Ars Technica:

To get “online” was to sit down at your computer, open up an application called a “terminal program” (or just “term program” for short), pull up your carefully hoarded list of BBS phone numbers, and start dialing. Inevitably, most would be busy and you’d have to wait, but eventually you’d be treated to the sweet sound of ringing through your modem’s speaker, followed by the electronic beeping and scratching of a modem handshake.

I remember all of this. In related news, I’m old.

Test Your Vocabulary:

English has the most words of any language on Earth.

TestYourVocab.com is part of an independent American-Brazilian research project to measure vocabulary sizes according to age and education, and particularly to compare native learning rates with foreign language classroom learning rates.

According to the test, I know over 36,000 words. I bet a lot of them are just different words for beer.

CNET:

If you’ve ever wanted to take a spin around the “Top Gear” test track in the UK, but don’t qualify as a Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, now’s your chance.

As a fan of the UK TV show Top Gear, I really enjoyed “chasing” The Stig around their track.

Gizmodo:

Can you spot the fakes? Hundreds of amazing images wash over our greedy eyeballs each and every day, clogging our Twitter timelines and Facebook feeds. Many of them are fakes, lies, or both. Like these!

I’m seeing more and more of these being passed around Twitter. Even worse, being passed around by people who should know better.

CNET News:

If you’re one of the people more interested in watching Super Bowl commercials than watching the actual game, you’re in luck. YouTube has offered early access to Super Bowl commercials for those who just can’t wait.

The Google-owned company on Thursday announced the Ad Blitz channel on YouTube.

Or, if you are unlucky enough to live in a place like Canada where the Super Bowl ads are replaced by local market ads for mufflers and mattress superstores, this channel lets you see what all the buzz is about.

Goalies are known as “The drummers of hockey” so 14 minutes of insanity from netminders is pure gold.

Modern Farmer:

About 80% of the world’s maple syrup comes from Canada and 90% of that comes from Quebec which produced 96.1 million lbs of syrup valued at $270 million in 2012.

We wrote about this when it first came to light in 2012 but this “illustrated update” is interesting too. The idea of a “International Strategic Reserve” of maple syrup still cracks me up.

The Dissolve:

In January 1994, a group of filmmakers from Chicago went to the Sundance Film Festival to accomplish the impossible, by selling a three-hour documentary about two inner-city teens hoping to get to the NBA. By the time they left, their lives had changed, and so had the way non-fiction filmmaking is perceived.

The movie still holds up as a powerful commentary on sports and the role it plays in the lives of too many “disadvantaged youths”.

But it’s also a wonderful film in and of itself. Even if you’re not a fan of documentaries, I’d encourage you to watch it.

Recode:

The principle of the idea is that the speech of 300 million Americans is more important than the profit-making activities of four or five companies.

Unfortunately all too often “principle” falls to “commerce”.

Today I Found Out:

Before a story about toys, before monsters went corporate, before anyone went searching for Nemo, and before twenty seven Academy Awards, Pixar was a high-end computer hardware company whose clients included the government and the medical community.

Many think Pixar sprung fully formed from the genius of Steve Jobs. This story does a good job of showing the history of the company long before Jobs was ever involved.

Washington Post:

Consider this, then, a collection of maps meant to inspire your inner map nerd. I’ve searched far and wide for maps that can reveal and surprise and inform in ways that the daily headlines might not, with a careful eye for sourcing and detail.

Maps have always fascinated me and the ones pictured here cover the span from “Cool!” to “Oh, that’s not good.”

TIME:

A gigantic percentage of what makes the trek to Vegas worthwhile for those 150,000 participants is what I think of as Shadow CES — the show beyond the show, largely carried on behind closed doors.

The average encounter at Shadow CES is probably more interesting than the average CES one, for several reasons.

I’d venture to say more deals are made and more meaningful work is done at “Shadow CES” than on the actual show floor of CES.

Quartz:

Given that CES has become the preferred exhibition venue for a burgeoning category of advanced home technologies, why is there such a total absence of disruptive toilet innovation at the show?

I want my Internet of Things Toilet!

ESPN:

Seismologists say Seahawks fans shook the ground under Seattle’s CenturyLink Field during Saturday’s defeat of the New Orleans Saints, causing another fan-generated earthquake.

The scientists believe the small earthquake during a Marshawn Lynch touchdown was likely greater than Lynch’s famous “beast quake” touchdown run three years ago, which also came against New Orleans during a playoff game.

I went to a couple of Seahawks games in the late nineties in the old Kingdome and even though the team sucked, the fans loved to make noise.

Fast Company:

Samsung’s program known as “White Glove.” It’s a marketing effort designed to convert Apple-slinging celebrities and business influencers into Samsung evangelists. When Beyoncé whips out her phone on the street in Brooklyn, Korea’s largest business conglomerate wants the paparazzi to see that she’s playing Words With Friends on a Samsung.

The White Glove program is a cross between the social marketing of Tupperware parties (minus the pressure to buy something), the house calls of Mormon missionaries (minus the pressure to give up smoking), and the persistence of Green Eggs and Ham–but for gadgets.

It may seem like a lot of time, energy and money on Samsung’s part but, for better or worse, celebrities are “influencers”. And before you knock the program, keep in mind this is something else Apple has done that Samsung has copied. Apple’s program in the Nineties was called “Apple Masters“.

Quartz:

My wife and I had 12 children over the course of 15 1/2 years. Today, our oldest is 37 and our youngest is 22. I have always had a very prosperous job and enough money to give my kids almost anything. But my wife and I decided not to.

I will share with you the things that we did, but first let me tell you the results: All 12 of my children have college degrees (or are in school), and we as parents did not pay for it.

Congratulations to the Thompson family. Maybe not a blueprint for everyone but there are some good ideas in the article for new parents.

Homes and Hues:

These seventeen bookcases and bookshelves can clear away the cluttery piles of books you may have laying around while adding some extra style to your home.

I’m a big fan of books and therefore, of bookshelves. Most of these designs are actually available (if expensive) and not just design concepts.

Failblog:

“Hey. Can we use your pool? There’s a moose in ours…”

Happens all the time in Canada.

For those of us who are fans of the movie, this old “behind the scenes” video is fascinating.

Wall Street Journal:

TV is stuck in an innovation cul-de-sac. There are no new ideas in TV hardware that are worth paying for, so, thanks to competition and production efficiencies, good TVs keep getting cheaper. The cheaper they get, the more desperate TV makers become, filling their sets with more and more useless piffle.

From 3D to 4K to curved screens to Sony’s strange “wedge-shaped” sets (don’t ask), we are witnessing an industry out of ideas, a business desperately casting about in the dark for something—anything—that might persuade us to part with our money.

For most of us, the TV we already have in our living rooms is perfectly good for what we watch. There’s little compelling in the offerings at this year’s CES.

Mashable:

We’ve found 10 of the most interesting and interactive real-time visualizations on the web. Feast your eyes on these awe-inspiring pages for a fresh look on what’s happening on the planet right now.

I don’t know about “put the world in perspective” but the Tweetping and FBomb_co data is fascinating.

The Week:

if you wanted to improve your Canadian accent, you would do better to just use your Californian accent. In some important ways it is closer to the real Canadian accent and vice versa than other American accents are.

Canada actually has many regional differences in accents. The most extraordinary ones are of the people native to Newfoundland but mine and Jim Dalrymple’s home province of Nova Scotia has some very distinctive accents too.

The scruffy twenty-something, wandered by our Pax East booth, looking up at the banner for our game. Ten feet tall, rising above the Pax floor, three tall, skinny women look jauntily at the camera. Two wear form-fitting combat suits. Another wears a ’60s Checkerboard dress. […]

Jalopnik:

People on two continents mourn the death of 92-year-old William Overstreet Jr. He was a resident of Roanoke, Virginia, a retired accountant, and like many men from his generation, a veteran of World War II. And in the spring of 1944, Overstreet did something people in France and the U.S. still talk about.

Overstreet, who died Sunday at a Roanoke hospital, is remembered for being the U.S. Army Air Corps pilot who flew underneath the Eiffel Tower’s arches in his P-51 Mustang during an aerial battle while in hot pursuit of a German fighter plane, which he ultimately shot down.

Stones. Great, big stones.

Vulture:

Vulture corralled legendary rap-rock producer Rick Rubin, Sir Mix-a-Lot (real name: Anthony Ray), the video’s director Adam Bernstein (also of Breaking Bad fame), and others to bring you the story behind the behind-centric classic.

Somewhere on the internet is a hilarious video of myself, John Welch, Sam Crutsinger and (I think) Andy Ihnatko lip-syncing this song.

Re/code:

Apple confirmed to Re/code that it has bought SnappyLabs, but declined to comment further on the deal.

SnappyLabs had sold the SnappyCam app — which allows the internal iPhone camera to take high-resolution images rapidly — in the Apple Store. It was founded by John Papandriopoulos.

Best part of this story was the snotty last line.

The Washington Post:

Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos suffered a kidney stone attack while vacationing in the Galapagos Islands over the New Year’s Day holiday and was flown back to the United States for treatment.

“Galapagos: five stars. Kidney stones: zero stars,” Bezos said through a spokesman.

Ow ow ow ow.

Mashable: We gathered up some of our favorite flicks from the year George Orwell warned us all about. Sorry in advance for making you feel old. Sigh. So very, very old.

Reservoir Dogs on Twitter:

Eight men dressed in BLACK SUITS, sit around a table at a breakfast cafe.

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, “Reservoir Dogs” is a great movie. This Twitter account recreates the movie in 140 character chunks. Interesting experiment in what Twitter can do.