Archive for 2008
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Don’t Be A Googlewanker
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 15, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, December 15th, 2008The Internet. I’ve Seen It.
Although Google recently released their 2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist, I’d like to point out a significant oversight in their methodology: If they were to treat every individual searcher’s name as a single search term, I’m pretty sure the number one search would be a form of Googlewanking. And for the record, if you’re prone to this behavior and find you’ve left an embarrassing trail on line, you might want to try a Googlewashing service. In any case, I think it says something about America that the top searches haven’t changed much since the . People still pretty much search for celebrities, games, and cataclysmic events. Personally, since I have to do a lot of research for clients, I think I’ve actually viewed all the pages in Google (as I joked with a friend the other day: “The Internet? I’ve seen it.”), so I’m always looking for new tools. One of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while is Idée Labs’ tools like Multicolr Search. Click colors and it finds photos that contain them. Or TinEye. Give it an image and it will tell you where the image appears on the web. And for you Googlewankers who haven’t seen the entire Internet yet, maybe you should talk to Ms Dewey, if you haven’t met her before. And since she takes so long to get loaded, here’s your Monday time-waster: MindCards. Annoyingly simple, yet annoyingly hard to score well on.
Single Serving Sites
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on December 14, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Sunday, December 14th, 2008Is this my single serving post? Dot Com?
We’ve touched on Internet memes before, but here’s a fairly new one: Single Serving Sites. I first ran across the phenomena with isbarackobamamuslin during the election , but thanks to the Internet’s power to demonstrate that someone’s always already thought of something and come up with a buzzword for it, we have is this your paper on single serving sites.com, which expands on the phenomena probably first observed by Jason Kottke. Some SSS’s are pleasantly pointless, like defiantdog.com (which features — you guessed it — a defiant dog), or sometimesredsometimesblue.com (sometimes it’s red, and well…sometimes it isn’t). Some are only occasionally useful, like instantrimshot.com, but some you might use every day, like doineedanumbrella.com. For your convenience, I’ve assembled a Single Serving Page here. Let me know if I missed any…
The Tango: It Takes Two (And That’s About All)
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 13, 2008 by admin in Clean & Green, Technology
Saturday, December 13th, 2008Lane-Splitting Prevents Brain-Splitting Headaches
If you’ve ever been in a traffic jam in L.A., you’ll appreciate the idea of the almost comical-looking Tango electric car zipping between the cars in the part-time parking lot often referred to as “The 405″. Which reminds me of a question no-one’s ever answered to my satisfaction: why do Californians have the weird habit of referring to their freeways with the definite article? In any case, as odd as the Tango looks, it apparently does 0-60MPH in 4 seconds, and can give a Tesla a run for its money on the quarter-mile. All of which doesn’t matter much if you need to cart the kids to soccer games and pick up lumber at Home Depot, but that is clearly not the intention of the car’s producers. It’s designed as a commuter vehicle, and besides the cute lane-splitting trick (legal in some states, not all) it will park nose-in to the curb, and fit in most motorcycle spaces. Worried about safety? It has a full steel roll cage that meets SCCA/NHRA rules; in theory you (or at least the roll cage!) should be able to survive a 200mph crash. With its current $100K+ price tag, only George Clooney can afford one, but they plan a price-drop in 2009. For a Tango-eye view of a traffic jam, here’s another YouTube clip (no sound).
At Least He Uses The Appropriate Orifice
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on December 12, 2008 by admin in Comics
Friday, December 12th, 2008
ABC Tells Pushing Daisies Fans To Stick It In Their Pie-Hole
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 12, 2008 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, December 12th, 2008Pushing Daisies Soon To Be Six Feet Under
The entertainment industry in general (music, film, television) seems to me to have made some secret suicide pact with itself. The RIAA constantly suing its customer base, the film industry’s vain and annoying attempts at copy protection, and the television industy’s gift for cancelling top-rated shows with rabidly loyal viewers all suggest a weird death-wish. Which (because of the show’s name) is ironic in the case of ABC’s cancellation of Pushing Daisies