Last night we attended the grand opening of the WIRED Holiday Store 2009, which is open November 21st through December 27th both in the form of an online store as well as a physical location in Meatpacking District of Manhattan.

Welcome to the Fifth Annual Wired Store. Here, you’ll find all that’s new & next in the world of WIRED: Cutting-edge technology & design… The latest in games & gaming… Cool new music & books… Hot new gear & gadgets… Indoor & outdoor inspiration… Products to help you lead a greener life… And the opportunity to own your very own WIRED-branded stuff.

Photo Gallery: Wired Holiday Store 2009

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• Everyman Offers New Directions in Online Maps (NY Times)
• Tim Burton Pours Out His Brain At The Moma Exhibit (io9)
• Brizzly Opens To All (TechCrunch)
• Camera Raw 5.6 and Lightroom 2.6 Available on Adobe Labs (Lightroom Journal)
• Twitter Changes "What are you doing?" to "What's Happening?"

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With Cats4Gold you can turn your glitter into litter and go from pretty to kitty.

via Urlesque

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Animated music video for “Flairs” by Truckers Delight directed by Jérémie Perin.

Think Spielberg’s Duel + Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat Kill Kill! and Marc Dorcel’s wildest fantasies. All warped into an 8-bit Sega era style graphic.

Oh and watch this one at your own risk, some may be offended by the content.

via Drawn!

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“Monster Manual” by Mixel Pixel (song) and Dan Meth (video)

via Neatorama

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photos by Scott Beale

Yesterday I stopped by the new Apple retail store in New York City’s Upper West Side. The building features a beautiful glass facade and glass spiral staircase that descends to the lower level.

Photo Gallery: Upper West Side Apple Store

See Previously: 24 Hour Apple Store in New York

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photo by Scott Beale

This is what the Empire State Building looked like tonight in the rain and fog as I walked by it on 5th Avenue last night. You know you’re in NYC when you can walk right by something as tall as the Empire State building and not even notice it, but I’m glad I decided to look up.

Here are more photo’s I’ve shot of the Empire State Building over the years.

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• Everything You Need To Know About Chrome OS (Gizmodo)
• What Twitter's New Geolocation Makes Possible (ReadWriteWeb)
• Want To Try Out Google Chrome OS For Yourself? Here’s How. (TechCrunch)
• Scroll Clock
• Camino 2.0 Released
• Anil Dash to D.C.! Tech Guru Will Head Gov't Incubator, Digitize Democracy (The New York Observer)
• San Francisco Opium Den Photos circa 1889 (Spots Unknown)
• Strange sightings of futuristic rocketmen and flying platforms (Boing Boing)
• Pankabestia: Punk Beasts of the Swimming Cities of Serenissima (Anonymous Gallery)

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I stopped by the Foursquare offices in Manhattan this afternoon, where they were busy rolling out support for 50 new cities around the world. Foursquare has really been rocking it lately, going full force and getting better every day.

While hanging out there I also came across their secret product roadmap.

photos by Scott Beale

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photo by John Curley

Santacon 2009 events are currently being planned around the world this December as Christmas approaches. Over on santarchy.com I’ve been actively tracking the cities currently being targeted for Santarchy invasions.

To get a better idea of what Santarchy is all about, here’s my 40 minute documentary on the 1996 Santacon in Portland “You’d Better Watch Out: Portland Santacon ‘96″.

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original version of Laughing Squid logo designed by Matt Dong in 2000

This week Laughing Squid celebrated its 14th anniversary. I started the company on November 16th, 1995 in San Francisco.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been around that long. Big thanks to our family, friends, customers and readers for supporting us all of these years.

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• S.F. cops may have gone too far in seizing DJ gear at underground parties (SF Weekly) via DJ Justin Credible
• Oxford Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend (OUPblog)
• Koalas Could Face Extinction Within 30 Years (BBC)

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photos by Scott Beale

I’m in New York City this week and last night I went to Diggnation NYC which took place in the beautiful Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center in Midtown Manhattan. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht recorded another great episode of Diggnation in front of an enthusiastic live audience. They had fun shooting t-shirts out into the crowd with a t-shirt canon and at one point a giant remote controlled Squarespace blimp came out and flew around above the crowd.

Photo Gallery: Diggnation NYC

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photo by Scott Beale

The last few days I’ve been staying in Cocoa Beach, FL for the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Every morning I was up before sunrise and back after sundown, but this morning as I left for the airport I finally had a chance to catch a beautiful sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. Living on the Pacific Coast, we are used to sunsets over the ocean, so it’s nice to catch an early morning sunrise.

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• Twitter Definitely Ditching "Suggested Users List" (ReadWriteWeb)

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NASA invited me to the John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida to attend a special NASA Tweetup (#nasatweetup) for the Space Shuttle Atlantis launch of the STS-129 mission to the International Space Station. The Space Shuttle launched on Monday, November 16th at 2:28pm EST from launch pad 39A.

Here are my launch day photos & video that I uploaded live from the press center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, which is located 3 miles from the launch pad.

As part of the NASA Tweetup, we took a tour of the Kennedy Space Center, stopping by the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF), Apollo / Saturn V Center and ended up with an amazing visit to a close up view of launch pad 39A with the Space Shuttle Orbiter in place on the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) ready for take off.

While touring Kennedy Space Center, we drove by a gigantic eagle’s nest (as big as king size bed) which has been home multiple generations of eagles for over 45 years. KSC is part of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is also home to alligators, wild boar, black bear, manatee, Florida panthers and over 330 species of birds.

Photo Gallery: NASA Tweetup Space Shuttle STS-129

NASA photographer Carla Cioffi has been shooting a bunch of great photos of the STS-129 NASA Tweetup and uploading them to NASA HQ Flickr account.

More Coverage:

- The Associated Press

- Central Florida News 13

- Space.com

- Star Stryder

photos by Scott Beale

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No Mas presents “Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No”, an animated short by James Blagden about Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis (who died last year) who pitched a no-hitter while tripping on LSD playing against the San Diego Padres on June, 12th 1970.

In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas and artist James Blagden proudly present the animated tale of Dock Ellis’ legendary LSD no-hitter. In the past few years weve heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. If our evaluation of the records of athletes like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds needs to be revised downwards with an asterisk, we submit that that Dock Ellis record deserves a giant exclamation point. Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.

via MetaFilter

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• Core i7-Based 27" iMac Benchmarks Show Significant Improvements (Mac Rumors)
• The Golden Age of the Playboy Club (Retrospace)
• Bill Gates Praises Steve Jobs for Saving Apple
• 15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee (The Oatmeal)
• Google Chrome OS To Launch Within A Week (TechCrunch)
• Lcross Mission Finds Water on Moon, NASA Scientists Say (NY Times)

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Video shot from the top of the spire on Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building.

See Previously: BASE Jumping Off of the Burj Dubai

via Garrett Camp

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Super slow motion video of my friend T.bias flipping his dreadlocks shot with a high-speed camera at 6,800fps.

A normal speed video shot by Karen Marcelo is shown for comparison.

The music is “Rag Tag Flag” from T.Bias’ Hooks’n'Heels project.

via T.bias & Boing Boing

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