Ben Brown, Internet Rockstar Feverish Velocity
Giving In To Tumblr
I have started posting stuff over on the Tumblr powered I Love Ben Brown. You should probably adjust your feed reader.
Lists
Andre Torrez just launched Listable, a tool that lets you make and share lists, and then get them in a variety of formats. I hope this gets some love, because having a reliable source for, lets say, a JSON formatted list of every country in the world would be very handy for people [...]
Instant Gratification
Thanks to integration with the Netflix API, we have a new feature on HoorayMovies! We are now not only tracking which movies are available to rent on Netflix, but also which movies you can watch instantly using Netflix’s new “Watch Instantly” system. It works very smoothly, and they have a surprisingly large and [...]
Red Oceans vs Blue Islands
When we lived in San Francisco, we were frequently confronted by pretty rabid anti-Texas attitudes. We’d have conversations like this:
BEN: Yeah, we’re actually from Texas.
SF: EW! Oh man, that is terrible.
BEN: It’s actually really nice there and most people are very frie…
SF: Yeah, nice for cows and Republicans!
BEN: Well, actually…
SF: Oh, but you [...]
Rosa sat…
Twitter’s election coverage just told me that “Martin” is a recent political buzzword. Why? People are quoting this All Things Considered piece from this evening:
Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running so our children can fly.
Inspiring!
Using the Twitter search, I went back a few hours [...]
Movie APIs
Just a quick follow-up to my previous post about The New York Times and all of their APIs: Today, they released the aforementioned Movie Reviews API. So far, it’s very straightforward, and provides access to a lot of useful information… and a lot of links back to NYTIMES.com. I think I’ll [...]
NYTIMES DATA VIZ API “IN OBAMA’s POCKET”
The New York Times has been busy lately releasing data sets and APIs so that developers can tap into the wealth of information they’ve collected. Their rhetoric behind all of this is very appealing to me - they hope that by releasing the data, they’ll create new opportunities for discovering stories hidden within. [...]
Telling You To Do Things
Ray Roker, the founder of URB magazine, wrote a post last night for Huffington about John McCain’s disturbing use of the term “GOOK,” and the lack of covereage this has had. This is something that I keep expecting to break into the daily news cycle, but nobody seems to be picking it up. [...]
Is it Halloween Yet?
We’ve become obsessed here at the Brownce household with the new HBO series, True Blood. It is about vampires who live in Louisiana after having “come out of the coffin” as part of the “Vampire Rights Movement.” The vampires are able to walk amongst mortals because of a Japanese fake blood drink [...]
David Sedaris on Undecided Voters
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be [...]
Welcome to benbrown.com
I'm Ben Brown and this is my personal web site. I live in Austin, Texas with my wife, Katie Spence.
Use My Stuff
HoorayMovies is a web application I built to help me remember what movies I want to see. Don't miss our video podcast!
do.Oh is a simple todo list app that works in your browser and on your iPhone.
XOXCO is my company. We specialize in internet-related r&d. We make fun things you can click on.
Popular Posts
NYTimes Data Viz Obama vs McCain
Where did the "Rosa sat..." quote come from?
Where Am I?
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