Every Monday through Friday-ish, we post a new Monkey Bite on our frontdoor for your edification. This could be a little news item, a link to a useful site, a handy coding tip, or just some random piece of information we think might be of interest to Web developers. Expired Monkey Bites are stored right here, growing tastier and more sophisticated with each passing day.

This month's Monkey Bites:

03/27/02

Quantum Picture has developed an algorithm that recognizes certain shapes — like, for instance, the handsome profile of a kitty named Flo, turning Flo's catdoor into a kind of automatic bouncer, refusing entrance to skunks and racoons, or even keeping Flo from carrying in mice, birdies, or other booty.

03/25/02

Webmonkey faves Fireland Josh and Hoopla Leslie have already discovered the fun(niness) of Poem Tag Project. Other just-for-laughisms: ooglegay eferencespray and broken windows.

03/22/02

The Booklend library mails you books for free (!) and lets you keep them as long as you want (!). Thinking of launching your own libre liberation? Get organized with Singlefile, the Web-based service that tracks who you've lent what to, stores data about the books you own, and recommends books you might like to acquire based on the contents of your collection.

03/21/02

Israeli company VKB brings you the Virtual Keyboard, a projection system that turns almost any flat surface into a full-sized keyboard. If it actually gets to market (no prices nor release dates yet, sigh), it could mean no more pinky typing on the midget keys of those PDAs, cellphones, and kneetops. Yay!

03/19/02

Visit NERVOUS Industries and gather collaborators for your next LMAO (Land Mail Art Object), a la the 1000 journals that are making their way around the world, the 20 things, 20 people, 20 days project, or The Photo Booth Chronicles.

03/18/02

Amplify your guitar with a SmokeyAmp cigarette pack, turn almost any flat surface into a speaker with Soundbug, or pop a Sound Bites Writes FM Radio pen into your mouth and make the voices in your head sing.

03/14/02

Fun: The Backyard Artillery is a collection of weaponry that shoots rubberbands (or dried peas, popcorn kernels, and lentils). Fun and helpful: This CSS Bookmarklet reveals divs and spans, allowing you to keep track of just what the hee-haw's going on with your pages as you build.

03/12/02

Now that you're all fired up about Web fontography, you'll be punch-pleased to discover that the updated fonts gallery at Apple's Internet Developer site gives you a peek at what the old standards (Arial, Verdana, Times, and Courier) look like on six different browser/platform combos (including OS X!) — just some things to keep in mind as you design your pages for different browsers.

03/11/02

[re]distributions is a collection of videos, animations, essays, interactive poetry, and other moving creations of the "nomadic arts" (as in PDAs and "information appliances") — perhaps join them by making some palm-made art of your very own?

03/08/02

It's a Tale of Two Trailers: A new Star Wars: AOTC trailer will be unveiled at 8:59:17 this Sunday on Fox, while hobbit-sized spies are reporting a March 22-29 release of the new Lord of the Rings trailer. Of course, the real money for both film franchises is in the branded merchandise, like the "official" Darth Vader Electric Guitar, and the "official" Arwen* pendant.
(*Elven immortality not included.)

03/07/02

The End of Free tracks the "free-to-fee" evolution of those sites and services that once were footloose and fancy-free, back in the dot.boon days, but now have to dance for money in these leaner, meaner times.

03/06/02

Thanks to an algorithmic loophole at Google, if enough people hyperlink to one of your Web pages using the same exact words ("Webmonkey shines," say), a search for those words will bring up your page, even if those words don't actually appear anywhere on it. This phenomenon is called a "Google Bomb," and it's being used by everyone from pranksters to justice-seekers.

03/05/02

If you've got the words but not the vision, BlogSkin has site designs for you to swipe and use for your own good. Or let your brotherly love and design skills shine by generated a skin and donating it to the cause (just make sure your template's to spec!).

03/04/02

Flash MX wasn't the only new release announced today. Video compression codec and "Playa" (that's in the "gangsta" sense, not the "Spanish for 'beach'" sense) DivX 5.0 also hit the the Net waves.




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