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.

On April 12th 1961, 45 years ago today, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space. Two decades later, astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen flew America's first Space Shuttle flight into orbit. And tonight, commemorations of human space travel will take place all over the world: Yuri's Night. — Read the rest