Webcurios 22/03/13

Advermarketingprinternetstuff (anyone with better suggestions for this, other than ‘the bit noone reads’, please do let me know):

GoogleThings:

• Google Keep: This is basically Google’s version of Evernote – a service which lets people do all that ‘tag, store, note-take’ stuff which they all seem so keen on doing these days. Effectively it’s them saying ‘look, we know where you live – now outsource your memory to us as well! What’s the worst that could happen, eh?’ (I imagine them mugging and winking furiously to camera as they do so, for reasons known only to my subconscious). Obviously I am (possibly) exaggerating the sinister aspects of this for effect – it will probably be quite useful. If I were Evernote, I might be a bit scared. Although of course it could all go the same way as the other stuff in the Google Graveyard (speaking of which, if you do miss Google Reader then you might like this as an alternative).
• Google Gif Search: It’s increasingly seeming like there’s very little point building stuff if you’re NOT Google – even if you get there first, they’ll just make their own version of whatever you throw out a few weeks/months/years later and then crush you beneath their juggernuat wheels like the miniscule, insignificant whelp that you are. You may (or may not) recall Giphly, a nice little gif search engine I found a few months ago – this is Google doing that. Lose yourself in the Ryan Gosling gif universe – you know you want to.  
• Google Unified Chat: Included more from the mistaken belief that completeness matters than from any burning sense of excitement, this is the news that Google is planning on unifying the ‘chat’ function across Gmail, G+, Google Drive, etc. Which is actually quite a clever idea, and probably has a lot of positive implications for potential customer services things if you’d like to think about them. Also, it’s rumoured to be called Babble WHICH SOUNDS LIKE BABEL. Just, you know, pointing that out. 
• Nice Little Literary Promo for Collaborative Working: This is a very nice piece of work to promote collaborative working through Google Docs, which takes your prose and imagines what it would be like were you collaborating with a host of famous literary figures and they were editing your copy in real-time. What it would be like, by the way, is VERY IRRITATING – Shakespeare’s undoubted ability to spin a yarn doesn’t automatically give him the right to gussy-up my prose whenever he feels like it, the be-ruffed nincompoop.
• YouTube TV Shows: I don’t really know whether there’s anyone who’s done Channels on YouTube that’s achieved proper mainstream crossover success – is there anyone? I mean, there’s big-if-niche channels like Machinima or Epic Meal Time, and I thinkk VICE are doing pretty well with Noisey, but I have no well-known they actually are. Anyway, will be interesting to see how the two new channels being punted by Ricky Gervais and Simon ‘Reality TV Sauron’ Cowell (copyright Marina Hyde on that one) fare – and even moreso to see how Reddit do with their new Explain It Like I’m 5 series, where they explain knotty concepts to actual 5 year olds (it is unclear what benefit the 5 year olds are getting from this deal. Jelly and icecream at the very least, I hope). 
• Chrome Maze-y Thing: This is only going to work for you if you a) use chrome as your desktop browser; b) have an android mobile device which also runs chrome. If it does, this is fun-if-pointless – you can turn any website you like into a pretty fun little rolling marble game, controlled by tilting your phone. It’s a gimmick, but personally I was left really impressed with the tech and execution. 

Facebook:

• Lookalike Audiences: You may recall that last year Facebook gave advertisers the opportunity to upload a database of email addresses or phone numbers and target those people via ads, whether or not they were already connected to said advertiser on FB. Now you can not only do that but also advertise to people who Facebook thinks might be a bit like the people who’s data you’ve got. I’m skeptical as to how good this ‘people like this’ targeting is going to be – then again, Zuckerberg is a billionaire and I am most definitely not. so perhaps my opinion’s less than vital. 
• Moderation Guidelines: It’s actually unclear whether these apply solely to Facebook or a variety of sites, but they are from a third-party moderation service the like of which FB offloads some of its burden onto. Fascinating – and quite surprising – to see what you can and can’t get away with according to the powers that be.

Amazon:

• ‘Send To Kindle’ Button: Basically a ‘read this later’ button which sends whatever page you’re reading to your Kindle (if you have one. If you don’t, it won’t). Worth knowing about – you might as well chuck it on your website’s editorial content. 

Some Campaigny Things and Other Things:

• Win The Chance Of Maybe Working at Subway!: Subway is running what appears to be a global contest inviting entrants to create a ‘Virtual Subway’ franchise, complete a number of online challenges and get people to vote for their shop, all to win one of 5 trips to NYC & Washington DC to meet and Subway co-founder Fred Deluca. Another of the big selling points (!), though, seems to be the fact that high-achievers in this virtual contests will gain exposure to the Subway network and may be lucky enough to get picked up for a job. This is all very, very odd, although not as odd as the fact that, as things stand, about 800+ people appeared to have entered worldwide. I know that the job maket’s tough, but still…
• BA Ungrounded: What do you think the best way in which to debate and arrive at solutions to the world’s greatest problems, such as talented people’s lack of access to opportunity, might be? If you answered “hand-picking 100 of the most forward-thinking founders, CEOs, venture capitalists, and Silicon Valley game-changers, and putting them on a flight from San Francisco to London”, with a view to then getting them to “present their ideas to ranking delegates from the United Nations”, then CONGRATULATIONS, you think just like someone from British Airways or their PR/Marketing/Ad agency. IS THIS A JOKE, BA?????
• A Look at FourSquare Checkins in NYC & Tokyo: Mainly because it’s quite a pretty visualisation. I still don’t know any real people who use 4sq (when I say ‘real people’, I mean people who don’t work in tech or advermarketingpr – we are not real people). 
• A 3d Map of the Internet: Having repeatedly mentioned William Gibson last week, the theme continues with this video which shows a version of what the internet look like if you were to turn it into a 3d navigable THING. It’s slightly disconcerting, and really does make me think of what Gibson imagined when he wrote about Cyberspace (an aside – I went to see Evgeny Morozov talk at the RI this week, where he spoke about how the idea of “the internet” is a fundamentally wrong-headed one. He’s probably right (although for the purposes of Web Curios I will continue to do just that – sorry, but I haven’t got the time to semantically unpack exactly what I mean each time I type that phrase, which is, I know, lazy. SORRY EVGENY SORRY) – have a read of some of his thinking here and also here).
• Facestealer: The App: This is an app by Yahoo! Japan, which allows you to (and I quote) “WEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S FACE”. It’s creepy and horrifying and I suggest you try an download it at once.
• Anti-Domestic Violence Video: I’m putting this up here as I’m 99% certain it’s part of a campaign for an anti-domestic violence charity, although which one (or any other linked elements) have yet to be revealed. I really, really hope it’s not a real video. Oh, and as with all YouTube videos you’re probably best off ignoring the comments. 

Listen! It’s A Mix of Rare Soviet Music by Solid Steel!

Other Things Off The Internet Which I Thought Were Worth Telling You About But I Can’t Guarantee Will Arouse Anything Other Than Moderate Interest, pt1:

• Letters From A Private: Scanned letters home from a Private in the US Army, 1944-45. A beautiful little slice of very personal history.
• The Future, As Seen From LA in 1988: This is awesome – back in 1988, the LA Times ran a piece looking at what life would be like for citizens of LA in 2013. Certain elements are pretty close, but the traditional robot servant prediction remains sadly unfulfilled. Sort it out, science.
• Slavoz ZiseK Writes for Abercrombie in 2003: Slavoj Zisek is a philosopher. For reasons known only to him (and, one would presume, someone at A&F), he ended up writing copy for Abercrombie & Fitch’s 2003 ‘Back To School’ lookbook. This is brilliantly weird – pictures of tanned, healthy, beautiful (and often naked) American youth, juxtaposed with frankly surreal phrases such as ‘The naked couple without the bespectacled teacher would be reduced to two clumsy ignorants unable to perform the act’. I would love a print copy of this.
• Overdog: This is a really interesting idea – Overdog is a US project that is seeking to set up a community where sports fans can play videogames against sports stars. It’s smart – given that most athletes are young men in their teens/20s, most of whom will likely play videogames to get over the stultifying boredom of the life of the pro sportsperson (I’m obviously just jealous of their bodies and salary), and given that there’s a large crossover with fans in that they are often young, videogame-loving men too, you’d think that there might be a market for this. It’s even reasonably easy to see how they could monetise it. Sports brands people, get on this one. 
• Author-to-Author Fanletters: A lovely literary love-in here, with a selection of letters from famous authors in which they tell other famous authors how awesome they think those famous authors are. My favourite, though, is the Burroughs-to-Capote hatemail at the end.
• TedX Summerisle: I would call this a hoax, but it’s unclear how many people were taken in by it. Nonetheless, it’s a really rather impressive piece of TRANSMEDIA!!!! storytelling which takes the uninspiring premise of crossing the breathless improvement-evangelism of the TED movement with the creepy fictional Scottish murdervillage of The Wicker Man. 
• Tarantino vs Penguin Books: Designer Sharm Murugiah has created Penguin Books-style designs for Tarantino screenplays. These really should be available as prints (says the never-satisfied, demanding, needy, entitled webmong).
• The Cat Font: A font made of cats. It is what it is. 
• Michael Keaton: I really have no idea what is going on here, at all, in any way. Needless to say that this site doesn’t appear to be affiliated with the famous Michael Keaton in any way, but it does feature a lot of odd little comic strips and a slight-but-persistent feeling of alienation. Odd, but in a good way.
• The Artist Explorer: Interesting little hack which breaks down artists by song data taken from Echonest and lets you play around / cross reference it. More interesting than useful, but it’s an interesting way of comparing artists’ output (in totally arbitrary and valueless ways, admittedly).
• US Gun Deaths in 2013: A beautifully rendered animated visualisation showing data of gun deaths in the US so far this year. The ‘years stolen’ figure is gimmicky, but it does tug at the heartstrings somewhat. There’s full data for 2011 in there too, should you be interested.

Image by Ted McCabb

LISTEN! To Songs Which Inspired Daft Punk!

Other Things Off The Internet Which I Thought Were Worth Telling You About But I Can’t Guarantee Will Arouse Anything Other Than Moderate Interest, pt2:

• TinyGames – A Worthwhile Kickstarter: I don’t ordinarily feature Kickstarters, but I like this one (and the people behind it). Hide & Seek are trying to get the money together to make an app featuring 100s of tiny games (you can see where the name came from), which can be played anywhere. Not videogames, mind – all sorts of different types. If I were a parent, I’d look at this and think “YES! THIS WILL BE A WORTH ADDITION TO THE iPHONE BABYSITTER’S REPERTOIRE”. I’m not a parent, though. That I know of. 
• Casio Transmitter Watch: I can’t believe this was on the market a year before that LA futurology piece up there. THIS IS AMAZING. Just think of the fun you could have – I’m thinking particularly in terms of what you could do to freak people out in traffic jams. Am I misunderstanding this? It seems like potentially the best childish prank tool ever. Is there an iOS app that can do anything similar?
• Mark E Smith is Funny, Grumpy: The Fall’s famously irascible frontman’s best sayings, accompanied by images of his gurning fizzog. 
• The Imaginary Atlas: A website collecting cartography of fictional lands. You don’t need to be a geek to like this, honest – or, well, maybe you do. I think that there’s something strangely soothing about looking at maps of imaginary cities, but then again I also like playing videogames so perhaps I’m a lost cause. 
• The Lullaby Factory of GOSH: WHY DIDN’T I KNOW THAT THIS EXISTED??? A lovely, whimsical piece of architectural design, or a playful folly, or perhaps both simultaneously.
• The 100 Most Influential Records of the 1960s: No more, no less, but a very comprehensive rundown containing some great songs I had never heard of. Musos will enjoy. 
• Inklewriter: After Twine the other week, this is another Interactive Fiction-creation tool, which is (early impressions suggest) very easy to use and pretty powerful.
• Fat & Furious Burgers: This is the apogee of burgers-as-art (actually ‘apogee’ would suggest that ‘burgers as art’ is a thing – it probably isn’t, is it? Oh well) – a French website containing beautifully constructed, stunningly photographed and often totally inedible burgers. In French.
• Incautious ‘Art’: There’s a fine line between art and extorsion…Incautious is a project which scrapes comments from pr0n and sex websites – in particular, comments that contain phone numbers. These are then painted onto canvasses and act as one-off artworks for people to purchase. So far, so internet – the slightly dark bit is that they are looking to charge 1000Euros to anyone who sees their phone number listed on the site and wants to have it removed. Which, frankly, I don’t think is very nice. Imagine me pursing my lips disapprovingly as I type this, like a cat’s bottom.
• Mastectomy Tattoos: Photos of women who’ve had tattoos done over their mastectomy scars. I might question some of the art, but there’s something quite inspiring (sorry) about the sentiment behind them.

The Circus of Tumblrs

• I’m Google: This is quite hard to explain, but it’s a little bit like visual word association by Dina Kelberman.
• Noise Park: Bands and musicians from the noise / industrial scene, reimagined as characters from South Park (and frankly a load of other obscure people who I can’t really categorise). Needs a little bit of knowledge, but there’s a lot of nice attention to detail in there. 
• Beverly Crusher’s Miniature Theatre: This is very odd. Gates McFadden played Dr Beverly Crusher in the Star Trek: Next Generation series. This is a Tumblr that she maintains, featuring the action figure version of herself in a variety of vignettes. I don’t really know what sort of effect doing this on a regular basis must have on her psyche. It’s all VERY meta.
• Women Eating on the Tube: I’m linking to this mainly to let people know that it exists – there’s something a bit creepy / misogynistic about it, I think, although I can’t help but be darkly impressed at how many people manage to take pictures of strangers on the tube without being noticed. Although I did once take one of a woman who looked an awful lot like Marcel Desailly, which I’m not proud of. 

Image by Mash Design

Long Things Which Are Long:

• The Age of the Expense Account: A really wonderful piece of writing, look back at the long-gone age in which well-connected foreign correspondents had their alcoholism subsidised by the 4th estate. A really good story about an era in which journalism really must have been rather a lot of fun (and very, very drunk indeed).
• The Crucifixion of Tomas Young: The title of the piece is too good to replace. This is the story of Tomas Young, an Iraq war veteran who was wounded in 2004. It’s not, I warn you, a very happy story, but one worth remembering given this week’s 10-year anniversary of the conflict. 
• The Czech Republic on Drugs: I must confess, I hadn’t linked the Czech Republic’s lax attitude to drugs and the never-ending stream of stag parties heading out to Prague. More fool me. This is an interesting look at what drug liberalisation has changed in the country. It sounds a bit grim – though that’s Spiegel’s editorial line as much as anything – but that’s as much due to economic factors as anything else. The meth thing’s a bit troublesome, though.
• A Quarter-Century in Solitary: What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without talking to anyone, or being in company? This is an amazing piece of writing – the author is a convicted murderer, and obviously did Bad Things, but his account of what it’s like being in solitary for over 25 years is mind-boggling and not a little harrowing. It doesn’t, rest assured, sound like it’s been any fun at all.
• Hislop On Media: Ian Hislop’s always good value, and this piece (admittedly from a few months ago) is worth reading in the wake of this week’s Leveson chat. His description of Blair as “a man who constantly looks like he’s playing his own character in an action movie about himself” is lovely.
• The Tragedy of Dr Polidori: If you’ve ever seen the film ‘Gothic’ by Ken Russell, all about Byron and Mary Shelley and the rest during the laudanum-fueled week that led to the writing of Frankenstein, this piece will ring some bells; if you haven’t, it’s even more worth reading as it’s a fascinating account of some very brilliant, and very damned, young minds. The description of Polidori as someone who was basically destined to be nothing more than a footnote in his own life is brilliant and sad. Byron, though, eh? WHAT A LAD.
• DIY Superpowers: Ever thought of slicing your arm open and, say, putting a magnet inside it and calling yourself “Magneto”? No? Thanks Christ for that. Nonetheless, this piece provides an overview of some of the options for tech-oriented body augmentation. IT’S QUITE ODD.

A Few Additional Videos That I’m Not Putting Down There:

• Nicholas Cage In Zelda: The internet’s obsession with Nicholas Cage reaches what might be its apogee with this video of a hack applied to Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, which puts Nic Cage’s MAD FACE all over the game. Interest in / knowledge of the original title is not required to get exactly how strange this is.
• Mad Sausage: A campaign, being supported by the Mercy For Animals charity, to draw attention to the less-than-sanitary genesis of processed meat products. Quite odd.
• Usher vs The Afghan Whigs: Surely this must have been one of the odder things to have happened at SXSW? OLD rockers The Afghan Whigs gigged with blandest-R’n’b-millionaire-ever Usher and it was actually QUITE GOOD.
• How Webcomics Work: Short video looking at the economics of webcomics – frankly, though, what it says is applicable to most if not all creative endeavours you’re promoting these days, it seems.
• Take My Picture: A brilliant short looking at the ever-growing world of amateur fashion bloggers and photographers. People get REALLY excited by clothes, eh?
• Singing Vaginas: No more, no less. Not embedding this one for obvious reasons – it’s strangely sort of pleasing and happymaking, and is about as sexual as Puppetry of the Penis (ie not at all, in the slightest). Except, obviously, it does feature real vaginas, singing. So quite NSFW, then, so you know.
• Fist Of Jesus: This is not the Jesus you remember. A very odd short film from Spain, featuring Jesus, zombies and a novel take on the loaves/fishes incident (skip to 7:40 to get to the heart of the oddity) – they’re raising money to make a full-length version, if you’d like to see more…
• Guitarcam: THIS FEELS WEIRD.

NOW THE OTHER VIDEOS:

1) We start with a short film from a few years back, called “Are You The Favourite Person of Anybody?”. It stars John C Reilly, and also features Miranda July, and it’s pleasingly bittersweet:

2) WendyVainity is a YouTube ‘star’ who makes the sort of odd 3d animations which are sort of pointless and unsettling which I quite like. This is a showreel of some of her self-portraiture. THIS IS ART:

3) Once upon a time, doing the sort of bullet time-type effects made famous by The Matrix would have cost A LOT of money. Now you can do it for pennies (well, almost), just like these wizards of home cinema. A great ad for GoPro, this:

4) Doing stuff to stuff in slow-motion. There’s a lot of this stuff online, but this is a particularly fine compilation. Guaranteed to put a smile on your face, for reasons it’s quite hard for me to define:

5) This week’s first ‘Blimey, that’s a bit odd’ music video of the week comes in the form of this trippy little number from Lapalux. The song’s sort of minimally absorbing, but the video’s what makes this – it’s called “Without You”:

6) Odd video of the week, part 2 – apparently Dillon Francis is “an American electronic-dance musician, known for being one of the pioneers of moombahton, a fusion genre of house music and reggaeton, and moombahcore, a sub-genre of electronic-dance music deviating from moombahton”. Moobahton? Really? Are you making fun of me, internet? In any case, this is his wonderfully strange video for “Bootleg Fireworks”:

7) James Franco apparently has something to do with this, thought it’s unclear exactly what he does in the band – probably EVERYTHING, the insufferably goodlooking polymath. God I’m jealous of James Franco. Anyway, his band is called Daddy and this is the cultish video for Ted James’ remix of their 2012 single “Love In The Old Days”:

8) You’ve probably seen this already, but I don’t care. It’s brilliantly impressive, if not wholly original, and deserves all the views – it’s called ‘Forward’:

9) Last but definitely not least comes this, from Russian band ‘Biting Elbows’. I can’t type the song title for fear of profanity filters, but this is just BRILLIANT. Again, you may have seen it before but I’m posting it due to the number of people who sent it my way this week – again, it deserves the views (another great ad from GoPro, by the way):

That’s it for now

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