How to Pack Everything You Own in One Bag - When I was away last week the rule for checked luggage on Delta changed while we were away. On the way back we were allowed fewer bags than when we left. We were three people with four bags, which would have meant a 25 dollar fee. The mistake we made was the snap decision to just take the smallest bag as a carry on. That was the toiletry bag which of course had all those bomb making shampoos in it. What we should have done was stuffed the smaller bag into the bag containing the child car seat.
The TV folks just did another one of those "what the bloggers are saying" segments that seems more like "what the bloggers are saying about what cable news is saying." What I see political bloggers talking about a lot is the number of
lobbyists tied to McCain and his campaign.
Speaking of the Web picking on McCain,
Things that are younger than McCain - The latest in what seems to be a new trend of one-liner URLs. Did you see
Things I did last night?
Man babies is a pretty funny meme. Coming soon as an option at the Sears Portrait Studio near you?
The
blurted curse of a local New York news anchor comes just as video of a
Bill O'Reilly meltdown finds new life online. (Gawker actually went whole-hog with a
top ten on-camera meltdowns list.)
NOTE: F-bombs galore.
I thought Last FM's
Most Frequent top 10 Tracks would be a good way to see what's hot in music right now. Unfortunately it also seems to be a good way to find out what's new and free on Last FM right now. The whole first page is from the new free Nine Inch Nails album. (
Album? What the hell do you call it when it never makes it to a tangible medium?)
I played a bit with
Microsoft's World Wide Telescope last night. It's like Google Earth for the night sky. My only note is that even on a pretty fast machine it takes a really long time to start up and there's not a whole lot of indication that it's doing anything. I thought it was broken because for a few minutes the only sign of activity I got was a brief title screen. Then suddenly the whole thing came up.
Ron Paul supporters are doing something they call "
a reverse money bomb." When they were doing fundraising for the candidate they called big fundraising days "money bombs." In this case, reversing the money bomb isn't about the candidate, it's about taking money out of banks. The idea (as best as I understand it) is that if enough people do it they can affect the value of the dollar by decreasing its availability.
Cool optical illusions.
You almost don't see it.
Related: This explanation of different but similar looking
cool motion illusions.
Speaking of illusions, the very last photo on page two reveals how this guy
makes himself stick to the wall with one hand.
On the one hand I love the idea of
scanning membership cards into a phone instead of keeping all those plastic cards in my wallet. On the other hand, once you're dealing with photos of bar codes, doesn't that make counterfeiting that much easier? On the third hand, does it really matter if I share the image of my PetCo discount card with my online friends?
Review: 13 Rule-Breaking FilmsA photoset showing the similarities between
Grand Theft Auto 4 and real life. Matches game photos with real photos of New York City. Tourism in New York City (or anywhere really) based on film locations or TV shows is common but I can't think of any other video game location sites. See also
real life restaurants in NYC from GTA. How soon before you can pay to have your restaurant included in a video game?
6 Ways Remote Workers Can Prove They're Working - Though the headline has potential to be a joke entry, it's basically sound advice about staying in touch at work. What I like about it is that it's also pretty good advice if you're not working remotely, which makes me wonder if some companies wouldn't run better if the employees were working remotely and following guidelines like this.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Internet Users - Hard to explain, it's a funny chart that matches Web activities with your mood -kind of.
Thing that I already know is going to eat up my evening tonight:
60 Photography Links You Can’t Live WithoutThing that I already spent too much time on today:
AudioTool - See the
Wired review here.
Well respected and established world-wide blogging initiative
Global Voices Online was a first-click for many surfers and they are doing a great job with suggested links for further looking. They also have lots of videos.
Shanghaiist is seriously owning this story with their liveblogging. I'm also watching
IfGoGo for continuing updates. Also lots of updates from
The Beijinger.
Naturally the first place to look when there's an earthquake is the USGS site. Here are the
details of the big one but you can see by
the larger map of Asia that it wasn't just single shot.
I had to do quite a bit of zooming out before
the Google map began including enough places I knew to give me some geographical context.
Evacuation photos aren't really as panicked as I expected. One blogger describes evacuated Beijing office workers as "
bemused." Of course, when you don't know what's happening it's hard to know how serious to be.
This blogger's eerie clip is a great example of that uncertainty.
If you're not impressed with the number of evacuation videos out there, here's a nice YouTube video showing
what it was like to experience the quake itself. I'm not sure I'd hide under that counter like that guy's doing but I'm not one to judge. Glad they made it out.
Wikipedia is calling it the
2008 Sichuan earthquake. It's always interesting to watch breaking stories develop here in front of your eyes. A second ago someone replaced the entire story with pi written out to 10,000 place but that was quickly corrected.
News from China in English.
Newsweek's Melinda Liu informs us that we can expect superstitious interpretations of this event. "Many Asians see major calamities as examples of "divine intervention" -- such as the recent Burmese cyclone which many citizens there interpreted as karmic payback for the military junta's bloody crackdown on monk-led protests back in September." I saw one page with photos of a mass frog migration from May 7 suggesting the frogs knew the quake was coming.
The Twtitter section:
A vast analysis of how news of the quake broke on Twitter.
Was this the first mention of it on Twitter? I'm still trying to figure out how to confirm that. ADDING:
Here's a timeline of the first mentions of the earthquake. It shows
this one as first.
The copious Tweeting by
Robert Scoble on this story has some talking (
seriously now, instead of speculatively) about Twitter journalism. Depending on when you click that Scoble link you may see what I'm talking about and you may see updates on whatever tech conference he's at right now. I suppose Twitter journalism works as a good live updater but as an archive to look through it's messy and impermanent. A problem Twitter doesn't address that was also a problem with blogs is that
searching the service doesn't help separate the worthwhile first hand accounts from the people saying things like, "Hey, China had an earthquake." That said, when you look at the information in the
main Global Voices story covering the event you see a lot of useful items with a Twitter link as the source reference.
Twitter Local is somewhat useful in helping find people on the scene. For example you can search for
people Tweeting within 20 miles of Beijing.
Only distantly related but still really fascinating,
ancient Chinese earthquake detection contraption. Any quake shakes the marble from the dragon's mouth whereupon it clangs into a metal cup.
I'll update as I find new things worth adding. Let me know if there's something I should include.
This gated community of Ron Paul supporters
would seem like a weird idea to me if I'd never been to North Florida
where it seems like gated communities are everywhere. It does seem odd
to get all worked up about living in a free country only to gate
yourself into a place that allows you to paint your house only three
shades of pale blue and you can't drive faster than 15 mph but then I
guess part of freedom means being free to give up freedoms. At least in
a Ron Paul community the dues are probably smaller. "You're free to
live your life the way you want and not be forced to do or pay for
other people's life styles you may not agree with." And I imagine there
are fewer rules, not more in a community with libertarian leanings.
Speaking of living free, Colossal Castle or Humble Home?
Same Price – Your Choice
- Depression alert! Not economic depression, emotional depression that
results from seeing the kind of real estate you can get in other
countries versus what that money gets in major U.S. cities. Of course,
you might get a big house but then you'd have to live there. D'oh!
Better than lightning porn, this is
lightning volcano porn.
Funny YouTube Videos May Get Salvia Banned - I confess I never heard of this stuff but recently the health editor near me was researching it and I ended up watching a bunch of these druggy videos. The generation gap just got a little wider.
Dino Run is the hot new mini game. It could also be called "Run like hell" because that's basically what you do as a dinosaur outrunning death by asteroid. (I played on the mirror site as the direct link was slow to load.)
These
stolen laptop stories happen just often enough that I can't understand why the camera feature or other tracking technology isn't standard in all laptops.
Peel & stick solar fulfills the need ... for speed! In this case the speed is speed of installation and essentially "speed to market." In the video it takes 34 minutes to install and hook up six panels for 2.25 kilowatts.
Did you see that new
Clone Wars trailer? Sounds good with headphones on.
Gizmodo has
a different one. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing but I do like the idea of spin-off characters.
Acting like a fool in the background of someone else's photo has a name:
Photobombing.
NOTE: There's a bare butt or two down toward the bottom.
Green Porno describes the sex lives of bugs and other crawlies.
Wicked cool toy of the day: Time Tube - Plots YouTube videos on a time line.
Tips For Dealing With Information Overload - Advice from a number of heavy information consumers.
Wow, this
rewrite of the subtitles on a Hitler movie to make it about Hillary Clinton is about as offensive as you can get but it's amazing how compelling it is to watch. I'm not sure if it's compelling because of the Hillary story or the acting of the guy playing Hitler.
NOTE: I say it's offensive, not just because the Hillary role is that of Hitler but because it uses just about every single letter hyphen word we have (the F-word, the C-word, the N-word...).
5 Snacks That will Smash That Afternoon Groggy Feeling - I totally suffer from this. There are some days at 4p.m. when I need a defibrillator to finish out the day. Lately I've been having pretty good success with mixed nuts trail mix. Some other ideas here sound good, though I'm not sure I want to sit at my desk eating deviled eggs, there's something a little gross about that.
UPDATE: Oh! Here's a great contest opportunity. For one of those digital die and the weird USB LED light, give me the full sentence (not just the licenseplate phrase) that today's headline is based on and who said it.
It seems like a promotion for the
I Beat You site but then
she does seem to be interacting with the participants, so you don't get the impression she's one of these celebs who bopped in, read the script and left.
NOTE: Volume blast! You need the volume up to hear her in the beginning and then they lay a really loud dance track over the clip.
"On the average Web page, users have time to read
at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." I'm not sure what kind of game they're trying to play with that "have time to read" phrase. More like "make time to read" or "bother to read" - not that I'm bitter. The question I have is whether visitors would read 100% of the page if I wrote 72% less or if that 28% is a standard "skim comprehension" number that is the bare minimum to understand the content on a given page. It looks like the report has the answer to my question but I'm sorry I just hit my 28%. Moving on!
Speaking of not reading, here's my latest bunch of Twitter related links you may click if you're interested or you may print out, chew into a wad and spit on your computer screen while cursing my name for foisting this trendy juvenile crap on you all the time.
- Tweet Wheel - "Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other"
- Twitter fone - Send messages to Twitter using voice
- Who should I follow? Enter your name and it recommends people to follow (maybe based on what's in your own stream?)
The beautiful game is a really well designed foosball table.
The Nissan Xterra that Dwight Schrute tried to flip on last week's episode of The Office is for sale on EBay from the real life owner. (Looks like the bidding ended early. I'd be interested to know the back story on how they ended up using a real car and not a studio prop car.)
I think this really is the
MySpace page of Tom Hanks. He hasn't blogged since last year but there's a new video on there of his endorsing Obama. I can imagine him calling his people and saying, "I want to endorse Obama, do I have a Web site or something?" And they say, "Well, you have that old MySpace page, wanna use that?"
Play Chronotron - Remember that game a while ago where you see previous turns you played so you end up having to help yourself get through the game? This is the same idea; you play into the level and then go back in time and see your own earlier moves.
WARNING NOTE: This has that freaking terrible idea from Facebook that automatically announces to your Facebook stream that you're playing this game. It does give you a "no thanks" option but by then you'll likely already have suffered shock and horror at being so invaded and how close you got to informing everyone on your Facebook list, including coworkers that you're playing a game in the middle of the day.
Make sure you're logged out of Facebook before you play.
The subprime primer - It's a pretty long but easy to read stick-figure slide show of what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis.
Super slow-mo video of the
Mentos/Diet Coke reaction.
Turn your point-and-shoot into a Supercamera - "The Canon Hacker's Development Kit, aka CHDK, is a firmware enhancement that supports an impressive array of Canon digital cameras." So basically there are hackers out there who are writing programs that tell your camera hardware what to do beyond what the factory has already told it to do.
Essential skills all men should have. Extra credit to Esquire for keeping the whole list on one page instead of going for the cheap page views.
I happened to see the "Yo Momma" headline on
the Newsweek story over someone's shoulder coming into the cube farm this morning. It's about
Postcards From Yo Momma, a site where people share cringe-worthy e-mails from their mothers.
Speaking of communal submissions here's
How I spent my stimulus. (Is this real or propaganda? Regardless, seems like a good idea if you can keep the haters out.)
Morning music: Following the link in the Newsweek item to see what's new on Jezebel I took
the recommendation to compare
Lindsay Lohan's "Bossy" with
the Kelis song.
NOTE: I only played that YouTube clip minimized while sorting through e-mail but looks like there's some bathing suit strutting and probably some booty shaking of some sort. Potentially unsafe.
"This collection contains television news programs recorded
live from around September 11, 2001 by the non-profit Television Archive to help patrons research this important part of United States history." No MSNBC but there is NBC. One of these days I'm going to go to the tape library here and look up my call-in on 9/11.
Random story: Sometimes people who read
my 9/11 essay want to know what happened before or after (or even around) the parts I described. Part of the reason I left some stuff out is that I was trying to write about fear, but also it's a little embarrassing. In fact, I was in the shower when the first plane hit and my wife called to ask if it was true that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. I leaned out the window to look and said, yup, completely clueless as to the severity of what was happening. Later as the morning progressed, I was on the phone with the newsroom when Tower 2 collapsed. I freaked out a little (see fear essay above) and the producer on the other end said, "Will, we're putting you through to the TV." I ended up live on the air with Lester Holt on the other end of the phone. I don't remember much of what he said, but I think it was something like "tell us where you were when the first plane hit." True to my long-winded form, I started my story with being in the shower - not at all what the TV folks were looking for in the midst of their coverage of this huge breaking news event. I reckon I was shuffled off the air quickly. So one day I'll look it up in the archive to see how my role in the history of that day has been recorded. But not today.
If you caught Colbert last night, this is the guy who is
performing surveillance on himself to (sarcastically) assist the government's anti-terror efforts.
The walking bike would have been cooler if they didn't show the video of how lousy it is to ride.
The latest free album download:
Nine Inch Nails, The Slip. You need a working e-mail address to click a verifying link. From there you need to know what format you want. I'm taking the mp3 version now and it's taking a long time but they've got a flac version by torrent if you prefer. Your download window lasts an hour. I don't know if you can resubmit the same e-mail address so best to try it when you have time to do the download.
In time for Mother's Day, next week is the
5th annual mom blog Mommyfest.
From the mailbag:I just saw this, from Slate.com, funny/harsh/on target. It seemed like you'd enjoy it.
PW
Just to close the loop on that Harry Potter contest a while back, Cat was the winner. I was hoping for a super-duper deluxe winner to answer the two officially asked questions plus the third implied question and though no one did that on their own, Cat did in a follow-up mail, so yes, she wins an umbrella with the msnbc.com logo on it. Plus that digital die thing. Plus, the super-duper deluxe prize which is a clip-on USB powered LED light. I'm not really sure what it's for, maybe to see the keyboard if you're typing in the dark and don't know how to touch type? Anyway, congrats to Cat, the stuff is in the mail.
I'm on one of those long weekend "as long as we came all this way to go to the wedding we might as well stay a couple days at that time share your mother's friend offered" trips. Flying home tomorrow.
I have to add that I'm softening my position on the bottled water ban now that I've had Orlando water for the past couple of days. Bleh. It's like liquid chalk!
Not Using Tweetscan to Manage Your Brand?
You’re Not Doing Your Job OMG! You're doing it wrong! It is really amazing to see how much the hype about twitter echoes the blog hype of 2002. Back then this headline would have read, "Not Using Technorati to Manage Your Brand? You’re Not Doing Your Job." Like blogs we're seeing exponential rates of
growth in Twitter use. And even if the numbers aren't huge yet, they're going to be. And even if they aren't going to be, Twitter users are the kind of people (like bloggers in 2002) that you'd be
well advised to listen to. Twitter is the must-have for marketers, the must-have for anyone with friends, the must-have for customer service, the must-have for journalists...
And so,
How We Use Twitter for JournalismAnd of course, where the people go, so goes the spam and now we're seeing strategies for dealing with Twitter spam. The idea behind the spam
TwerpScan is meant to fight is that when someone follows you (subscribes to be notified of your Tweets) you get a note informing you of that fact. If you don't know the person, you'll likely click through to their profile to see who it is. In that way they trap you into viewing their ad or whatever. (This definitely happens on Flickr where I've had people with streams full of nakedness add me as a contact and later remove me (but not before I'd clicked through to their porn spam profile.) Plus, they are listed as a follower on your account, which gives them a tiny bit of real estate on your profile. And of course, if you make the mistake of following them back, you've opened yourself up to direct spam messages.
So TwerpScan looks at your followers and makes a ratio of the number of people they're following and the number of people following them. If they're following many more people than are following them, the possible implication is that they're playing games and you might want to block them.
Also rooted in this kind of following/follower Twitter math to root out spammers is
The Twitter Blacklist. According to
the explainer, this one can also figure out when a spammer is trying to balance out the ratio by using fake profiles as pretend friends.
And then there are people who aren't spammers but for whatever reason you just don't want to hear from them for a while.
TwitterSnooze lets you turn off a friend for a number of days and then automatically turn them back on. This past weekend I was reading Twitter a lot for the conference and I was thinking that temporary following would be a handy tool. This is more like temporary un-follow but still I can see where it would be useful.
Staying with Twitter but leaving behind the utility,
Twistori scrapes Twitter for a few phrases and scrolls them up your screen for not much purpose other than to be kind of interesting.
"
Inexhaustible energy: The red squares show the necessary surface at mirror power stations on, in order to supply the world (left), Europe (center) and/or Germany (right) completely with river." -- Somewhat imperfect but you get the idea translation from
Babel Fish. (And I don't meant get too literal about a simple diagram, but how 'bout if we put the world's source of energy in a nice stable country this time?)
The Uno motorcycle has two front wheels and... that's it. I've seen prototypes of
Segway-like one-wheeled
motorcycles but this is pretty crazy. I keep looking for the April 1 dateline but I don't see one.
"In the late '90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched
a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy."
The 100 top Web apps for 2008 - Categorized nicely. A good way to see alternatives to the apps you use regularly.
Here's a cool Google trick I didn't know. When you add a bit of code to the end of the URL of a search result it gives you
a time range pulldown menu to narrow your results. The one option I'd want to add is the ability to eliminate short term results.
Worldometers - World statistics updated in real time.
There's no avoiding all the GTA IV hype today so I won't pile on, but I did click this demo of the
animation technology the game uses and it's pretty amazing how well it understands human physics.
MySpace Karaoke - That's all I have to say about that.
I'm having trouble getting through to the actual
NeoCube site but the video looks pretty cool. How soon before someone has a hard time explaining it to airport security?
Simple brain exercise can boost IQ - This would be a great idea as a video podcast. All you need is video, audio, and a button. Perfect for the train.
Commuter Click:
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - I think he's talking about how new technology enables (or requires) you to reshape your life.
I'm looking forward to The Smoking Gun getting hold of the mug shot of
suspect number 3 because I'm having a hard time fathoming his condition.
Y'know what bugs me about
this Miley Cyrus story? Not that we see the bare shoulder blade of a 15-year-old girl, but that I saw it online first. I recently ordered a subscription to the magazine exactly because of stories like this. It seemed like the magazine kept making news or having some of its articles grow some good legs online. So I subscribed, thinking I'd get a jump on some of these stories. Instead I see all the interesting content online for free and when the dead tree arrives I reminisce with a flip-through and off it goes to the recycle bin. Obviously I won't be renewing my subscription. We hear so much hype about the Web killing the magazine industry but there's a case to be made that the magazine industry is killing itself with the Web.
Not only are there
awesome new movie posters for the new Batman out there but there's also a new site feature that looks like
some kind of game puzzle. (How the heck do you start it?)
Also of Batman, someone did some creative editing to put
scenes from the first Batman movie with scenes from the coming movie. There's no real conclusion to draw that I can see, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Speaking of games, here's
one with some social relevance. I had a little trouble getting it to load (eventually it worked in IE) but when it does, it shows a series of photos of scenes with people and you have to decide very quickly whether a person has a gun or not and whether to shoot or holster your weapon. The game is more about the decision than the shooting which makes it an interesting tangent to the Sean Bell shooting verdict. (Yes, that case is not really about whether or not a gun was seen, but it did involve making the quick decision to shoot.)
And on games, here's a new Ralph's Recommendations:
Here's a fun (but gory) new game you can link to.
13 Days in Hell: Ghoul Shooting Gallery
Hell's not a fun place for the living. Lots of lost souls trying to flay your skin off. Fortunately, there's a handy gun shop where you can buy the tools to protect yourself.
As with most games like this, accuracy is more important than overall brute force. On the other hand, sometimes it's fun to pull out the machine gun and start mowing down the monsters. Just be sure to keep an eye on your ammo levels.
Hope you enjoy it!
-Ralph
Will adds: Stone simple controls, point 'n click.
I attended
ROFLCon over the weekend, a two-day conference devoted to Web memes and the phenomenon of viral popularity. What follows are some of my observations of the event. This isn't a typical Clicked linkblog post but it does apply to a lot of the themes and sites we explore here. I'll have a regular Clicked up later, including the re-launch of Ralph's Recommendations of free Web video games.
The nature of "famous on the Internet"David Weinberger gave they keynote address and hosted a panel with such viral luminaries as the
Chuck Norris Facts guy and the
One Red Paperclip guy. The panel itself would prove to be a template for some of the less impressive aspects of the conference. The people behind these highly successful memes often were as clueless about how it happened as the people trying to harness the power of viral distribution for commercial and marketing purposes. The almost universal formula was "I was bored and just put up this thing to amuse myself and suddenly..."
But one point in Weinberger's keynote did stick with me and I'm still turning it over in my head. He made a distinction between
broadcast fame and network (p2p) fame. Broadcast fame is the traditional sort - "one to many" in the lingo of tech conference enthusiasts - with powerful single source feeding its content into the consciousness of its audience. Network fame, then, is the Internet kind that relies on word of mouth and social recommendations instead of a ready-and-waiting audience.
What's bothering me about that construction is that I ordered HBO because everyone in the office was talking about a hot new shot called The Sopranos. And in fact, while I do flip channels and find favorite shows by chance, I think most of the traditional media I consume comes to me by way of some kind of social suggestion, not because I'm simply leaving the TV on waiting for whatever new show or star it puts in front of me. Isn't that "buzz" that surrounds successful shows the same as "network fame?"
And on the other side of the equation, most of the people behind really successful Web memes had some part of their story involve a really big traffic driving site. "And then we were Slashdotted..." "And then we got on Boing Boing..." So was it really a network that created the fame, or was it closer to the broadcast model?
The Web meme is not as new as you thinkI don't recall if I've linked to much content on
TextFiles.com. I remember looking at it briefly and thinking it was sort of a nostalgia site with a lot of old Web content. In fact it would be better described as an archive or a library, and its host, Jason Scott gave the most unexpectedly fascinating presentation at ROFLCon. He took us all the way back to newspaper headline styles of the 1800s, through the telegraph and Hamm radio and into the early Internet, with the overarching point that memes and in-jokes and other pass-along content is as old as the technology that makes it possible. It was valuable perspective at the outset of a conference celebrating a new wave of memes as though the idea of stupid things becoming wildly popular without the aid of mainstream media is something invented in the last few years (the conference site's tag line is "in the making since '94). It also helped validate the general editorial decision I've made with Clicked about not getting too worked up about every little running gag that comes down the (intar)pipe(s). Then again, Scott was emphatic in pointing out significant figures in the history of communications culture who are nearly literally (but for Scott) forgotten to history.
Scott called it a "natural human thing" to want to share cool stuff and make art. I'm not sure it's a universally natural human thing but certainly some humans seem to do it as part of their nature. I made a note of his recommendation of
The Victorian Internet for more on the deep history of people playing with communication technology.
The past is the futureScott was asked about what he expects for the future of the Internet given its history. More stuff in other languages was one answer that seems undeniable. He also predicted more rediscovery of old things. That brought to mind the "A year ago today" box on
the old Blogdex aggregator and Jason Kottke's
Gems from the archive of the New York Times. But in a later panel discussion someone mentioned
the story of a Digg user
innocently recommending Fark without realizing
Fark's significance - particularly to sites like Digg, and that's probably closer to Scott's point.
Other meme-making panelists made mention of the fact that even once the joke is old there's always someone new on the Internet who hasn't heard it yet. Matt Chapman, co-creator and the voice(s) behind
Homestar Runner mused that the Internet makes things become retro cool faster. He suggested the new retro irony cycle is about four years.
In a related remark, the 4Chan founder pointed out that often part of the problem of starting a meme is that by the time it's popular the community where it originated thinks it's an old joke and they're sick of hearing it.
Distributed networking and shattering the monocultureJason Scott was also critical of what he called "the monoculture." It's not hard to imagine a future in which the Internet has spawned lots of small communities that elevate their own celebrities and customs. A related theme cropped up a few times through the conference, a theme that could only come up at a gathering of geeks with a sense of history: criticism of the monster sites that are the current gods of Web culture. Scott was bitter about Wikipedia, pointing to the success of Usenet as proof that one site doesn't have to posses everything. At other panels a similar criticism came up about YouTube acting as the video sharing default. And MySpace killing the personal homepage. The interconnectivity of the Internet, its most defining characteristic, means that everything doesn't have to live in the same place. I found myself wondering if computer education will eventually catch up and create a situation in which people prefer to construct their own Web presence.
Lessons on fame's lightning strikeI don't have a lot of notes to relay from the panel of
Tron Guy Jay Maynard and
Matt Harding but it provided some of the best perspective on Internet fame I've ever heard. Harding used the sausage factory metaphor for mainstream television media in a way I hadn't heard before but with an undeniable accuracy. Usually we think of the media sausage factory as the ugly production side that creates the usually clean, professional product that appears on the screen. But Harding's twist pointed out that the other problem with a sausage factory is that everything comes out sausage. No matter who you are or what you have to contribute, the professionals in legacy media are trained to know their product and how to produce it and they'll turn you into a sausage no matter what. He mentioned this as an explanation of why he preferred to represent himself and not submit himself to mainstream machinations in spite of his popularity.
Other advice from Harding that stayed with me: When you do an interview, know what you have to say (in Harding's terms, "know what's in your bag") and keep that in mind. If anyone's keeping track of our list of lessons for dealing with instant fame so far:
- Have enough product. (Don't get caught showing your gizmo as a guest on the Today show if you don't have lots of gizmos ready for sale in the ensuing demand.)
- Know what's in your bag (and bring it).
- Beware of sausage casing!
- And one I learned the other day from a colleague with an interest in documentary filmmaking, make sure you have a "next project" lined up in at least enough detail that you can talk about it when you're inevitably asked "So what's next now that you're so famous?" (Every panelist was asked this question either about their particular meme or about their area of Web specialty.)
We are nerdJay Maynard, meanwhile, was the living embodiment of just about everyone at the conference. In short, he's a nerd who has come to embrace his nerdiness in the face of horrible ridicule. Whether he realized it or not he was a constant piece of performance art, mixing with the crowd at the conference and even attending social gatherings outside the conference, his suit a representation of social awkwardness, personal uniqueness, nonconformity, self consciousness and frankly the cruelty of cultural standards.
He was the bee girl. At ROFLCon he was us.
(I'll add that this was in contrast to
Leslie Hall who also represented nerd empowerment to some degree but only, from what I could see, in acting as a character.)
Where Maynard's example was perhaps most informative was in answering the question of whether (and when) Web memes can transcend online audiences and speak to the mainstream. Writing Clicked on msnbc.com, with its mainstream pedigree and billion plus page views a month, I often struggle with the audience question. Sometimes my mainstream masters want to know how to make the Web work for them. Sometimes I want to know how to make the mainstream work for Clicked.
Both Maynard and Harding have received quite a bit of mainstream attention, Harding on the Today show, among other places, and Maynard on the Jimmy Kimmel show, and I asked them if they noticed a difference in the reception by nerd audiences versus mainstream audiences. Maynard's answer would prove to be one of the most powerful of the conference. He explained that the running joke for his appearances on Kimmel was, "Get laid yet?" which always brought uproarious laughter from the show's audience "but you'll notice no one here is laughing." Sure enough, the hall was dead quiet. Someone quickly lightening the moment with a joke shouted from the back, "That's because none of us are getting laid either!" And I don't mean to imply that nerds don't take humor at others' expense, but there's clearly some aspect of the nerd/geek perspective that makes it distinct from the general population.
Book smart vs. Web smartSpeaking of contrasts, day two of the conference opened with a speaker from academia whose presentation was remarkably parallel to what we'd learned anecdotally from Matt Harding and Jay Maynard the day before - except that she did it with big words and heady taxonomies. Just to be clear, I'm not one to bash academics, but this conference gave such direct access to people so entrenched in Web culture that as insightful as her presentation was, it was hard not to mentally ask, yeah, but when was the last time you were the subject of a Fark Photoshop contest?
Marwick, the day two keynote speaker, also raised, or re-raised, an issue of political correctness that popped up repeatedly throughout the conference. In essence, why were so many of the panelists white males and what were the white males
doing to help non-white males achieve panel-worthy status. I'm not looking to pick the fight yet again, but since I'm already talking about social estrangement and bee girls, when the subject is social and cultural there's another oppressed minority that doesn't benefit from the activism of liberal bleeding hearts: smart kids.
A question of styleOne interesting phrase that stuck with me from Marwick's presentation was that she described Internet microcelebrity as a style of performance. In a way, this recalls Weinberger's "network fame" (it's a style of fame) but what I like about it is that usually we talk about the rules of the Internet or what behaviors are typical. We see top ten lists and how-to checklists on how to succeed online. But to call it a style speaks more to the philosophy than the dogma.
Perhaps the exception that proves the rule, Randall Munroe, creator of the wildly popular
xkcd cartoon confessed that while he's active in online social sites, he avoids feedback threads on his work for the sake of his mental health. I can only imagine how appearing in front of a giant MIT lecture hall packed with adulating fans affected his mental health.
Wow, the
video game on the Audi Ironman site is actually pretty fun and challenging. Better than the Nokia one the other day. Given those two plus another that comes to mind (
ahem) it seems safe to say that no online ad campaign is complete without a video game component to help it go viral. (I was less impressed with the actual car part of the site. Though visually cool, I'm more impressed by the product placement on Dirt than on Ironman.) [And yes, I realize I'm the only person who watches Dirt.]
Speaking of efforts at viral advertising and watching commercials on purpose, it's also apparently the season for banned ads. I was thinking today as I clicked to a couple that while it's always been the case that banning an ad has brought it more attention from the media (on a slow news day at least), with the Internet a banned ad isn't banned at all and a ban assures a certain amount of viral distribution just for the "do you think this ad goes too far?" factor. To wit:
Does this ad go too far? (Note the lack of a NOTE: indicates my opinion.)
Apparently Abercrombie & Fitch have already gone to far in the U.S., so far that they don't bother producing a catalog here in the U.S. anymore (instead they
stand behind presidential candidates during nationally televised speeches) but they're still doing it in the UK and waddaya know,
it's drawing interest from some Americans anyway - or at least the naked guy photos are.
NOTE: This link has censored versions of the images which you then have to click the see the uncensored versions which are frankly nearly SFW anyway. Still, it's a naked guy so...
Speaking of trying to harness the viral,
TechCrunch's description of the new Blowtorch initiative
is easier to understand than the actual site. The idea is to bring some
order (and hopefully some viral energy) to user generated Web videos by
issuing challenges or themes.
Also in the "viral" vein,
Twist lets you track trends in Twitter. Enter the terms and see the frequency of use of those terms graphed comparatively over time.
Lastly on the viral topic, I'm going to be at
ROFLCon this Friday and Saturday. Let me know if you're there as well.
Google Me the movie - A guy Googles his name and finds a bunch of guys who share his name so he films a documentary of himself going to meet them all. He asks them all the same 30 questions.
Have you heard about the Dutch traffic experiment in which they
removed the road signs and somehow traffic ended up running more smoothly and with fewer accidents? Apparently not everyone is feeling moved by that spirit. How'd you like a traffic signal that
throws a holographic wall in front of your car? I vote no thanks.
"PETA is now stepping in and offering a $1 million reward to the first scientist to
produce and bring to market in vitro meat." This is kind of like the challenge to find a way to produce stem cells without having to fertilize an egg (or take whatever step is defined as creating human life). In this case they want to find a way to "make" meat without having to cut it off an animal. I want to say this sounds gross, but really, given what I eat I have no grounds to say anything.
(
Slate says the whole thing is a publicity stunt because part of the requirement is that the product has to be brought to market, which kind of defeats the utility of the million bucks.)
Nuclear explosions since 1945 - Interesting to see the one North Korea did in 2006. I remember some pundits deriding it s a dud.
That college student who got in a fight with John Ashcroft over whether U.S. waterboarding is comparable to Japanese waterboarding in WWII. I'm not sure how widely this made news but I caught it on Olbermann last night.
The "leave me alone" box - (When you turn it on it turns itself off.)
The most interesting part of this explanation of
how to identify a Persian prostitute is this weird marriage option:
"But there's a loophole in Islamic law called sigheh, or temporary marriage. According to Shiite interpretation, a man and a woman may enter an impermanent partnership with a preset expiration date. There's no legally required minimum duration (a day, a week, anything goes) and no need for official witnesses..."
'Til 3:45 p.m. do us part.
"Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of
using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft." Somewhere there's an African Seinfeld episode waiting to be written.
Type racer is definitely the best typing game yet. The speed of your typing is reflected in a little car that moves along a dotted line. You play against other visitors to the site to see who can type the same piece of text the fastest. It's like those carnival games where you roll the balls into the holes to make your horse move faster. I lost the first one miserably but won the second game. I haven't tried to play it as a registered user yet so I'm not sure if gameplay changes once you're signed in.
I'm not sure what this video is about but it's pretty amazing to see
a railroad tanker implode in an instant. The explanation: "Hot gas/air in a sealed container and you let it cool. The air pressure difference inside is so great that the structure is compromised."
The idea behind the inchworm shoe is sound. Stretch the shoe as your kid's feet grow. I'm skeptical about two points. First, I don't believe it doesn't get all floppy after a few months of use. Second, so far my kid needs new shoes because he wears out the bottoms as fast as he outgrows them, so this would need a retread feature to appeal to me as a consumer.
Pictures of Dell’s Eco Bamboo Computer - You know I'm a sucker for the natural cased technology.
