Webmongs! In a show of MASSIVE DEFIANCE I am today saying XXXX XXX (use your nous and creativity to establish exactly which expletive I am masking behind those cunning Xs) to my workload and instead channeling all my energies into bringing you some stuff off the web. You hear that, The Man? YOU HEAR THAT???? Eh? Oh.
Strangely enough, The Man’s ambivalence to my defiance is pretty analogue to my feelings about the new toy for grown-ups which has been launched today (as an aside, may I just quote the ever-wonderful Saul Williams here and reference the conspiracy-theorists’ anti-Apple belief…”no one seems to recognize the symbols come to life / The bitten apple on the screen, and Jesus had a wife…”…JUST SAYING, is all) – for a full, unexpurgated viewpoint click here (WARNING – BAD WORDS).
For those of you, though, who are fully intending to line Steve Jobs’ pockets even further and sit about stroking your new i-pets to the appreciative breathy moans of your i-onanist colleagues, can I suggest that you all get the Scrabble app, which is the best thing I’ve yet seen on the iPad. Apart, actually, from a demo of the Telegraph’s forthcoming app, which looks very shiny indeed (it won’t actually make reading the news any better, but it will make it prettier – and that’s what counts, eh? I despair, I really do).
Anyway, enough bitter misanthropy. Or maybe not; we’ll see how we go.
I’d thought about trying to compose something pithy and insightful for the opening section this week, but frankly all I can think of is the upcoming 4-day weekend. It’s times like this that I’m particularly grateful to Jesus for riling up the Romans and getting himself nailed to a tree (as with all the good stuff on here, that line’s courtesy of someone better than me – in this case, the late, great Douglas Adams). Freedom, webmongs, sweet freedom (or at least the transitory illusion of freedom, which frankly is pretty much all any of us can hope for, with our useless arts degrees and a future of interminable wage-slavery ahead of us). To celebrate, I give you THE LIFE OF CHRIST IN CATS (one of the finest things ever to appear in Viz):
A plate depicting the life of Christ through the medium of cats. No more, no less.
Anyway, feline frippery aside, here’s this week’s offerings…:
[NB - if you're strapped for time, can I just suggest that you go straight to the last video and watch it. 23 seconds you won't regret. Obviously if you've got time then read everything as it's all...well, pretty mediocre, frankly]
You! Yes, you! Welcome, once again (presuming that you’ve been here before – if you’ve stumbled across this whilst searching for pornography then I apologise in advance for the lack of nudity but offer you a sincere first-timers’ welcome) to Web Curios.
God, that was a desperately poor intro. Sorry. What can I say? It’s Friday afternoon, and I’ve spent the entire week feeling a bit hungover under the weather. Not to mention the impact on my mood that this has had. It’s hard sometimes being a webmong (as you will well know). Nonetheless, I am putting my personal feelings of exhaustion and ennui to one side to bring you another selection of stuff I found online this week that one or two of you could conceivably find moderately interesting.
(It should be apparent by now that I am not a salesman).
We begin, this week, with a video – If you do nothing else here this week, watch this. It’s 5 minutes long, and is by far and away the best description I have yet seen of how virality works. Ignore the scaremongering undertones, and just think about how the meme below spreads. Oh, and for the non-geeks among you, a quick explanation of what 4chan is – you know all the stuff that features on those lists of the ‘biggest viral sensations EVER’? Stuff like RickRolling, the Numa Numa kid, Chocolate Rain and YouTube Porn Day? They all start at 4chan (WARNING – that link is direct to 4chan; the landing page is safe but I take no responsibility for what you might find beyond that (clue: porn and swearing)). It’s…just mental, really. Anyway, the video….
Oh Nestle… – Other ’social media gurus/mavens/experts/(insert meaningless title of your choice)’ will do this at length over the next few hours / days, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the tone of Nestle’s reponses to comments on their Facebook page probably didn’t do them any favours… Of course, as my esteemed colleague Dan Leach pointed out, it could all be very clever work by Greenpeace…
Twitter Announces @anywhere – Ok, so what this is (massively simplified) is Twitter’s next step in terms of integrating itself with other, 3rd party websites. The TechCrunch piece linked to in the title is a decent overview (and this is a shorter one)- what it doesn’t seemingly touch on, though, is the potential implications for the development of a ‘universal’ online identity. Could this be a first step into the creation of a one login / username culture, integrated across all platforms? The BBC’s announcement yesterday of greater integration with both Facebook and Twitter would suggest it could be…Oh, and at the same time Twitter also declared that it wanted to be ‘A Force For Good’. Isn’t that nice? And…er…haven’t we heard that before somewhere?
I WANT THIS TABLE IN OUR OFFICES. IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT THAT SOMEONE IMPORTANT IS READING THIS, CAN YOU MAKE IT HAPPEN PLEASE? THANKS.
What a magazine on the iPad might look like- Women’s digital magazine Viv put together this shiny demo, showcasing how their content might work on an iPad. My first thoughts? Content for people who really enjoyed Sin Citybut who don’t actually like reading very much.
Skittles for Valentine’s Day – Part of the ongoing trend in giving people real-life (cool) stuff in exchange for engagement with brands on social media (see also the Marmarati)
And, to finish (I know, I know, tldr), this week’s video selection:
1)Losers – ‘Flush’ feat Riz MC & Envy: Great track, great video and Envy is set to be huge this year (obviously if she isn’t then I never said that)
2) I went to see this lot on Tuesday. Great gig, though I did actually cause someone to leave the venue towards the end. In the unlikely event that you ever read this: sorry, Annoying Pair of Girls, but you were really getting on my tits:
3) The Internet of Things: how the planet is developing a central nervous system. 5 minutes of frankly insane futurology here from IBM:
4) Finally, a music video of near-Gaga levels of insanity. WHY THE SELLOTAPE???
