Nothing says love like a satellite photo
Posted: Thursday, November 09, 2006 10:17 AM by Will Femia
Hey check it out, while working on a neighborhood photo-mapping project at home I found a marriage proposal on a rooftop in Queens. I wonder if the goal was to get on a map like this or if it was for a helicopter tour. It would be funny if the reply came in the form of sky writing.
Speaking of the new Virtual Earth/MSN/Live maps, Flash Earth lets you toggle between different map services to compare.
Still speaking of Virtual Earth, the idea of selling ads on billboards in 3D view reminds me of a controversy that came up during the filming of Spiderman scenes in Times Square. Billboards there were digitally replaced with sponsors of the film.
Speaking of follow-ups to the Microsoft portion of yesterday's entry, one thing I forgot to mention that makes me nervous about Zune is the report that folks who bought songs from now-closed MSN Music are stuck with files they can't play elsewhere. Will media from the Zune store still work if there's a new next big thing next year?
10 Greatest Martial Arts Movies of All Time P.S. What a cool site.
Speaking of cool sites, LinkDonkey is relatively new but has some interesting photo collections.
Ruined Music - Ever had a favorite song totally ruined for you because of a sour social association? Submit your story here.
From the life-as-opera department, this murder story is so insane that it should skip the "torn from the headlines" cop shows and go straight to the opera house. What appeared to be a suicide turns out to be a staged suicide to cover up a murder. The most brutal twist in the story is that the victim wasn't actually dead when the killer panicked and staged the hanging that ultimately killed the victim (a beautiful young actress on the rise). There's a CSI twist to how the case was cracked (strange sneaker prints) and the fact that the whole thing started with a noise complaint only amplifies the tragedy.
Speaking of life as art, this photo of the Santorum family at his concession speech feels like it could be a movie poster. Related: The covert bird flip is getting some viral attention.
There was a lot of noise yesterday among tech bloggers about Like.com which is described as the first true visual image search. It’s pretty limited, only useful if you’re shopping for fashion accessories, but it definitely works. It’s built on/by Riya, which you may recall us playing with a while back.
**I should add that I’m not much of a fashion plate, so for me to say it works is not the same as my wife saying it works. I tried to look for a titanium ring with an orange stripe and had a fun time playing with it to get what I was looking for. To me, that works.
By the way, there was also noise about the noise about Like.com yesterday. I know I said the other day that the holy grail of online marketing is the secret to courting user participation, but an argument could be made that the real holy grail is how to (intentionally) generate buzz online.
“PageAddict is a Firefox extension that will help you monitor your Internet addiction. Once you install it, it will display a summary of the time you've wasted on each web site for this day, and a graph of your web surfing habits from the past. You can categorise different sites and restrict how much time you spend in each category in a day.” What a terrible idea.
Speaking of ideas to make you groan, SeasonShot lets you flavor your bird when you kill it.
I recall us playing a game like this before but I don’t remember it being this hard. I can’t get past level 7.
The Britney Spears’ divorce papers.
One question the online community looks to have answered every time there is an election is whether the “netroots” –online political activists- are having a noticeable impact. Some are arguing that the Lieberman win over the netroots candidate Lamont is an indication that they’re not able to deliver. A look a the broader list of netroots candidates points to a different conclusion. Was Lamont a waste of time or a rallying cry (or something else)?
Linkbucks, which I first read about here, pays you for the traffic you dive to other links. Basically it throws up an ad page in between your site and the link destination. Here’s a blog that’s using it. I think if Clicked was using this I’d lose all my readers to rage.
Extreme trainsurfer – I wonder how terrorism-related security crackdowns have affected the trainsurfing community.
What does Borat get right and wrong about his native land? Speaking of setting the Borat record straight, USA Today did a sort of where-are-they-now round-up of the real people in the movie.
South Park explains evolution. Of course it’s offensive.
“Cell transplants have successfully restored vision to mice which had lost their sight, leading to hopes people could benefit in the same way.” There was no word on whether stem cells would play a role in re-attaching the tails, however.
“According to data from veterinarians in New York, cats are most likely to survive if they fall from a height of six stories, with heights over seven stories being only slightly more dangerous.”
Another collection of Photoshop trans-humanism – making people look better, if less human, through Photoshop. Some of the images we’ve seen before. I think BillyBob looks better in the “before” photo. And I wonder if being skinny would be so popular if photos of skinny girls weren’t smoothed out like in that 11th picture.
I don’t pretend to know much about mainstream sports, but I still got a kick out of this fan response to Randy Moss following Monday’s football game.
