Here’s a cool app: Sidestepper, a generator of “relational architecture”. Input any URL, and Sidestepper scours the site for images and text, and inserts snippets of them into a 3D living room. That room above is Sidestepper’s rendition of Collision Detection. Squint, and you can see that the picture on the left is the intro text from my site — “I’m Clive Thompson, a writer on politics, technology, and culture …” — and the picture next to it is of the baby hippo I posted about on the weekend. The room is fully 3D, so as I explored it I found other images and bits of text scattered around. My favorite detail: The image of the TR-3B government UFO is showing on the television.

(Thanks to the J-Walk blog for this one!)