Link roundup

1. "Grocery Outlet, Supermarket Chain Where Oddball Products End Up." (Oddball products like Cleavage Creek wine.)

2. Relationship advice.

3. "Book Of 'Roadside Prostitutes' Made Entirely With Google Street View."

Link roundup

1. Llama overlooking Machu Picchu.

2. Apparently I need to eat at Black Market Liquor Bar in Studio City. Via.

3. Another Google+ horror story. I have no idea why they delete not only your G+ account, but also your Google Reader account.

4. And this is why Google wants so bad to force people to use their real names on their social service. Via.

Link roundup

1. Since my dumbphone works great and is cheap, I've been waiting for an iTouch with a solid camera. Optional 3G would be the cherry on top.

2. Seriously, it's one report after another of Google deleting accounts without warning, and then restoring them for celebrities. Some class action attorney should look into it. And you'd have to be nuts to buy a Chrome OS netbook.

3. Sculpture of a pigeon pooping on a Nazi. (But I was actually looking for video of this from the opening.)

4. Has there been any evidence that the News of the World phone hackers used their misdeeds to expose actual news? Or was it just to go after tabloidy gossip?

Link roundup

1. It wasn't (just) an iceberg that sank the Titanic. Via.

2. Two really cool Google Street view events. Click ahead one step to see sudden winter and the rapture. Via.

3. The SWAT team that protects NASA.

*Buy patches at eBay.

Link roundup

1. "Clark Kent has very rarely changed into Superman in a phone booth, including not once on the 1950s Superman TV series!" And at the same link, Death of the Endless appeared in an issue of the Hulk.

2. Fun comic book scan featuring Hawkman turned into a gorilla by Gorilla Grodd (site is NSFW).

3. Fascinating that some bloggers hear about a tragedy and immediately devise ways to turn it into a SEO opportunity.

4. Relatedly, the manner in which Google has deleted (and occasionally restored) accounts without warning over vaguely-defined Google+ abuse is pretty disturbing.

Link roundup

1. I finally saw Deathly Hallows part 2. All in all I thought it was great, with the talk with the Ravenclaw ghost being especially cool. The special effects were terrific, aside from the horrendous broomstick escape from the flames. And the scene with Dumbledore in limbo flickered so badly (in 2D) that I had to look away.

2. Grant Morrison doesn't like superfans (to say the least). The excerpt mentions Morrison's take on Mark Millar's Wanted. A few years ago, I'd heard so much about Wanted that I picked up an issue and was absolutely horrified by what I was reading.

3. Is this from The Onion? Google is offering a credit card "with what it calls a competitive interest rate, an ample credit line and no annual fee. The catch: it can only be used to buy search advertising on the world's No.1 Internet search engine." Via.

Link roundup

1. Find out what Google thinks you're interested in (and turn off the tracking). Via.

2. JShea posted the three sculptures he created for Gallery Nucleus's Harry Potter show.

3. Since I seem to be obsessed with Bruce Timm's art right now, here's a pinup.

Link roundup

1. For other Blogger users, here's a useful comment by a Blogger employee from Ann Althouse's blog:

While our export tools may have been somewhat unreliable when handling blogs this large (Althouse is one of the largest Blogger blogs!), along the way helping Ann we discovered ways to improve them and moving forward Blogger will be much better equipped to handle cases like this.

So Ann while I'm personally sad to see you go (if that is indeed the decision), I wanted to let you know that you will always have a home on Blogger and a team who cares about your experience with Blogger. That also (of course) goes for everyone. We love hearing from users, and anyone can bug me directly on Twitter (@electrobutter) if something is on their mind, or hit up the team via @blogger.

It seems like such a typical Google thing to do to make such outreach efforts only when it was too late to keep her on the platform. Her entire Blogger blog was deleted, possibly by error, possibly by a rogue Google employee, last month.

2. "An investigation into Atlanta’s public school system has uncovered evidence that teachers and principals have been secretly erasing and correcting answers on students’ tests for as long as a decade."

3. "For the past few years, networks have been digitally inserting ads and product placements for new products into old reruns."

Nexus Contraptions, a new free game from Google

Nexus Contraptions, a new free game from Google. It loaded very fast and runs smoothly. Via.

Link roundup

1. Essentially unlimited free image storage with Picasa if you sign up for Google+.

2. "Beginning Friday, the County of Los Angeles Public Library and the Los Angeles Public Library will offer cardholders the ability to download songs from Sony Music’s catalog -- for free."

3. "Amazon is encouraging reviewers to receive free products through Amazon Vine, an invitation-only program in which the top 1,000 reviewers are offered a catalog of free products to review." Via.

Link roundup

1. Blogger was down all night again. You had to really hunt for an acknowledgment and solution.

2. I meant to post this last night, but here's a fascinating line from the Figures.com tour of Neca:

Here paint applications are applied based on a Paint Master NECA provides. These can get pretty complex. For example, NECA's Gears of War figures feature 150+ paint applications per figure, most all done by hand in the Chinese factories. That's alot of work to make one figure - about 6 - 9 months from start to finish.

3. Dr. Sketchy's San Francisco had a Star Wars-themed session. Here's a semi-safe for work video of the event, and a totally NSFW version, and you can find the uploaded sketches here.

Gay Pride, by Google.

Until now, it seemed Google could doodle no wrong. Now, some critics contend Google's hidden rainbow illustration casts a cloud over Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. To celebrate gay pride in June, Google has placed a little rainbow next to its search bar that pops up when users type in terms like “gay,” “lesbian,” “homosexuality,” “LGBT,” “marriage equality,” “bisexuality” and “transgender.”

The hidden doodle "should keep the six-color rainbow, a symbol universally associated with gay pride ever since San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker created it 33 years ago, from appearing on the pages of those who are still opposed to gay rights. And keep Google from having to deal with any backlash,"

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