Web Humor: Baby's First Internet
Baby's First Internet by Kevin Fanning and Kean Soo provides a hilarious look at some of the trends, habits and absurdities of today's online culture. From having to be the first to add a comment underneath a new blog post to the urge to photograph every single thing you eat this new baby book (that's not really for babies) covers a great deal with it's short insightful rhymes.
Metafilter connects the book to larger concerns about where the Internet may be headed. (via Babyosphere)
Posted on August 5, 2008
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Show Off Your Inbox Zero Victory
An iniative called Inbox Victory from the F.A.T. (free art and technology) website is encouraging people to take pictures and screenshots of when they have managed to clear out their email inbox.
Have you ever been in the situation where you spend days trying answer all of your email only to accomplish your goal and have no one to share in your victory? All you want is a high five, a pat on the back, and a "job well done soldier!", and yet most likely all you are left with is an empty room and a cold cup of coffee. Inbox Victory is an initiative that says, "you deserve that high five!" And here is how you get it:It can be very difficult and time consuming to get your email inbox down to zero. It is also usually a very short-lived experience because it isn't long before new emails come rolling in. This is a great way to keep a momento of your inbox success story. (via Boing Boing)
1) Get your email inbox down to zero. People have various methods for dealing with their email so 'inbox 0' is going to mean different things to different people. A basic rule of thumb, however, is getting it to a point where no further action can be taken.
2) Open up your webcam software and take a screenshot of yourself profiling in front of your defeated foe (See examples below).
3) Leave your screenshot in the comments of this post.
Posted on July 30, 2008
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Paintings of Internet Memes
Czech painter Jeremiah Palecek is now painting Internet memes. Featured below are his paintings of The Dramatic Chipmunk and the Star Wars Kid. You can see Palecek's paintings on his blog here (via Boing Boing).
Posted on May 1, 2008
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A Convention For Lulz
Finally all those Internet memes will be honored with a convention. It's the ROFLCon. We really needed this convention badly right? LOLCats just doesn't get enough notice on the Internet. The Bosotn Herald says this lulz con is being held by MIT.
The best - and, well, the worst - of Internet culture will crawl out of computer screens across the globe and descend on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Friday and Saturday for the first-ever ROFLCon, a joint venture of the Harvard and MIT Free Culture programs that will feature more than 60 Internet celebrities, guest speakers and college professors.Laughing Squid says the Tron guy is going. Wired calls the convention a weekend of nerddom. The full list of guest stars is here.
"We're getting the Internet to appear in the real world," said ROFLCon organizer and Harvard senior Tim Hwang.
"And it's terrifying," laughed fellow coordinator and Crimson undergrad Carrie Anderson.
If you don't know that ROFL stands for "Rolling on the Floor Laughing," then chances are you've never marveled at the luminescent costume detail of Tron Guy, giggled to grammatically depraved kitty captions on the Web site "I Can Has Cheezeburger" or hopped aboard the meteoric rise of the "Stuff White People Like" blog. That site garnered 24 million hits over a few months and landed creator Christian Lander a book deal with Random House Publishing.
Posted on April 23, 2008
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Rick Astley Interview About Rickrolls
Rickrolling was very big on April Fool's Day. YouTube even rickrolled people who were clicking on its featured videos. For the very few who don't know rickrolling is when someone tricks you into clicking on a link that takes you to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video. Astley told Web Scout that if he was a young kid looking at his old song today he would think it was pretty naff.
For his part, Astley was nothing if not modest about his new cultural role. "If this had happened around some kind of rock song, with a lyric that really meant something -- a Bruce Springsteen, "God bless America" ... or an anti-something kind of song, I could kind of understand that," Astley said. "But for something as, and I don't mean to belittle it, because I still think it's a great pop song, but it's a pop song; do you know what I mean? It doesn't have any kind of weight behind it, as such. But maybe that's the irony of it."Rick Astley seems to be taking it very well. If "Never Gonna Give You Up" was a bad song it probably wouldn't be such a popular choice for something like a rickroll. It's the fact that the song gets your head - it is both catchy and cheesy - that makes it the perfect music video to trick someone into viewing.
Astley would never put the song down, mind you. It's just that, as he says, "If I was a young kid now looking at that song, I'd have to say I'd think it was pretty naff, really."
(Wikipedia on "naff": British slang for "something which is seen to be particularly 'cheesy' or 'tacky' or in otherwise poor aesthetic taste.") "For me it's a good example of what some of the '80s were about in that pop sort of music way. A bit like you could say Debbie Gibson was absolutely massive, but if you look back at it now ... do you know what I mean?"
Posted on April 5, 2008
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