If you can't get enough of abominable snowmen I recommend checking out "The Abominable Charles Christopher," a wonderful new webcomic by Karl Kerschl.

http://horhaus.com/abominable/

@johnnyaction

Are these moving images or are they just slides? I have some friends at the Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association that might be interested in seeing that travelogue.

I'd like to see Adobe ditch DRM efforts and jump start supporting some linux OS. Most people I know only use MS because of the Adobe suite.

I already weighed in on the ingrained advertising over in the Honda post. I just want to know if there are different Hamsters in every box.

http://orphanarmy.com/wp-content/sketches/dreams.gif

P.S. If we're stuck with "The Power of Dreams" can we at least get some animated sparkles in the header?

My comment ballooned into a letter.

http://orphanarmy.com/blingbling_2008-02-11/

Dear Boing Boing,

Yours is one of a few blogs I read with regularity. It’s filled with wonderful posts by a great group of writers, inventors, and tech geeks who have good hearts and great minds.

Today, when I went to the site to decompress and catch up on my wacky internet news, I ran into a disturbing post about special sections of Boing Boing sponsored by Honda’s “Power of Dreams” campaign.

As a reader, I find this level of advertising embarrassing. It’s worse than having a flood of subscription cards douse my joy each time I open a new issue of WIRED.

I can understand that you need advertising to help cover bandwidth costs and pay for your time but it can and should be done tastefully and with respect to your audience.

The IT ROOM was bad. You endorsed a blatant corporate ripoff of the IT CROWD. It was like Ben Cohen going to work as a huckster for Western Family Ice Cream.

I think this latest advertising venture is worse. You’re mixing your posts with specific advertisements, again from big business with deep pockets. Reading the comments on your site it appears that I’m not alone in worrying. Is money starting to control the show? Will this lead to intentional and unintentional poisoning of your content?

I think you’re all smart enough to avoid the obvious pitfall here and I hope you’ve had a good long discussion about your revenue streams and where to draw the line when an advertiser walks into the room with a sack of cash. Boing Boing is successful beyond imagining and has earned its success by steadily building respect and reputation.

For each of you, Boing Boing has brought great attention to your personal projects and has increased your value as speakers, consultants, artists, and journalists. I have some idea of what that must mean for your personal finances.

It seems to me that in the long run you would most benefit by maintaining good faith with your audience and keeping Boing Boing free from dubious advertisements.

All my best,
Pat Race

So the council would rather look at a giant wall of hay covered with a blue tarp and tires than this beautiful castle? I'm a little torn here because it seems that he should be made an example but the castle is so cool looking I almost forgive him.

... and go karts! I want a castle with go-karts!

The only thing keeping me and many of the people I know from making the switch to something like Ubuntu is the Adobe Creative Suite. If Adobe started releasing software for Linux I think there could be a mass migration. Or at least a single migration.

@#5 You're right, this image looks impossible. How did she eat all the dot in the center?

Maybe there were no dots in the center to begin with? If that's the case it seems like the current position would violate the "Don't turn back" rule. Maybe there's a higher ranking rule on power pellets or she died and just restarted.

Did he say "Catch the Batman?"

Looks like a good project and their submission terms are better than the usual content gobbling web video contests that require filmmakers to give over all rights in perpetuity.

What I really liked was the link they provided to a list of "Human Universals." This could be a very useful read for many artists and writers.

http://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm

I liked the jumpsuit.

I'd go with a deep red one, lots of pockets and white racing stripes down the side. Then throw in a black leather aviator helmet and some big heavy boots. Maybe one of those funky axes from the Amok Time episode of Star Trek.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/68/STAmokTime.jpg

LOLCATS are supposed to be funny?

Thanks to this BBTV feature on the cookie crumbles contest we were able to put together a last minute video and ship my friend Aaron off to DC for the FTC town hall meeting on behavioral advertising.

Here's his summary of the event:

FTC: So what do y’all think we should do?

Industry: Nothing, the market will regulate itself.

Watchdog: We don’t trust industry.

Industry: But the people trust us, and that’s what counts.

Statistician: Our surveys show that people don’t care about what you want them to care about, they just want free services.

FTC: Thanks to you all for coming and to Microsoft for the free bagels, they were delicious, we’ll have to do this again sometime...

Thanks for the lengthy response Xeni, I did like the furry segment your editor cut together today and really admire your ability to stick to such an ambitious schedule. It's hard to do anything five days a week outside of eating and sleeping.

My criticism is meant to be purely constructive. I understand that the show is somewhat experimental and it's good that you're willing to defend your decisions. It shows that you've put thought into them.

You're a ridiculously talented bunch and I expect a lot of good things out of you.

Apologies in advance for a critical post. I'm a long time reader of boingboing and was very excited about the bbTV launch but the last couple episodes have been disappointing after what seemed like a promising start.

I think BBTV works better with the brief talking heads to break things up. It gives the show a more consistent personality and makes me feel less like I'm just watching a spoon fed YouTube clip.

There needs to be some distinct difference between the bb posts that link to an episode of bbTV and the bb posts that link to a video of a guy levitating. Maybe the production timeline is too ambitious? Could bbTV be scaled back to two days a week or one day a week and have higher production value? Maybe I just need to look at it as a vlog instead of a mini show.

I'm also not sure how others feel about this but it seems like a sell out move to endorse what looks like a poorly made IT crowd knock off. I'm not even clear on if it's a real show or some advertisement scheme cooked up by a big company along the lines of the createsimplicity adverts.

I think bbTV should probably be more discerning about their endorsements if they're going to ask viewers to sit through a commercial.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share. Good luck with the show.

A magnet under the table. You can see the glue snap into place when it gets set down.

King Corn + News at Seven = Orville Redenbacher

Wow. Those creepy news avatars look like they were salvaged from a bad strip poker game. It's a cool project and they'll probably run the world someday but right now they're teetering on the brink of the uncanny valley. Just like real news anchors.

This looks like it was made with Wired's Big-Idea Book Generator.

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/15-10/st_bigidea

I'm not saying that food is bad for you, I'm just saying we eat an awful lot of it. [insert ominous music]

I'm amazed at how many third party ad tracking cookies get served up. Even here on boingboing I get nailed with an easy half dozen. I know cookies are just text files and aren't going to rip a hole in my machine but it's a little unsettling that we've grown so comfortable in an environment where you've got a little spy looking over your shoulder recording your surfing patterns.

And targeted ad content? So far it sucks. Most of the ads I see are for things I can't buy. If they were truly targeting my demographic there would be a lot more clip and save pasta coupons and the banner ads would all be for comic books and bubble tea.

-Pat

Gross. All the BBQ Smoked food is going to have natural leg flavoring.

His smile just fades to a grimace and then gets eaten by his mustache.

I can't wait to see the advertisements for these shoes. I'm sure I'll be embarrassed to watch.

The earth is flat and round.

http://akrobotics.com/comics/2007/09/20/flat-earthers-unite

It doesn't matter if the content is free, it's lame that the files self destruct. It's an idea thought up by some stuffy boardroom coot sucking on an oxygen tank.

Maybe they'll go the route of the New York Times and put up a paywall for their archived content. Then after they sink a bunch of money into all this DRM and paywall nonsense they'll realize that they've been actively reducing their number of viewers.

Then.. when it's just about too late for big television they'll reluctantly release their entire archives as free downloads and go back to making money the way television has historically made money, through advertising.

These guys look like music notes hanging off a sheet. I wonder what they sound like.

Winamp got bought out by AOL and started to suck when the core developers left. I use foobar.

The MK12 logo that starts this clip off is from a kick ass design firm in Kansas City. It's worth watching their film Man of Action: The Terrible Cosmic Death.