http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/w00t http://io9.com/tag/w00t

My favorite new mind-bending idea is an extension for Firefox released today by brainy game designers Merci Grace and Justin Hall. It's called PMOG, for passively multiplayer online game, and it turns the entire web into a fantasy world where you can go on quests. Like all cool art, PMOG makes apparent something that you knew unconsciously for a long time. Browsing the web is just a game. Gathering knowledge is a game. Finding cool new pieces of information by reading is a game. PMOG just makes those games literal, by letting you earn points for web surfing — erm, questing. And io9 is part of that quest! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=389737&view=rss&microfeed=true

If you want to spend your Friday evening contemplating the joys of alien-based paranoia, plus a little wrestling, then there's nothing better than a nice heaping of They Live. Released in the late 1980s, this ironic-paranoid classic was John Carpenter's giant fuck you to the Reagan Administration and social conformity of all types. Aliens have taken over, and are controlling all of the United States (and perhaps the whole world) by beaming a signal into everybody's mind that masks the true aliens, as well as the "obey" signs they've planted everywhere. In this awesome scene, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper puts on some sunglasses that allow him to see the truth. It's like the "taking the red pill" moment — suddenly the extent of his manipulation becomes clear. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=368274&view=rss&microfeed=true

Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster announced yesterday that "w00t," the cyber-talk word for "yay," is word of the year. Apparently it reflects the future of language. Spelled with two zeros, w00t is the kind of coinage that Merriam-Webster president John Morse says he would expect from a generation raised on computers and cell phones. But Global Language Monitor, a group that uses an algorithm to track word popularity in the media and online, says the main word on everyone's typing fingertips this year was "hybrid." As in the car. What were the weird runners-up? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=332825&view=rss&microfeed=true