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Matthew Inman at The oatmeal has published his “State of the Web” post for spring 2012. He addresses G+, Instagram, Yahoo, Valve, and other web subjects in the news, in his own particular way. Some text is NSFW. Link -via Laughing Squid
Previously: The State of the Web Summer 2011
There is no texting on my family phone service. Not only do I want to avoid paying for it, I also want to encourage my children to talk with people, instead of talking at them, as so many of their friends prefer to do. The new methods of communication we use free us up from the annoyance of having to look at, pay attention to, or listen to other people. Sherry Turkle at the New York Times has also noticed this.
A businessman laments that he no longer has colleagues at work. He doesn’t stop by to talk; he doesn’t call. He says that he doesn’t want to interrupt them. He says they’re “too busy on their e-mail.” But then he pauses and corrects himself. “I’m not telling the truth. I’m the one who doesn’t want to be interrupted. I think I should. But I’d rather just do things on my BlackBerry.”
A 16-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says almost wistfully, “Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.”
In today’s workplace, young people who have grown up fearing conversation show up on the job wearing earphones. Walking through a college library or the campus of a high-tech start-up, one sees the same thing: we are together, but each of us is in our own bubble, furiously connected to keyboards and tiny touch screens. A senior partner at a Boston law firm describes a scene in his office. Young associates lay out their suite of technologies: laptops, iPods and multiple phones. And then they put their earphones on. “Big ones. Like pilots. They turn their desks into cockpits.” With the young lawyers in their cockpits, the office is quiet, a quiet that does not ask to be broken.
In the silence of connection, people are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people — carefully kept at bay. We can’t get enough of one another if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right.
Many young people see the lack of face-to-face conversation as a benefit to the new communication, but as they mature they may realize that as they dispense with listening, their network connections (“friends”) are not listening to them, either. Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)
By Wendy MacNaughton. If you battle your email inbox every day like I do, this article by Katherine Ellison over at Forbes is for you: Link
Geek fashions are pretty popular these days, but these high-fashion dresses based on some of the most popular websites around take the concept to a whole new level. Granted, you probably wouldn’t want to actually wear any of them the way they are right now, but with a few tweaks, most of them would make great formal wear.
Link Via Geekologie
Twenty
five years after he got lost whilst traveling on a train in India, a man
found his mother using the unlikeliest of technology, satellite images.
Here's the incredible story of how Saroo Brierly used Google Earth to reunite with his long lost mother:
Saroo was only five years old when he got lost. He was travelling with his older brother, working as a sweeper on India's trains. "It was late at night. We got off the train, and I was so tired that I just took a seat at a train station, and I ended up falling asleep."
That fateful nap would determine the rest of his life. "I thought my brother would come back and wake me up but when I awoke he was nowhere to be seen. I saw a train in front of me and thought he must be on that train. So I decided to get on it and hoped that I would meet my brother."
Saroo did not meet his brother on the train. Instead, he fell asleep and had a shock when he woke up 14 hours later. Though he did not realise it at first, he had arrived in Calcutta, India's third biggest city and notorious for its slums. [...]
Soon he was sleeping rough. "It was a very scary place to be. I don't think any mother or father would like to have their five year old wandering alone in the slums and trains stations of Calcutta."
No, it’s not about LOL cats per se. Instead it’s about Ben Huh, the genius behind I Can Has Cheezburger, FAIL Blog, Know Your Meme and all those other memetastic sites. The show will be on Bravo and is tentatively called Huh? The show will focus on Huh and his life at work and some of his relationship drama (the two are pretty closely related, given as how his wife is the head editor over at I Can Has Cheezburger.
Link Via Geekosystem
Matthew Inman at The Oatmeal spells it out in plain language for those who couldn’t figure it out any other way. If you know someone like that, you can forward the link to them. Meanwhile, we will look forward to Inman’s love story about cage fighting nuns and tanks. Link
Now that's smart advertising in 140 characters or less: smart Argentina created an ad with ASCII animation in its Twitter page. Each tweet is an animation frame (you can hit "J" on your keyboard to scroll down): Link - via Notcot
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Lynn Peters of Johannesburg, South Africa, sent out a Tweet that her boyfriend had been kidnapped Sunday night. He was put in the trunk of his own car by armed carjackers! However, the unnamed man was able to contact Peters via phone. Her alert sent the Twittersphere into action.
RT they did, including Peters’ friend, Tanisha Reddy. From her it was picked up by well-known SA Twitterer, @pigspotter, who retweeted it to his 100,000-plus followers. @pigspotter specializes in identifying and sharing the location of police roadblocks. The police forces in South Africa have frequently been accused of graft and violence, so it does not seem to be criminals alone who make a point of avoiding roadblocks.
Because @pigspotter’s followers include a large number of private security forces, whose vehicles are spread around the country, the Golf was located. Units were notified and in many cases sent out, each team and company retweeted the specifics of their search and kept each other apprised and informed on Twitter.
@afritrack asked if the car was equipped with electronic tracking (it was not.) A volunteer security group called Riga Rescue offered to track the victim’s cell signal. The security company K9 Security eventually visually identified the car. The kidnappers were ultimately stopped at a police road block in Ventersberg, 150 miles from where he was taken.
The victim was rescued unharmed. The perpetrators fled on foot, and have not yet been apprehended. Link -via Gizmodo
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Now that you can dress up your Facebook page and make it more personal, what do you want to show the world? Kiltak over at Geeks Are Sexy made up a batch of Facebook banners that showcase your favorite science fiction, gaming, and pop culture worlds. You can download and add them to your Facebook page if you like, as long as you credit the original photographer. Check them all out! Link
In 1974, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke told a reporter from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation what computer use would be like in the year 2001. At the time, the technology to link one computer to the next was in its infancy. Clarke could see possibilities far ahead of ability. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Have you ever thought that you could surely strike it rich if you could just come up with the perfect idea for a new startup company? Well, Nonstartr can help with that since it randomly generates ideas for new startups. Of course, there’s no guarantee the idea the site generates will actually be any good, evaluating the ideas is up to you.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Comments Off One thing that wouldn’t change is that people would still send out messages while drunk. Squirrel Monkey created this video showing Twitter though a DOS environment and painfully glaring colors. At his/her site, you can also find 80s versions of Google, Facebook and Angry Birds.
Link -via Blame It on the Voices
The site April Fool’s Day on the Web keeps track of pranks played by websites each year. The list for 2012 is growing by the minute! If you are directed to something that looks too good (or too odd) to be true, it may be listed there already! And if you need some more laughs, check out their archives for internet pranks from previous years. Link
(Image credit: Flicker user Dave Gough)
Comments Off Engineers at Osaka University in Japan have created this robotic hand for use with video chatting, to help people talking to each other online feel more connected.
It’s warm like a human hand, registers grip force, and will be programmed “to harass their colleagues with a constant stream of formal greetings”.
I’m not sure what that means, but it doesn’t really matter either way, because this device looks like the beginning of a strange new world of online arm wrestling matches and *ahem* safe virtual encounters.
Just don’t ask this thing to wash your windows, or you will see a strike sign appear in it’s hand faster than you can say Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto!
–via Engadget
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I’ve been saying this for years now: a major flaw in Facebook’s interface is that it lets you create a friends list, but not an enemies list. Now a plug-in designed by Dean Terry of the University of Texas at Dallas gives users that option:
Last month he and a student released a Facebook plug-in called EnemyGraph, which users can install free and name their enemies, which then show up in their profiles. “We’re using ‘enemy’ in the same loose way that Facebook uses ‘friends,’” Mr. Terry explained. “It really just means something you have an issue with.” [...]
Who was Mr. Terry so eager to diss? “One of the first things I put was the band Journey,” he said of his enemy list, “just because they annoy me, and I thought it was funny.” He has also enemied Deepak Chopra and the color red.
Link -via Glenn Reynolds | Image: Aaron Wood
A man sued Google in a Japanese court and won! That doesn’t mean that Google will comply with the order, but here’s what happened:
A Japanese court has ordered Google to shut down its autocomplete feature in Japan after a man took a complaint to court that said autocomplete feature was casting him in a negative light. The mans’ name was not revealed, though the complaint said autocomplete coupled his named with over 10,000 negative words, and it is negatively affecting his career.
Since it never occurred to me to do it before, I immediately Googled my name to see what autocomplete would come up with. Luckily, the results are pretty benign (though I’m disappointed that Neatorama didn’t appear). Take a moment to do the same, if you haven’t already, and then read the rest of the story at Geekosystem. Link
Young
people don't go to the theaters anymore. (Hint for young people: it's
like the movies, but live action - you know, performed on stages and such).
What to do?
Curt Hopkins wrote an Ars Technica article about the latest in the effort to reel in the kids: Tweet Seats.
Maybe movie theaters should offer these!These are sections of a live theater or performance space’s seating set aside for audience members who wish to tweet on their phones or tablets during the performance. They are being advertised as safe harbor for the twitterati, where pulling out your gizmo is celebrated instead of frowned upon. The seats are often located in the back row of the seating area.
Every once in a while, a message pops up on your computer that makes perfect sense for what you’re doing at the time, but you might notice how dreadfully depressing it could be out of context. You’re not the only one who noticed that, and that’s how the site Screenshots of Despair came about. Looking through the collection of submitted screenshots will either bring you down or give you a laugh. I hope it’s the latter! Link -via Breakfast Links
To celebrate Twitters 6th anniversary, Jimmy Kimmel asked celebrities to read actual Tweets they’ve received, and it will come as no surprise that they’re mostly hurtful and offensive.
Celebrities, like bloggers, really do have feelings folks, and apparently they get to sift through all sorts of mean spirited comments every day just like we do. Thanks Twitter!
–via The Daily What
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When
Justin Bassett interviewed for a job, there was one question that caught
him by surprise: the interviewer asked for his Facebook password!
Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn't see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.
Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn't want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no.
In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person's social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around.
"It's akin to requiring someone's house keys," said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor who calls it "an egregious privacy violation."
Would you share your Facebook password to get a job? Link
On April 15, the world will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The History Press has set up a Twitter account to send real-time (+100 years) updates on the progress of the ship and its only voyage. Start following now to get the whole story as it happened. Link -via the Presurfer
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Microsoft knows that you hate its browser Internet Explorer, but it's planning for it to make a comeback. While that remains to be seen, at least they've got a pretty nifty ad to tout the new Internet Explorer 9. Even the name is apt: The Browser You Loved to Hate
Here are a few more:
View more at Microsoft's website: The Browser You Loved To Hate - via Visual News
Comments Off I know I already showed an image of the Me Gusta Latte, but for those of you who wanted to make your own…or at least give it the old college try, here’s how.
Via Geeks Are Sexy
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Longcat
Monitor Sitter - $11.95
You don't have to surf the web alone! The Longcat Monitor Sitter from the NeatoShop is there for you, patiently waiting with the quizzical expression on its face ("What? You're looking at THAT!?").
No computer? No problem! Longcat works as a bookshelves sitter as well.
The Longcat Monitor Sitter is handcrafted by local artisans next door to the Neatorama HQ. We had a lot of fun bringing this Internet meme into the real world.
Link | More NeatoShop Exclusives | Neat New Items from the NeatoShop
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Illustrator Caldwell Tanner has created some colorful travel posters for locations familiar to lazy people. So, now you can feel like you do all kinds of traveling every day, even though you rarely leave your house!
Who needs fresh air and sunshine when you’ve got the arctic chill of the refrigerator and the rainbow waterfall of infinite pages that is the glorious interwebs?
Link –via Rampaged Reality
GIFs are a fun little party for your desktop, and as a digital medium they are officially 25 years old! This seven minute documentary, from Off Book by PBS Arts, takes us on a tour of this multi-framed wonder. Despite the overuse of annoying host close-up shots, it’s a fun and informative way to celebrate the GIF.
Link –via DesignTAXI
We can’t post a quote from this (or any) infographic, because you can’t copy text from a graphic. Also, infographic “facts” tend to be unreliable, but this particular one is just trying to make an overall point, so go see it at SplatF. Link -via Boing Boing
You know that feature of Facebook in which it suggests new friends for you among your friend’s other friends? In the case of a Seattle man, the social network suggested that his first wife “friend” his second wife. See, he is still married to the first wife.
According to charging documents filed Thursday, Alan L. O’Neill married a woman in 2001, moved out in 2009, changed his name and remarried without divorcing her. The first wife first noticed O’Neill had moved on to another woman when Facebook suggested the friendship connection to wife No. 2 under the “People You May Know” feature.
“Wife No. 1 went to wife No. 2′s page and saw a picture of her and her husband with a wedding cake,” Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist told The Associated Press.
Wife No. 1 then called the defendant’s mother.
She also called authorities, and O’Neill was arrested for bigamy. He was freed until his court appearance, as he is not considered a threat. Link -via reddit
The Better Business Bureau warns you about the biggest scams that reared their ugly heads in 2011. No doubt there are folks still using these to try to separate you from your money, or even worse, your personal information that can yield even more money through identity theft. The best defense? Know them, avoid them, and remember that much of what you see on the internet is not what it appears to be. Link -via the Presurfer
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