- Incredible Lifelike Animation: A New Era for Computer Games Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology. Emily - the woman in this embedded video - was produced using a new modelling technology. She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier of perception.
- Confidence Game: How Some People Earn Your Trust Instantly Behavioral scientists have begun to unravel the inner workings of trust. Researchers have discovered that surprisingly small factors can matter as much or more than what they say about themselves.We size up someone's trustworthiness within milliseconds of meeting them and powerful tendencies prevent us from revising our first impression.
- Foreclosure Effect: House in Detroit Listed and Sold for $1 One dollar can get you a large soda at McDonald's, a used VHS movie at 7-Eleven or a house in Detroit. The fact that a home on the city's east side was listed for $1 recently shows how depressed the real estate market has become in one of America's poorest big cities. And it still took 19 days to find a buyer.
- 21 New Trend Illustrations in Web design many sites that use illustrated elements in their design. It's really great how they turn out to be... the results are pretty sweet! I hope you all enjoy my selection! Cheers.
eltmon posted a photo:
- Unfuddle Free Subversion Hosting and Bug Tracking Unfuddle is a secure, hosted software project management tool providing source control via Subversion, bug and issue tracking, milestones, time tracking, audit trails and more.
After a long, thoughtful process, I’ve decided to open-source my Facebook game, “Empire“.
I had originally intended to do this as I was writing the game, if nothing more than to serve as a tutorial, or breadcrumbs, for others who were trying to learn this new landscape.
Before I even officially deployed it to a public server, however, I noticed something unusual… A large amount of people were inviting their friends to the beta server I had left public, and it was growing at much faster rate than I expected. Additionally, my constant readings of the facebook developers forums left a bitter impression about the less than ideal characters that were floating to the surface, and I didn’t want some cheap rip-offs to distract from the early growth of the game.
So I stopped making the SVN commits, added some more features, and set it up at the excellent Joyent hosting servers.
Indeed, the growth has been incredible, if not stable. Some of those growth issues were due to some performance issues I ran into, which I finally corrected when I had the time.
Now, the game sits at a regular 1000+ daily active users, and it’s developed a hardcore fan base. Indeed, there is an excellent user-generated wiki describing strategies for the game, and an enourmous amount of activity on the forums. People enjoy the game, despite it’s simplicity and somewhat haphazard release process.
On the downside, the CPM rates for the application seem to suck. It just maintains enough to pay for the joyent hosting costs, and that’s it. Perhaps there are better strategies to employ to increase the CPM rate, but that’s not what I am in the businesss of doing.
So, as a dedication to the entire Empire fanbase, I’m opening up the source in a GPL, and others have already expressed interest in actively partcipating in it’s future development.
I’ll continue to manage the game, and I’ll be the sole release coordinator, at least for a while until I or somebody else trusted and clever manages to put the time and effort into properly manage the process.

After a long, thoughtful process, I’ve decided to open-source my Facebook game, “Empire“.
I had originally intended to do this as I was writing the game, if nothing more than to serve as a tutorial, or breadcrumbs, for others who were trying to learn this new landscape.
Before I even officially deployed it to a public server, however, I noticed something unusual… A large amount of people were inviting their friends to the beta server I had left public, and it was growing at much faster rate than I expected. Additionally, my constant readings of the facebook developers forums left a bitter impression about the less than ideal characters that were floating to the surface, and I didn’t want some cheap rip-offs to distract from the early growth of the game.
So I stopped making the SVN commits, added some more features, and set it up at the excellent Joyent hosting servers.
Indeed, the growth has been incredible, if not stable. Some of those growth issues were due to some performance issues I ran into, which I finally corrected when I had the time.
Now, the game sits at a regular 1000+ daily active users, and it’s developed a hardcore fan base. Indeed, there is an excellent user-generated wiki describing strategies for the game, and an enourmous amount of activity on the forums. People enjoy the game, despite it’s simplicity and somewhat haphazard release process.
On the downside, the CPM rates for the application seem to suck. It just maintains enough to pay for the joyent hosting costs, and that’s it. Perhaps there are better strategies to employ to increase the CPM rate, but that’s not what I am in the businesss of doing.
So, as a dedication to the entire Empire fanbase, I’m opening up the source in a GPL, and others have already expressed interest in actively partcipating in it’s future development.
I’ll continue to manage the game, and I’ll be the sole release coordinator, at least for a while until I or somebody else trusted and clever manages to put the time and effort into properly manage the process.

On matters of style, swim with the current. On matters of principle, stand like a rock.
— Thomas Jefferson
On matters of style, swim with the current. On matters of principle, stand like a rock.
— Thomas Jefferson
Nothing much to tell.
- Brian Wilson – I'm In Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around/Workshop
- Wings – With a Little Luck
- John Lennon – Woman Is The Nigger Of The World
- The Beatles – Something
- The Beatles – While My Guitar Gently Weeps
- Pink Floyd – What Do You Want from Me
- The Doors – Love Me Two Times
- Cream – Sunshine of Your Love
- Jimi Hendrix – Foxy Lady
- Eric Clapton – Lay Down Sally














