30th October 2006 - Online Madness

The internet. Love it or hate it I think we can safely assume its here to stay. Well for another week at least.

So whilst it's still around, here are some things you might want to take a look at.

First some sites that have no discernable purpose, but they're jolly nice all the same.

Pick up the lady and bounce her along the wire (I'm not sure why, just do)

Elastic Enthusiastic

On this one, click on buttons A to F to play some music and then roll your mouse over the keyboard on screen or use your real keyboard to make the pipecleaner man dance in time to your tune. Its good, I promise.

Pipecleaner Man

Here is a Japanese site. I literally have no idea what the hell its for or about, but if you wait ages (Japanese people clearly have better broadband than us) a strange big tortoise thing appears.

Tortoise

Now for the YouTube section. I decided not to include the excruciating video from "Chad and Steve" the cofounders of the site announcing their acquisition. It's a perfect demonstration of why nerds should focus on building great stuff rather than populating it (they chortle all through it like spotty Beavis and Buttheads and yet they're worth $1.6bn - life's so unfair). But build it they did, which has allowed us to watch all these lovely things...

You may have already seen this ad for Dove. Much as I loathe Dove (who in their right mind would invent a deodorant with such a nasty smell??) this is an interesting look at their "real beauty" campaign

Real Beauty

Google Earth - its still amazing

Dutch Sunbather

And here is a piece of technology that will make you want to be an engineer (no really!)

Whiteboard

So you thought engineering was boring, and I proved you wrong (maybe). Now how about blogs. Think they're dull? Take a look at this one. I LOVE this guy. I've never read someone's blog in my life, but this guy is set to change all that.

Blog

Now for other stuff. This is another example of a very clever idea indeed. Take mapping technology, take peer to peer transactions, and "mash them up" what you might end up with is: Park At My House. Its new, so there's not a huge amount on there yet, but imagine a world where you can find a parking space anywhere in the UK, or charge someone to park in your driveway when you're at work. Very neat idea.

Park At My House

For those of you who haven't already seen it, here is a site with all the best new US shows, in full, for free, illegal and streamed. Given that streaming is prohibitively expensive for us for VOD, who on earth is paying for such a wonderful, albeit very naughty, service?

TV Links

And if for any reason, this site doesn't work, try this one (click on TV shows on the left hand side)

More

But if your new media life is restricted to online dating, you might enjoy this concept, which proves, that no matter how bad life seems, it could be worse (love the picture)

Penpals

That's it for another week. Back to Lost and one less viewer for Sky.