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Caldwell Tanner posted the 8 Lesser-Known Fairies that affect your daily life. This one, the Internet Fairy, should be very familiar to all of your Neatoramanauts! Link - via Look At This
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It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world. Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed. Of course, one could argue that these sites are no different than conversation was for previous generations, and that conversation seldom generated big ideas either, and one would be right.
Remember Mary Bale, a.k.a. the woman who was tracked down and harassed after someone uploaded a video of her throwing a cat into a trashcan? She’s one of the many people who were taught a lesson by the throngs of angry internet users. You can read more about her and 11 others in similar situations over at Ugo. Fair warning, not all of the people actually deserved what they got.
Spanning from over a decade ago to this summer’s memes, Ranker has gathered together 35 catchy viral musical videos that swept the internet. You can relive the good old days of “All Your Base” and “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” and also catch up with tunes you may have missed as well. Lyrics in some songs are NSFW. Link
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It’s no secret that the web is a safe haven to say whatever you want about who ever you want. However the overall effect of anonymous commenting on the internet has created an unprecedented mob mentality leading to an almost constant state rage and hatred directed toward any target. What do you guys think? Please leave a comment.
For a while after his first TV series was broadcast in 2009, comedian Stewart Lee was in the habit of collecting and filing some of the comments that people made about him on web pages and social media sites. He did a 10-minute Google trawl most days for about six months and the resultant collected observations soon ran to dozens of pages. If you read those comments now as a cumulative narrative, you begin to fear for Stewart Lee. A good third of the posts fantasized about violence being done to the comic, most of the rest could barely contain the extent of their loathing.
Who says internet memes don’t last? Some people have the most fleeting memes tattoos on their bodies. Imagine trying to explain to your grandchildren why those things were so important to you that you had them permanently inked into your skin. Ranker has a list of ten memes, some with more than one tattoo found. A couple pics are NSFW. Link
Geekosystem has a hilarious list of subjects you won’t believe eHow claims it can teach you. I particularly like the one above and “how to use superglue to fix a tooth,” which is conveniently followed by “how to remove superglue from a tooth.” You stay classy eHow.
Good magazine has a post entitled The Eternal Shame of Your First Online Handle, in which people share how they selected their first internet pseudonym. In the last few years, more and more people are using their real names online instead of anonymous identifiers.
Those of us who came of age alongside AOL must contend with something even more incriminating than a lifelong Google profile: A trail of discarded online aliases, each a distillation of how we viewed ourselves and our place in the world at the time of sign-on. The dawn of the Internet was an open invitation to free ourselves from the names our parents gave us and forge self-made identities divorced from our reputations IRL.
Here at Neatorama, every author either uses their real name or a made up name that sounds like a real name so they don’t have to explain it (except for me, which means I am a dinosaur in internet terms). However, the majority of our commenters use pseudonyms. Would you like to share with us the story of how you selected it -or the story of some abandoned name you once used? Link -via Metafilter
With the Lulzsec recent post of email addresses and passwords, along with all the regular hacking that occurs on a regular basis, it can be really hard to know if your email password has been compromised. Fortunately, Should I Change My Password can help automatically scan a variety of these info leaks to check if your password has been hacked. This way, you only have to change your password if it actually needs to be updated.
Update: Just to be clear, you don’t have to enter your password on the site, just your email.
A very internet video, indeed! This collection of clips features just about every video meme that ever hit the ‘net, edited into appropriate places to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Some language NSFW. -via BB Spot
The percentage of households in the United States that have TVs dropped from 98.9% to 96.7%. Why would you think that happened? Where I live, high-speed internet access costs $40 a month, whereas a decent slate of TV channels on cable costs $70. If you own a computer, the choice is a no-brainer. According to the New York Times:
There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas.
The other is technological wizardry: young people who have grown up with laptops in their hands instead of remote controls are opting not to buy TV sets when they graduate from college or enter the work force, at least not at first. Instead, they are subsisting on a diet of television shows and movies from the Internet.
I had forgotten that there are places in which people can pick up several TV channels by using just an antenna. If I lived alone, I would give up TV entirely because I don’t have time to watch it. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
While there are plenty of bizarre Blogger and Word Press pages, the number of off-the-wall Tumblr accounts is a little astonishing. I don’t know what it is about Tumblr, as opposed to all the other blog programs out there, but something about it just seems to inspire people to create some of the weirdest sites around the net. Here are a few of my favorite strange, niche and just plain silly Tumblr blogs.
Perhaps one of the strangest Tumblr blogs around, Selleck Waterfall Sandwich is exclusively dedicated to three things: Tom Selleck, waterfalls and sandwiches. You’ll be amazed just how many ways these three things can come together in an image.
Have you ever seen a citation needed tag on Wikipedia and thought, “really, they need a citation for that?“ Well, that’s the whole point of Citation Needed. One of my personal favorites on the site is this gem, “The band March Hare is named after the March Hare. [citation needed]“ Unfortunately, many of the funny bits on this site are removed from Wikipedia, making Citation Needed the only archive of such comments.
There’s a reason owls are nocturnal creatures –they’re too hung over to be awake during the day. But while hungover humans tend to look downright disgusting, Hungover Owls look absolutely adorable –in a slobbish, grumpy and tired kind of way.
Have you ever read a captcha and laughed at how humorously the words seemed to go together? Captcha Art asks you to take a screenshot of the captcha and then submit your artistic interpretation of the message.
more …
Encyclopedia Dramatica was always a place to get in-depth information on internet culture, memes, and history, but the site was rarely linked here at Neatorama because it was NSFW and far from family-friendly. Now Encyclopedia Dramatica is no more, and a new site has risen in its place. The new Oh Internet is dedicated to the same type of information, but is not open to unlimited editing by users as ED was. Geekosystem has more on the big switch. Link to story. Link to website.
When you order a pizza online, a lot of the places have a text area for you to include any special instructions you might have, like extra sauce or a code to get in to your apartment complex. When the blogger who writes for Awesome Robo got to this section on the Domino’s online order form though, he decided to ask for a drawing of Yoda riding a tauntaun. Surprisingly, the Domino’s staff was happy to oblige with this little doodle.
How many internet memes are incorporated in this music video? All of them! But they happen so fast you won’t catch them all the first time around. -via Laughing Squid
Comments Off Remember Chatroulette? Once in a great while, something really good can happen. I wonder how many “strangers” these guys rejected before they found Diana. -via reddit
Joseph Tame will run the Tokyo Marathon while wearing an extensive set of gear that will enable him to publish constant updates on the web. He calls this getup the iRun.
The iRun features four iPhones on rotatable mounts, an iPad, and Android handset, three mobile Wi Fi routers, a four-in-one atmospheric monitor and a heart monitor – all to record his route round the 26-mile circuit.
A post on Tame’s website states: ‘This technology will allow me to broadcast live video on two cameras (using either skype or FaceTime to a local studio for re-broadcast), send live location/pace/heart rate data via Runkeeperon the iPhone, transmit temperature, COx/humidity/noise levels via a custom-made Android app – and do all of this while looking incredibly cool.’
Watch Tame looking incredibly cool in action at Japan Probe. Link
Who are the most popular people on the internet? Well, they are not popular just for being on the internet -it takes a presence in the real world. However, the internet can measure a celebrity’s popularity pretty well. And the most popular person, teen pop singer Justin Bieber, got his start on the internet.
In the past twelve months, more people have searched for the 16-year-old wonder on Google than have searched for “china,” “jesus,” or “boobs.”
Bieber also left other celebrities in the dust. The only person who came close was Lady Gaga.
Based on a rigorous analysis of Google Trends we’ve identified the most popular people on the Internet. Since Google provides only comparative data, we compared everyone we could think of to Bieber. Feel free to check the data and post a comment if we left anyone off the list.
Business Insider counts down the top 20, ranked in comparison with Bieber’s popularity. Link -Thanks, Adam!
Can you name the most popular websites in the United States? That’s the challenge in today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You have two minutes to name the top ten (you don’t have to type the URL). There are really no surprises here, so if you don’t get them all, you’ll kick yourself when you see the answers. I got all ten in time, but I have to admit that I typed a lot of wrong guesses quickly! Link
Caldwell Tanner and Kevin Corrigan rounded up internet memes to bedevil Batman and Robin in a series of comic book cover mashups. There are five in all; this one is my favorite. Link -via Gorilla Mask
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What
happens when you take away your teenagers' TV, iPods, cell phones, video
games and even - gasp - Internet?
Susan Maushart did that to her three kids for 6 months in what she called "The Experiment" and lived to tell about it.
And something with as grand as "The Experiment," you'd need to kick it off in a grand way - which is exactly what Susan did:
She turned off the electricity completely for a few weeks — candles instead of electric lights, no hot showers, food stored in a cooler of ice. When blackout boot camp ended, Maushart hoped the "electricity is awesome!" reaction would soften the kids' transition to life without Google and cell phones.
The result is surprisingly (or not surprisingly, for some people anyhow) are good:
Her son Bill, a videogame and TV addict, filled his newfound spare time playing saxophone. "He swapped Grand Theft Auto for the Charlie Parker songbook," Maushart wrote. Bill says The Experiment was merely a "trigger" and he would have found his way back to music eventually. Either way, he got so serious playing sax that when the gadget ban ended, he sold his game console and is now studying music in college.
Maushart's eldest, Anni, was less wired and more bookish than the others, so her transition in and out of The Experiment was the least dramatic. Her friends thought the ban was "cool." If she needed computers for schoolwork, she went to the library. Even now, she swears off Facebook from time to time, just for the heck of it.
Maushart's youngest daughter, Sussy, had the hardest time going off the grid. Maushart had decided to allow use of the Internet, TV and other electronics outside the home, and Sussy immediately took that option, taking her laptop and moving in with her dad — Maushart's ex-husband — for six weeks. Even after she returned to Maushart's home, she spent hours on a landline phone as a substitute for texts and Facebook.
But the electronic deprivation had an impact anyway: Sussy's grades improved substantially. Maushart wrote that her kids "awoke slowly from the state of cognitus interruptus that had characterized many of their waking hours to become more focused logical thinkers."
“The Scrollwheel” is a short film about the frustration that one experiences while watching someone who doesn’t understand computers try to surf the Internet. You know, like people who type a URL into a search bar. Just keep in mind that long ago, you didn’t know anything about the Internet, either.
This cartoon was made by Neon Noodle, Guy Collins, and Kevin MacLeod.
via Urlesque
Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the internet. – @AdviceToWriters
Ain’t that the truth! And it’s a occupational hazard when your job is to offer internet distractions to everyone. This Twaggie was inspired by @AdviceToWriters. Like all Twaggies, it is available in print or t-shirt form. Link
Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal posted a series of methods your cat will use to get your attention while you are surfing the web. Cat owners will not be surprised by what finally works! Link -via Digg
Ah, the memories of a year chock-full of useless and incomprehensible things to occupy your time. These are the internet memes of 2010, causing a laugh or two as they fly around the web. If by chance you’ve missed any of them, you can become familiar with all 25 before someone calls you out as a n00b. If you are familiar with them, it’s a chance to relive the greats, or maybe not-so-greats of the past year. Link -Thanks, Joanne Chu!
There are many familiar terms you read on the internet, but if they came up in conversation, you might not pronounce the words the same as other people do -because you’ve only seen them typed! Geekosystem has a pronunciation guide for 21 words and phrases that you may not have ever heard spoken out loud. But if you ever do, you’ll be correct. Take, for example, the word “Cthulhu”.
4) Cthulhu
Created by H.P. Lovecraft, Cthulhu is a humongous cosmic entity resembling a blend of an octopus, dragon and humanoid. Bordering on a ridiculous mishmash that would be found laughable in today’s horror scene, Cthulhu is still widely-known and loved amongst literature buffs and geeks the world over.
* The Mystery: Probably doesn’t need a list of common mispronunciations, but it’s safe to say every letter in the name other than the “l” can be pronounced one way or another.
* The Answer: Wikipedia says H.P. Lovecraft once transcribed the pronunciation as “Khlûl-hloo,” though didn’t pronounce it that way at other times. Now commonplace, the accepted pronunciation is “ka-thoo-loo;” that is, if you accept a pronunciation from a source other than the creator of the word. Lovecraft didn’t seem to have any consistent way of pronouncing it though, so we’re all better off settling on the common way described above.
You’ll also want to check out the best way to pronounce FAQ, Ubuntu, and meme, among others. Link
(Image credit: the NeatoShop)
Would you agree to the government having a kill switch that shut down the Internet in the event of a malicious cyber attack?
The majority of Americans do:
Sixty-one percent of Americans said the President should have the ability to shut down portions of the Internet in the event of a coordinated malicious cyber attack, according to research by Unisys. […]
“A majority of the American population is willing to grant the President the authority to cut short their Internet access to protect both U.S. assets and citizens, suggesting that the public is taking cyber warfare very seriously,” said Patricia Titus, VP and CISO, Unisys. “Our survey shows that the American public recognizes the danger of a cyber attack and wants the federal government to take an active role in extending the nation’s cyber defense. It will be up to officials in all branches of the federal government to respond to this call to action in a way that is measured and well planned.”
You might remember how Randall Munroe of xkcd created a map of the internet in 2007. A lot of things have changed since then, so he made a completely new map to reflect the state of online communities today. Just a portion of the map is shown here. Go to xkcd and enlarge the map, and you’ll find Neatorama in the inset of the Blogosphere area (in the Sea of Opinions), a tiny island off the coast near Deadspin and Lifehacker. Look around, and you’ll see plenty of cleverness, such as Facebook’s privacy controls isolated in a pool of lava, and a meteor crater where Craiglist’s adult services used to be. Link -via Metafilter
Update 10/6/10 by Alex: Woohoo! Randall knows we’re alive – Neatorama made it to this year’s map, right alongside Boing Boing, Lifehacker, and Deadspin:
Like to chat and tweet? Try Qvaq. It’s a brand new and very neat web app, made by Robert Birming (a Neatoramanaut and fellow blogger at Geek Alerts) and Martin Lindkvist, that makes discussion and collaborations in real time fun and easy.
With Qvaq, you can discuss your favorite topics with others (either by joining an existing group like the Neatorama group and Guess The Movie or by starting your own). You can add photos and video clips, chat privately or publicly, and so on. None of these are new features – Martin acknowledged that IRC has been around since the 80′s – but what they’ve done is create a smoothly integrated set of functionalities that just flow easily. Qvaq is fun to use
Give it a try – I’ll be at the Neatorama group there off and on today. Come and say hello: Link
This year’s Web 2.0 Summit, a conference for web bigwigs, has a pretty neat topic: Points of Control, The Battle for the Network Economy. What got my attention was the nifty presentation of various segments of the Internet as a battlefield map.
One could envision a smoke-filled backroom where Internet honchos (I’m looking at you, Ben Huh) play the Net like a game of Risk: Link – via John Battele’s Searchblog
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