Neil Gaiman Crowdsourcing a Short Story Via Twitter

Coraline author Neil Gaiman wants to make a writer out of you.

His means for penning his upcoming project are as creative as the gems in his copious portfolio, only he can't claim all the credit for this one. Starting today at noon EDT, the writer began encouraging people to tweet in their 140-character contributions for his next short story, which BBC Audiobooks America will later garner into an audio book.

Gaiman (@neilhimself), who is already well established in the Twitter realm, will tweet the opening line and fans will be able to continue the story as they wish. BBC will log about 1,000 contributions into a script that will be edited and prepared to be read by a professional narrator.

Currently there is no talk of releasing the story in print form, but the audio edition will be available for free download at the BBC site, iTunes and other audiobook distributors before the end of the year.

Neil Gaiman Crowdsourcing a Short Story Via Twitter :: Books :: News :: Paste

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Google Docs, Slowly Morphing into Google Drive

Google Docs, Slowly Morphing into Google Drive:

"The new interface of Google Docs, which is slowly rolled out to all users, brings the service one step closer to an online storage service. The 'items by type' menu replaced 'PDFs' with 'Files', suggesting that Google Docs will allow users to upload any type of files.

It will be interesting to see how Google Drive integrates with other Google services that store files (Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, YouTube) and to find the free quota limits.

Tony Ruscoe found in January an internal Google document about Cosmo, described as an upgrade from GDrive, a service that was only available to Google's employees. 'We're in the process of migrating all Google Doc accounts to Cosmo,' mentioned the document.

Update: Kevin Mohr found an interesting image referenced in Google Docs' code: . It's a folder icon that includes Google Chrome's logo, so it could be related to Google Chrome OS, a browser-centric operating system that will probably use Google Drive to store files online. There's also an icon for videos which suggests that videos will be uploaded to YouTube."

U.K. airport scanner sees you 'naked'

There is nowhere to hide for passengers at Manchester Airport's Terminal 2.

The airport has unveiled a new full-body scan that can see right through passengers' clothes to the body, showing everything from concealed weapons to piercings – even implants.

"Our passengers tell us that they don't like being patted down by security staff," says Sarah Barrett, the British airport's head of customer experience.

U.K. airport scanner sees you 'naked' - thestar.com

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Don't Judge My Hair: Epic Hairstyles

Don't Judge My Hair: Epic Hairstyles » No, I Can’t Take Them Off. They’re Prescription.

My new favorite hair/fail blog :)

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Hannah Montana Linux OS - Not kidding.

About Hannah Montana Linux:
Hannah Montana Linux is a free operating system based on Kubuntu with a Hannah Montana theme.

Hannah Montana Linux is fast, stable and powerful.It includes a Hannah Montana themed boot screen, KDM, icon set, ksplash, plasma, color scheme, and wallpapers.

hannah montana Linux OS
That's right, I didn't believe it either but here it is. Your own Hannah Montana operating system. Thinking of trying out the live distro just for fun. XD

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Last.fm Widget - Dynamic Tag Cloud (Shows Music Tags & Artists)

Last.fm Widget - Dynamic Tag Cloud (Shows Music Tags & Artists):

"here you can create your own last.fm tag cloud, which will be automatically regenerated every single day."

The Photojojo Book on the CBS Early Show!

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The Photojojo Book on the CBS Early Show!:

"Watch Amit and Kelly demo some awesome projects from the new Photojojo Book on the CBS Early Show this morning!"

Congrats guys!

Ubuntu Netbook Remix now has Moblin

Canonical Ubuntu Moblin Remix IDF 2009 | Netbooknews - Netbooks, Netbook Reviews, Smartbooks and more:

"Walk through the Canonical Ubuntu Moblin Remix. This O/S by Intel is focused on social media and arranging conent by Zones rather then program tabs."

I was just trying out Moblin this weekend on my EEEpc and liking it. And now, it seems Ubuntu is supporting it in the 9.10 release. Very nice! I'm really excited about this.

What if Twitter Had an App Store? Now It Does.

Like Summize before it was acquired and relaunched as Twitter Search, OneForty is Twitter’s missing piece. Similar to the App Store for Apple’s iPhone, OneForty is a marketplace for the Twitter community to discover and share tools and services that make Twitter valuable. It also offers a business platform for the over 20,000 Twitter developers to market their innovations. It brings order to the chapos with organized categories, tags and “essentials” to introduce new users to apps.

What if Twitter Had an App Store? Now It Does. | Brian Solis - PR 2.0

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Celebrate Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

ALA | Banned Books Week

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MP3tunes Music Locker - Releases iPhone app!

MP3tunes Music Locker: Your Music Everywhere:

NEW for your iPhone or iPod touch!

Airband

and your MP3tunes Locker

• Enjoy your Locker wherever you go with the FREE Airband app!
  
  
• Never be limited by the disk space of your iPhone or iPod touch again!
  
  
• Browse your albums and artists or just click to listen to a mix of your favorites!

Finally! I've Been waiting for this to come out!

Google Maps locates Hell.

2009-09-23_1327.png

According to Google Maps, Hell is located at the corner of Patterson Lake Rd and Silver Hill in Pinckney, MI.

So you may want to adjust your travel route if you're in that area.

Google Chrome Frame - have IE 6 run Chrome

Google Chrome Frame is an early-stage open source plug-in that seamlessly brings Google Chrome's open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer. With Google Chrome Frame, you can:

* Start using open web technologies - like the HTML5 canvas tag - right away, even technologies that aren't yet supported in Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8.

* Take advantage of JavaScript performance improvements to make your apps faster and more responsive.

Google Chrome Frame - Google Code

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Video Artist Invades Best Buy

Video Artist Invades Best Buy:

Borna Sammak, a member of the Free Art and Technology Lab, is planning an illicit exhibition for a New York Best Buy store on October 8. If all goes according to plan, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. all of the display monitors in the store will simultaneously switch to his incredible video art, which is specially built for hi-def screens and looks like the year 1992 exploding in slow motion (example here). It's unclear how he’s pulling this off, especially with the word out about it, but it’ll be the coolest thing to happen to a Best Buy in years.

Kids can play with anything, if it's Play-Doh

Kids can play with anything, if it's Play-Doh:

"Kids shouldn't play with razor blades, matches, chainsaws, cleavers or pills. Unless, of course, they're made of Play-Doh. The eye-catching ads are from Singapore, which needs better broadband access if Play-Doh's still a viable time-waster there. Compare and contrast these ads with the German campaign for Becks modeling clay, which, as we all know, played the social-issues card and made the world a better place. The Play-Doh tagline: 'Safe no matter what you make.' The stuff's even non-toxic, though if kids do eat it, what they'll eventually make won't be appealing. Via Ugly Doggy. "

See also:
Modeling clay soothes the old antagonisms

Online Audio Editor - Aviary.com's Myna

Online Audio Editor - Aviary.com's Myna:

"Use Myna to remix music tracks and audio clips. Apply sound effects and record your own voice or instruments!"

And it comes loaded with ready to use music loops and samples. Very cool. Looks like a great podcasting tool.

Bad Boys II White Guys on Vimeo

Bad Boys II White Guys on Vimeo:

Bad Boys II White Guys from Travis Blackwell on Vimeo.

Took me a second to figure out what was going on here. These two guys spliced themselves into the movie Bad Boys II. I was wondering how they could afford to do all those car crashes.

League of Librarians Trading Cards

League of Librarians Trading Cards - a set on Flickr:

"from Carleton College who created the'original* librarian trading cards"

Google Voice and Gmail are sort of merging

Google Voice and Gmail are sort of merging | Rafe's Radar - CNET News: "

Two new little Google Voice features just made their way into Gmail. A new option lets text messages sent to Google Voice show up as e-mail messages in Gmail. You can reply to messages from Gmail, too, which makes it a nice platform for carrying on a text message conversation.

Google Voice text messages can now be read and replied to from within Gmail.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

Also, there's a new Labs feature in Gmail that lets you play your Google Voice voicemail messages from inside the Gmail viewer. Previously, Gmail would send you the text transcript of your message, but if you wanted to play the audio file, it would open a new browser window to do so.

"

Control your Mac or PC using Twitter

Control your Mac or PC using Twitter: "The services TweetMyMac and TweetMyPC allow you to do exactly that - send specific commands to your remote computer to have it perform specific tasks. Here's a sampling of the sorts of commands it can understand: shutdown, restart, logout, sleep, ip, screenshot, screensaver, open (apps), quit (apps), lock, etc."