Image by Brendan George Ko

SocialMediaMarketingPRAdvertisingCampaignsPlatformDevelopmentStuff
It’s unlikely that I will ever write a word that ugly again. 

Facebook:

• Facebook Home: There was going to be a Facebook phone, everyone said. They were going to MAKE A THING. Turns out that that was sort of half-right; Facebook Home is software rather than hardware, yes, but it’s also software that could (BIG ‘could’ there, obviously) become a default interface layer for the biggest mobile platform in the world. Which is quite smart really, not that you’d expect anything else. As to whether people actually *want* to have their phone’s usage filtered through a Facebook-designed UI…who am I to say (although I don’t imagine anyone will relish the inevitable future where the portable computer in your pocket is just another piece of advert-peddling plastic in your life – THANKS, FUTURE FACEBOOK!)? I barely use the thing any more. I saw a phone the other week which had a physical Facebook button on it – because life is just TOO SHORT for people to put up with more than one click to share pictures of their sodding food with their ‘friends’, it would appear – and nearly recoiled in horror; I’m unlikely to be target audience for this development. You can read more about how it will work here, some stuff about the (inevitable) privacy concerns here (but seriously, YOUR PHONE ALREADY TRACKS WHAT YOU DO) – and the best comment on the whole thing from some kid in the US here.
• Speaking of Ads: More of them, in your newsfeed, tracking you better. I may stop writing about this stuff; we may as well all just assume that EVERYTHING we see on the internet is trying to sell us something and leave it at that. 
• Better Ad Analytics: But seeing as I’ve started…FB has also tweaked its ad analytics, allowing advertisers to easily see exactly how ads have performed against specific metrics such as gaining new followers, ‘engagement per post’, etc. Which is basically just another way of Facebook reinforcing its incredible, symbiotic relationship with media buyers and allowing them to go to their clients “Look! We said we were going to increase engagement by buying adverts and we DID increase engagement by buying adverts now watch as I roll over so you can tickle my tummy because I am a GOOD ad buyer!”. It’s like the people at Ocado proudly demonstrating that they have achieved your stated shopping goal of buying salad, or something (it’s early and I’ve not really thought this through, so it’s entirely possible that that comparison really doesn’t work at all, for which apologies).
• Threaded Conversations on Pages: Comments on FB Pages become more like those on Reddit, so it’s easier to see who’s replying to whom. That’s basically it, although this line is interesting: “Also, the most active and engaging conversations among your readers will be surfaced at the top of your posts ensuring that people who visit your Page will see the best conversations”. Hm, the best, eh? Try telling that to the brand which is dealing with the SOCIAL MEDIA CRISIS. 

Twitter:

• More Twitter Cards: No, me neither. Twitter Cards are apparently those bits of code which allow web devs to code pages so that content shared from them can appear as a thumbnail / preview in a user’s Twitter feed. You know – when you share a photo or video or something, and you can see it / play it without leaving Twitter. That. Anyway, they’ve expanded the service – useful to know if you (for some people. Maybe not you, though).
• Vine – Good & Bad Examples: A look at some good and less good examples of Vine used for branded communications. There is something a little silly about this amount of attention / analysis being given to a medium which allows the creation of 6-second video clips, isn’t there?
• Twitter on Bloomberg Terminals: This is my ‘under the radar but actually quite significant news item of the week’ (part of an in-no-way-regular series). Traders on the floor of Wall Street will be getting Tweets fed to them through their Bloomberg terminals – which in terms of rubber-stamping the platforms centrality to the way information moves in 2013 is pretty big. It’s also very big news for large corporates – at the very least, it sort of demands that they use Twitter for news dissemination and media relations, to an extent, as it’s feeding directly into the market and has suddenly become hugely price-influential. Not that it wasn’t already, but, y’know, moreso.

Google:

• Building Apps on Glass: This is a 50-minute developer video, and is NICHE. Nonetheless, if you’re in any way interested about how Glass will work, how developers can work with it, and a few of the tricks it has up its sleeve, it’s worth a skim.
• All of Google’s April Fool’s Gags: In case you’re not bored to tears with all this crap yet. Even if you are, though, you need to doff your cap to the amount of time and effort which Google devoted to make the whole ‘We’re shutting YouTube’ one – there was a whole additional 8 hours of video which they put together to go with it, which is an impressive commitment to a throwaway gag.
• Use Gifs as Google+ Profile Pictures: If you’d like to, you can.
• Visualise Website Analytics: This isn’t by Google, and it’s basically just a marketing tool, but it’s still actually quite cute – service produces a nicely designed poster-style analytics report for your website. Useful for reporting purposes, perhaps, maybe.

LinkedIn:

• Mention and Tag People/Brands on LinkedIn: You know how you can name people and tag them in Facebook posts? You’ll be able to do that on LinkedIn soon. Possibly of use to those few brands who have found a viable use for LinkedIn other than recruitment – all 7 of them.

General Internetty Newsy Things:

• Social Media Usage Habits in the UK: This is actually 3 weeks old. SORRY. In case you didn’t see it, though, it’s some useful-if-you-need-to-justify-something stats on UK social media usage. Everyone uses Facebook! Lots of them on mobile! The kids ARE on Twitter! 17% of the UK population uses Google+! Er, wait, what, hang on? You can see the full report here – which makes it clear that the sample size was 1,000. I’m going to take that Google+ stat with the requisite pinch of salt, in which case. 
• On the Utility of Social Media Marketing: I love this piece, largely as its central thesis seems to be ‘well, this stuff seems to work. A bit. Sort of. Muchlike a load of other stuff. We don’t really know why, though. Or how. But it can’t hurt to throw money at it, can it?’. Which is BRILLIANTLY HONEST. Oh, and I KNOW that the pradvermarketing industries CAN track stuff and SHOULD track stuff and and and. It’s all just lies, though, isn’t it, really, when it comes to a lot of this? What’s that you say? 49billion earned impressions of your campaign across digital channels? Come off it, people, not even you believe this stuff any more.
• How Bitcoin Works: You can’t move on the internet for people writing articles about Bitcoin at the moment, and how it’s changing EVERYTHING (until I am able to pay the aforementioned Ocado man with it, I’m not convinced). The link back there explains how it works – so does this piece, in slightly more detail. Read it, and then nod knowingly and stroke your chin when someone tells you that they are jacking it all in to go Bitcoin mining (this piece explains why they’re probably a little late to that party, in case you’re interested).
• Tracking the Harlem Shake: You remember that Harlem Shake thing? No? Oh you fickle, fickle people. In any case, this is a really interesting look at some of the factors which made it temporarily the BIGGEST THING ON THE INTERNET – there were, unsurprisingly, one or two commercial factors involved. Another nail in the coffin of the phenomenon of natural virality.

Campaign-type Things:

• Crowdsourcing Carly-Rae Jepson’s Lyrical Output with Coke: I think that, after this point, noone is ever allowed to tell a musician that they have sold out ever again. The concept is simply redundant. This is the apotheosis of Simon Cowell’s decade-long forced-mating of music and brand culture, in which American Idol, Coca Cola and doubtless charming internet pop-mopsy Carly-Rae Jepson collaborate to produce what will almost certainly be the best song that has ever been written by anyone, ever, in the history of soundwaves. I don’t really want to write much more about it, as it sort of makes me a bit sad, but you can see the whole campaign thing here.
• WiFi Poster Campaign: This is smart. A poster campaign in Korea included WiFi devices in billboards for a certain film, giving passers-by the opportunity to download the trailer and other bits and pieces quickly and for free. Clever and helpful.
• The Best Job In The Worlzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz: The one certainty in advermarketingpr is that there’s nothing better than a truly original idea – other than a slightly different take on an idea that’s worked pretty well for a load of other people before you! Here’s a hotel chain doing their very own riff on the best job in the world thing, this time advertising for professional sleepers to test their beds. CAN WE STOP THIS NOW PLEASE? Thanks.
• UNICEF Vending Machine: I really like this (video’s in Portuguese, but it should be fairly comprehensible). UNICEF set up a vending machine in a shopping centre, allowing people to directly ‘buy’ vaccines for children. It’s an excellent execution, although if you think too hard about it it does say a couple of worrying things about how hard-connected the ‘make a physical purchase, feel an endorphin rush!’ thing is.
• Rijksmuseum Flashmob: The PR around the full reopening of the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam has been nothing short of spectacular – it was EVERYWHERE, yesterday. This is one part of that superb execution – I am bored of faked flashmobs, but this put a smile on even my jaded fizzog. Watch.

Lisa Gerber by Jeanloup Sieff

Things of Interest and Wonderment, pt1:

• Soundtrack this section with the SUBLIME Jazzmatic – Nas’ Illmatic, reimagined as being recorded in a 30s jazz style. So much better than it should be based on that description.
• Minuum – A Typing Solution: I think this is a lovely piece of design, particularly for people with fat fingers. A minimalist keyboard interface which allows for fast, non-accurate, auto-correcting typing. Obviously the proof is in the usage, but it’s a clever idea.
• Recalling 1993: I love this. An urban history project taking place in New York City, put together by the New Museum, which allows anyone in the city to access location-specific memories from 1993 from payphones located around the city. It’s SUCH a lovely idea, and a brilliant example of clever urban storytelling and use of civic infrastructure. Can we do this everywhere, please? Obviously London no longer really has working phoneboxes, but RFID tags in park benches which play audio, perhaps, or something to do with those WiFi enabled posters from Korea which I mentioned above…So much potential. 
• Vogue Meets Star Wars: No, really. In 1977, the cast of Star Wars (in character) appeared in a fur photoshoot in US Vogue. Very weird pop-culture/fashion crossover.
• NYT Haikus: Sticking with NYC, this is one of the NYT’s seemingly-infinite stable of websites – this time, showcasing accidently haikus which have appeared in the paper, as picked out by an algorithm. There are some occasionally quite beautiful ones in there, but aside from anything else it’s a pleasingly abstract / pointless project. 
• The 100 Most Significant Websites of 2013 in the UK: As of tomorrow, the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Library and Trinity College Dublin, will gain powers to archive the entire UK web, along with e-journals, e-books and other formats. This is the list of those websites chosen by the institutions as the most significant / interesting / representative; it’s a fascinating look at what our nation’s curators think of as our national identity as expressed online. 
• The Dead Duck Story: I first heard about this duck thing about 10 years ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. This TED talk is about how one duck changed a man’s life forever. It’s an…erm…odd story, and one which really does give lie to the whole ‘cuddly nature’ idea. As an aside, I once told the duck story to a room full of civil servants at a party, only to be met with stunned and slightly horrified silence and a slow shuffling away – turns out it’s not as good an icebreaker as I might at first have thought. Oh, and bonus-duck.
• Pictures of Holi: Holi is the Hindu festival of colour, and these are some gorgeous pictures of it from last month. Cheering as we limp, pitifully, into British Summer Time.
• Obscure Hiphop Motherlode: There is SO MUCH excellent music on this site (if, that is, you like 90s=ish hiphop. I do).
• Killing Cool: A website for creatives who are frustrated by their clients persistently failing to acknowledge the genius behind their ideas, allowing them to keep track of ideas that are ‘killed’ and get rewards for milestones hit (500 ideas killed? HAVE SOME STICKERS!). Sometimes ideas deserve to die.
• My Little Pony Love Spat: There aren’t really any adequate words for how odd this is. Suffice it to say that it’s a letter written by a man who seems to seriously believe that he is in love with, and will marry, a character from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (an aside: how LONG is that Wikipedia entry? About as long as the one for ‘Gene’, fyi) to another man who gets his jollies drawing sexually explicit pictures of said pony engaged in heavy-duty acts of congress. It’s entirely SFW and VERY ODD.
• Lifehacks from Quora: Quora’s a bit of a forgotten site these days, but it regularly throws up interesting / useful threads – like this one, which collects some genuinely useful tips for better living. You can see some of the better ones at Quora Spotlight.
• Pictures from Vietnam: Back to Boston.com for this collection of never-before-seen images from Vietnam. Some great photos, from an exhibition which opens today in Portland, OR, USA.
• Every UK Number One Album, Reviewed in Such a Way as to Make You Want to Listen to It: No more, no less. There is some brilliant writing on there, not least the one about Charles & Diana’s BBC Royal Wedding album. Go read.

By E.V. Day

Things of Interest & Wonderment, pt2:

• Separated by a Common Language: A great blog (for people interested in linguistics, culture and the like, at least) looking at the differences between US and UK English. Geeky and technical, but also full of interesting etymology (if that’s not an oxymoron).
• America Hates Atheists: Atheist is a shoe company based in Berlin. They are SUPERHIPSTER! Nonetheless, they ran an interesting experiment to see whether or not their brand name affected the likelihood of their goods successfully reaching customers in the US. Turns out it did – seems that employees of the USPS aren’t only prone to homicidal fits of rage, but they also LOVE JESUS.
• The Crimer Show: This is…well, I don’t know what it is. A website and Twitter account which basically tells CRIME stories in a tone of voice halfway between LOLCats and Clueless Joe. It made me laugh, which is obviously the only important thing about it.
• Polaroid Portraits by Max Galimberti: So this man has photographed MANY FAMOUSES, and so is probably quite famous himself; nonetheless, this is the first time I’ve seen his brilliantly kaleidoscopic polaroid portraits – they are BRILLIANT.
• The Architecture of Density: Seeing as we’re doing photos, these are great – hyperdense cropped views of battery-packed urban living. Screws with your head a little bit if you start to imagine ALL THE LITTLE PEOPLE behind the windows. 
• Neurofiction: I don’t think that this is an April Fool. It seems genuine enough, but it also seems utterly fantastical and a bit…well…impossible. It purports to be tech developed in Scotland, with the support of New Media Scotland, which READS YOUR MIND and then generates stories for you on the fly based on data pulled from an encephalogram (is that what they’re called?). Effectively it can ‘read’ how you are reacting to stimuli and then deliver alternate content based on what you appear to want/like/dislike. Expect something like this to do something spine-chillingly horrific as part of a Hallowe’en event / installation sometime in the next few years (or sooner, if I can get my mitts on it).
• What We Wore: A project documenting the style history of the UK, from the 50s to now. Some great nostalgiapics in there, and some truly dreadful haircuts, Warm, fuzzy nostalgia – you can lose yourself in this one, a bit.
• The Imaginary Poetry of Sally Draper: I don’t watch Mad Men (or indeed any of the HBO megaseries. Sorry about that) but I understand that there is a teenage character called Sally Draper in it. These are her poems, as imagined by Jennica Harper. They’re really good – a touch Judy Blume (with less Ralph).
• Cats Can Be Your Friend: Or so this rather cute photoseries of a small girl and her cat would suggest. Don’t normally do ‘cute’ in here, but these really are rather nice.
• The Best Worst Album Cover You’ll See All Week: I’m sure this practice has a name, but I can’t for the life of me think what it might be. 

Image by Jack Davison

The Circus of Tumblrs (BUMPER EDITION):

• Depressed Copywriter: Undermining the world of fake corporate cheer in advertising, one tear-stained post at a time.
• Benedict Cumberbatch Drawn as Every Single Pokemon: Yes, that. No idea at all why, but it’s strangely compelling. Bonus points for the slightly unhinged URL.
• International Relations as Depicted Through Cats: There is nothing so geopolitically complex which cannot be described or explained via the medium of feline photography and captioning, it seems.
• Videogames in Toilets: One man’s (come on, it’s not likely to be a woman, is it?) quest to comprehensively catalogue toilets in videogames throughout the ages. Obsessive.
• Modernist Architecture: A tumblr collecting B&W shots of modernist architecture. For one person this will be THE ideal mood board or inspiration this afternoon. You may not be that person, though.
• Calvin & Hobbes GIFS: Not sure that this quite works, but here’s a Tumblr full of animated GIFS of Calvin & Hobbes panels. Quite surprised that the famously litigious Wa
• Actresses Without Teeth: In case you’re one of the 13 people yet to see this.
• Stalking GUTS: GUTS was a 90s Nickelodeon show in the US, billed as an ‘Action Sports Quiz’. No, I don’t care either. This Tumblr is brilliantly creepy though, as it goes through and SOMEHOW (and I am really impressed by the fact that they seem to be finding these people) tracks down former contestants on Facebook and posts ‘Then & Now’ photos here. I would like to see a UK version for, say, Knightmare, please. Thanks. 
• Pictures of Blacked-Out NYC: Collecting images taken during Hurricane Sandy. Some really good shots in here. 
• Kilopanorama: Glitched-out iPhone photos. Empty and a bit creepy and quite Lynchian.
• Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn: As NSFW as the title would suggest. Amazing photobombing, porncats!
• James Franco, With Cats: No porn this time (though for some of you I appreciate that BLOODY JAMES FRANCO might qualify). Included largely for the wonderfully poor photoshop in most of these pictures.
• Vinnie’s Pizza Specials Board: Vinnie’s is a pizza joint in Brooklyn. This is a Tumblr of its daily Specials board. Small businesses! THIS IS HOW SOCIAL MEDIA SHOULD BE USED.
• Distractions in Space: What astronauts might talk about, maybe.
• Who Is That Hot Ad Girl?: Creepy, stalkerish site which invites people to submit screencaps of actresses in adverts so that they can be identified by name. Not convinced that this is ok.
• Street Hijab: Pictures of stylish women, in hijabs. 
• What Ali Wore: I posted this on Twitter last week and the response was ASTOUNDING. Girls in particular were SWOONING over Ali – and it’s easy to see why. As with the actresses/teeth thing, you’ve probably seen it already – I really hope some fashion brand makes Ali PROPERLY famous.

LONG READS!

• Try this as a soundtrack for this little lot – ambient piano instrumental called ‘Every Day We Are Dying And Outer Space Does Not Give One Single F**k’.
• The Man Who Sold Shares in Himself: A fascinating look at one man’s project to turn himself into a company, with shareholders who can dictate his existence. I am quite seriously considering buying some myself, just to see how it works. But that might be a bit too odd, not sure yet.
• The Disbenefits of the Bacon-wrapped Economy: Ok, so this is ostensibly about the Bay Area in the US, and the impact that having all these fabulously rich and very young people dominating the culture out there. The points it makes, though, about how the arts and cultural sectors can and should be funded, how relatively small demographics can skew a whole area’s identity, gentrification, responsibility and urban renewal are pretty universal, and worth reading particularly with reference to East London (yes, I know that there isn’t the money there, but there are still parallels).
• A Very Sad Look at the ‘Erotica’ Industry: I’d always thought that David Foster Wallace’s ‘Big Red Son’ was the defining ‘straight’ look at adult industry awards – this one’s up there with it. You will feel nothing more than grubby when you’ve finished, but the writing is excellent. 
• One Man’s Addiction To Gucci: This will make you feel grubby too, although for different reasons. The story of one very, very rich man and his apparent quest to be made a fool of by a legion of fashionistas. Really, man, TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF. Also, the money involved is just jaw-dropping. Go read. 
• On the Psychology of Extreme Altruism: I like to think I’m quite a helpful person, which almost certainly means that I’m nothing of the sort. I, and almost certainly you, pale into insignificance when compared to the insane willingness to help displayed by US academic Adam Grant – this article examines how he does it, how he benefits, and whether it’s something we should all do more of (answer: we should).
• All About VICE: No question the smartest lifestyle/consumer/publishing company in the world right now, this is a look at the VICE empire, where it came from, how it works and where it wants to go. I wonder if The Man ever turns up to any of their board meetings.
• Hugh Hefner: There have been no shortage of Hefner profiles, but this one’s particularly good and shot through with an elegiac sadness which you don’t often find. Definitely worth reading, this one.

Some Videos That Don’t Fit Down There:

• Post-it Animation: Post-its used as pixels in animations are nothing new, but the effort put into this stop-motion short is astounding.
• Calvin & Hobbes – The Gritty Reboot: This spoof trailer for a Calvin & Hobbes reboot actually makes it look as if the concept could stand up. What would Calvin’s life be like now, if his prodigious and uncontrollable animation had never deserted him. PRETTY SCARY, it turns out.
• This Week’s Odd Internet Art-thing: This is Michael the cat. Michael’s quite special. Also, he turns into a robot at the end.
• Garrett’s Fight: I really don’t know how I feel about this, but the news report is really interesting and throws up a whole host of questions that I’m not about to attempt to answer here. This is the story of Garrett, a Down’s Syndrome man, and his nascent career as an MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighter. I cried A LOT whilst watching this, I warn you.
• Lana Del Rey covers Cohen: I love Chelsea Hotel No.2 by Leonard Cohen. This is actually a very good cover, whatever you may think of Ms Lizzie Grant.
• Flaming Lips & Bon Iver: This feels a little like it’s trying slightly too hard to be odd, but it’s still worth a watch because it’s the Flaming Lips and Bon Iver.
• Watch Out: Full disclosure – I know the person in this, but nonetheless it’s a really well cut short made by some South London teens. Someone give them some acting / editing work. GO ON, DO IT.

By Matthew Woodson

NOW THE EMBEDDED VIDEOS CAN COMMENCE:

1) This week kicks off with a short, slow motion piece of footage of people blowing bubbles with bubblegum. It’s relaxing and a bit gross at the same time, and really made me think of toads:

 

2) This video is a cross between mid-90s side-scrolling arcade games, The Smurfs and the entire art back catalogue of Robert Crumb. Needless to say it’s excellent, as is the song; this is…er…’Kleenex Girl Wonder’ by NUBBS:

3) Reverso is a short French animation about a man for whom gravity doesn’t quite work like everyone else. Charming, and technically excellent:

4) Staying on the theme of animation, have you ever wondered what it might be like to be the only straight flamingo at the annual flamingo gay pride party? I thought so – in which case, this video’s for YOU:

5) Short, bloody and not very sweet, this is my favourite song of the week. The Thermals, with Born to Kill:

6) Political campaigning is, we all know, becoming more and more sophisticated – I mean, just LOOK at this website, for example! Which makes this video effort by the Tea Party movement all the more odd – it’s just TERRIBLE. A look at the dystopian future in which the FILTHY LIBERALS have their way and all decent, God-fearing people are being taxed 100% and everyone’s so SOMA-d out with benefits that they have lost the entrepreneurial spirit that made America great and…oh, look, just watch it. All served with a healthy dollop of Hunger Games. AMAZING:

7) I know I feature OFWGKTA stuff on here quite a lot, but they do make good songs / videos. The latest from Tyler is for IFHY, and is not only really well put together but also shows off what a good actor the man is. Impressive, I think:

8) I’m not a fan of the song, particularly, but this is the most beautiful video I’ve seen in ages. Another one taking the aesthetic of high-quality B&W gifs and applying it to video, this is Back to Me by Joel Compass. If you only watch one thing, make it this one:

*

9) Finally, this is a really sad little animation about love and losing love. It’s called Howard. HAPPY WEEKEND, EVERYONE!!!

 

That’s it for now

See you next week. Please forward this onto as many people as your mail server can physically handle. If you’re reading this and have yet to subscribe, visit the Imperica newsletter page to do so.
 

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

See you next week. Please forward this onto as many people as your mail server can physically handle. If you’re reading this and have yet to subscribe, visit the Imperica newsletter page to do so.

 

 

2) This was sent to me and another Twitter person on Wednesday, with the accompanying message “I saw this and thought of you”. THANKS! This is apparently an advert for a Russian workwear clothing brand called “We Cum”. To be honest, it could be anything – it has a strange poetic beauty all of its own:

3) By way of an apology, have this – an incredible combination of graffiti and camerawork and animation which, I guarantee, will properly drop your jaw around halfway in. Seriously, watch:

4) This is Earl Sweatshirt’s latest, and features a lot of the traditional OFWGKTA tropes – skateboards, jackassisms, dense flow (I can’t help but feel self-consciously stupid writing that, but hey ho) and a barely contained sense of menace. It’s very good, I think:

5) You’d expect a song titled ‘Evil Friends’ to have a somewhat sinister video, and this doesn’t disappoint. The song is AWESOME, though, and the video from artists Portugal The Man is a little creepy but also does some quite cool stuff in terms of recreating the imagery of photos and gifs within moving images. Ahhh, PSEUDERY!:

 

6) This week’s slice of 80s-film-inspired Goonies/Mad Max-esque film comes courtesy of Wavves, whose songs I’ve always liked but who I’ve always found it hard to warm to. No different with this one, but the accompanying clip will make you want to watch a long-form film version and there’s no higher compliment. The song itself is also very good indeed, which helps:

7) What do you get if you combine Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (and Bambi) with Top Gun, and turn the whole into a story about Tom Cruise wreaking vengeance on woodland creatures for no clearly defined reason? This, it turns out. Aerodisney, by Africa Pseudobrutismus:

8) Cartoon ducks. At a rave. Drawn in the slightly unpleasantly lysergic style of an unsteady-handed Ralph Bakshi. This is “It’s My Beak” by Libythyth:

9) Finally, this is a beautiful and romantic and slightly sad/wistful short by Gustav Johansson. Get a cup of tea and watch it with someone you like a lot. It’s called ‘Everyday’:

That’s it for now

See you next week. Please forward this onto as many people as your mail server can physically handle. If you’re reading this and have yet to subscribe, visit the Imperica newsletter page to do so.