Link roundup

1. How China bought its first aircraft carrier. (Hint, they lied about it.)

2. MIT students receive their acceptance letters in cardboard tubes and are encouraged to modify them. One student sent hers into space. (Have you noticed that all of the interesting stories about space have nothing to do with NASA?)

3. Mysterious new Google device being tested. Via.

Link roundup

1. Panasonic lost $10.2 billion for the year. Via.

2. How (and why) to set up Google Cloud Print.

3. A lawyer has the url rapesq.com. Via.

4. Bacon-flavored shake at Jack in the Box. Via.

Link roundup

1. Use Google Alerts as an Identity Theft Watchdog.

2. Relatedly, find out how old Google thinks you are.

3. And here's one more: Ever since the big Google Reader change, the "explore" function has been useless - - I used to find lots of neat links there, but now it just shows me Lifehacker and XKCD posts (and I'm already subscribed to those feeds!). I'm guessing that the Explore feature never points to obscure, cool posts any more because it's now reliant on Google+, and no one uses Google+ to mark blog posts they like.

4. Visit The Village from The Prisoner on Google Maps.

5. Free download of an audiobook version of Cory Doctorow's Martian Chronicles.

Google announced a new pseudonym policy for Google+

New Google+ policy:

On Google+, we try to flag names which don’t represent individuals, such as businesses or abstract ideas which should be +Pages. Sometimes we get this wrong, so starting today we’re updating our policies and processes to broaden support for established pseudonyms, from +trench coat to +Madonna.

If we flag the name you intend to use, you can provide us with information to help confirm your established identity. This might include:

- References to an established identity offline in print media, news articles, etc
- Scanned official documentation, such as a driver’s license
- Proof of an established identity online with a meaningful following

We’ll review the information and typically get back to you within a few days. We may also ask for further information, such as proof that you control a website you reference. While a name change is under review, your old name will continue to be displayed. For new accounts without an old name, your profile will be in a non-public, read-only state during the review. Either way, you'll be able to see the status of your review by going to your profile.

For more details, check out the Google+ Names Policy: http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1228271

To reiterate, the features described herein will be rolling out over the next couple days.

Via.

One Hour Per Second

One Hour Per Second, a charming site filled with information about how much video is uploaded to Youtube. (Every time I see one of these delightful HTML experiments, I'm reminded of the inexplicably horrendous Google Reader redesign.) Via.

Link roundup

1. Nightmare fuel.

2. Apparently Google's new signup form for Google accounts now requires users to join Google+ and use Gmail, as well as provide name and gender.

3. Sean Hartter has a new coloring book for sale.

4. Chris Dodd explains American politics:

"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake," Dodd said on Fox News on Thursday.

Link roundup

1. This week's Google research challenge is on an interesting topic. (I think this guy is the answer, and this is a description of the battle.)

2. Depressing article about soldiers struggling to reassimilate at an army base in Washington.

3. Thomas Barnett on the unlikelihood of war with China.

4. Walter Russell Mead on the possibility of war with Iran and Turkey's competition with Iran for influence.

Link roundup

1. "This is what happens to the Whole Foods on P Street when it misses a single shipment due to the holiday weekend — just in time for all the shoppers returning from vacation and hoping to restock their refrigerators." Via.

2. "Keith Olbermann's Days on Current Are Numbered."

3. "Google+ Is Going To Mess Up The Internet."

4. FYI, thanks to everyone who entered the James Bond art contest. I'm going to post the entries tomorrow.

Illustration roundup

Santa Claus by Marcelo Braga.




Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Francesco Francavilla. (Black Panther: The Man Without Fear, Vol. 1 is $12 at Amazon.)




Lilli Care:

Last Spring I was invited to make an illustration for a new Google search caption game, in which people are invited to submit funny captions for what a character might be searching for in each illustrated predicament. The project was posted today, and you can view the different illustrated scenarios and submitted responses here.

Noelle Stevenson posted a holiday-themed wallpaper featuring her Broship of the Ring characters.




Poster by Kali Fontecchio for the Channel 101 Awards on sale at Etsy.







New Gremlins items going on sale at Mondo on Friday. The first poster is by Phantom City Creative. The other two posters and the cutout are by Ken Taylor.

*Buy Mondo posters at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Photo gallery of the weird stuff (including giant board games) created for Google's 2011 UK holiday party.

2. Cool (and somewhat unsettling) animated holiday card by Laika (reminds me of Graham Annable's shorts, but his name's not in the credits).

3. Destructoid has good things to say about The Old Republic. (And don't forget to try to win The Old Republic art book.)

4. Here's a video showing off the character customization in Gotham City Impostors.

The Internet Justice League

One of several super heroes by Caldwell Tanner.

Link roundup

1. Comment and win art. (Although I'm hoping I win.)

2. Some useful Google research tips.

3. Newsradio: The Complete Series is $25 at Amazon.

4. $10 t-shirts at Threadless today.

5. It's $5 off t-shirts at Zazzle with the code DECDELIGHTS1. I recommend Miskatonic University, Vonster, Steve Thomas, and my own store.

Link roundup

1. I saw this long William Gibson interview linked a few times today, not sure if I've read it before, or just read so much by him that it seemed familiar, but anyway, it's very interesting about his childhood. He's a great storyteller:

Wytheville was a small town. I wasn’t a very happy kid, but there were ­aspects of the town that delighted me. It was rather short on books, though. There was a rotating wire rack of paperbacks at the Greyhound station on Main Street, another one at a soda fountain, and another one at a drugstore. That was all the book retail anywhere in my hometown.

My parents were both from Wytheville. They eventually got together, though rather late for each of them. My father had been married previously, and my mother was probably regarded as a spinster. My mother’s family had been in Wytheville forever and was quite well-off and established, in a very small-town sort of way. My father’s father had moved down from Pennsylvania to start a lumber company. Once the railroads had gotten far enough back into the mountains, after the Civil War, there were a lot of fortunes being made extracting resources.

My mother had had some college, which was unusual for a young woman in that part of the world, but she hadn’t married, which was basically all a woman of her class was supposed to do. When she did eventually marry my father, he was the breadwinner. He had had some college, too, had studied engineering, which enabled him to wind up working postwar for a big construction company. My earliest memories are of moving from project to project, every year or so, as this company built Levittown-like suburbs in Tennessee and North Carolina.

2. Apparently I'm not the only person who thinks the new Google Reader design is inexplicably horrendous. It's so bad in such obvious ways that I wonder if it's a preliminary step toward eliminating the service.

3. Here's a talented artist looking for commissions to make custom action figures. (I post his work often at my custom toy site.)

Blogger's going to be integrated with Google+, too

Apparently Blogger is going to be integrated with Google+, also. Via.

UPDATE: Here's the official announcement:

If you blog under a pseudonym and you don’t want to connect your common name with your blog, this integration may not work for you. That’s why we’ve made it completely optional to switch.

Link roundup

1. Radioactive Wolves special on PBS.

2. "Google+ will soon support pseudonyms and other forms of identity, says a Google executive."

3. Kraven the Hunter by Kate Beaton.

Link roundup

1. The song from that Nike commercial I posted this morning was Ellie Goulding's Under The Sheets (Jakwob remix). Here's more than a dozen remixes of Goulding's songs (including the one from the video). So far I like the Jakwob remix of Starry Eyes.

2. The guns in Terra Nova are apparently Nerf guns painted black.

3. Google News apparently won't index sites written by one person:

We currently only include articles from sources that could be considered organizations, generally characterized by multiple writers and editors, availability of organizational information, and accessible contact information.

Via.

Link roundup

1. Roosters are kept caged next to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles as an early warning device for West Nile Virus.

2. Chrome Remote Desktop sounds useful.

3. "Quarterly Co. is a subscription service that enables people to receive physical items in the mail from influential contributors of their choice."

4. Olly Moss's glow in the dark and dayglo vampire t-shirt has been reprinted at Threadless. (He's also going to be selling some posters tomorrow, but good luck.)

5. My thanks to sponsor the Imperial Trouble Podcast, a weekly uproarious and informative look at pop culture. Placing an advertisement is easy, very cheap, and available by the day.

Link roundup

1. Walter Russell Mead:

The looming struggle over water is not difficult to foresee. As China and South Asian countries use more and more water in urban development and agriculture, available resources will be intensely protected. China controls the vast Tibetan plateau, where most of South Asia’s rivers originate. Not only does China appropriate upstream resources, but pollution flows downstream, making what water downstream nations have available increasingly unsuitable for consumption or agriculture.

2. New Resident Evil ARG site and the site it takes you to.



3. Graphic design in the movie Moon.



4. Offline Gmail. (The only Chrome app other than Angry Birds that I've installed. Are there others worth installing?)



5. The latest nick and dent sale at TFAW (lots of comics and toys).



6. Tenacious Toys has Kidrobot Azteca Series 2 Dunny blind boxes on sale.

Link roundup

1. A Gizmodo writer went on two dates with a guy she met on OK Cupid and then wrote a post about how he was a loser for being a world class Magic The Gathering player and not mentioning it in his profile (or maybe she had a different motivation for going on the dates). He participated in an interesting q&a at Reddit. Also funny: Top Signs You’re on a Date With a Gizmodo Writer, including "refers to post-dinner plans as 'occurring after the jump'."



2. Hotel elevator with separate buttons for staff and guests.



3. How to report scraper sites to Google. Via.



4. Lime green couch wallpaper. Via.

Link roundup

1. Coilhouse fundraising art auction.



2. "Google Street View To Map Amazon - - Street View teams will mount camera-trikes to boats and also pedal through river communities."



3. I added pricing information for the Adventure Time toys I posted several days ago.



4. id Software's Rage will be free for the iPhone and iPad for the new few days.