Archive Category: Blog & Internet
Having Fun with "Google Suggest"
The “autofill” feature of the Google search box was designed as a timesaver, but the suggested searches can also be entertaining. Writing in Slate, Michael Agger compared the autofill of “less intelligent” and “more intelligent” queries, an exercise that has previously been conducted at Digg.
The image above is a screencap of two Google searches conducted tonight using less- and more sophisticated search terms.
A corollary question would be “What searches are most commonly conducted at Neatorama?” The Lijit search engine doesn’t have an autofill feature, but it does offer a list of the most popular recent searches at Neatorama, in descending order of frequency:
“world’s smallest,” mystery sale, halloween, what is it, disney, halloween costume, pumpkin, shop, stories, tattoo, cat, facebook, halloween costumes, pear, game, costume, movie trivia, photography, new species, zombie, bacon, lego, elena desserich, google, anvil cake, costumes, national day, notes left behind, origami, national geographic, videosift, wedding, what is it? game, 6 year old, albert einstein, brain, christmas, chum, hitler, logo, one take, pig, sex, animals, art, batman, brain shot, comic, einstein, shark.
Someone else may want to tackle the sociological implications of that list; I’m not going to touch it.
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Which Browser Would You Marry?
With the advent of competing browsers came some fierce loyalty to one brand or another. Some people would go as far to say they “love” their browser of choice. That got Grace Smith thinking. If you had to marry a web browser, which one would it be, and why? She put the question to her Twitter followers, and got many responses. Some examples:
I’d marry Firefox, but I’d like her to lose some weight and stop complaining when I accidentally call her Google Chrome.
I imagine I would start by dating Firefox, but come to realize she is high maintenance and run off with Safari.
It would have to be Opera, still barely touched and very innocent but with some great hidden features.
Netscape is my MILF!
I would marry FireFox, but every once in a while have a fling with Safari (For the looks) & Chrome (For the performance).
Can’t say which one i’d marry but I’d divorce IE6 in a second.
IE makes promises it doesn’t keep.Safari is unpredictable and incompatible. Firefox hogs the resources. I think I’d be single.
Firefox, though I have to admit, I’ve had several affairs with Safari. *shamefaced* But I’ll always come back to you, Firefox!
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Big Ben on Twitter
Big Ben, the London clock tower, has a Twitter account. Online, it says the same thing it has always said in real life. The account was opened as a statement on the banality of Twitter, but Big Ben now has over six thousand followers! Come to think of it, this IS handy if you want to know what time it is in London. Link -via Blame It On The Voices
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How to Use An Apostrophe
Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal has just released another web project, How to Use An Apostrophe. It’s a hoot! (Notice the proper use of apostrophe in the preceding sentence).
Link (for extra goodness, see the source code) – Thanks Matthew!
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101 Historical Moments You Can Relive on YouTube
Every once in a while, someone will say, “I wish I’d been around when that happened.” You can get a taste for what it was like to live through historical moments by watching converted film footage, news reports, historic speeches, sports coverage, and even famous musical performances on YouTube. This list has links to 101 available videos, some of which you’d never think of to look for on your own. Just a few are recreations. Pictured is a screenshot from the destruction of the Berlin Wall. This resource will be useful to help my children with their history lessons! Link -via the Presurfer
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10 Neat Facts About Google
Google in 1998 (notice the exclamation mark)
Sure, everybody knows that Google was created by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin who became gazillionaires. But did you know that Google's first storage device was cobbled together with LEGO? Or that Google's first investor wrote a $100,000 check even before the company officially existed? Or that it has its own "official" Google dog?
Neatorama presents the Top 10 Neat Facts About Google:
1. Before Google, There Was BackRub
In
1996, graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on a research
project to understand the link structure of the World Wide Web. They're
particularly interested in determining the importance of a given web page
based on its backlinks or how many other web pages link to it (which later
became the concept behind Google's "PageRank" algorithm).
The project was named BackRub (yes, a play on the word "backlink"). You can see an archived page of BackRub in the Wayback Machine:
8) Your logo is upside down: Why is the light source obviously below the image? It looks quite unnatural...
The logo is simply a scan of my hand, from a flatbed scanner converted to black and white. The "back" in the picture is the scanner cover, and the shadows are from the scanner light.
2. The Original Google Computer Storage
Photo: Stanford
Infolab's Computer History Exhibits Photo
Larry and Sergey needed large amount of disk space to test their PageRank algo, but the largest hard disks available at the time were only 4 GB. So they assembled 10 of these drives together.
While he was an undergrad at Michigan University, Larry had built a programmable plotter out of LEGO, so it's only natural that he used the colorful bricks to create Google's first computer storage!
3. Google's First Investor
Sun
Microsystem co-founder Andy
Bechtolsheim knew a good thing when he saw it. After talking to Larry
and Sergey about Google for 30 minutes, he whipped out his checkbook and
wrote a check for $100,000, made out to "Google, Inc." Problem
was, Google, Inc. hasn't existed yet!
Oh, by the way, the Sun in Sun Microsystem stands for "Stanford University Network."
4.
Google Garage
Talk about getting lucky tenants. In 1998, Susan Wojcicki rented her garage to two Stanford students - you know who they are - for $1,700 a month to help out with the mortgage. That turned out to be a life-changing decision for Susan - it got her a key early job at Google which translated to a top executive position later on, introduced a future husband to her younger sister Anne, and created a mini cottage industry for the rest of her family. (Photo: Jack Gruber/USA Today)
In
2006, Google
bought the house which had become a tourist attraction (the busloads
of people who show up to take pictures were so annoying that Google decided
not to publish the address - though ironically, you can still Google
Map it.)
5. Google's First Dog
Despite the Internet's obsession with cats, dogs rule Google. In 1999, a Leonberger breed named Yoshka came to work with Google's first VP of Engineering Urs Hölzle and became the company's "first" dog. (Photo: Google Timeline)
If you must know, Leonbergers are big dogs with lionesque mane that look really majestic. They are, however, useless as guard dogs because they're much too kind and gentle.
6. Just How Many Servers Does Google Have?
A sign near the Googleville data center. Photo: ahockley
[Flickr]
The real Googleville.
Photo: Melanie Conner/NY Times
Good question. Nobody outside the company knows, and Google ain't talkin'. The company's famously secretive when it comes to its data centers (Heck, no one even knows for sure how many data centers the company has!)
For example, The Dalles or "Googleville" data center in a small
Washington Oregon town, was cloaked
in secrecy:
"No one says the 'G' word," said Diane Sherwood, executive director of the Port of Klickitat, Wash., directly across the river from The Dalles, who is not bound by such agreements. "It's a little bit like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in Harry Potter."
Recently, Google Fellow Jeff Dean gave a revealing talk on large-scale computing systems in which he discussed technical details of a new storage and computation system called Spanner, which is designed for up to 10 million servers. Skynet, anyone?
7. "Green" Search
All those hardware must use a lot of electricity (indeed, Googleville data center is calculated to require about 103 megawatts of electricity - enough to power 82,000 homes or a city the size of Tacoma, Washington), but just how much energy do you use when you perform a Google search?
Google calculated that it uses about 1 kJ (0.0003 kWh) of energy to answer the average search query. It's so efficient that your PC will likely use more energy in the time it takes to do a Google search.
Photo: Google
Solar Panel Project
To offset its electricity consumption, Google even installed 1.6MW solar panels on the rooftops of the Googleplex. A total of 9,212 solar panels generate 4,475 kWh daily, the equivalent of about the amount of electricity used by 1,000 California homes.
8. Google Trike
I'm sure you're all familiar with Google Street View and the camera-topped Google Car, but what about all of the interesting places inaccessible to cars? Enter the Google Trike, which started as a project by Daniel Ratner, a Senior Mechanical Engineer on the Street View team:
"I began thinking about building a bicycle-based Street View system after realizing how many interesting places around the world - ranging from historic landmarks to beautiful trails to shopping districts - aren't accessible by car," says Dan. "When I'm riding the trike, so many people come up to me and ask where it's off to next or how they can get imagery of their favorite spot, so I can't wait to see what our users come up with."
Previously on Neatorama: Google Car Pulled Over by the Cops - Now in Google Street View!
9. I'm Feeling Lucky Costs Google $110 Million a Year
The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google's homepage takes you straight to the first web page result. Because it bypasses Google's own search result page, where users are shown ads, the button actually costs Google around $110 million a year.
Why keep it? Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marisa Mayer said:
You know Larry and Sergey had the view, and I certainly share it, that it's possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money. And you know what I think is really delightful about Google and about the "I'm Feeling Lucky," is that they remind you that the people here have personality and that they have interests and that there is real people.
10. Googlebot, Revealed At Last!
Image: Ben Rathbone
In 2005, Ben Rathbone (then at Google's Hardware Operations) gave us a glimpse of humanity's future. I, for one, welcome our new Googlebot overlord:
Then I pondered the question: what does Google do? The grossly simplified answer that I came up with is Google connects the world with the Internet.
It all snapped into place: the idea of a robot, connecting a world with the Internet, with wires, that connect to big cabinets of computers. It was not hard then to make the leap to representing the internet as a world, or globe, made up of pages.
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Web Addresses Now Available with Non-Latin Characters
Since the early days of Internet history, web addresses have only been available in languages that used the Latin alphabet, such as English and French. But on Friday, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — an organization that provides international oversight for the Internet — agreed to allow web addresses with non-Latin characters. Anick Jesdanun writes for the Associated Press:
The result clears the way for governments or their designees to submit requests for specific names, likely beginning Nov. 16. Internet users could start seeing them in use early next year, particularly in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts in which demand has been among the highest, ICANN officials say.
“This represents one small step for ICANN, but one big step for half of mankind who use non-Latin scripts, such as those in Korea, China and the Arabic speaking world as well as across Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world,” Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s CEO, said ahead of the vote.
Link | Photo: NASA
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Internet Cat Costumes
Internet memes make great Halloween costumes, although they are usually only clever for one year. The exception is cats, because their popularity (at least on the internet) goes on and on. Here are some clever LOLcat Halloween Costumes.
Jacki was Spaghetti Cat in 2008. You don’t have the time to make a better costume for this year, unless you have been working on it a while already. In case you’ve forgotten, here is the origin of Spaghetti Cat.
Brad O’Ferrell showed up at the “A Night To ReMEMEber” internet meme party in a Keyboard Cat costume. All it took was a cat costume and a keyboard.
Matt Cutts is a LOLcat. Or he was for Halloween last year. The cheeseburger was a nice touch!
This LOLcat costume is perfect for trick-or-treating. You won’t get the full effect until you see the back of the t-shirt.
This Ceiling Cat costume should be easy to do, depending on the size of the ceiling. If you are going to sit on the porch and hand out candy, this would be OK. It might be a problem if you are a cab driver.
You can buy Hello Kitty costumes of all kinds, but making your own is a real accomplishment. Pink Daisy at Craftster made her own version of Hello Kitty for Halloween 2008.
This costume was posted earlier on Neatorama, but this collection wouldn’t be complete without Lime Cat, Melon Cat, Helmet Cat, or whatever you want to call this. Flicker user Alida Saxon’s brother put this costume together at the last minute. The helmet is a basketball painted green, and the fur was salvaged from a stuffed toy.
A warning: if you dress as an internet meme for Halloween, be prepared to explain yourself. Unless you’re meeting up with your online group, you’ll probably have to tell the whole story of your costume. If you’re willing to do that, the few who will “get it” will make the entire effort worthwhile.
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Lo! The Internet Turns 40
UCLA’s Leonard Kleinrock remembers sending the first message over the Internet 40 years ago this week; the first word sent host-to-host was supposed to be “login,” but the receiving computer crashed after the first two letters. So the Internet’s first word was “Lo!” Soon came the first denial of service, and the first spammer.
In honor of the occasion, Asylum’s Tommy Christopher compiled the Top Ten Signs the Internet Has Turned 40.
10. Hangs around at clubs using cheesy, outdated pickup lines like, “All your base are belong to me, baby!”
9. Starts referring to YouTube videos as “talkies.”
8. Still uses MySpace, and thinks of Heather_69 as a “friend.”
7. Stays in the left lane of the information superhighway with its blinker on.
6. Google mysteriously changes its name to “Google, She Wrote.”
5. Star Wars Kid now on his second divorce after nailing his secretary.
4. Starts believing that Al Gore invented it.
3. Inexplicably purchases a Chrysler Sebring convertible.
2. Swears it goes to Pornhub.com for the articles.
1. Has to call its kids for tips on how to use itself.
I’ll add a bonus one: Uses the file menu to shut itself down…all seven open windows of itself. Any more ideas out there?
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Reliving Radio History This Halloween
This Halloween marks the 71st anniversary of the night The Mercury Theater aired a live production of the H.G. Wells story of a Martian invasion, The War of the Worlds.
At least two websites are offering streaming versions of this historic event that “panicked America.” Produced by and starring Orson Welles, the chilling tale was told as though the radio broadcasters themselves were part of the story at first.
Soon, the conditioned ears of the listeners took the news events coming out of their radios as the truth, and, while there is some speculation of reports like this:
[P]anic ensued, people fleeing the area, others thinking they could smell poison gas or could see flashes of lightning in the distance.
It’s still fascinates to this day. The actual 1938 broadcast of the show is going to be streamed live at WarOfTheWorldsTribute at 8:00pm EST on the 30th of October, and it’s really worth a listen.
Also, on Halloween night, student radio station WKNC will do the same with a modernized version here at 7:00pm.
via kottke. | Photo: Orson Welles (Wikimedia Commons)
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Facebook Etiquette Rules People Still Break
With new users joining every day, many people either don’t know Facebook etiquette or they don’t care. The Golden Rule, and treating people as you would treat them offline is a good start, but just in case, here are some guidelines for how not to act on Facebook, and other social networking sites. For example, why would you post (and tag) unflattering or embarrassing pictures of your friends?
“I feel obligated to point out some of the obvious Facebook etiquette rules that people continue to break, in the hopes that one day, they think twice before posting.”
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Congrats, Hanan: Grow-a-Brain Grew a Baby!
Congratulations to Hanan Levin of grow-a-brain and Stella on the arrival of his new baby: Adora "Nyunyu" Levin, born October 18, 2009.
Hanan wrote me: People who knew me would never have thought that at 56 I will have my first child, but here she is, taking a piece of me to see the 22nd century…
Congrats again, Hanan! Link
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wetoku: A New Tool for Web Interviews
If you’re interested, my interview for Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere mentioned above was conducted using a new and free web service called wetoku.
wetoku is still in beta, but I can tell you this: it’s one to watch out for. The interview was a snap to set up – all I had to do was plug in my webcam (otherwise it sits in a box somewhere on my bookshelf) and click on a link sent to me via email. The web page consisted of the image of the interviewer (in my case, Eric Olsen of Blogcritics and Technorati) and the interviewee (me), and a simple chatbox where we can text each other. The interviewer presses the "record" button and we started talking. Simple!
It’s easy to see how wetoku can be very useful (just view all of the interviews done by Technorati for their State of the Blogosphere report). I won’t be surprised if we see many more wetoku interviews popping up in many blogs.
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10 Internet Rules and Laws
The laws of the internet were never legislated, but passed into law by being evident over and over again. I was familiar with most of these laws, but some I didn’t know had names or documented origins.
4. Skitt’s Law: Expressed as “any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself” or “the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster.”
It is an online version of the proofreading truism Muphry’s Law, also known as Hartman’s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation: “any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror”.
That’s nice to know. Link -via Digg
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Weird Images of Yore: Black and WTF
Image from Foxtongue [Flickr]
The next time you get a bunch of WTF pictures on a viral email, remember this: human’s propensity for making weird (and weirdly wonderful) pictures predates the InterWeb. Take a look at these strangely compelling black and white images of yore over at Black and WTF tumblr blog: Link – Thanks Matt!
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PostSecret Interview Follow-Up: Winners of the PostSecret Book
A
couple of weeks ago, we posted an interview
with Frank Warren of PostSecret,
where we asked Neatoramanauts to submit their own questions.
Here are the four questions and a comment that were picked - these people will get a free autographed copy of the PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God:
1. Reflecting upon all the Post Secrets you’ve received, and the contents therein, what would you say is the underlying – yet unifying – character(istic) of humankind? (Asked by Sanyu)
Frank : All the secrets I have seen, almost half-a-million, have revealed a hidden landscape that we all recognize but don' talk about. They have made me aware of our rich inner lives and the stories of heroism, human frailty and humor happening in people's lives. Those stories and secrets allow me to feel more empathy toward others and greater self-acceptance. They make me feel more connected to strangers. They make riding the subway more interesting.
2. How do you tell a fake secret submission from a genuine one? Or does it matter to you if they’re genuine confessions from the person who sent them or not if they might resonate with someone who might read them? (Asked by Melissa)
Frank: I think of the postcards as works of art that may have several layers of truth. Perhaps the secret we think is true becomes false when we share it. Maybe the secret you "make-up" actually reveals a kernel of truth that you are hiding from yourself.
3. What is the most commonly sent ’secret’ to Postsecret? (Asked by Mowog)
Frank: The most common secret I get is, "I pee in the shower". The most common kind of secret I get are the ones describing that condition I think we all can relate to; our search for that one person who we can tell all our secrets to. The journey toward greater intimacy with others and understanding of ourselves.
4. Have you ever received a secret you didn’t think you should publish? (Asked by Jenny)
Frank: A year ago I received a call from the FBI about a secret. It was about a secret I did not publish. Maybe someday I can post it.
5. Comment that won the book:
Oh my goodness… The last postcard up here “Rationally, I think the idea of God makes no sense, but I cannot get rid of my faith no matter how hard I try” has tears streaming down my face. I have been reading PostSecret for the last 3 or so years and this hasn’t happened yet. Funny that it’s on Neatorama and not PostSecret though, but i digress.
I have felt this way my whole life and it has caused a huge number of conflicts for my spiritual self. I have such a hard time praying and praying after telling people I’m an atheist or that I don’t believe in God, but I still always say stuff like that. I’m so happy there is someone else who is having the same conflict. (Comment by Paula R)
Congratulations to everyone who won the book (you'll get an email from me soon)! My apologies to those whose questions didn't get picked - they're all great questions, but time limitations did not permit every single one of them to be answered. Thank you to Frank and all you Neatoramanauts who participated ;)
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Balloon Boy Halloween Costume
That didn’t take long. You can get your very own Balloon Boy Halloween Costume Kit from Plantraco Microflight. Includes balloon (some assembly required). Link -via the Presurfer
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A Lesson in eCommerce from The World of Goo
The World of Goo is a physics-based puzzle game released in October of 2008. It was favorably received by the gaming community, receiving many awards.
On the one-year anniversary of the product’s release, the developers decided to undertake an e-commerce experiment. They offered to sell the game (previously retailing at $20) to anyone for whatever price the customer was willing to pay: “…one cent, a million dollars, the usual twenty, or any creative number they let you type into the text field.”
In the week that followed, 57,000 additional people purchased the game; the graph above shows what prices they opted to pay. About 17,000 people paid $0.01, but another 16,000 paid $1.00-$1.99, and several hundred paid the full $20.00 original price. Total sales = over $100,000 for the week. And still rising, because they have announced that they are continuing the offer until October 25.
The developers discussion at their website includes their impressions of why people paid different amounts, and notes that they made no money when people paid less than $0.30 because of Paypal transaction costs. For further discussion of this odd marketing strategy, see Rock, Paper Shotgun.
Via Metafilter.
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A Teacher's Blog: The Cuban Missile Crisis
This week marks the 47th anniversary of The Cuban Missile Crisis, an event that spanned thirteen days and brought the world close to total nuclear war. It was also a valuable lesson in Presidential powers, and global negotiations.
NYC teacher Mr. D. decided to have his students re-enact the crisis, with surprising results.
I laid out a dossier of the facts of the case: missiles were discovered in Cuba by an American spy plane. The United States is under pressure from the Soviet Union to withdraw missiles from Turkey. The Russians are not saying for certain that there are missiles. The United States is prepared to escalate with possible military action.
I had the class divide into groups, take the facts and create a course of action. Amazingly, their plans mirrored the plans created by Kennedy’s cabinet and Pentagon officials in 1962. One group favored a military option, a direct strike on the Cuban missiles. Another group favored a covert operation to disable the missiles. Still another favored a unilateral pullout from Turkey as a sign of goodwill.
What was most astonishing was my last group. They actually said, “Maybe we should get other countries on our side by showing them what we have.” By doing so, they figured, it would make the Soviets look like the bad guy, the aggressor. I was floored. These were barely teenagers and they tackled delicate foreign policy like a pro.
Link with embedded video clips of Adlai Stevenson’s triumph at the U.N. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
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From Blogs to Books - A History of the Web in Print
Most people I encounter in my offline life do not surf the internet, and I think about all the rich content they are missing. The people I encounter on the internet work hard to spread interesting content, and are rarely rewarded for their efforts. But in the last few years, quite a few interesting ideas that broke on the web are now breaking through to “meatspace” through book publishing, which is where the real money is -for the lucky ones. This has led to blogs that are started for the express purpose of landing an eventual book deal. Urlesque has compiled a list of blogs that have turned into books, which may be useful in Christmas shopping for your relatives who would enjoy such things but won’t spend time online. Link -via the Presurfer
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Why settle for a boring computer mouse when you can surft in style with Road Mice, a cool wireless computer mouse that looks just like the car of your dreams? Road Mice is available in various Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, and Ford models including the popular Dodge Viper shown to the left. It's the perfect gift for the auto-enthusiast in your life! |
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Blog Action Day: Is Climate Change / Global Warming Real?
Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event in which participating bloggers post about a particular issue to raise awareness and trigger global discussion that will – hopefully – bring about positive change. This year’s topic is climate change – which, shall we say, is a wee bit controversial.
We’ll get to some Neatorama-worthy posts on the blog today, but first I’d like to ask YOU what you think about global warming/climate change. Do you believe that it is happening? Or is it just a passing hysteria, much like the concern over global cooling in the 1950s to 1970s?
Loading ...It’s an open mike – let’s hear your opinion.
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Be Careful Who You Poke
In yet another case of blurring between the lines of virtual and reality, a woman broke the law for poking via Facebook! Shannon Jackson of Tennessee broke the law when she poked a contact on her Facebook list, by violating a restraining order.
The order specifically prohibits either telephoning, contacting, or otherwise communicating with the petitioner. Violation of a restraining order in Tennessee is a class A misdemeanor, punishable up to 11 months and 29 days in jail, as well as a fine up to $2500.
This does leave one big question on the table, however—if the plaintiff here felt so threatened by the defendant, why didn’t she block (a little-known option in the privacy settings) or at least de-friend her on Facebook? From what I can see, you can only poke friends (or possibly people on your network with public profiles). Yes, the accused is responsible and shouldn’t have poked her, but shouldn’t the plaintiff have taken steps to avoid contact if she was distressed enough by their interactions to get a restraining order?
What do you think? Should the perp here have known her poke counted as contact? Was she naive or hoping to subvert the court order?
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Robots + Monsters
Raise money for charity and support indie artists? What can be better than that? Joe Alterio has relaunched his website Robots + Monsters, where you can order a very cool custom drawings – the ones above are our very own Neatorama monster and robot.
Your drawing will be made either by Joe himself or one of the site’s contributors: John Martz, Travis Pitts, and Adam "Apelad" Koford. Portion of the proceeds will go to support a charity (right now it’s Water.org which provides safe water and sanitation to communities in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America) and to help support the artist.
Here’s how to get yours: Link
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Post Secret: New Book Interview with Frank Warren
Forget the CIA, Frank Warren is probably the world's best keeper of secrets.
In 2004, Frank started a project called PostSecret, in which he printed 3,000 blank postcards inviting people to mail him their secrets anonymously. He handed out the postcards to strangers, left them between book pages in bookstores and libraries, and even left some on park benches. He got 100 back and posted the secrets on his blog.
Apparently, that struck a nerve: PostSecret went viral and since he started it, Frank has received nearly half a million postcards in his mailbox and over a quarter billion visitor to www.postsecret.com. The website spawned various exhibitions, events and PostSecret books, as well as various parodies (a true measure of one's popularity in today's world, I'm afraid).
The latest book, PostSecret:
Confessions on Life, Death, and God
Frank, a Neatoramanaut himself (that's him wearing one of our T-shirts),
has kindly agreed to sit down for a virtual interview with us. You are
invited to submit comments and questions for Frank - we'll pick 5 of the
best comments/questions to get a free autographed PostSecret:
Confessions on Life, Death, and God
Neatorama: Congratulations on the new book (it's fantastic, by the way, I was engrossed reading it for a couple of hours) - did you ever think that PostSecret would be as popular as it is today when you started it?
Frank Warren: No, I have been shocked. In addition to the five PostSecret books, the website has had over 250,000,000 hits.
I knew that if I could earn people's trust and build a collection of creative and authentic secrets it would be very special for me. It's great to know so many others appreciate these extraordinary confessions too.
Neatorama: Why do you think it has been so successful?
Frank: I think people find some of the funny and sexual postcards amusing but eventually you come across a secret that you might recognize as one of your own. One you might be hiding from yourself. I think it is those moments of epiphany and empathy that have allowed the PostSecret community to grow.
Neatorama: Your latest book focuses on life, death, and God. Can you tell us a little bit about the reasoning behind the topic?
Frank: PostSecret started as a lark, maybe even a prank, but over the years the secrets have become more meaningful to me. This new book, like all the books have never-before-seen secrets that touch on sexual taboos and some outlandish humor, but more than the other books, the new book has postcards that share some our deepest and most private feelings about the greatest mysteries of life. The parts that are always there beneath the surface but we sometimes forget about during our everyday lives.
Neatorama: What are some of your favorite PostSecret secrets?
Neatorama: It's been five years since you started PostSecret - how has it changed your life?
Frank: Knowing all these secret stories that are happening in so many of our lives makes life, people, and riding the subway more interesting.
Neatorama: What's next for you and PostSecret?
Frank: My favorite part of the project now is traveling to college campuses and sharing the stories behind the secrets at live events where audience members can share their own secrets - without anonymity, but sometimes with great emotion.
__________
Frank's message on YouTube
__________
From PostSecret Confessions on Life, Death and God:
Frank has kindly offered 5 free autographed copies of the book for a giveaway. Got any questions for Frank? 5 lucky commenters with the most interesting questions and/or comments will win a copy of the book (I'll post Frank's replies as an update).
Links: Post Secret Book official website (with bonus secrets) | Post Secret website | Post Secret Community | Post Secret Book on Amazon (affiliate link, here's the clean non-affiliate link if you'd like)
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Disapproving Rabbits
Bunnies make great pets, but there’s something about them that’s just so condescending. For those of you who need a few more snarky rabbits in your life, try DisapprovingRabbits.com.
Link Image Via Disapproving Rabbits
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Using Facebook to Measure "Gross National Happiness"
Image: Facebook
Jason Kinkaid writes at Tech Crunch that Facebook has developed a new application that aggregates the published emotional states of users over time. The relative contentment that users express constitutes “Gross National Happiness”:
Data is collected from “public and semi-public forums” on Facebook, which is all anonymized before its analyzed. To determine if a particular status message is happy or sad (or neither), the app searches for popular phrases and words that the engineers have associated with each sentiment.
You can adjust the graph by sliding the bar at the bottom of the screen. You can also adjust the zoom by dragging the handlebars on the slider, and can actually watch happiness jump hour-to-hour, though it’s a bit difficult to navigate when you’re zoomed in that far. It’s fun to play around with, but you aren’t going to find many surprises: happiness generally hits a low on Mondays, then gradually grows up through the weekend when it drops again as the work-week begins. Peaks are all found around holidays, with Thanksgiving drawing the most happiness. Also worth nothing: this year there was an abrupt drop in happiness in late June, which is likely associated with the tragic death of Michael Jackson.
Link via Fast Company
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Rick Rolls
Image: planetwrite
Literally. Flickr user planetwrite of Ocala, FL used his laser engraver to draw Rick Astley’s image on dinner rolls. | Link via Urlesque
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Winston Churchill Motivational Posters
The Art of Manliness blog has an excellent post turning the wits of Winston Churchill into stylish motivational posters.
I'd like to see Brett and Kate McKay of AoM Blog turn these favorite Churchill quotes of mine into a poster:
Bessie Braddock: Sir, you are drunk.
Churchill: And you, madam, are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober.
and
Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if I were your wife, I'd poison your tea.
Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it.
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10 Most Useful Online Tools
The web is full of online tools, but I bet that you just use a handful of them every day. Indeed, the hardest thing about using online tools is finding them – sometimes you have to wade through a lot of mediocre tools to find the one that suits your need.
Well, here’s my list – a set of 10 online tools that I use daily (or almost daily) to blog. For example:
Ta-Da is a very useful, easy to use – and best of all, free – online to-do list by the folks at 37signals. I use it every day to jot down tasks and ideas. You can even share your list with other people or make it public.
Link: 10 Most Useful Online Tools Ever! over at Cluebert.
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Draw A Photo Masterpiece With PhotoSketch
PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.
Designed by a team at the National University of Singapore, PhotoSketch is the latest and greatest in image creation systems. The full description of how it works can be found here, but the basic process is this:
Draw a basic object, name it and repeat this for any other objects you want in your picture, then name the background. PhotoSketch then searches the Internet for images that match the descriptions given, and after a bit of sorting out, you have all the elements necessary for seamless stitching. The possibilities seem endless. Check out the video!
This is getting so much buzz, the link is down as of 10/06/2009 1945 hrs EST.
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