Archive Category: Blog & Internet

Fantastic Global Street Art

Posted by Jill Harness in Arts & Crafts, Blog & Internet, Travel & Places on January 7, 2009 at 9:13 pm

Good Magazine has a fantastic gallery of some of the best street art in the world. Some are sculptures and some are murals. The site paired up with Wooster Collective, a street art blog that has some great stuff and some just ok sauce.

 
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The Customer is Not Always Right

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet on January 7, 2009 at 6:51 pm


As a former retail employee, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. And so do the people at NotAlwaysRight. I only wish I knew of this site when I actually worked retail - I could have contributed so many good stories. But there are some really funny ones even without my additions. Here’s one - it was online chat assistance, which is going to be relevant later in the story:

Customer: “Your site won’t let me get through!”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. Could you tell me what part of the site you were having an issue with?”

Customer: “It keeps telling me that I have the wrong password. I have my password!”

(I look up her password and use it on the site to make sure it
works.)

Me: “I have tested your password and it appears to be working. Would you like me to send you an e-mail with a copy of your password?”

Customer: “NO! I have my password! It says it right here on the screen, and I typed it just like it says.”

Me: *slightly confused as to why the customer’s password would be displayed* “What password do you see on the screen?”

Customer: “cAsE sEnsitIve! I typed it the exact way that it says here! ‘Your password is cAsE sEnsitIve’!”

Link [Edit 1/11/09 - delinked because of possible virus in the website. If you still want to visit, it's notalwaysright.com. You've been warned]

 
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Five Celebrity Wikipedia Entries They Clearly Wrote Themselves

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet on January 6, 2009 at 11:35 pm

I have to say, Cracked.com nailed this one. I grew up loving Corey Feldman. My cousins and I used to fight over who would get to marry him someday (thank God I lost that one, I guess). But even I have to admit his career is less than stellar at the moment. However, the “anonymous” person who wrote this section of his Wikipedia entry begs to differ:

“In November of 2008 he released his most ambitious musical project to date, a new album with his band Truth Movement entitled Technology Analogy. This high concept album has been met with tremendous reviews, and features an all-star line up, including Jon Carin (Pink Floyd), Mark Karan (Rat Dog, Grateful Dead) Scotty Page (Pink Floyd), and artwork by the legendary artist Storm Thorgerson. To order his album check out his website at www.coreyfeldman.net”

Aw… yeah. Cracked has also outed Bruce Willis, Hulk Hogan, Paul Stanley and William Shatner as the authors of their own Wikipedia entries. And maybe the entries were written by lackeys or overzealous fans, but the article is funny either way.

Link

 
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Vintage Cereal Boxes

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet, Food & Drinks on January 6, 2009 at 8:10 pm

Nostalgic for your childhood? No doubt The Imaginary World’s vintage cereal box gallery will conjure up images of Saturday morning cartoons and massive sugar rushes. And even if you were more of the oatmeal type, some of the boxes are at least pretty interesting to look at. Does anyone remember Sir Grapefellow cereal? I’ve never heard of it, but “grape flavored oat cereal” doesn’t sound too appealing to me. And be sure to check out “Grins and Smiles and Giggles and Laughs.”

Link via Slashfood via lemondrop.

 
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2008 Weblog Awards

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on January 6, 2009 at 7:40 am

Congratulations to many of our friends in the blogosphere for being the finalists for the 2008 Weblog Awards.

Go forth and vote! (Did I miss anyone?)

 
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Watch Wal-Mart Take Over America

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet on January 5, 2009 at 7:58 pm

This animation just confirms what I already knew: Wal-Mart is sweeping the nation like an unstoppable virus. It’s pretty amazing to see how the company has exploded across the States since 1965. Click on the link to see it go from one dot (one store), to a few dots, to several dots, to a handful to dots, to complete domination.

Link via DarkRoastedBlend

 
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The Horror: Your Parents on Facebook, Befriending You

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on January 4, 2009 at 11:54 am

The growing popularity of Facebook has an unintended consequences for young people who used to have the social networking website all to themselves: their parents are joining and befriending them!

The Facebook group entitled "For the love of god — don’t let parents join Facebook" has 5,819 high school and college-aged members who want to stop the growing number of parents who are joining Facebook, the massively popular social networking site, from "spying" on them. [...]

"It’s really weird that nonstudents and parents use Facebook," said Emma Gaines, a Tufts University sophomore. "It makes me feel really uncomfortable that my older aunt has Facebook, because she says that she likes to check up on her teenage nieces and nephews and takes our pictures for her own use. That’s creepy."

Link

 
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2% Wikipediaholics Account for 73.4% of All Wikipedia Edits

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on January 4, 2009 at 1:45 am

Wikipedia bills itself as the free online encyclopedia anyone can edit. And while indeed that is true, do you ever wonder who does the bulk of the work? Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia has the surprising answer:

Wales decided to run a simple study to find out: he counted who made the most edits to the site. "I expected to find something like an 80-20 rule: 80% of the work being done by 20% of the users, just because that seems to come up a lot. But it’s actually much, much tighter than that: it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users … 524 people. … And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from "people who [are] contributing … a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix … or something like that."

Aaron Swartz of Raw Thought has the full story: Link - via Silicon Alley Insider

 
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Wanna Buy The Big Bopper’s Casket?

Posted by Jill Harness in Blog & Internet, Everything Else, Music, Odd News on January 3, 2009 at 1:33 pm

If your goal in life is to own the most tasteless rock memorabilia, then you best be heading to eBay soon. The Big Bopper was moved to a new casket recently and that means his previously used casket is now up for sale on the internet.

The casket is in good condition, having some minor rust damage and a little lime sentiment that shows water once entered the outside vault, although it seems the interior never suffered water damaged.

If you’d like to see the item in person before you place a bid, it is currently on display in the Texas Musicians Museum.

Link Via BoingBoing

 
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Finding Line Drawing Using Google Image Search

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on January 3, 2009 at 3:05 am

Maybe my Google-fu isn’t as strong as yours, so I’ve just found out that you can find nifty things like line drawings, faces, and clip arts in Google Images!

Here’s what you’ll find if you look for line drawings of "Neatorama": Link - via Chris Glass

 
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In a Public Space

Posted by Stacy in Arts & Crafts, Blog & Internet on December 30, 2008 at 6:39 pm

In a Public Space is a website/collaborative art project where people are invited to leave strange objects in random public spaces (this bullhorn to the left was deposited in a library). Then people write in with a picture of their object and the location they left it. I think it’s pretty interesting - you know you’ve found things before and wondered, “How did that get there?” Next time that happens, I’ll wonder not only how it got there, but if it was part of a collaborative art project.

Link via Dark Roasted Blend

 
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Celebrities are Clowns… No, Really

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet on December 29, 2008 at 11:12 pm

I am horribly, terribly scared of clowns (and people dressed up in costumes or masks that obscure their faces, for that matter), but even I find this contest on Worth 1000 interesting. The contest lets people with wicked Photoshop skills put their techniques to the test with regular challenges. This one is to give the celebrity of their choice a Ringling-style makeover.

The one here is by Worth1000 submitter SassyDeb, and in case the grease paint threw you, it’s Hugh Laurie from House.

Here’s the whole gallery, but you can also find previous incarnations of this particular challenge here.

 
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Ashleigh Brilliant’s Pot-Shots

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet, Book & Lit on December 29, 2008 at 2:21 pm

For the past 40 years, Ashleigh Brilliant has been making these wonderful "Pot-Shots," combining his marvelous wit with brevity (all are 17 words or less). He has over 10,000 illustrated epigrams that you can view on his website or buy as postcards or CD

Go check it out - they’re wonderful! Link - Thanks Strange de Jim!

 
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Scouting New York

Posted by Miss Cellania in Architecture, Blog & Internet on December 27, 2008 at 8:30 am


Scouting New York is an occupation blog that’s also a gorgeous photoblog.

I work as a film location scout in New York City. My day is basically spent combing the streets for interesting and unique locations for feature films. In my travels, I often stumble across some pretty incredible sights, most of which are ignored every day by thousands of New Yorkers in too much of a rush to pay attention.

As it happens, it’s my job to pay attention, and I’ve started this blog to keep a record of what I see.

Not only does he record interesting locations in photographs, he also researches the architecture and other details for your edification and enjoyment. One post has several closeups of this building, which features gargoyles and other embellishments that are not visible from the ground. Link -via Metafilter

 
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People Who Deserve It Blog

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on December 26, 2008 at 2:02 pm

People Who Deserve It is a theme blog dedicated to documenting the types of people who deserves a good punch in the face (I think they mean metaphorically or at least I hope they do!). To wit, this annoying character type, The Self-Important Bluetooth Guy:

Hey there buddy, I see you got one of those fancy cyborg ear attachments for your cell phone, you must be pretty important?

No?

Oh, of course you’re not, you’re not even on the phone right now, instead your just walking around with a blinking light in your ear like a metro-sexual robot.

Honestly, unless you’re police dispatch, or air traffic control, there is no way you’re getting enough calls to justify sporting that glorified techno-earring 24/7. So do us all a favor take that “thing” out of your ear and rejoin regular society.

Otherwise, it’s open season, and our fist-to-face connection is one call that always goes through. Can you hear us now?

Link - via Urlesque

 
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Coolest Book Covers of 2008

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet, Book & Lit on December 22, 2008 at 11:35 pm

Readerville Journal has been picking the coolest and most clever book covers since 2000; here’s this year’s installment. Did your favorite book make the list? I haven’t actually read any of the books on the list, but I’m really partial to the Ravens in the Storm cover (it’s the first one on the list).

Link via BoingBoing

 
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The People Behind Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on December 21, 2008 at 1:18 pm

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a web service that lets you assign tasks to human workers in exchange for payments. It is named after The Turk, a chess playing automaton made by Wolfgang von Kempelen in the late 1700s (it turned out that a chess master was hiding inside the machine).

Andy Baio of Waxy was curious to see what exactly the Amazon Mechanical Turk looks like, so naturally he started a new Turk experiment to answer two questions: what do these people look like, and how much does it cost for someone to reveal their face?

Here are his answers, #1:

And #2: about $0.50

Link

 
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Tongues Are Gross

Posted by Jill Harness in Animal, Blog & Internet, Pictures on December 18, 2008 at 3:50 am

There’s been an abundance of cute on the web, particularly lately. At least one site aims to counter this movement, and that is Ugly Overload. I’ve been waiting for a great post to share, and this quick collection of tongues is just what the doctor ordered…although, I have to say, I still find the giraffe tongue to be quite cute.

Link

 
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Cute Things Falling Asleep

Posted by Jill Harness in Animal, Blog & Internet, Video Clips on December 18, 2008 at 1:38 am

Cute Things Falling Asleep is yet another adorable animal blog, this one exclusively posts videos of its namesake. I’ve gotta say, this one is even a bit too cute for me, but I couldn’t resist this adorable sloth video.

Video Link

 
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Twingly Top 100 Blogs

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on December 16, 2008 at 2:45 pm

Twingly, the spam-free Swedish blog search engine, has released its list of the Top 100 blogs in the world and Neatorama made it! (We’re no. 35)

Twingly groups the blogs it follows by language - so if you don’t write in English, you can still find out how you rank against other blogs in the same language. Another interesting thing that Twingly has is BlogRank, which is sort of like Google PageRank, but for blogs.

Link - Thanks Anton Johansson!

 
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So You Wanna Blog …

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet, Neatorama Only on December 15, 2008 at 6:00 pm

To kick start the new Neatorama forum, I’ve written a little how-to guide on blogging for those of you who want to know the secret of Neatorama’s success:

So you want to blog. Perhaps you’re worried about your job security, or perhaps you just want an extra source of income in these bad economic times. Blogging is fun - and it can be profitable, if you know what you’re doing.

In the first of what I hope is a series of forum posts about blogging, I’d like to give back to the readers of Neatorama. If you want to blog, you don’t have to buy an eBook that promises to tell you the secret of making money online. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from three years of blogging - what I think I did right and wrong. In a nutshell, I’ll tell you the secrets of Neatorama’s growth and success.

In this article, I’m going to assume two things: you’ve never blogged before (but you want to try) and you want to blog for fun and profit.

I hope you like it - if it’s popular, I’ll post more: Link

(Chart: Time to Look Busy by Jessica Hagy of Indexed)

(Comments are closed here, but open at the Forum)

 
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Neatorama/ViewBug Challenge Winner

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet, Neatorama Only on December 15, 2008 at 1:17 am


Photo: cages [ViewBug]

A while ago, we announced a collaboration with View Bug: a challenge to upload the neatest or weirdest thing about your hometown. Well, the winner has just been selected. Congratulations to cages, who won $300 in prize (now wasn’t that easy?)

Link - Thanks Ori!

 
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Puzzle Game Toilet Paper Dispenser

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet, Home & Garden on December 13, 2008 at 10:58 am

I imagine this puzzle game would be funny for about 10 seconds, and then your friends are going to start yelling for some TP… or they will put your guest towels to ingenious use, as John Brownlee from BoingBoing Gadgets puts it.

Via BoingBoing Gadgets.

 
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The Most Shocking PSAs Ever

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet on December 13, 2008 at 12:20 am

We all remember the “This is your brain on drugs” public service announcement with the frying pan and the egg, but that’s pretty mild compared to some of the PSAs compiled by PopCrunch. Click the link and you’ll be warned about everything from eating foie gras to using meth to stopping land mines. Warning - some of the videos are rather graphic.

 
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2008 Urlies: Meme of the Year

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on December 12, 2008 at 4:30 am

To celebrate/honor/make fun of everything that happened on the Web in 2008, the staff at Urlesque blog made their own award (now that’s a neat idea!), the 2008 Urlies.

One of the funnest categories is the Meme of the Year. This year, "Fail" scored an Epic Win at the Urlies …

As far as memes are concerned, it was the year of FAIL. Sure, the four-letter word has been trolling around the web in various forms for years, but as countless image macros fueled the fire and everyone added the catchphrase to their vocabularies this year, writers were sparked to write lengthy pieces about the phenomenon — thus instigating a complete FAIL overload. Oh the irony.

And yes, Neatorama was nominated for "It" URL: Site of the Year, but we lost out to one of the neatest websites around today and one of my own personal favorites, Buzzfeed.

Link

 
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Emoticarolers

Posted by Alex in Advertising, Blog & Internet on December 11, 2008 at 8:40 pm

Barrett Haroldson of Colle+McVoy ad agency worked on Yahoo! Messenger’s newest microsite: Emoticarolers, where you can "compose" your own Christmas ditty to be sung by four emoticons sent to the digital doorsteps of your family and friends.

Here’s the Neatorama Emoticarollers: Link [Flash] - Thanks Barrett!

BTW, I just found out that Colle+McVoy has worked on quite few interesting microsites featured previously on Neatorama, including the Human Flipbook, Candle Cannon and Yearbook Yourself.

 
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The Google Street View Prank

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet, Travel & Places on December 11, 2008 at 2:07 am

When Ben Kinsley and Robin Hewlett of Carnegie Mellon University found out that Google Street View is coming to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the duo arranged a more "interesting" view of the street: they staged a marathon, a parade, a mad-scientist laboratory, and even a sword fight!

National Geographic Magazine’s Intelligent Travel Blog has the story: Link [with embedded YouTube clip] | The Google Street View of Sampsonia Way - Thanks Marilyn!

 
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Google Zeitgeist 2008

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on December 10, 2008 at 2:54 pm

We posted about Yahoo’s top searches of 2008 before on Neatorama. Well, Google has just released its 2008 Year-End Zeitgeist, and the results couldn’t be any different.

Here are the highlights from Google searches from around the world in 2008:

1. sarah palin
2. beijing 2008
3. facebook login
4. tuenti
5. heath ledger
6. obama
7. nasza klasa
8. wer kennt wen
9. euro 2008
10. jonas brothers

I had to look up tuenti (a Madrid-based social networking website, referred to many as the "Spanish Facebook"), nasza klasa (a Polish social networking website), and wer kennt wen (ditto, this time for Germans).

Link - Thanks Justin!

 
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Test Your Geography Skills

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet on December 10, 2008 at 10:03 am

Geosense is so addicting. It names a specific location, such as Analava, Madagascar, or Wonju, Korea. Then you have to find it on the world map.

It turns out that I am severely lacking in my knowledge of geography. If you’re confident, though, you can go head-to-head with strangers to see if you know more than they do (there’s also a “Play Alone” option). Good luck!

 
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An Interactive Guide to The Simpsons’ Springfield

Posted by Stacy in Blog & Internet, Everything Else on December 9, 2008 at 9:11 pm


This is amazing! It’s an interactive map of Springfield that a fan put together. Click anywhere on the map to zoom in - the black text represents retail stores and the pink text represents restaurants. If you hover your mouse over the green boxes, you can view a screen cap of that particular building.

I can’t imagine the time it must have taken to put this together! Even if you don’t care that much about the map itself, it’s worth it just to go through and read the clever names of some of the establishments - the Texas Cheesecake Depository cracks me up.

Link via Instructables.

 
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