Steward Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr, has just launched his next act, a web-based multiplayer game called "Glitch." It sounds a lot like the original game behind Flickr, Game Neverending, full of puzzles, whimsy and warmth (like Stewart). The game's in private alpha now, but the intro video and Daniel Terdiman's profiles of the company on CNet are damned exciting:

A new game that went into alpha testing on Tuesday, as reported exclusively by CNET, Glitch (see related behind-the-scenes feature about its development) is a puzzle-heavy, Web-based social MMO built around sending players billions of years into the past to develop the optimistic future that today seems increasingly unlikely.

"The whole world was spun out of the imagination of 11 great giants," said Stewart Butterfield, the president of Glitch developer Tiny Speck, and better known as the co-founder of Flickr. "So you have to go back into the past, into the world of the giants' imaginations and grow...the number of things in the world, grow it in terms of physical dimensions, to make sure the future actually happens. So all the game play takes place in the past inside the world of the giants' imagination."

While Glitch shares some of the features of hard-core MMOs like World of Warcraft and EverQuest--principally quests, leveling up, an in-game economy and working socially with other players, as a 2D Flash game--it might at the same time feel mildly familiar to players of Facebook games like Farmville or Nintendo titles like the many iterations of the Mario franchise.

The next SF in SF free science fiction events is coming up on Feb 13, with guests Jedediah Berry and Laurie R. King:

Jedediah Berry was raised in the Hudson Valley region of New York State. His short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and works as the assistant editor of Small Beer Press. The Manual of Detection is his award-winning first novel, now available in hardcover and paperback.

While Laurie R. King's fiction falls into several areas, first in the hearts of most readers comes Mary Russell, who becomes first the apprentice of Sherlock Holmes, and then his partner. Over the course of ten books (and more to come!), Russell and Holmes challenge each other to ever-greater feats of detection, traveling the world from Sussex to Simla. King's other series concerns San Francisco homicide inspector Kate Martinelli, her SFPD partner Al Hawkin, and her life partner Lee Cooper. In the course of her five books, Kate has encountered a female Rembrandt, a modern-day Holy Fool, two difficult teenagers, and a manifestation of the goddess Kali.

Reception begins, and cash bar opens at 6:00PM. Author readings begin at 7:00PM

Each author will read a selection of their work, followed by Q & A moderated by author Terry Bisson. Booksigning and schmoozing in the lounge afterwards. Books for sale at event, courtesy of Borderlands Books

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor - entrance between Quizno's & Citibank
582 Market St., at 2nd @ Montgomery, San Francisco

Rusty from SomaFM writes,

"The Space Shuttle Endeavour has taken off and is in space, traveling to the International Space Station where it will be delivering parts including the third connecting module known as 'the Tranquility node' to the station. It's also bringing up a seven-windowed cupola to be used as a control room for robotics. The mission will feature three spacewalks."

"You can hear it all mixed with electronic ambient music on SomaFM's Mission Control channel. Just go to somafm.com and click on Mission Control.

"The best time to tune in is around 2pm pacific time (06:00 GMT), when the astronauts are just getting up and starting their checklists for the day. Astronaut sleep periods are approximately from 6am pacific to 2pm pacific. There will be minimal mission audio at that time, but the rest of the time all sorts of stuff is going on."

[CC-licensed image, via Flickr: "STS-130 Shuttle Launch," photographed on Feb 8, 2010 by Malenkov in Exile]

These early electric doorbells by Rene Binet date to the early 1900s (they were used at the 1900 Paris World Fair). Binet was inspired by Ernest Haeckel in his designs.

When electric doorbells were new

Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan claims that when he went through Heathrow, security staff printed out the naked image of his body from the full-body scanners (scanners that the authorities have claimed won't ever be used to generate printouts) and circulated them among the staff:

'I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You've got to see them. It makes you embarrassed - if you're not well endowed.

'You walk into the machine and everything - the whole outline of your body - comes out.'

Khan said he did not know that the body-scans - installed in the wake of last year's abortive Christmas Day bombing of a transatlantic flight over Detroit - showed up every little detail of one's body.

'I was a little scared. Something happens [inside the scans], and I came out.

'Then I saw these girls - they had these printouts. I looked at them. I thought they were some forms you had to fill. I said 'give them to me' - and you could see everything inside. So I autographed them for them.'

(Image: S3010420, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from dodo_anji's photostream)

Greg from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association sez,

It's not just the U.S. border guards who want to search the files on your laptop and cellphone. The Canada Border Services Agency has been doing the same thing for years. From U.S. journalist Amy Goodman to a Canadian gay couple whose collection of porn got border agents all hot and bothered, the CBSA likes to look just as much as its counterpart in the U.S.

The biggest difference between U.S. border guards and the CBSA is that the CBSA hasn't made their policy for laptop searches public. Judging by how they've handled the BC Civil Liberties Association's Access to Information request, they'd like to keep it that way.

Back in October 2009, the BCCLA filed an Access to Information Request with the CBSA looking for their policies on searching personal electronics and copying data from them. We got a polite acknowledgement, and we settled in to wait for the 30 days allowed by the Access to Information Act.

On November 30, 2009, we got another letter from the CBSA saying that they'd need another 60 days to meet the request, because a timely response would "unreasonably interfere with the operations of the government institution" and "consultations are necessary to comply with the request." We settled in to wait again.

February 1 came and went. Three months after the original request was filed, the CBSA remains unwilling or unable to provide a single document in response to our request.

We've written up an overview of the file and put the correspondence online. We'll be posting more about this over the next few weeks, and we'll be putting documents online as soon as we get them.

(Image: Pacific Highway crossing, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from scazon's photostream)

Gareth Branwyn says:

We're kicking off our Maker Business series with this piece by Jeffrey McGrew, who along with his wife Jillian Northrup, and their trusty CNC machine named Frank, are a two-person (and a bot) design and fabrication juggernaut. From their design-build studio, Because We Can, in Oakland, CA, they do custom interior design, furniture, and create such artistic wonders as the "Art Golf" course they've set up at Maker Faire. Here, Jeffrey shares some words of advice to those who may be thinking of going "Maker Pro."

Look what happens on this podcast when the host clicks the button to play the podcast.

Snip from 1934 Los Angeles Times article about lizard people who lived in tunnels under the city 5,000 years ago. This legend is a long-lived chestnut. A hi-rez scan, more at Strange Maps, and: Reptoids! The Flickr uploader, vokoban, has lots of great stuff.

News story, auto-translated to English in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. More on Google Maps. (thanks, BB reader Kjetil Rydland in Norway!)

Video link. Actor Brian Cox attempts to teach Shakespeare's most famous soliloquy to Theo, age 2 1/2. (Thanks, Lisa Mumbach!)

Donald Scruggs of Chino, CA was awarded a patent in 2007 for a self-boring coffin. (Via Random Good Stuff)

The official Muppets Studio channel on YouTube just keeps getting better and better. First "Bohemian Rhapsody," now this: Beaker performing the Kansas prog-rock classic "Dust in the Wind," and being pelted by caustic overlay annotations from anonymous strangers. Video Link: Beaker's Ballad.(via Laughing Squid)

A Munich-based design studio is proposing a unique alternative to washing clothes by hand in developing countries. Swirl is the concept design for a giant candy-striped ball that you can stuff your clothes in; roll it around using removable handlebars or by kicking it around, and that rolling motion launders the clothes inside. It has the added benefit, the studio claims, of doubling as a giant soccer ball and a water transporter. What do you guys think? Good idea? Bad idea?

Swirl main page (via Inhabitots)

This article reports on people who think that playing with a pink Ouija Board can "leave a person's soul vulnerable to attack." Just think: this is the 21st century, and people who believe (or pretend to believe) this are currently walking the Earth. It's as amazing as discovering a lost tribe of Neanderthals.

It's designed for young girls ages 8 and older, but some say the mysterious product is a "dangerous spiritual game" that opens up anyone, particularly Christians, to attacks on their soul.

"There's a spiritual reality to it and Hasbro is treating it as if it's just a game," said Stephen Phelan, communications director for Human Life International, which bills itself as the largest international pro-life organization and missionary worldwide. "It's not Monopoly. It really is a dangerous spiritual game and for [Hasbro] to treat it as just another game is quite dishonest."

Phelan, who has never played the game, said the Bible explicitly states "not to mess with spirits" and that using a Ouija board will leave a person's soul vulnerable to attack.

New Scientist surveys the latest in wireless power, from highly directional lasers to magnetic induction. Paging Nikola Tesla -- your meme is ready! From New Scientist:

The idea of wireless power transfer is almost as old as electricity generation itself. At the beginning of the 20th century, Nikola Tesla proposed using huge coils to transmit electricity through the troposphere to power homes. He even started building Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island, New York, an enormous telecommunications tower that would also test his idea for wireless power transmission. The story goes that his backers pulled the funding when they realised there would be no feasible way to ensure people paid for the electricity they were using, and the wired power grid sprang up instead.

Wireless transmission emerged again in the 1960s, with a demonstration of a miniature helicopter powered using microwaves beamed from the ground. Some have even suggested that one day we might power spaceships by beaming power to them with lasers. As well as this, much theoretical work has gone into exploring the possibility of beaming power down to Earth from satellites that harvest solar energy (New Scientist.

Long-distance ground-to-ground wireless power transmission would require expensive infrastructure, however, and with concerns over the safety of transmitting it via high-power microwaves, the idea has been met with trepidation.