Yesterday, I published another Android app, WordKick.

The goal of the game is to change one four-letter word into another four-letter word by changing only one letter at the time. It’s easy to play, but some words can prove challenging!

I started playing this game by myself when I was in grade school, writing four-letter words in the margins of my notebooks while I was bored in class. Even in college it’s helped me endure the most miserable classes. I had the idea to make it into a mobile game while I was falling asleep at a conference last year.

It’s free to play, so check it out!

Ruben van der Vleuten made an awesome video of a package’s journey through the mail system. I love creative Arduino projects like these.

Before you marry a person you should first make them use a computer with slow Internet to see who they really are.

@PeterKlesken

The author’s right: Georgia Tech’s College of Computing is a strong community, and like my second family. Love these guys.

There are also the smarmy “Let me Google that for you” types who, when asked a simple question that you figure falls within their expertise, tell you to go look it up yourself, as if engaging in conversation about something potentially interesting is exhausting and unnecessary.

Excuse us for asking, right?

Engadget: When We Google Too Much

I made a VineBox last weekend.

Vine is a fairly new offering from Twitter that enables users to share six-second videos to the world through tweets. Like Twitter, these short videos are, for the most part, pointless and trite, but it’s kind of cool to see (and not just read about) what the world is up to in real time. I don’t have an iPhone, so I can’t create anything using Vine myself (although there seems to be an Android version in the works), but I do get a kick out of seeing how people are creatively using the service. It’s kind of like watching television in some ways: a lot of it is just noise, but occasionally you’ll hit something interesting.

That TV comparison is what inspired me to make the VineBox. I wanted to play around with the differences between traditional media consumption and the digital consumption of today, and I wanted to think about what “Reality TV” really means. I found an old analog television and hooked up a Raspberry Pi to it, and wrote some python code to download and play videos from Vine in real time. What you get is essentially true Reality TV: I’m seeing what’s happening to real people in the real world just as it happens. And it’s surprisingly addictive.

If you’re interested in doing this yourself, I’ve put the code up on github.
If you don’t feel like building something like this, but still want to see Vine videos in real time, online services like Vinepeek can help.

You can use Gifinator and AnimGIF LWP 2 to make your own personal live wallpapers. It’s pretty cool, and super easy!

Have fun!

I really don’t like Black Friday. I hate the idea of fighting with others and trampling people in order to buy more things we don’t need, just hours after being thankful for what we already have. It’s nice to see Everlane choosing to stay out of the mess today (even if their stated motives are a bit different).

Remember, don’t stop being thankful!

I’m loving Typing Karaoke, a simple flash game where you type lyrics to songs, karaoke style. It’s a brilliant idea, and a lot of fun!

Using BitCam is easy: take a picture, choose one of several nostalgic filters, and share your new pixel art with your friends. You can also post your images to the BitCam Tumblr.

Download it today!