Yes, Nerds can make music … all they needs is some gadgets to get rappin’. Brett Domino and his crew are brilliant. Make sure to visit his website or his YouTube channel.
Uh, all this nerdy excitement and brilliance makes me giggle like a little girl!
Warning: This video might be unsuitable for people who still believe in the good of human nature.
Actually I am doing this all the time in my cellar with my "Hello Kitty" collectables, but please don’t tell anyone …
PS: You can’t "unsee" this video, it will be stuck in your mind forever.
Just go and watch the Battle For Milkquarious. If you are not killed by laughter, the sheer brilliance of it’s cheesiness will end your life or your sanity.
Enjoy!
It’s up, it’s down. It has been sued, it has been sold. It will disappear, it stays. Whatever!
The Pirate Bay is one of the web’s most important and busy websites. Billions of downloads are initiated via the Pirate Bay’s HUGE database of torrents. And most of them "point" to illegally shared music, books, games, software or videos.
File Sharers and Content Producers alike should finally come to terms. Sharing copyrighted files is still theft – no matter how many cool new media terms you use to explain it. But content producers should finally follow the market – iTunes was a great start and the prices for music are now at an realistic and affordable level. For movies they still charge too much and deliver too little.
Most of all: theft won’t go away, but don’t treat all your customers like criminals. You should charm and educate them into good customers. Threats don’t work … and some people simply will never pay up.
Many of your customers are also thieves. Sometimes people buy stuff legally and also "own" pirated stuff at the same time.
Make buying an easy process, skip all the DRM crap and complicated protection software. Shopping should be fun! Offer additional services pirates can’t offer, like re-downloading stuff you might have deleted accidentally or free media web space to host my media collection?
There should be more innovation and less threats.
So CompuServe officially died this week – it was the first big online service here in Germany and allowed newbie’s like to go "on" for huge amounts of money.
Sometimes I spent about 1.000 or 3.000 Deutschmarks per month for that bloody service. If I remember correctly my ID was 10015,1352 – it’s almost exactly the amount of money CompuServe ripped off me.
I loved the service and it’s text based interface – and worked quite well with my speedy 12.800 modem.
On CompuServe I discovered all the basics of online lifestyle and communities: forums, eMail, Chat, user profiles and downloads.
CompuServe died a long and miserable death – like AOL (who actually deserved it). But both actually were victims of the openness and their own ignorance to adapt to it.
Click for more details.
The Economist is one of the best magazines you can get your news, analysis and insights from. It’s the only piece of paper I have subscribed for years – and it’s worth every cent.
They also have great website with an excellent Audio- & Video section as well as podcasts (on iTunes as pictured above).
They have been slow to go digital – but now their offerings are simply brilliant. I especially love their topical Economist Debates, which focus on subject for several days with excellent essays and comments from smart experts and readers alike. Instead of the usual idiotic dribble those debates are often of the highest quality and quite provoking.
“Nazi Porn” is one of the search keywords that bring quite some hits from Google. So I felt obliged to offer all those “poor souls” looking for NAZI PORN a posting that actually offers some …
Are you getting excited?
I can actually recommend the video “Caligula reincarnated as Hitler”! Great camera works, excellent soundtrack and the acting … just magnificent …
Look she is a Medic, a Nazi and a Slut in one package!
You should be pretty excited by now?!
Here some hot SS-Studs … that should help?
Honestly, who are these people looking for Nazi porn on my bloody blog anyway?
Finally WolframAlpha has been released and I am deeply impressed by it’s genius.
Most reviewers so far have been impressed or wondering what the hype is all about. Usually Alpha gets compared to Google, which is a big mistake.
Google is a basically a search engine – Alpha is a "computational knowledge engine". It’s not meant to find pictures of your favourite celebrity pr0n or lookup an address to buy Lederhosen in your town.
Alpha is like a smart research robot, it can compare and compute numbers in all shapes, sizes and forms.
With Google you can find the population size of Germany, France and Italy – but only Alpha can compare them for you, make a nice graph and sort them accordingly.
So that tagline "computational knowledge engine" has to be taken literally and seriously. If your question is not about computing or comparing anything then don’t use Alpha.
Most of us mere mortal don’t have any such questions for Alpha, but for researchers, students, engineers, journalists and doctors Alpha will be a Godsend. Look here for many excellent examples what Alpha can do.
Alpha is pretty young, so it doesn’t have data on everything so far –and we users are new to this great tool. I am sure it will be phenomenal as Wikipedia in it’s area.
Today’s netbased social interaction is getting lazier and lazier. Writing long eMails to you friends? Nope. Send a nice eCard with a personal note? Nope. Chat with them for hours via IM? Nope. Write a blog entry or comment on a posting? Nope. Write a Tweet (max 140 keys to press)? Nope.
We are now just down to one click to "connect" to your friends and tell them you are "with them".
Less and less context and "social stickiness" is created with these tools. It’s more like "rating" relationships and friends instead of creating your mutual "carpet of friendship" by creating unique actions and interaction.
Each year big and small websites try to fool their readers on 1. April. How boring and predictable. Most of these jokes are not very funny either. So save your energy and stop that stupid herd behaviour.
Can any commercial encyclopedia survive in the age of Wikipedia? Maybe if you are selling a specialized product, but generic commercial encyclopedias are a thing of the past.
I owned several editions of the Microsoft Encarta. It had great specials and functions that Wikipedia (still) doesn’t have. So I am a bit sad seeing these innovations gone.
But I am pretty sure they will come back to Wikipedia some day.
Click image for the full size of my Twitter penis.
Finally a web tool that will help some people to really measure if their public efforts have penetrated the blogosphere.
I think this site is brilliant: http://www.epenis.nl/
PS: I especially love the function of measuring other people’s penis and immediately twittering the result.
PPS: How to make friends and influence their penis length.
I am always very conservative when it comes to software updates. For example: I have been working with Office 2000 until last week. With WordPress I won’t wait nearly ten years to upgrade this very blog – but with all versions I wait for the x.x1 release. So after WP 2.7 was made available I waited for 2.71 … there are always bugs …
So far it seems to run smooth.
I love WP!
Amazing how quickly some of these celebs amass their followers and fans on various sites. This a strange real time parasite relationship between followers and alpha twitters. Can you really have a real dialogue with tens of thousands of people?
But I am sure it’s a great ego boost for these celebs and followers alike.
PS: Full disclosure – I am following Stephen Fry, because I think he is worth it.
Slashdot: YouTube Passes Yahoo As #2 Search Engine
This is truly sad: Yahoo is slowly disappearing in the mists of insignificance. I have always loved Yahoo – and it’s (too) many free services were often far ahead of anyone else (including Google’s great free stuff).
Yahoo for example had free eMail and Calendar – and a great Desktop Synching Tool long before GMail was even on the drawing board. The same is true for Yahoo Groups in comparison to Google Groups.
But Yahoo has also the strange talent of fucking itself up.
The interfaces were often overdone – and there was always too much advertising as well. And there was always a serious lack of “cooleness” and “buzz” surrounding Yahoo’s tools.
It’s now just a matter of time before they die, since all desperate attempts to fix itself haven’t helped.
Excellent Video about Twitter and how it works. Very well done and easy to understand for even twentysomethings or my clients …
Don’t miss the other brilliant videos from commoncraft as well.
I love this video – it’s so “casual” how it mixes reality with fantasy …
Remember: You don’t your mail on GMail – you are only allowed to access it for free when Google wants you to.
So always keep local copies of your email (by using Outlook or any other normal eMail program to access your Gmail account) – AND get an additional eMail account somewhere else as a backup too.
Never trust just ONE provider.
The crew of Jibjab.com have been producing great stuff for years, but for some odd reason this video is currently all over the intrawebs. But it’s brilliant!
There should be more political satire.
For years the Internet was dominated by male ingenuity and needs: computer stuff, free porn and killing each other in bloody games.
Now woman are taking control and are putting their stamp on the Internet to satisfy their gender specific needs: looking pretty, knowing all the newest gossip, shop and shop and shop …
Isn’t it great to see that biological patterns still reign supreme in the 21st Century and a totally virtual environment?!
I’ll admit it: I watch war porn from time to time. It fulfills me with a strange excitement and disgust at the same time. It awakes a primitive "awesomeness" within my inner Neanderthal.
But there is another aspect to this: since mainstream media is so sanitized one doesn’t see the full horror of the action in the news. Plus many soldiers post their combat footage or photos on the net – so we all get to see what they do in our name.
I think Internet War Porn is a brutal but necessary way to confront western audiences with the realities of war – or the current madness in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also is a great channel for soldiers to tell us DIRECTLY their side of the story – without any filtering Defense Departments, politicians or media experts in between.
We need the truth more than ever in the age of political spin.
Yep, I finally joined the in crowd – again. I tried Twitter in the very beginning and didn’t like it so much – because it was an "empty universe". And I am still surprised that such a minimalist tool is such an success. It doesn’t do anything new – it’s a sort of public instant messaging and group chat. So nothing your AIM, Yahoo Messanger, ICQ, Skype and MSN are not doing already – but in a bit different way.
But it once again shows that excellent small tools always find their audience. Especially when they fulfill specific needs: in this case 24/7 exhibitionism, virtual omnipresence and peeping into other peoples lifes. Some people would call another step to the ever close global village – other would call it simply the inability to be alone and "disconnected" in our networked modern life.
Anyway …
Ultraorange on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ultraorange
But you can also see the recent twitter posts above.
The Big Picture Blog is simply AWESOME. Almost every posting is a complete stunner. Like this series of pictures shot from the space shuttle.
One would hardly consider the House of Lords as a modern political institutions – but they seem bend on improving their standing with the British Voters. Excellent!
So they got themselves their own channel on YouTube and trying to explain what they actually do.
I really really really hope more politicians get smart about this and try harder to connect to their voters via the web. Cut out the middle man (the so called media) and talk directly to the people you work for.
I love paper – and I love building stuff with paper. Cubeecraft has a great selection of paper models for your pleasure. This is highly recommended for anyone working in a cubicle or having kids. It’s a lot of fun.
You simply download the pattern and print it on a A4 / letter sized piece of paper. Grab your scissors and start the fun. Each model on the site is rated for it’s complexity to build. What a great service – thanks you Cubeecraft!
More? www.cubeecraft.com
A nice series of wallpapers by Hybridworks from Japan. Make sure also to check page 2 for more yummy illustrations.
Now I am hungry.
Even when reality disgusts you – go outside and try to enjoy it once in a while – you might find some new aspect to hate or maybe even enjoy.
CNN: Student ‘Twitters’ his way out of Egyptian jail
This is a typical high-tech non-story. If this guy simply would have called someone nobody would have cared. But because he used a high-tech gizmo suddenly it’s a story.
I think for causing such a stupid commotion he should be jailed – and all his Twitter buddies and the journalists too!
*Thanks to Edosan for not Twittering this to me*
I think this excellent graphic explains it all. Too bad all this great technology is used for “funny” pictures and trivia. There never has been a golden age of knowledge, a highly intelligent and educated mass of people. But at least for those who crave knowledge live and learning has become much easier.
Let the rest blog and twitter about cats and American Idol.
If this propaganda website from NATO is any indicator for the current state of affair for the North Atlantic Alliance than it is bad … very bad.
The website feels so 1999 and really stinks. Who made this? The 14 year old son of a Polish General? Sorry, I am so incredibly underwhelmed by this …
Watch for yourself: natochannel.tv
UN Data is one of these websites that look REALLY boring, but offer a HUGE amount of interesting data – at least for people who want to know more details.
These official numbers are certainly not perfect – I am pretty sure some governments feed the UN crappy data. But at least it’s a global repository for important facts about our planet, the current state of human affairs and our societies.
MSNBC has a nice feature highlighting the “debate” Paper vs Plastic. Pretty idiotic: let’s get rid of these stupid plastic bags. Paper is the way to go – or simply use a reusable bag made out of cotton …
I always love it when I see even spammers having problems with their software as well. May I recommend some medicine or penis extension to fix your problem?
Stage6.com has been killed. It was the best video site so far, because it over high-quality viewing (based on the great DIVX codec) and – let’s be honest – tons of excellent pirated stuff.
What attracted me was the fore mentioned quality and many great user groups full with documentaries and arty stuff. It’s all gone now. So I have to do some housekeeping and delete the video links on my blog as well.
Goodbye Stage6 – you will be missed.
PS: I am pretty sure all that stuff will come back on another site.
At the moment the VERY painful video of Eduardo da Silva’s accident is all the rage on YouTube – and is a big hit with the kids. One has really to wonder why watching such a painful video is all the rage?
Scientists have long proven that we empathize and re-live such experiences simply by watching other humans doing (stupid) stuff. So I can only extend this idea in this way: we watch pain porn to train ourselves for such moments and try to cope with it’s consequences – even when it isn’t happening to us.
YouTube is full of fight videos that concentrate only on knock outs and bloody scenes, you can also find tons of accident and crash videos that show only the nasty bits.
Do we simply need some blood and nasty stuff from time to time? By watching terrible stuff happen to other does that help us to enjoy our less painful life?
Currently China has about 2100 million Websurfers – and the number is climbing fast. Soon they will have overtaken the US as the #1 of Websurfers.
But too most of us Chinese Internet Users are almost invisible – and not just because of the language barrier (the same applies to many other nations that stay within their language bubble – like Japan or Arabic countries).
China’s Internet is heavily policed and censored – thanks to companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco and Google content is filtered, websites blocked (most famously Wikipedia) and users are hunted down if they dare to protest too much.
The old High-Tech-Hippie argument that the Internet can’t be tamed or regulated has been proven wrong – and not only by the Chinese Government. Places like Cuba or Iran are also black holes in the net infrastructure.
Information wants to be free – people too …
More? The Economist “Alternative Reality”
Homemade video, talking … or rather singing to youself and the world. Perfect! Geo’s song "The Assumption" from the album Interrobang.
Thanks Edosan.
Shitsenders does exactly what the name says. They collect some nice poo, package it and send it to a friend of yours. You can choose between a variety of dung (cow, elephant or gorilla) – depending on your level of friendship and depth of message you want to send.
The price? About 20 to 30 US Dollars. The effect on the receiving end? Priceless …
*I will not mention your name – but thanks for sending in that shit*
