The world's first non-human reality show? National Geographic is launching a program consisting entirely of footage shot from small cameras attached to animals. Or something like that.

Ride on the backs of Earth's most charismatic creatures on Crittercam. Our new show reveals new, unexpected behaviors in the lives of marine and land animals.

Link (no web site for the show yet, scroll down on this page for video teaser clip), Link to website with technical background on the Crittercam device. (Thanks, Mike O!)

A brief "how this stuff works" piece on VoIP I wrote for the current issue of Wired Magazine:

Regional and long-distance carriers, facing extinction, are lobbying government officials for protection. California, Minnesota, and at least nine other states are pushing for some sort of regulation, and the FCC is weighing its options. Meanwhile, big telecom is joining the party. International voice carrier Teleglobe is acquiring a VoIP wholesaler, and others are poised to follow suit. Cox, Comcast, Cablevision, Qwest, and Time Warner are also rolling out VoIP offerings. Their existing customer bases, fat pipe IP infrastructures, and coveted "last mile" connectivity create a powerful triple threat. And, as more telecommunications monopolies around the world open up for competition, the cost savings promised by VoIP seems destined to spark a market shift as dramatic as the one that followed US telecom deregulation decades ago.

Link

Now *that* is a photoblog. Chronologically indexed gallery of interplanetary snapshots from this weekend's Mars landing. The first images sent back are of limited quality -- and only in black and white -- because data transmission rate from Spirit's antenna back to Earth is limited. Higher-res color images are expected to be relayed back from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey Spacecraft later today, according to Mission Control. At left:

"This mosaic image taken by the navigation camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has been further processed, resulting in a significantly improved 360 degree panoramic view of the rover on the surface of Mars."

Link to NASA's Mars moblog, link to full-size, 360-degree composite panorama image. Link to AP story with details on how NASA's coping with bursting web traffic for the online images (= 1300 web servers around the world!). (Thanks, Warren)

New York City is auctioning off property seized in busts. Great deals on hot goods. Link (Thanks, noel!)

"Aunty Flidais' Guide to Dating in Dereth" is a high-larious machinima shot in the video game Asheron's Call and edited together into a kind of "Sex Tips for the Modern Avatar" educational film. 22MB DivX Link (Thanks, Ockham!)

If your AA flight has a preponderance of discount-fare passengers, you may end up with shittier catering as compared to flights where a good number have paid full fare.

A very subtle form of product crimping allegedly is employed by American airlines. On flights with a high proportion of full-fare passengers, American improves the quality of the meal service, thereby rewarding the full-fare passengers and injuring, on average, discount flyers.

Link (via EvHead)