Archive Category: Blog & Internet
World Superhero Registry
Ever wanted to be a superhero? What’s stopping you? Here’s a list of real life superheroes - people who don costumes and fight crime/do good as listed in the World Superhero Registry (yes, a website dedicated to finding these people).
Take, for instance, the Red Arrow, a 20-year-old guy in Hong Kong who tries to "bring happiness to people and become the salt and light of the world" by handing out toys to poor children.

… or Superbarrio Gómez, a Mexican "real-life superhero" who wears red tights and a Lucha Libre wrestler’s mask to organize rallies and protests and file petitions against forced evictions in Mexico:

For more real-life superheroes, check out the World Superhero Registry | Post at the Laughing Squid - via Rue The Day
Food Radio

Following a friend’s suggestion, Jonathan Ryan made a Pandora station with artists and bands with foods in their names. Here’s the result: Food Radio - via JonathanRyan
PostSecrets Through History
As most of you Neatoramanauts know, PostSecret is an ongoing community mail art project in which the public mail their secrets anonymously on handmade postcards.
This is a collection of PostSecret submissions as if they were done by famous people throughout history.
From the Upcoming
ueue, submitted by CheeseDuck.
You Can’t Please Everyone
Chris of Cynical-C blog has a nifty series called You Can’t Please Everyone. In it, he collects one-star Amazon reviews of classic movies, music, and literature.
Take, for instance, The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews. The movie won 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture in 1965. Adjusted for inflation, it made more than $1 billion in earnings since it was made … yet, even it can’t please everyone:
This movie was made in the sixties, we live in the 21st century, GET OVER IT!
I loved it when I was ten, but I think I’ve out grown it
When I see garbage like this, I finally understand what is wrong with the world. I watched this movie on a dare and was absolutely mortified!!!!! I would have given it negative stars if I could have. As an animal lover and vegetarian, I was especially offended!!! Anyone who is a fan of this series should run, not walk to the nearest Psychiatrist. You are in desperate need of having your head examined. And we as a society wonder why violence and seriel killers have become a part of daily life. Well, ladies and gentlemen I present to you Exhibit A…….
This movie should be called the Sound of Mucus. The only redeeming quality is that the family has to run from nazis.
See more of Cynical-C’s You Can’t Please Everyone series: Link - via kottke
YooouuuTuuube

Make a YouTube video into a multiframe presentation with YooouuuTuuube. Enter the video’s URL and set your specifications, than watch your creation. Here’s an example, using a song Neatorama readers may remember. Link -via Metafilter
BuzzFeed on Neatorama
W00t! I’m happy to tell you that we’ve just started a new partnership with BuzzFeed, one of the neatest websites on the Web about, well, things going ’round the Web.
I’m sure plenty of you have gone over to visit Buzzfeed, but for those who haven’t, it is a website dedicated to things that have gone or will go viral (heck, it’s tagline is "the viral Web in realtime." I don’t know how they do it, but Buzzfeed is consistently in the leading edge of what’s hot on the Intertubes.
You can see what’s going on over at Buzzfeed on Neatorama with the widget on the blog’s navigation sidebar. And in the near future, I hope you’ll start seeing more on Neatorama’s content on BuzzFeed, cuz we’d like to be BFFWBF (Best Friends Forever With BuzzFeed - see what I did there?)
Link - Thanks Eric!
Google Street View of a Man Walking His Boa Constrictor

Google Maps: Link
You’d walk your pet dog, so why not a pet boa constrictor? That’s exactly what Leon Kidd, 25, did when he got his pic snapped by Google Street View. Thank goodness, Telegraph was there:
Leon Kidd, 25, who has five snakes, was photographed with his 10ft red-tailed boa Nibblez as he carried her along Clarkson Road in North Earlham, Norwich, last summer.
Mr Kidd, who lives in nearby Gentry Place, said he goes out for walks with the female boa almost every day in the summer.
Despite her size and appearance Nibblez loves the outdoors and sliding around in the grass at Earlham Park.
10 Things You Didn’t Know About Emoticons :)
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Surely you've used emoticons before, or at least encountered them while surfing the Intertubes, but did you know that they've been around since the 1800s? Or that a computer scientist came up with the smiley emoticon? Here are 10 Things You Didn't Know About Emoticons: 1. The Oldest Emoticons
The first emoticons were published on March 30, 1881 by (the now defunct) US satirical magazine Puck. If you want to read that edition, Wikimedia has the scan: Link 2. The Abraham Lincoln EmoticonIn 2004, a team from the digital archival company Proquest stumbled across what could be an even older example of an emoticon in print ... in the transcription of a 1862 speech by President Lincoln, no less!
A flurry of "yes, that's an emoticon" and "no, that's a typo, you dufus" by emoticon experts quickly ensued. NY Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee has the story: Link And if you were wondering, yes "8" is Jennifer's middle name. She was born without a middle name, and chose "8" as a teenager because of the ubiquity of her first name. 3. The First Internet Emoticon
Since then, Fahlman is known as the "father of the smiley." Links: Transcript of the posts (as retrieved from a backup tape by Jeff Baird in 2002) | The Smiley :-) Lore 4. Western vs. Eastern EmoticonsLike hip hop, emoticons have geographical styles; there are western emoticons and eastern emoticons. Western ones are read sideways (from left to right) whereas eastern style emoticons are read upright. It's easier to explain with examples:
5. Emoticon StatisticsIn 2007, a Yahoo! surveyed 40,000 Yahoo! Messenger users and found that 82% of them used emoticons in their IM conversations. 83% said that "happiness" and "flirting" are the two emotions (flirting is an emotion?) they expressed most by using emoticons. 57% said that they would rather tell a "crush" their true feelings with emoticons rather than - gasp - words. Yahoo! Messenger users are pretty dedicated to their emoticons: 66% of them had memorized the text characters for 3 or more emoticons. 19% of them had memorized more than 10. (Source) 6. Evolution of EmoticonsDriven by instant messaging programs like Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AIM and ICQ, emoticons quickly evolved from text smileys into more complex, animated graphics. Yahoo! Messenger even got a set of "hidden" emoticons that you won't find in the menu, but can be "activated" by typing the keyboard shortcuts:
Even Gmail got in the game - they added "emoji" (Japanese for graphical emoticons). If you want them for your Gmail account, simply go to Settings > Labs, then enable "Extra Emoji."
7.Assicons & BoobieconsSince emoticons are so great, why limit oneself to faces? Thus assicons* and boobiecons were born. Examples, my friends, are warranted - strictly in the name of science, mind you (source).
There is also the elusive penicon. You can guess what that is all about. If you're interested (naughty!) you can Google that yourself, mmkay? *Indian readers beware: the salacious assicon above is not to be confused with ASSICON, or the unfortunately named Annual Conference of Association of Spine Surgeons of India (ASSI). 8. Trademarking the EmoticonIn 2000, Despair Inc., the company that came up with the witty "de-motivational" products, trademarked :-( or the frowny emoticon. Despite the tongue-in-cheek nature of the mock press release (Despair's COO Dr. E.L. Kersten threatened to sue 7 million individual Internet users who have used the frowny emoticon in emails), the company got a lot of real flack. Not to be outdone, Russian entrepreneur Oleg Teterin decided to trademark ;-) or the wink emoticon in Russia. In an television interview, Oleg said:
9. Driving LED EMoticon
Think that you can only use emoticons on the Intertubes? Think again!
Here's a battery powered LED emoticon for your car, so you can tell the
people stuck behind you how you really feel: Link
10. Emoticonman
This one to the left is his impression of the wink emoticon. You can see a whole lot more at his website: Link Bonus: LOLcat EmoticonsWhat do you get when you combine emoticons with the LOLcat meme? This awesomeness below, of course!
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YouTube Helps Man Deliver Baby
Jo Stephens of Cornwall had planned a home birth, but when her labor pains started, no midwife could come. And the ambulance wasn’t going to make it in time, either. Luckily, her husband Marc had been watching YouTube videos just hours before on how to deliver a baby.
A few hours earlier, Mr Stephens has been reading up on home births and how to cope with anything unexpected.
“The videos gave me peace of mind. I think I would have coped, but watching videos made things much easier.”
The Stephens delivered a 5 pound, 5 ounce boy they named Gabriel. Both mother and child were later taken to a hospital where they were pronounced healthy. Link -via Gizmodo
Reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula In Real Time
Today marks the first day in the year (May 3rd) of what would be Jonathan Harker’s journal. Dracula Feed has started an experiment of blogging Jonathan’s journal in "real time", publishing each journal entry the day it would have happened.
Experience Bram Stoker’s Dracula in a new way — in real time. Dracula is an epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of letters or diary entries,) and this blog will publish each diary entry on the day that it was written by the narrator so that the audience may experience the drama as the characters would have.
From the Upcoming
ueue, submitted by MonkeyDay.
Social Media Blues by Scott Rodgers
In this little country ditty, Social Media Blues, Scott Rodgers described his futile attempt of getting the attention of a girl through web 2.0 shenanigans.
Twitterphobics: don’t watch it, it’ll just make you mad! Link [embedded YouTube clip]
Neatorama’s Facebook Fan Page
Because I’m not Facebook savvy, Neatoramanaut Becky took charge and created a Neatorama Fan page on the popular website: Link
Be sure to go there and do whatever you Facebookers do on such a page (what do you do on such a page anyways?) Now, maybe we can take care of that Twitter thingy (who owns that anyhow?) - Thanks Becky!
The Facebook Revenge
When "Valeria A." caught her fiancé fondling another girl’s boobs on Facebook a few days before their wedding, she decided to get even, guerilla-style!
She and a pal printed and stuck up hundreds of posters at train stations and office blocks around the city where her fiance and their friends work.
A picture - taken from Antonio’s Facebook profile - shows him nestling his head between a girl’s naked boobs.
"Thank goodness there’s Facebook! At least I’ve disovered you’re a traitor pig before the wedding! Signed, your former betrothed bride and the 548 guests of our wedding," wrote Valeria, 28.
Link (Photo: EuroPics)
The World’s Most Influential Person
TIME magazine has announced the winner of their World’s Most Influential Person poll.
In a stunning result, the winner of the third annual TIME 100 poll, and new owner of the title world’s most influential person, is Moot. The 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, whose real name is Christopher Poole, received 16,794,368 votes and an average influence rating of 90 (out of a possible 100) to handily beat the likes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Oprah Winfrey. To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective, it’s worth noting that everyone Moot beat out actually has a job.
First Interspecies Internet Chat
Eleven years ago today, Koko the gorilla used American Sign Language to communicate with her fans via AOL chat. It was the first known interspecies chat on the internet.
Roughly 8,000 AOL subscribers joined the chat, which featured Koko, who signed her answers; Patterson, who interpreted them; and an AOL chat facilitator.
As the transcript clearly shows, Koko’s responses were a bit vague, but no more inane than some of the drivel littering Facebook pages these days.
Also check out Koko’s website, which includes a transcript of the AOL chat. (Thank, Gauldar!)
Are 2 Million People in America Professional Bloggers?
Leaving aside the Neatorama Civil War, I thought that I’d turn our attention to a controversial article by Mark Penn.
In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters [...] For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work; are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America’s Newest Profession.
I’m incredibly skeptical of the 2 million number, but Penn has provided a follow-up explaining his methodology. Here at the Neatorama corporate HQ compound, we certainly don’t anything approaching that number of pro bloggers. We do have a ridiculously high number of Blackwater contractors, but Alex insists that such security is necessary for “Stage 3″, whatever that is.
Link via Instapundit
Image via flickr user alexanderljung
If Twitter Were Human, What Kind of a Person Would It Be?
If Twitter were human, what kind of a person would it be? And, more importantly, would you befriend such a person? Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum has an opinion about what she dubbed the "Age of Oversharing":
… at the risk of unilaterally offending 14 million people, I need to say this: If Twitter were a person, it would be an emotionally unstable person. It would be that person we avoid at parties and whose calls we don’t pick up. It would be the person whose willingness to confide in us at first seems intriguing and flattering but eventually makes us feel kind of gross because the friendship is unearned and the confidence is unjustified. The human incarnation of Twitter, in other words, is the person we all feel sorry for, the person we suspect might be a bit mentally ill, the tragic oversharer.
… as Twitter’s popularity wobbles at the tipping point between faddish distraction and worldwide obsession, it’s worth wondering how much of this "connecting" is simply hastening the erosion of our already compromised interpersonal skills. Are we tweeting because we truly want to communicate with a select group of true friends, or because typing has replaced talking and indiscretion has been stripped of all negative connotations? Are most Twitter posts merely inane, or do they carry the faint whiff of the insane?
My First Dictionary

Librarian Ross Horsley has a blog in which he enters words for children to learn. However, letting your children see these definitions may destroy their childhood. Link -via b3ta
Make Yourself an NPR Name
Liana Maeby [pictured at left] is a blogger who’s fascinated by the complex and memorable names of the correspondents on National Public Radio: Renee Montagne, Korva Coleman, Lakshmi Singh, Sylvia Poggioli, Corey Flintoff. How cool would it be to have a name like that?
Liana and her boyfriend Eric decided to try it out by devising a formula for creating their own custom-designed NPR names. The rules are simple; here’s how it works:
"You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited."
So Liana is now Liarna Kassel, and Eric is Jeric Bath.
Lots of folks on Twitter devised funny NPR names for themselves, like Pamelda Fondo, Stefsan Swakopmund and Marmilyn Zug.
NPR’s Monkey See blog caught wind of the game and invited readers to leave their NPR names in the comments. 164 people did, but a lot of them just aren’t that good.
I’m convinced that Neatorama readers can come up with better NPR names. Wanna try?
From the Upcoming
ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
Dead Pixel in Google Earth
Dutch conceptual artist Helmut Smits (blogged before on Neatorama here) came up with this idea: a "Dead Pixel" in Google Earth that is actually 82 cm x 82 cm (~ 2¾ sq. ft.) square of scorched earth - the size of a pixel from the altitude of 1 km!
From the Upcoming
ueue, submitted by mikolka.
Using the Upcoming Queue: Instructable
If you’re confounded by Neatorama’s Upcoming Queue and can’t make heads or tails out of the submission process, Instructable user DIYJosh has got you covered.
Here’s the step-by-step instruction on how to use the Upcoming Queue feature of the blog, in the typical Instructable way:
In this instructable I will outline the steps to get started using the Upcoming Queue along with some common mistakes that keep your post from reaching the front page.
From the Upcoming
ueue, submitted by StuckeyJ.
The Twittering Office Chair
Instructable user randofo outfitted his office chair with a gas detection sensor, then programmed it to publish updates on Twitter whenever a fart is detected! “Office Chair” now has 2,395 followers on Twitter. Here is a sample of the results:
# I wish I were some other chair
about 15 hours ago from web# He farted right on me again
about 17 hours ago from web# allow me to repeat… ppppfffffffffftttttttttttt
about 18 hours ago from web# Ugh. That was a gross one
about 18 hours ago from web
Link to instructions. Link to Twitter feed. -Thanks, Emily Farris!
What Type of Web Commenter Are You?
I’m amazed at the different reactions we get from the variety of posts here at Neatorama. Some items have no comments at all; others have discussions that go on for days. The same thing happens at the Neatorama forums and in the Upcoming Queue section. Some discussions are overwhelmingly positive or negative, others feature a lot of differing opinions, and some veer off-topic into something completely different. What kind of web commenter are you? Veteran journalist Michael Malone takes a look at the different types of commenters.
The Troll — Everyone knows this guy (and it’s usually a guy), who intentionally visits sites in order to stir things up, provoke a furious reaction from other posters and then disappear. Classic examples are the Free Republic types who visit Daily Kos and vice versa.
The Skimmer — The commenter, usually sour, who reads only a headline or sentence of a piece, draws exactly the wrong conclusion, and then embarks on an embarrassing rant.
The Kumbaya — These folks always show up two-thirds of the way through any heated on-line debate and ask, “Why can’t we all just get along?” They are inevitably ignored or trashed.
The Parser — What would we do without the Internet Grammar Police? These folks assiduously correct the online writings of others — never quite catching on that the Web is designed to be fast, fresh and sloppy.
There are a couple of dozen types identified altogether. Link -via Geek Like Me
(image credit: ABC News)
2 Photographers: 365 Days of Random Pairings
Josh and Nina are two friends. Every day, they each take a photo. Operating under a pact of absolute secrecy, neither knows what the other is working on. Each morning, they post their photos on MintyForest side by side. The results are often surprising — not least to the photographers themselves.
They have just completed their one year project goal with 365 daily random pairings - some of the combinations are beautiful, some are funny, some are absurd, all are lovely and visually engaging…
An experiment in blind-collaboration, the coupled images of the MintyForest project are explorations of both creative and personal synchronicity — as subject matter, color palette, and technique are compared and contrasted anew with each day. (It’s also an excuse for Josh and Nina to use their shiny new cameras more often.)
From the Upcoming
ueue, submitted by jshayne.
Google Car Pulled Over by the Cops - Now in Google Street View!

Remember the story sent by Neatorama reader Chris Whiteoak about Google Street View Car in Bradford, England, that got pulled over by the police? Well, the street view has been released for UK, and Chris noticed that the entire drama was caught on the all-seeing Google’s cam!
Chris walking down the street just before he noticed the police car up the road (pan left to see it in the distance) | Police in pursuit, picking up a fellow policeman | Police pulling over the Google Street View Car
Thanks Chris!
Update 4/7/09 - Seems like this story went everywhere! Besides being featured on Digg’s front page, Chris told us that a few newspapers also picked it up. Here are the articles on The Sun, The Telegraph and Argus, Daily Mail, and Metro. Of course, none of these fine newspaper even mentioned Neatorama
Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing Spurs Productivity
Next time your boss catches you reading Neatorama instead of what your job description specifies, tell him/her about this study from the University of Melbourne.
Dr Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t.
“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says.
“Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that’s not always the case.”
(image credit: Flickr use Valerie Reneé)
Around the World in 80 Telescopes
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, Germany presents a 24-hour webcast involving astronomical observatories around the world. Live streaming video will be available, plus links for each participating observatory and the times they will be online in Universal Time (GMT). The webcasts will start Friday morning at 5AM Eastern Daylight Time, or 9AM UT/GMT with the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, then move around the world. The webcast is part of the 100 Hours of Astronomy project to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy. Link -via Metafilter
(image credit: Gemini North Observatory)
Dogs Looking Like People

There are dogs … then there are dogs looking like people. And of course, there are blogs that blog about dogs looking like people: Link
Super Punch Blogging Secrets
Our very own John Struan, who blogs at Super Punch, wrote a very neat article summarizing the secrets of his blogging success.
3. Give more than you expect to receive
Every selfish move I made failed. As I’ve explained, I tried posting spammy comments and begging for links. It got me nowhere. But what worked extremely well was trying to help other people. I recommended countless tips to other sites. Now, this didn’t help me directly or quickly. Many sites would post my suggestion and thank me, but not even offer a link. Other sites would credit me with a "via," but I’ve learned over the years that "vias" drive no traffic at all, even when they come from the biggest websites.
However, "vias" helped in two ways. First, they improved my site’s status in Google’s eyes, and thus increased the chance someone would find me accidentally via a web search. Second, vias directed a few visitors to my site, typically other bloggers who were looking for new sources. Those bloggers then started linking to me with more vias, further improving my site’s status. Also, every once in a long while, a site I’d helped would drive traffic to me in thanks. I stuck with it, and it all started to snowball.
As you probably know, John is a blogger here on Neatorama (as he mentioned in the article), so let me add three additional things that I think contributed greatly to his success: 1) John has a keen eye in finding neat stuff in his area of expertise (custom toys, pop culture); 2) he has integrity; and 3) he blogs about what he’s passionate about (it shows in his blogging style). I know that he’s an authority on the subject, and if I have a question about custom toy, he’ll be the first guy I’ll ask.
Previously on Neatorama: The Secret of Neatorama’s Success
100 Ways to Kill a Peep
Like its name said, 100 Ways to Kill a Peep blog is dedicated to documenting the creative ways to kill the marshmallow candies.
So far they’ve got about a dozen and a half or so, but I have no doubt they’ll reach 100 soon.
Link - via Rue The Day!
On
September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Scott
Fahlman introduced the very first sideway smiley on an online message
board to distinguish serious posts from jokes. 
If
emoticons are expressions of emotions put in simple text format, what
is the reverse process? New Jersey-based multimedia artist Dan Wade takes
emoticons and "emote" them out ...







