Feed

Nerd Alert

By Kelly Faircloth 6/19 2:57pm

Nerd Alert

(Photo: Foursquare)

Hey History Nerds: Turn Foursquare Into an Orgy of Vintage Photos

Good news for history nerds/hipsters who really identify with Luc Sante’s Low Life: The New York Public Library has released a snazzy new app that’ll show you cool historical photos when you check in on Foursquare. Pack your bags, because we’re going on a nostalgia trip.

The app draws on the NYPL’s Photographic Views of New York City collection, a huge cache of photos from the 1870s to the 1970s meant to “document the changing face” of the city. During a recent hackathon, a team rigged them up to Foursquare and its geolocation data. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 1/21 4:45pm

Nerd Alert

Screen Shot 2013-01-21 at 3.57.23 PM

Portlandia Issues Heartfelt Plea to Make ‘Nerd’ a Dirty Word Again

By and large, Ladybeat likes to stay out of the nerd-shaming business. Unlike slut-shaming, its equally insidious cousin, nerd-shaming in the Ascendancy of Zuck has come to be defined as calling out people–most often comely people with human lady parts–for not being nearly nerdy enough. (See: meme, Fake Geek Girl.)

And while that rankles, it’s equally as hard to cede the “nerd” label to well-adjusted types with nary an esoteric obsession. You cool jerks would never have sat at our lunch table, etc. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 4/11/11 8:40am

Nerd Alert

Marak Squires

This Is a Rap About Javascript

“I started a project to learn javascript and node.js through rap,” Nodejitsu co-founder and New York expat Marak Squires told Betabeat over Gchat. Mr. Squires has a well-established tradition of rapping about Javascript. Nodejitsu is a hosting platform for apps that use node.js, which allows for server-side use of Javascript, normally a browser-side language. Read More