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Microsoft Jetpack Simulator
Astute readers may recall my attempt last year to get Photo Stamps to print some stamps customized with pictures of “Surly Squid” — an artwork by my friend El Rey. Though Photo Stamps had already blithely printed stuff featuring such mass murderers as Slobodan Milosevic and Ted Kaczynski, they decided that a squid stamp strayed beyond the boundaries of good taste — and refused to print my order. I was thus thrilled when the company summarily went outta business.
But now it turns out they’re back again, claiming that their intial foray was not so much an exercise in clown-show ineptitude as a “test”, as a spokeswoman told the Direct Marketing News. As the News reports:
Pets and children have been the most popular categories of images, according to Stamps.com, which has content guidelines prohibiting obscenity, copyright infringement and images of celebrities and public figures.
Maybe I should try my order again.
(Thanks to Boing Boing for this one!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”
“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912
“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex
» visit the Collision Detection archives
May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM
From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.
July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S
July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM
My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.
June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM
On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.
June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM
I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives.
According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable!
» see all of my photos on Flickr
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A long German word for "noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history"
