That thing in the news
More details and/or original material about stories you've heard about.
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.
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.
NOTE: Lot of
cursing in the following links, even from the kid. Engage headphones.
In what appears to have begun as a YouTube video that was taken down and is now hosted on a hip hop site and a variety of other places, a kid rambles for nearly ten minutes about his intention to kill the president and maybe himself too.
UPDATE: the video has been taken down. No one seems to want to host this hot potato.
UPDATE: Found it
in pieces on UK YouTube . I wonder if the UK site doesn't answer to the same laws or maybe they just haven't caught up to it yet.
It's hard to get too worked up about a kid being an idiot on a Web cam and I definitely don't look forward to the possibility of having to watch this played in loops on TV but it's hard to ignore the issues it raises, from matters of race (the kid is black) to the role of spree killers in American culture.
What else makes it noteworthy is the degree to which is has a certain political segment
worked up . A quick look at
Blogrunner shows the story has made the rounds of some very prominent right wing blogs and online commentary. And yet it doesn't appear to have cracked the mainstream media. If nothing else it's a classic example of how different political cultures arrive at such different perspectives. They're responding to different news.
The piece that appears to be providing the hook for the Oprah backlash story is
this L.A. Times blog entry on how much her favorability ratings have fallen since her Obama endorsement. Weirdest is the number of views on the video. Four million views of a video that doesn't include a talking dog, a skateboard nut smash or a bikini girl? Who the heck is watching this thing?
The Harry Potter Lexicon is the fan site full of Harry Potter words. The lawsuit is over a book version of the site planned for publication.
In a nutshell , Rowling says it's theft of her ideas, the publisher says it's a legitimate guidebook to complicated material. Personally, I'm surprised Rowling's publisher hasn't already been churning out related reference material to the series. There's a lot of milk in that cash cow.
I don't know about you but seeing a collection of trivia makes me think contests. So Harry Potter fans (and people who know how to perform a Web search), what modification did Arthur Weasley make to Hagrid's flying motorbike? (Yes, I know it was S
e irious Black's bike, but you know what I mean.)
The first person to give me that answer wins an MSNBC logo version of the thing Hagrid hid his wand in. As a bonus, if you can name the celebrity who interrupted my interview with Robbie Coltrane when he was doing publicity for the first Harry Potter movie, I'll give you little beeping cube with LEDs that flash when you tap it. (I think it's meant to be a digital die.")
As for last week's contest, the winners are John who sent the Blackarachnia answer, David who sent the V'ger answer and Greg who sent the "I, Mudd" answer. I was going to do just the first right answer but these were the first of their kind and I happen to have three mugs here cluttering up my desk.
Congrats guys, I'm going to send you an e-mail asking for your mailing address. I'm hoping you all put valid e-mail addresses in your comments. If not, get in touch.
Oops, I forgot the photo: Thank you Vanna.
I call fake. I don't doubt that he can jump that high but there's no way he'd risk it. Even if he would I imagine there'd be insurance lawyers tackling him to the pavement and throwing themselves in front of the car.
I wonder what the msnbc.com record is for
shortest story .
Y'know, I'd seen the links to the photo of smiling Dick Cheney and didn't get what they were about. I thought I was missing the text. Boing Boing has
the full story arc along with a high resolution shot that shows the reflection more clearly. Given the clarity of the hi-res shot I don't see how some news outlets are still adding the "you decide" tag to the story. Sorry, it's not like seeing the Madonna on a piece of toast. There's a reality to this one that doesn't leave the decision up to you.
no one in the U.S. would notice their Mexican ad campaign? I can already imagine the "Absolut World" parody maps being Photoshopped across the blogosphere.
ADDING: Rob in the comments asks if I'm declaring a new contest with my Photoshop mention. As a matter of fact, the swag box arrived today and there was extra stuff in it so I'm looking for another reason to have a contest. This subject is a little hot though and I'd like to keep the contests to something fun. A Photoshop (or whatever program you have) is a good idea though. Do you think enough people know how to do it? I don't know very much beyond sharpening and cropping images so a contest would be a good excuse to learn. Let's keep an eye out.
There isn't a whole lot of background material to be found
on
this story about the teen girls in Florida who confronted a former friend
and beat her mercilessly . This in spite of the fact that the story's origins
are in MySpace postings. Most of the girls involved have set their MySpace profiles
to private, including what is
likely that of the victim , Victoria Lindsay (who
communicates through her profile's headline that she is "just fine"
and "happy."
One MySpace page not set to private is that of
Mercades
Nichols in whose house the beating takes place and with whom Lindsay was
staying, according to the police report. Nothing new has been added to the online account since the
incident so it doesn't serve as much more than character color for the story.
It's interesting to note that the Lindsay account has left an affectionate
comment on the Nichols account as recently as March 4th.
It's Nichols' mother who is featured in the latter half of
this video . Speaking of video, the clip in the
Orlando Sentinel coverage
has clearer audio. It's mostly screaming
but you get a sense of what the beating is about.
The Ledger , whose coverage includes AP video of Lindsay's
parents, has scans of
the police affidavits which describe the attack in
greater detail. (It says 17 pages but really it's just a few pages repeated.)
I can definitely
confirm that people are taking the
joke photo
seriously . I just saw an angry letter to msnbc.com from a person accusing Obama of sloppily posing for the photo and not realizing its upside-down. Good thing I recognized the IMAO watermark.
