Petri writes:

I have developed a new orientation sensor game for Nokia N95, N95 8Gb and N82, that I think will interest you and your audience at geektronica.com.

The game is called “Marble Maze”, and the basic idea is from a classical game, in which you have a board with labyrinth and holes, and you try to guide a metal ball into the goal without dropping into a hole. The thing about N95 and N82 is that those phones have orientation sensor, that enables this kind of idea taken from physical world, to be implemented in the phone.

Check out a Youtube video of the game play with N95:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G3puULvn_E[/youtube]

Another with N82 (with rubber ball):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_C_pz3F8TY[/youtube]

Some features of the game include:

• Use of orientation sensor data of the device to control the game play
• 40 different fields
• Create and save your own fields (and share with friends)
• 3 different balls, with different bounce and friction (metal, rubber and pingpong balls)
• Saving of record times for each field
• Tactile feedback, you can feel the ball hit the walls

You can get the game (or read more about it) here.

Great way to take advantage of the built-in sensors - reminds of me of the slap-Mac hack.

Long before he endorsed Mike Huckabee for President, Chuck Norris did something even more amazing. No, not win the professional middleweight karate championship (which he did six times).

He invented Chuck Norris Action Jeans.

Alarmed that this magazine ad for the jeans looked a bit old, I contacted the company to see if this venerable (and, dare I say, must-have) garment was still available.

Oh well. I guess I will have to tolerate the inevitable binding that occurs when I kick someone in the face while wearing regular jeans.

During the long, hot summer of 2006, You’re The Man Now Dog told its readers to submit reviews of an Amazon.com product seemingly chosen at random: Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gal, 128 fl oz. The results made web history.

There are currently 975 reviews of the product, some well-written and laudatory, others utterly ridiculous. There are tales of how Tuscan Whole Milk has ruined lives, and how it has saved the day. There’s even a rendition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Kahn, rewritten to honor milk instead of the 13th century Chinese and Mongol emperor.

This, er, project attracted attention from BoingBoing and even the New York Times, which probably added fuel to the fire.

One of the great things about geek culture is the delicious remixing of in-jokes and memes. That’s why this review of Tuscan Whole Milk is my favorite:

Tuscan Whole Milk 1 Gallon 128 FL OZ’s Improve US American’s Education

December 19, 2007

By Jacob J. Harder

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have Tuscan Whole Milk 1 Gallon 128 FL Oz’s and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us and Tuscan Whole Milk 1 Gallon 128 FL Oz’s” link

This is of course a parody of Miss Teen USA South Carolina’s utterly nonsensical answer to a question about education during the 2007 pageant. If it weren’t for her, plus an insightful YTMND reader, we wouldn’t know that milk is the solution to US Americans’ ignorance about basic geography.

Michael Skinner, one of the two Americans at the TopCoder collegiate competition in Orlando, took first place in the “marathon” division. The Times reports:

Skinner, 22, a senior, was one of just two Americans among a field of 120 students gathered in Florida for the 2007 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge. Skinner had qualified eighth among eight finalists in the “marathon match” division, and he was up against students from Poland, France and the United Kingdom - all of whom had won or placed in previous events. link

Skinner walked away with $15,000 in prize money, and will be working at Google when he graduates.

As I said previously, I think it’s great to have prizes and competitions to encourage excellence and innovation.

TopCoder is sponsored by employers looking to hire talent, but I can think of several other ways our society is taking advantage of contests and competitions:

• Contests to develop open-source software, e.g. plugins for WordPress or improvements to Linux
• Competitions to develop environmental solutions, such as Formula Hybrid
• Marketing competitions to support the work of nonprofits or make public service announcements, such as the NoStankYou anti-smoking campaign. Check out this hilarious PSA, for example, which features the catchy jingle “it’s like having someone big sitting on your chest.”

Bring on the competitions!

I got the strangest message today, a day after placing an order for a flash drive (this one, in case you care) on Amazon.com:

Hello from Amazon.com.

We are writing about the order you placed on October 30 2007

(Order# xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx). The item(s) listed below will actually

ship sooner than we originally expected:

“SanDisk 4 GB Cruzer Micro USB Flash Drive with U3 (SDCZ6-4096-

A10RB)” [Electronics]

Estimated arrival date: 11/02/2007

I’m not sure why they have notifications like this, unless perhaps they got complaints from geeks who were taking days off or working from home to wait for their packages. Early is good. Maybe they’re just bragging.

From The Onion comes this tragic story about the crash of the internet:

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

Glad to see The Onion getting into video - good stuff.

Via del.icio.us comes this gem on what it would be like If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers. Snip:

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one. link

Since there’s the perception that everything on the web is free (even if it takes hours or days to implement), I think people are a lot more likely to ask for things just because they saw them somewhere else. If you do that with your architect, and he tells you it’ll be $15,000 extra, you’re likely to just stick with the plan. Great post - check it out.

Update: This site has been moved to a new server. If you left a comment recently and it disappeared, you may want to re-post it.

This strange new phenomenon called “Internet” can let you communicate with other people! Includes information on how to communicate with emoticons!

From a 1980s Toronto TV news story. Sweet!