Webcurios 19/07/13

No idea who first made this, sorry 🙁

THE BIT ABOUT S*CI*L M*D*A WHICH THIS WEEK IS MERCIFULLY SHORT, PERHPAS AS A RESULT OF THE WEATHER BEING BETTER AND VEREYONE REALISING THAT ALL THIS STUFF IS SIMPLY A COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME AND WHICH AS A RESULT I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO BOTHER TO SUBCATEGORISE SO YEAH, TAKE THAT, INDUSTRY!:

• Noone Looks At Your Facebook Posts: So the fact that Edgerank means that noone actually sees the crap that you spew out on The Social Network is nothing new, I don’t think, but this article on Buzzfeed was moderately interesting insofar as it highlighted the extent to which this is a problem for personal rather than professional users and the fact that it asks why Facebook won’t tell you, ever, what percentage of people who are your ‘friends’ have actually seen what you post. Anyway, this isn’t surprising in itself – what is AMAZING, though, is the insane article linked to in the heading which Techcrunch ran, which is effectively a puff-piece written by Facebook’s PR people saying ‘but people don’t want those numbers! It would make them sad!’. Journalism, eh? A dying art.
• Channel 4 Use Twitter Cards: After that insanely tedious furniture shop, this week we have something marginally more interesting (but only marginally) – C4 news using Twitter to allow people to sign up to John Snow’s daily ‘funny’ teatime email (I am aware of the insane lack of self-awareness contained within those inverted commas, fyi). I’m only including this as a final ‘look, you really ought to start using this stuff, it’s probably quite useful’ pointer – promise that it will never be alluded to EVER AGAIN. 
• Google Glass – This Is How It Can Work: I didn’t know this, bit Sarah Willis is an INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTAR horn player, who plays with the Berlin Philharmonic. Anyway, she’s one of the Google Glass ‘explorers’ (sorry) and has a pair of the cyborg specs to play around with. This is a video which she made of her going on tour, and all of a sudden the whole thing just makes sense. There’s a very real, very exciting sense of being inside someone else’s head with this, and it’s the best example I’ve yet seen of why Glass is exciting from a storytelling point of view. Take a look. Oh, and as a bonus here’s a rather shonky but technically interesting example of how AR might work with glass. Ignore the UGLY visuals and think of the tech opportunities. If you want, obviously – alternatively just skip to the videos like everyone else. See if I care. 
• The Newswires Are Quicker Than Twitter (sometimes): Look! Sometimes, just sometimes, we can all agree that TRADITIONAL MEDIA STILL WORKS!!!! Except obviously this is still on the internet, so not that traditional – but an interesting point nonetheless insofar as the spread of information and INFLUENCER HIERARCHIES go.
• Twitter Verified Users – Visualised: Speaking of ‘influencers’ (SEAMLESS!), this is a viualisation of the links between all of Twitter’s verified users. Eye candy rather than useful, but it does, if nothing else, highlight both the insanely incestuous / closed network of the FAMOUS, and also how many people you’ve never, ever heard of who have verified accounts. 
• Use Instagram As A Shopfront: So this should really be in the LONG STUFF bit at the bottom (it’s a really interesting interview with New York-based, Senegal-born and Kuwaiti-raised artist Fatima Al Qadiri), but I’m shoehorning it in here – basically there’s a VERY SMALL mention of people in Kuwait using Instagram as an e-commerce shopfront in para 3, which if none of you steal as a ‘WORLD’S FIRST’ brand exercise I am going to be very, very disappointed in you. You whelps. 
• A Thing About Big Data: A nice little website by Ogilvy which wangs on about BIG DATA (so bored of that term) and how people like you can use it to make more money for Sir Martin Sorrell. 
• How Nordstrom Is Using Pinterest To Inform Real-World Shopping: This is very clever, in a slightly evil sort of way – the piece looks at how retailer Nordstrom is using the popularity of certain articles on Pinterest to determine how they should window dress their shops. Simple, but an excellent example of using digital to inform the physical and applying digital data analysis to the pursuit of filthy real-world lucre. 
• Why Paid Search Is A Waste Of Time – LOOK, ACADEMICS!: Do you work for an advermarketingpr agency whose clients are increasingly choosing to spend their budgets on search ads rather than your AMAZING creativity? FEAR NOT! Just send them this link to a dry-but-still-interesting paper on why paid search ads don’t work, at all, and then watch the pennies roll in (Web Curios accepts no responsibility for the non-arrival of aforementioned pennies). 
• A Load Of Slides With Stats And Case Studies: Next time you need to do a presentation with loads of numbers and examples of AMAZING SOCIAL MEDIA, take a long, hard look at your life / career – and then steal everything from this one. Valid for at least a month, I reckon, before it’s all hopelessly out of date.
• Tinder Now Being Hijacked By Brands: Tinder is the latest HOT dating app, which basically uses FB pics to let you make snap-judgements on the attractiveness or otherwise of complete strangers based on nothing more than the fleeting glimpse of one photo of them. Anyway, this is the latest platform to get people all sweaty with venal excitement about how they can use it to SELL MORE STUFF – TV networks in the US are starting to experiment with marketing through it. Look, this won’t work – noone wants to be sold television when they’re casually scrolling through a list of people who they could quite possibly have a really tawdry, disappointing and empty sexual experience with in a matter of hours. Can people not browse for partners for casual sex in peace, without being sold crap? OH GOD THE HUMANITY.
• Bet On Breaking Bad: Seeing as we’re talking about TV (SEAMLESS!), here’s a genius little app which will no doubt be ripped off by a betting company in the not-too-distant. This basically allows people to place bets with their friends as to what will happen in the final series of Breaking Bad – no actual money changes hands, but you can very easily see this being coopted by a big gambling conglomorate (Bob, this one’s for you).
• The Best Advermarketingpr Thing I Saw All Week: Just amazing by WWF – such a clever idea, brilliantly executed. LOOK AT THE ANTS! CARRYING BRANDED MESSAGES! WATCH AS WE BEND NATURE TO OUR WILL!!!!! Actually, on reflection, maybe it’s not that nice after all.

By Ben Dehaan

A Miscellany Of Summer Curios, Pt.1:

• The First Posts: A cute little Wayback Machine variant, this takes you waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in time and shows you the first EVER posts on a variety of BIG NAME websites. A strangely melancholic little bit of time travel, which has served to remind me just how old I am and how young the internet is.
• What 3 Words: A really clever solution to the problem of sharing map-links and directions online. Each and every location on a map corresponds to three words, which you can then share with someone else to give them the exact directions of where to be. Which, if you’re having an affair and think that someone’s on to you and want to arrange secret assignations with the object of your desire without anyone knowing where you’re meeting (look, it was the first thing that sprang to mind, ok?), could be really useful.
• How A Wife Should Undress: From LIFE magazine in the 30s. Go on, married men, send this to your wife and see exactly how well it goes down. 
• Rent Arcade Machines: As pointed out to me by someone when I linked this on Twitter, it’s an annoying tease as it’s only available in the US. BUT! Come on, kids – we can make this happen here! This service allows users to rent arcade cabinets – the whole things, delivered to you in your home – for a month at a time, for the incredible price of $75 per month. For men (look, we all know it’s most likely to be men, it’s ok) of a certain age, this is possibly one of the best things ever invented and a surefire passport to singledom / divorce. 
• Share Hotel Rooms With Strangers: Travelling alone? Want to save money on the exorbitant rates that hotels charge for single rooms? Well, why not use this website to find a complete stranger to share your hotel room with? What’s that you say? BECAUSE THEY MIGHT TURN OUT TO BE A PSYCHOPATH???? Fie on you, you paranoid ninny! When I posted this earlier this week, the people behind it got in touch rather sniffily suggesting that I was being unfair and misrepresenting the service. I felt bad for a bit, but then remembered that this was a truly dreadful idea which screams “HELLO DAHMER, PLEASE EAT ME”.
• The Art of Pi: This is gorgeous, if mathematical – some beautiful visualisations of Pi and the numerology around it. In the interests of honesty, I’m going to have to confess that I don’t really understand how they make the pretty pictures; the more numerologically-inclined of you may fare better. But look, PRETTY COLOURS!
• The Best Maths Website Ever: Staying on the mathematical tip (SEAMLESS!), this is a truly BEAUTIFUL website (also available as a mobile app) which takes you through 30 of the most exciting concepts in maths. Really, really clever, beautifully designed, and comprehensible even to a mathtard like myself. Worth a look.
• Probably The Worst Tshirt In The World: I don’t really have anything to add to this.
• Encrypted, Secure Phone Messaging: Heml.is is a clever little app which provides secure, untraceable phone-to-phone messaging, which is delivered in a really user-friendly and simple manner and with a friendly interface. Noteworthy as it delivers a service which is only usually available if you’re a bit techy and can cope with a properly hardcore UI; if you’re doing something you shouldn’t and are a bit of a luddite, this may well be of use to you. 
• Font Comparator: For those of you who LOVE your typography, this may be of interest. A neat little site which allows you to compare different fonts and see what the practical differences between them are. 
• London In Flickr: And, in fact, a whole load of other cities too. This is a wonderful project, and a total timesink if you let it be. Taking publicly visible Flickr images and mapping them across cities, this lets you see what people have snapped where. A really lovely way of seeing the city in which you live through someone else’s eyes, and there are some great photos on there too. Go, play, lose yourself for the rest of the afternoon.
• Picture Of Animals In Snappy Outfits: No, really, that’s EXACTLY what these are. No more, no less. Available to purchase too, should you suddenly decide that what your home really needs is a portrait of a parakeet wearing an orange velour hoodie. 
• Life In 5 Seconds: A cute project which takes some of our greatest stories / legends and reduces them to very, very short infographical representations. Some work better than others, but if these haven’t already been used in an ad (they have, haven’t they?) it can only be a matter of time. 
• SuperEmoFriends: Small, sad portraits of characters from popular culture. Far more affecting than it really has any right to be. LOOK AT SAD RONALD MCDONALD! 
• The Worst Portfolio Ever: An astute takedown of the current trend for online portfolios for designers, and the most egregious examples of their crapness. To be honest, this could be applied to all industries and the increasing propensity towards ‘clever’ online CVs. Although maybe I’m just bitter as I can neither design nor code. USELESS ME. 
• Beautiful Old Photos of Cincinatti’s Public Library: You can almost smell the dust. Takes you back to a happier time, when the internet hadn’t even been thought of yet and there was…er…malnutrition, sexism, racism and homophobia everywhere. God, it’s saddening when you look back and realise that being born any time much before the past 50 years would have been genuinely dreadful. 
• The New York Bench Library: Another book-based thing (SEAMLESS!), this is a gorgeous bench / library hybrid in New York that made me very happy when I saw it. Here’s an idea – brands, why don;t you just do loads of stuff like this with a little logo on it. Bollocks to the idea of whether it ‘fits’ with your ‘strategy’ – it will be a nice thing that people appreciate and like you for, and will be a whole load more valuable than a bunch of CONTENT that noone needs, wants or cares about. Go on. Do it. You arseholes.
• DJs, Back This Kickstarter: I don’t DJ (Jesus, this is turning into a litany of personal inadequacy), but for those of you that do this pocket mixer on Kickstarter might be just the thing that you want to pledge a lot of money to. 
• Snow Tunnels: I have literally NO idea what the text on these pictures says, but they are amazing. Some sort of crazy snow tunnel, somewhere in the world (look, I know that this is a dreadful description but my knowledge of Cyrillic is pretty patchy at the best of times).
• Eel Slapping: A small, pointless website which allows you to slap a man in the face with an eel. Cathartic (also, screencaps of this will be ENDLESSLY useful in what I believe we’re now honour-bound to call OFFICE BANTS!).

By Flora Borsi

A QUICK MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORS: If you like Web Curios and what we do here at Imperica, then we would love to hear from you in our annual Imperica Reader Survey. The Survey helps us to find out how to improve our magazine, and what we should be doing in the coming year. It also helps us to make informed decisions as to how Imperica can remain commercially sustainable. We would be really grateful if you could take a couple of minutes to fill it in. It’s quick, honest. If you want to tell them to pay me loads more money, by the way, then please feel free x http://www.imperica.com/reader-survey-2013

A Miscellany Of Summer Curios, Pt.2:

• Quiet Places in NYC: I’m in two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s a lovely thing to get people to share their favourite quiet places in a large metropolitan city; on the other, by so doing you’re basically killing them. I think there should be some sort of secret version of this for London, which basically only my girlfriend and I have access to. That would be nice. Maybe I’ll let you in too, I’ve not decided yet. We’ll see.
• Worried About Aging, Wrinkles? TRY THIS: This is apparently a real thing. I think I’m going to buy it and see how it works.
• Course Texts For A Porn Postgrad: A wonderful imagined collection of 70s-style academic textbook covers for imagined tomes which might be used as part of a University course on the theory of pornography. I really, really want to read ‘New Directions In Squirt Sociology’.
• Hire My Friend: A great idea, this – taking the whole ‘My Single Friend’ concept (by the way, WHY isn’t that site called ‘Date My Mate’? SO MUCH BETTER) and applying it to the world of work and allowing people to advertise themselves for hire without actually advertising themselves, if you see what I mean. Currently skews towards tech, unsurprisingly given its genesis in East London, but still smart.
• The Best Wikipedia Entry Ever, No Joke: Look, you have to read this one. Really. Just incredible, and proof if it were needed that your life really is fundamentally unexciting and beige compared to that of Adrian Carton de Wiart, who is probably the greatest boy’s own hero ever to have lived. I’m going to paste one of the opening bits as a teaser – seriously, do take a look: “He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War; was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; survived a plane crash; tunnelled out of a POW camp; and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. He later wrote that “Frankly I had enjoyed the war” when describing his service in the WWI.”
• Sand As An Executive Toy: I don’t doubt that the chemistry behind this is mind-boggling, but all I can think is how much I want some. Just MENTAL.
• Crosswords. Really Hard, Inexplicable Crosswords: I don’t really ‘get’ these, I have to say, but they look interesting and I think that if you’re a logician or similarly mindeed then it may all make sense to you. Anyway, the crossword clues are defined using regular expressions – if that means something to you then congratulations!
• See Your Folks: Need a website to make you feel guilty about how long it’s been since you spoke to your parents? OH GOOD! This is a brilliant thing to send to a sibling to make them feel really, really bad about themselves. Or, in fact, your kids if you have any. Go on, troll your family.
• Missing Kids On Stamps: This is a heartrending little project, encouraging Canadians to take advantage of their postal service’s ‘Custom Stamps’ service to put pictures of missing children on your stamps. The sound effects on the website almost reduce me to tears each time (I’m not ashamed of this AT ALL). 
• Air Freshener FOR MEN: Are you upset because Glade or Airwick or whatever other sickly olfactory horror show you use to mask your home’s miasmic funk isn’t quite masculine enough for you? Help is at hand in the shape of Archer, the apparently-not-a-joke air freshener for MEN. With MANLY SCENTS. It looks like a parody, it smells like a parody, but it appears that they really do offer sprays with the scent of ‘Hunting Lodge’, ‘European Sports Car’ and, er, ‘Distillery’. Weird.
• Photos of NYC’s Drag Queens: Just wonderfully happy-making pictures. Each image links to its own slideshow, so have an explore as there are some great shots in there.
• Universal’s Kickstarter For Vinyl: I can’t remember if I linked to the Ninja Tune version of this earlier this year (OH MY GOD I DID); anyhow, now Universal are doing a similar thing but BIGGER. Interesting trend here for back-catalogue stuff being resurrected due to popular demand – watch this extend to food, etc, in the next year or so. Seriously – you think, say, Cadbury’s wouldn’t run a Kickstarter around bringing back some sort of limited edition thing? GUARANTEED MONEY, KIDS.
• Visualising Texan Executions: Following on from the Texan Last Words database from the other week, this is a project visualising the stats behind the deaths. As miserable as you’d imagine, really. HAPPY FRIDAY!
• Men Who Visit Brothels: Another one from the cheery side of the web, this is an excellent photoseries taking portraits of German men in the brothel they frequent, with short interviews with them as to why they’re there. Actually less depressing than you might have initially thought, honest. 
• Fuds: I like this. Mocking foodie idiocy in simple fashion. The menu is almost credible.

THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS:

• Bad Kids’ Jokes: I think that this one’s quite old, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it before, but it make me laugh so fuckit. Bad jokes from a moderator of a kids’ jokes website. 
• My Old Man: A new project collecting essays and thoughts about people’s fathers. You can submit stuff, if you’re so minded – it could develop into something rather lovely. 
• The First Vine ‘Album’: Lucky Pierre is Aidan Moffat’s solo project (it’s also a slang phrase for the middle-man in an all-guy three-way, but we won’t worry about that right now). Aidan used to be in Arab Strap and this is his take on what purports to be the first Vine ‘album’. It’s not quite an album, of course, what with the restrictions of the medium and all that, but it’s an interesting idea and some of the music is LOVELY, particularly with Vine’s autolooping which I suppose is the point. BONUS! Have what is apparently the first ACTUAL Vine song which is all about Ben Fogle’s involuntary acid trip and is pretty weird.
• What’s Your Ex Doing Now: Want to be reassured about how badly your ex-partner is doing without you, but in a softly whimsical fashion? OH GOOD!
• Epic Pukes: Pablo Iranzo has put together a collection of pictures of musicians, screaming, and painted massive jets of technicolour vomit emerging from their gaping maws. The ned result if vastly more aesthetically pleasing than it has any right to be. 
• Super Magritte: The paintings of Rene Magritte, recreated through the graphical style of Super Mario Brothers. What the everliving fcuk did we do before the endless creative outlet afforded us by the internet, eh?
• Famouses Wearing Black Flag Tees: You now how it’s now de rigeur for any famous who wants to appear a bit rock’n’roll to wear a Ramones tshirt or similar? Here’s a whole site dedicated to photoshopping Black Flag logos onto famouses tshirts. WHY NOT, EH?
• Visual Poetry: Erm, well, that really. It’s visual textual mashup poetry STUFF. Depending on your level of pretentious pseudery you will either love or hate this (clue: I love it).
• This Is Thin Privilege: Because being life-threateningly obese and having people perhaps react to that is simply ANOTHER example of how thin people ruin EVERYTHING. This privilege stuff would be funny were it not so deeply depressing.
• Sleeping Models: Male models snapped with their eyes closed. Basically a collection of really, really ridiculously good-looking people looking a tiny bit silly.
• Tinder Rejections: I mentioned Tinder up there (SEAMLESS!) – here’s a nice collection of screenshots of one person’s failed chat-up attempts on it. Basically it proves that being facile works on online fcukbuddymatching sites.
• One Star Reviews of Strip Clubs: Generally just a little disheartening, but the line about being thrown out for being deaf made me laugh like a donkey for about 5 minutes. 
• Your Barrister Boyfriend: Currently doing the rounds of every Chambers in the UK, this frankly incredible (in the ‘is this a parody? Oh sweet Christ it’s not, is it?’ sense) site collects London’s ‘hottest’ barristers in one convenient place. And rates them, in prose which is a bit creepily damp-palmed. Oh, who am I kidding – I’m just jealous because I’m nowhere near as successful, rich or handsome as these people. If anyone wants to set up ‘Your Webmong Boyfriend’ then feel free.

By Johannes Grutzke

LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG:

• On The Society Of Spectacle: Wow. One of those pieces that makes you realise that there’s nothing new under the Sun, and that we’re all simply racing around in circles around the same fundamental principles as we always have (maybe just racing a bit faster, and looking at stuff through different prisms). This is an essay by Guy Debord from 1967, looking at how society is focused more on the representation of things than the things themselves. Leaving aside the Platonic elements, this is incredible – look how little things have moved on (or, if you prefer, how incredibly prescient Debord was). Oh, and I know that this is Marxist philosophy but come on, THINK for once. 
• A Really Nice Interview With The Lovely Dave Grohl: Because if you read the above, you deserve it. Really interesting interview, though, and proof positive (if any further were needed) that Grohl really does come across as the nicest man in music.
• And Daniel Craig Interviews Thom Yorke: Well, yes, quite. I have no idea why this happened, but it’s actually a surprisingly good read if you discount the slightly ‘oh, we’re both kind of amazing’ vibe which permeates the whole thing.
• Russell Brand Is Quite Clever: I never really ‘got’ Russell Brand – his whole ‘Dick Emery meets Dot Cotton’ schtick always left me cold, and I found the serial shagger stuff very tedious indeed (again, probably jealousy). Increasingly, though, I’ve been forced to concede that he’s a very smart man – recent essays on drugs, race, politics, liberalism and Islam have been well-thought out and cogently argued. This piece looks at the man as a commentator rather than a comedian, and is a decent overview of why he maybe deserves a little more respect from useless armchair critics like me. 
• What Foxconn Workers Do In Their Downtime: How Apple’s slaves ‘enjoy’ their time off. Look, I know that no commissioning editors read this (WHY NOT??? Rhetorical, btw), but on the offchance can we all agree that this is a wonderful photo essay waiting to happen? Good. Now go and make it happen.
• The Prancersise Lady: You remember Prancersise, don’t you? You all got really excited about it a couple of months ago. This is a profile piece on the woman behind it, and what happened to her when she went megafamous. As per the norm with these sorts of stories, it will make you really hope that you never become internet famous (unless you’re a mental). 
• A Series Of Things On Trayvon Martin: There’s nothing funny to say about any of this. Here’s an interesting piece in the Atlantic looking at the whole thing from a PURELY legal perspective; here’s a piece on the whole affair with some really, really interesting comments (I know, this is UNHEARD OF on the internet, but they really are worth reading through), and this is Questlove of The Roots’ take on the whole thing, which is probably the saddest thing I’ve read all week. God, what a mess.
• Peggy Paula: The best short fiction I have read in a long, long time. Save, read, enjoy. 
• The Theory of Pixar: Have you ever, when watching Pixar’s films, thought to yourself ‘Hm, I think that there’s an overarching narrative superstructure here with a fairly bleak post-apocalyptic narrative at its core’? No? More fool you, then. This VERY LONG essay is either genius or madness (I think I’m leaning to the latter), but its comprehensive knowledge of the films is insane. I would love to see pictures of Pixar people’s reactions on reading this.
• The Confusing Merry-go-round Of Gay Identity Politics And Nomenclature: This is actually an essay about the word ‘Twink’ and its pejorative meaning, but sort of segues into a whole load of other stuff about gay subcultures and identity. I only found this because I had a haircut this week which basically makes me look incredibly twinky. 
• Clive James Takes Down Dan Brown: Ok, so it’s not really a fair fight but James, as ever, writes like God. 
• We Get The Films Which We Deserve: On Asylum, the film studio which is responsible for Sharknado (LOL!!!) and other memetastic favourites. Basically this is a pointer to a future in which EVERY SINGLE FILM EVER PRODUCED is ‘Snakes On A Plane’. Hi, future!
• The Third Golden Age of Television: We’re currently living through the third golden age of television, or so this article posits. A really interesting look at why this might be.
• The Bad Things Kids Do: A Reddit thread collecting examples of the worst things that people did as kids. The best argument for sterilisation I’ve read all week (but also dreadfully, awfully, guiltily funny in places).

By Dina Litovski

NOW, FINALLY, MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS! (OH, AND IF YOU’VE NOT YET SEEN IT HERE’S THE AMANDA PALMER DAILY MAIL TAKEDOWN):

1) Corey Feldman! Have you ever done porn, Corey Feldman? (sorry, that’s a line from this AMAZING interview that I know I’ve linked to about 30-odd times but which I will never tire of) Anyway, 80s teen heartthrob Corey Feldman now makes MUSIC, of a sort. This is the awe-inspiring video for his latest track ‘Ascension Millennium’. There is SO much WTFery in here that it’s hard to know where to begin. Just watch. Oh, and if you want to make yourself feel a bit sad, this is the website for Corey’s…er…well I’m not sure what it is, but it seems to be his attempt to do a Hugh Hefner with ‘Corey’s Angels’. SO GRUBBY and you can almost smell the coke sweat: