel jpg images into ASCII (black and white or color). The resultant ASCII can be viewed in Flash format or output as HTML. (Site requires Flash Player 6)

The AllTheWeb search engine, in the news recently for attaining an index larger than Google's (press release), has recently launched Alchemist which allows users to view search results with user-defined stylesheets. Alchemist returns search results in plain, unformatted HTML which can be controlled by a users's own CSS.

Wondering what's behind those pieces of junk mail asking for your assistance in smuggling money or diamonds out of another country? Wired News carries the confession of a former scammer.

AltaVista has updated it's search engine with several new features including Prisma. Prisma identifies terms associated with a user's query, these terms can then be used to refine the user's search.

The Web Standards Project (WaSP), founded in 1998 by a group of web designers frustrated with the incompatibility of web browsers, relaunches Tuesday June 11.

With recent releases of browsers like Mozilla, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Netscape more or less supporting standards such as CSS and HTML 4.01. WaSP seeks to convince web designers to stop the expensive and time consuming practice of accommodating old browsers and start making sites that take full advantage of newly supported standards.

After four years of open source development, the final build of Mozilla 1.0 has been released. (Win32, Mac Classic, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD/OS, FreeBSD, OpenVMS, OS/2, Tru64 Unix)

Relativley soon after the release of its generally disliked version 6 browser, Netscape just released a preview of version 7. (Available for OS X, Mac Classic, Windows, and Linux)

Los Almos Labs has taken a novel approach to high-powered computing. They've built a Beowolf cluster based on Transmeta Crusoe processors. These processors were initially desgined for use in laptops and run on less energy/give off less heat than most other processors. The resulting cluster requires notably less cooling than a traditional cluster.

Those of you who have been searching for Lego recreations of key scenes from Lord of the Rings need search no further.

Google's search mechanism works such that, if enough people link to a given site with a phrase, for instance, "Worst Site Ever", the site might come up as the first search result for "Worst Site Ever". Get a whole bunch of sites to link to a site with a predetermined phrase and you've got yourself a Google Bomb.

An interesting article pointing out, among other things, that Microsoft's soft money donations for the 2000 election cycle significantly exceeded Enron's.

Time Machine is a new device that allows television networks to imperceptibly shorten the length of their programming. The device can generally make room in a 30 minute program for an extra 30 second commercial.

MSN Messenger when used with Internet Explorer allows a site access to your username and all the usernames on you contact list. Careful.

Google Groups has made about 700 million usenet messages fully searchable from groups.google.com. They've also got a spiffy timeline of memorable historic posts. On a related note, The Register has offered up what it feels are the best fake usenet posts its readers can write.

The friendly designers at k10k (www.k10k.com) have just released Moodstats. "Moodstats is an application that allows you to quickly record & rate how your day has been in six different categories.... Moodstats ... generate[s] multi-colored graphs & statistics showing you exactly how your moods have been over the last week, month, two months, six months or year." Moodstats is share/free ware and is available for Mac and Windows users.

Users of Internet Explorer version 5.5 or 6.0 might want to download the latest security patch. Without it "a malicious user could potentially ... gain unauthorized access to a user's cookies and potentially modify the values contained in them ... this could allow personal information to be compromised."

Here's an interesting article about the importance of purposing web content as a navigational tool.

A List Apart offers up an intruiging article on how the style of Flash animations has begun to creep into other media. This article does a better job of describing the "Flash aesthetic" than actually demonstrating its influences, but it is interesting none the less.

Engineers at the University of West England's Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory are hard at work developing a robot that will hunt slugs.

The latest release of the open-source browser Mozilla (0.9.4) allows users to disable javascript's "window.open()" method used to open new browser windows. This means no more pesky pop-ups.

The Business Software Alliance offers up a hillarious animated short on the dangers of software piracy. The bottom line: unless you want to be transported into your computer and almost eaten by an alligator, you had better stay away from pirated software.

This site requires Flash plug-in.

Wired News offers up a story about the DNA Copyright Institute, the institute will take a blood sample and give you a nice plaque all for only $1500. The US Copyright Office points out that it has never received a claim for a person's DNA, and that copyright law does not protect a person's DNA.

Anyone looking for a huge, memory-hungry browser will surely appreciate Netscape's most recent release of its version 6 browser. It is reportedly faster and slightly less buggy than previous Netscape Communicator 6 releases. It also sports a more streamlined interface and is mostly compliant with CSS levels 1 and 2 and HTML 4.

The Fat Channel offers up stunning do-it-yourself models of, among other things, a nuclear fallout shelter, and a cardboard box.

Hackers who "prey on unsuspecting schools" (i.e. anyone who "intentionally affects or impairs" school computers) constitute the latest batch of non-violent offenders slated for prison time.

This questionably useful utiliy will take a long url and make it shorter. Hence http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004T20V/qid=996529472/sr=2-1/ref=aps_sr_pm_1_1/002-5037 becomes http://makeashorterlink.com/index.php?Y25D1270 .

Here's a browser emulator that lets you see today's internet through the eyes of version 1.0 and 2.0 browsers. It's not a pretty sight.

Tired of seeing that X10 pop-up ad everytime you want to read a New York Times article? If you want it to go away for 30 days, and don't feel like turning off javascript, X10 will be more than happy to help.

A Java enabled toaster that burns the day's forecast onto your morning toast.

In its quest to document every latitude and longitude integer degree intersection in the world, the Degree Confluence Project presents photographs of such fascinating locations as 41°N 104°W and 42°N 90°W.

"Some theories as to where all the money has gone"

The This Page Intentionally Left Blank project seeks to "offer surfers a place of quietness and simplicity on the overcrowded World Wide Web."

Starting with this week's issue, A List Apart will be designed to take advantage of the best features of the latest web browsers. Check it out to find out how and why. (Be sure to bring a standards compliant browser.)