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.

Link roundup

1. NY Times' review of the first Chrome notebook:

How well does Google’s newfangled concept hold up in the real world?

Unfortunately, not very well.

It's ludicrously expensive considering its shortcomings.

2. Did you see earlier this week that a PR company promised to punish sites running negative video game reviews? I couldn't help but think of it in reading the uselessly contradictory conclusion to Destructoid's review of Alice: Madness Returns:

In spite of tedium and technical faults, I quite enjoyed Alice: Madness Returns, which says quite a bit for the extraordinary world McGee has created from the blueprint of Caroll's original tales. Fans of the original Alice find plenty of here to love, and will certainly want to return to Wonderland to work towards a satisfying narrative conclusion. For others, putting up with the game's monotonous design may prove to be a personal spiral into madness they may want to avoid.

UPDATE: To be fair, as the commenter points out, Destructoid gave Duke Nukem a terrible review.

3. There's a theme park in Las Vegas where you can operate excavators and other machinery. But packages start at $400 and no kids under 14, so I can't imagine it lasting.

Link roundup

1. Misconceptions about China.

2. Two lackluster reviews of Samsung's Chrome laptop. Tablets, I understand (although I'll wait until they're half the price). But mostly reading the review of the Chrome laptop I'm left wondering why anyone would buy such a thing instead of buying a Windows laptop with a Chrome browser.

3. If you're a Batman Brave and the Bold obsessive, the latest episode starring The Atom(s) was placed for sale at iTunes ($3) and Amazon ($2) before airing. Via.