1st February 2007 - If new media is now old media, what is new, new media? (the subject I was asked to discuss at a conference last week )

Another year, another month of internet blah. MySpace in China, YouTube sharing revenues with uploaders, and US judges using Wikipedia as a source. Yawn, aren’t they missing the point? Surely the internet’s about pointless stuff like this:


I know how much everyone likes to sit back with a cup of tea and browse my list, so to start you off, here’s a site that recommends biscuits to go with your beverage. When IS the biscuit of the month going to be the legendary Jaffa Cake…?
http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/


Back to work grrrrrr? This guy shares your pain:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v422/zoltan66/?action=view&current=officework.flv


At least you are back at work. Here’s a site which tests your knowledge on who popped their clogs in 06. Tasteless always did play well on the web:
http://www.deadoralive2006.com/


Confession time. I have a strange obsession with cover versions of songs. The more random the better (Radiohead does Carly Simon, U2 sing Abba, Tori Amos is Nirvana – stars in their eyes style. But new media takes this to a whole new level. Mashups are the new covers. Muppets do Goodfellas anyone?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiKBoLXg5Cw


Remember the fascinating science site "will it blend?” well here is a site that should probably be called "will it microwave?":
http://www.wontonway.com/microwave/microwave.html



Right, I think its time I sprinkled some good old “new media trends” in amongst the pap. Profero came in last year and predicted two big moves for 2007. The first of these was people getting paid for stuff. As we’ve all heard, YouTube seem to be following the Revver model (see my blog for mention of Revver some months ago), but now it appears everyone’s at it, and it makes sense. Why shouldn’t people get some return on all their content generation, creative thinking, brand promotion and all the other things they’re doing online? Ok, often the revenues are small, but as we all know, something’s better than nothing!



Daytipper is a tip-sharing site, rewarding consumers with $3 for every published piece of advice. Tips range from “how to take screenshots on a Mac” through to “how to use dog biscuits to trim hamster teeth”. Don’t even ask how the site creators are making money, I’ve no idea, but as you’ll see, the “provider gets paid” model is on the way up even when the content provided is of questionable quality:
http://www.daytipper.com/

Turn Here shows short, online videos that give viewers an insider's look at destinations around the world. Created by experienced filmmakers specifically for Turn Here, the website's videos offer an alternative to travel books, with obvious benefits to consumers: they're up-to-date, very local, highly personal, free, and they communicate the sense of a place more directly than traditional guidebooks ever could. TurnHere emphasizes the high quality of its videos, which are 2-5 minutes long and professionally edited. Filmmakers are paid $500 to $1000 if their video is featured. Imagine this rise in video happening on a site like TripAdvisor on a big scale, imagine transferring these video guides onto your i-pod. Take a look at the map mash up on the page and picture being on holiday somewhere, and able to access on-demand video by location with footage of all the restaurants nearby recommended by someone who’s profile matches yours. Its not as far fetched as it seems:
http://www.turnhere.com/city/new_york.aspx


The second trend that Profero mentioned was widgets. A widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed on a web page or on your desktop by an end user. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes, and even give your current local weather. Apple reinvigorated the trend, Yahoo are at it in earnest http://widgets.yahoo.com/ , but third parties have created these too such as the fantastic Musicubes from Radio 1 (well done Charlie!) http://www.radio1musicubes.co.uk/constructor1.shtml

But imagine mashing up these two mega-trends. Welcome to Favorite Thingz where consumers create a badge/ widget of their favourite artist, film, team, stores, service and brans, which they can display as a slideshow on sites like MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga, Friendster, Tagworld, Typepad, Blogger and hi5. If someone clicks on a product in the slideshow and decides to buy it, the badge creator earns a commission of 1.5% - 4.0%:
http://www.favoritethingz.com/


My Pick List offers a similar service:
http://mypicklist.com/


But its not just creativity that you can get cash for. If you have unsecured WiFi at home, chances are someone else is taking advantage of it and using up some of your bandwidth. I know more than one person who has never paid for wireless broadband and relies on scanning for unsecured networks in the area. Well get them to stop taking the piss! With the Fon network, if you “share” your bandwidth, you get free use of any other Fon bandwidth in any location, and if a non-Fon user wants to log on, they pay for the pleasure and you, the provider of that particular bandwidth gets 50% of the fee (plus a personalised page access page where you can advertise your business). Nice one:
http://en.fon.com/


So how else can you make money out of your stuff?
Amie Street aims to make it easy and affordable for consumers to discover new independent music. What makes it unique? Every song sold starts off being free and the price increases to a maximum of 98 cents depending on how many people download it. The more popular a song, the faster its price will increase to 98 cents. Besides giving early buyers a better deal, the market price system gives them the added pleasure of seeing they've discovered a song or artist before everyone else has. Members are also rewarded for recommending music. As explained by Amie Street: "We know music is social, and the process of music discovery is stunted by traditional digital music retail sites because they are not social (or fun). Music discovery is best catalyzed by communication between people, so we reward fans for recommending songs to their friends by giving them credit to buy more music." If a member reviews or otherwise recommends a song, they're credited with the song's price increase. So, if you recommend a song while it's priced at 10 cents, and the price goes up to 90 cents, you earn 80 cents worth of credits. Promotion isn't left solely to the community, though. Amie Street does its part, from interviewing bands and posting their videos, to organizing showcase concerts in New York. Artists maintain full ownership of their work and receive 70% of every sale after a first $5 to cover storage, bandwidth and transaction costs for that song. All MP3s sold through the website are DRM-free, so can be used on any music player, without restrictions. Combined with the knowledge that artists are getting their fair share of a song's revenues, this is a creative way to make consumers more willing to pay for music downloads:
http://www.amiestreet.com/


And what if your skills are aren’t music based, but you offer some kind of phone support (PC help, homework clues, legal advice etc…). In the US you can sign up for a free Ether (1-888) number, which is forwarded to a phone number of your choice, be it mobile, home or work. You can then decide how much your time is worth, per hour per minute or per call. Customers will only be able to call the service provider when they've prepaid the set rate. Ether bills their credit card and will then send you your fee via direct deposit or cheque. Ether's commission is 15%, with no monthly fee, no setup fes, and no connection fee. You have to take responsibility for spreading the word about what you’re selling, set the hours you want to take calls and then just wait for the calls and money to roll in! Now see if you can think of sensible services to offer other than phone sex and psychic hotlines!
http://www.ether.com/



So what else is going on right now? Here’s a selection of the good, the bad and the downright awful…

The good:

Igglo combines large amounts of property information on a customer friendly site that could alter how the housing market operates, by letting potential buyers 'pre-order' houses that aren't yet for sale. The Finnish company has photographed every building in Helsinki, with more towns to follow, and combines these photographs with satellite images and maps. Every property is listed, not just those that are currently on the market. (Their tagline is: "Your house is already on Igglo."). Potential buyers can earmark a building, street or neighbourhood they're interested in, and post offers online. This lets potential sellers find out how desirable their property is, even if they weren't actively considering selling. Buyers also receive an alert when a property in their earmarked building or area comes up for sale. If demand and supply meet, Igglo handles the transaction for a lower fee than is charged by regular real estate agents (less than 2%). Lower fees are made possible by the fact the Igglo agents don't get involved until buyers and sellers have found each other. The company is looking to expand the service to other big cities. Wow
http://www.igglo.fi/


Back in good old London, three designers are setting up a system whereby you will be able to send tracks (via Bluetooth) to and from your mobile to a wall mounted unit on the tube. The idea was based on the fact that people leave newspapers on the tube for people to read all the time, so why not extend this offering to music? Clearly licensing restrictions are an enormous problem however, this is a great concept that deserves to catch on
http://www.undersound.org/


Another great new concept isn’t about online, but is about portable devices. The iFood terminal at a Swedish food hall (think Selfridges or Harvey Nics) lets customers hook up their iPod and download audio recipes. After choosing from a wide range of recipes and downloading audio instructions to their iPod or other mp3 player, shoppers can purchase all necessary items from a colour-coded deli area.
Similarly at Schiphol airport, travellers can download travel guides, music, audio books, tv shows and movies to their MP3 players and other digital devices. Located in Schiphol's departure lounges, the Fuel for Travel stores feature listening and viewing stations for travellers to browse digital content. Once they've found what they want, they can dock their device, pay by credit or debit card, and download the material. Pricing is similar to that of online music and video downloads. A wide range of devices is supported, including MP3 and MP4 players, phones, and PDAs. Unfortunately, iPod owners are out of luck: due to Apple's DRM protection boooooo….

The bad:

New York restaurant booking service PrimeTime Tables - "specializing in impossible reservations" - has created a bit of a storm. The service, touted as a very exclusive dining club, can procure members short-notice reservations at the hottest restaurants in New York, Miami, Colorado and The Hamptons, many of which are booked weeks in advance. Membership costs $450 per year, plus reservation fees (free for reservations acquired the same day before noon), while non-members pay between $35-45 per booking, depending on how far in advance they book (48 hours - same day). What this effectively means is that you could be thrown off your 6 month booking at The Ivy in a matter of seconds. Hmmmmm
http://www.primetimetables.com/



The completely excruciating:

Canadian site Tailored Music now offers customised love songs performed by professional musicians. Customers pick a vocalist and genre, ranging from experimental to folk waltz. The website then shows the default lyrics for the song they selected. While a demo of the song plays in the background, customers edit the lyrics in an easy to use online word processing tool. Some lyrics must be customised (the love object's name), while other fields are written for easy customisation, allowing users to add personal experiences, locations, events, colours, etc. Any words or lines can be changed, and TailoredMusic's singers can adapt to varying numbers of syllables and different rhyming schemes. Once the right words have been selected, a customer can choose to receive the song as a web download (compressed MP3 and CD-quality WAV), or a gift-wrapped CD in a metal case with a printed lyric sheet. Delivery time is 1 to 2 weeks, and songs are priced from $99 to a whopping $250.
http://www.tailoredmusic.com/




So how do I finish this first (and long) mail of the new year?

Well, naturally with something kind of light and pointless I guess – the world’s first coloured bubbles. Enjoy until next time …
http://www.zubbles.com/

4th December 2006 - Clicktastic Diversions

I thought it was about time to deliver a pre-Christmas, Friday-afternoon, hangover-solution list of stuff to do that doesn’t involve objectives, media plans, board reports or strategy. So sit back, get your mouse moving and get ready to click on a bunch of mental websites. Here we go…

As its Friday, I think we better start with the obligatory YouTube gems.

First up Russian TV news visits a coal mine where reports of drunkenness leading to an increase in accidents are being made. Here they interview a supervisor who is denying that the miners have a drink problem. If it wasn’t so funny, it would probably be sad, but hey, it’s Friday afternoon after all:

Miners

And on the subject of “should I be laughing at this” here one is in such bad taste, that I feel the need to point out that it’s a favourite of Steve’s and nothing to do with me:

Fight

After that, I think I need to redeem myself slightly, so here’s something a little less banal. The earth is breathing. No really.

The Earth Is Breathing


Right, haul yourself off YouTube for a minute (trust me they don’t need the clicks) and check out what else is going on on the web – apparently there really IS a world outside of YouTube.

This is a “mash up” (all you new media kids should know what I’m talking about now) of mapping and live data feeds. Here you can look at a map of the US and see what’s playing on the radio in real time all over the country. Simple but effective:

Music Map

And still on the subject of music (a favourite online theme) this is a real neat piece of kit. Click on the scale for the kind of mood you’re in, and the kind of music you like. You’ll find a lovely cloud map appears with appropriate tunes playing, drag the map around to move from positive to “dark” music, calm to energetic, classical to disco. Slide the bar to the era you’re after or move to dance and change the tempo. This is stunningly executed and frankly just plays great music. I love it. (I’ve been playing with this all afternoon and I seem to have broken it! Perhaps Friday afternoon overload has brought the beta down. Persevere, come back if its not working. Its probably the best thing on here this week)

Musicovery

So maps, maps and more maps. Everyone’s at it. If you dug a very very deep hole where you live, where would it come out on the other side of the world? (two confessions here, firstly given that I pointed out Steve is responsible for the atrocious Jerry Springer clip, I better credit him for this rather good one. Secondly the site was actually down a few minutes ago, so come back if its not working now.)

Dig

Ever wanted to direct your own Bollywood movie? Watch this and be inspired (its done by a friend of mine, and I won’t reveal who Danielle and Gregg are) but then click on the Make A Movie link to drag scenes and add your own subtitles.

Bombay TV

Kids. Annoying aren’t they. You’re a hard working, underpaid teacher with a class full of little devils, and what do they do. Go online and slag you off. Seems like parents are joining in now too. Check out this site, which perhaps surprisingly has an astonishing number of positive comments. Probably lots of techy teachers hacking the system. Only a matter of time until Ofsted cotton on and start including the info in their reports. Check out your old nemeses:

Rate My Teachers

If you’re a kid, then everything’s shit right? Wrong. This site shows the best stuff in the world. Well according to its users. A little like the site I sent a while ago (43 Things) this shows visually what people think is good. Ranging from “brown hair” to “love” its as random as it sounds.


The Best Stuff In The World


Finally, do go to This Is A Knife. Some of these links come from our rather good online show which is now in the iTunes top 100 podcast chart

This Is a Knife



Short but sweet, I’ll attempt to send another more comprehensive mail before Christmas but I’ve been seeing a lot of the same old stuff recently – seen something good? Please forward it on

9th November 2006 - World Wide Whatareyouonabout?

Last week Google hit the headlines with an announcement that its UK revenues are expected to reach £920m by the end of 2006.

This is up a staggering 90% year on year and accounts for 46% of all UK online ad spend.

In a 2006 report of the world's richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin was ranked number 26 with a net worth of $12.9 billion, and Larry Page was at number 27 with a net worth of $12.8 billion.

The company is only about 8 years old.

What did you achieve by the age of 33? (and if you’re younger, you better come up with your idea quick – Google reckon their big competition won’t come from an existing player but from a startup)


Now that you’re feeling suitably depressed its time to piss about on the internet and see if anyone else has come up with something worth this kind of cold hard cash.

Well, the good news is you’re still in with a chance, I’ve had a quick look, and certainly none of these will make a billion pounds in the UK anytime soon…



So you’re the marketing manager for Blendtec professional blenders. Boring. Or maybe not.
Will It Blend?

This one is my personal favourite this week. Apparently its done by a random Italian circus company but like all the best things its simple and very very clever
Circoripopolo

Next, this is definitely the cheesiest thing you’ve EVER seen. But (and it’s a big but) imagine using this technology to embed personal details into video for a programme campaign. Steve – get on the case!
Westlife Wedding

And now the obligatory utterly pointless game designed by people who need to get out more (but if you’re going to click on it, put your headphones first for a delightful little song at the start)
Brussel Sprouts


Ok, perhaps its time to stop looking at novelty sites, and move things up a notch.


Ten by Ten is a site that automatically observes what leading international news sources (currently the BBC, Reuters and The New York Times) are saying and showing on their websites, and pulls together one hundred images an hour that represents the world at that moment. The important bit is that it runs with no human intervention, it makes no comment and has no agenda, it simply shows what it finds.
Ten by Ten

If there’s one UK site that really has a seat at the global table, it’s the BBC. So much of what they are doing is deeply impressive. This is my latest favourite. When watching video on their site, you can choose to send a link to a clip of content rather than the whole thing. With incredibly simple “stop/start” editing tools you can select a particular scene and then forward the link to a friend. Give it a go. I’m green with envy.
Seen It

Here’s a germ of an idea that’s not fully executed yet, but you get an idea of what it might become at some stage. Retreivr (hateful web 2.0 name!) allows you to sketch or upload a picture, and Retrievr’s search engine will find all the images in Flickr that match it by colour and shape. At the moment the results are limited. It doesn’t yet have face or object recognition so if you’re drawing a cat you almost certainly won’t get pictures of cats but it does return matches by shape and slabs of colour. Imagine a time sometime soon where a picture editor can search for exactly what they’re looking for with a quick drawing. Or imagine searching for all pictures of yourself on your computer by uploading an image of your face and asking it to find more of the same (this was rumoured to be in the new Windows Operating System out next year). Anyway, try this with simple pictures and low expectations.
Retrievr

Still on the subject of picture recognition, remember a while ago I sent you a site to find your celebrity lookalike via this kind of software? Well, why search for people when you can search for stuff! This site takes that idea, mixes it up with a site like “As Seen On Screen” and voila – find those shiny black shoes that Ray wore on last week’s X Factor. Or not.
Like

As I have made clear before, travel remains one of my enduring new media obsessions (not travel on my computer in virtual reality worlds I hasten to add – but ways the web is making exploration in the real world a whole lot more fun.) Virgin Atlantic do some excellent podcasts which offer city guides to their key destinations, not rocket science but just plain good. You can find out more from the site, or simply search in iTunes. They are free, easy and surprisingly good.
Virgin Podcasts

One step on from this is something I mentioned a while back. Imagine walking tours, or museum or city guides done by people you trust, available on your ipod on demand. At the moment, the one live example available based on walking tours is fairly atrocious. Its American (pronunciations like Shonghai instead of SHANGhai), fairly pricey for each guide, and rather irritating, but it’s STILL a great idea and they cover a lot of destinations.
Tourcaster

Remember all those community sites I sent a while back? Here’s a new one for the list. Friends Abroad puts you in touch with people who speak the language you want to learn and who in turn want to lean English. So if you are desperate (post Borat) for a Kazakhstani penpal to help you get to grips with the nuances of their rich language, this could be the place to start.
Friends Abroad


Finally, why break the habit of a lifetime. I’d better end with something that dumbs the tone down again. This video is mildly amusing, but hover over the bottom of the screen whilst or after enjoying the video, and look at this simple and fairly neat navigation. Quite nice for a video rich site.
Neave



Ok, until next time, by which stage Sergey and Larry will be several trillion pounds richer and lots of time will have been spent in dark rooms trying to come up with something better than the big G. If you figure it out, do make sure you let me know.

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.

10th October 2006 - New Media Nonsense

The world wide web was invented 16 years ago.
Its seen boom and bust – been heralded as both a new dawn and a load of hype.
Today a site run by two 20somethings that’s less than two years old and has yet to make money has been sold for $1.6bn.

Funny old thing the internet.


This week, a mixture of sites. Some with no aspiration to sell for millions – their aim to just look lovely, make people smile, or meet the needs of a small discreet audience. Others whose ambition is large and whose creators are no doubt dreaming of their own Yahoo/Google/Microsoft acquisition.

So first, the beautifully designed, entertaining, surprising or just silly


Etsy is a way to shop online: by colour. All products on Etsy are scanned for the colours they contain and an average colour is found. When you click on their beautiful colour interface, you’ll see images of products available in your chosen colour. Sounds complicated, but as with all good web things, it isn’t, and its worth trying it out. Try throwing the item thumbnails around, or chuck them off the interface altogether. The design of this site is its genius rather than its business model. Try spinning images or dragging them, change the background to black, there’s something amazingly addictive about playing with Etsy.
Etsy

Next a site for Jackson’s of Piccadilly who sell tea. This just shows how surprising some of the innovators in new media are. At the AOP awards this week, the best use of a new media platform went to Nature.com a serious science site for something called Avian Flu mashup which mixed Google maps with outbreaks of Avian Flu. Here a traditional retailer has a stunning site. Try navigating by hovvering over the flower heads. Simply lovely
Jacksons of Picadilly

Some sites aren’t even using design to sell something, they are simply a pleasing way to spend a couple of minutes. Try moving your mouse and clicking on this site inspired by the artist.
Jackson Pollock

But as usual, not everyone is being creative in a highbrow way. Someone spotted that Paris Hilton always uses the same pose in front of the paps. Here on a loop is endlessly entertaining proof (more fun with sound)
Paris
And almost as good, her nemesis Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay




Next, a group of sites that are all about web 2 type stuff – user generated content, social networking and collaboration – these are the guys who are no doubt hoping to catch the eye of the big boys.

Firstly, Blogger is big, but can be a pretty clunky application. Why not try the new kids on the block. Vox allows you to pull in feeds from Flickr, Amazon and others, you can publish audio, video, images, and entries from your mobile, and it has many more lovely templates than plain old Blogger. You’ll need an invite to sign up as its in beta and they’re using that clever “exclusive club” Gmail tactic but if you’re about to start a blog it’s a very nice and friendly place to do it.

Take a look at my blog on Vox to see what yours could look like
My Blog

If you want to start your own, here is the place to get yourself invited
Vox Invites

And here’s the link to their homepage
Vox


You know those sites that you hear about from about 5 different people in a short space of time? Writely is one of those for me. It’s a place where you can create documents on your PC, upload them to Writely, keep them online and edit them from anywhere, allow other people to edit them, and then download easily back to your PC. Highly likely that this kind of functionality will be built into the new Microsoft operating system Vista if it ever launches.
Writely

Chatsum is a way to chat with all other Chatsum users who are looking at the same website at the same time as you. Take a look at this page which shows how it might work on a news site.
Chatsum

Twitter combines a blogging concept with SMS. You send texts to a number from your phone. Your text can appear in a number of ways: it can appear on the public web pages if you want everyone on the site to see, you can ensure its just seen by your friends, you can upload to your own Twitter page or you can take the feeds to insert on your MySpace profile or other Blog. Basically its blogging by sms.
Twitter


Want easy video editing software but don’t have a mac and not convinced you want to buy some pricey piece of software? Try Eyespot. Easy editing, easy sharing (even to mobile) and another nice interface.
Eyespot

If you’ve already got a video you want to share with the world (and its all legal with no copyright issues) then think about a world beyond YouTube. Revver allows you to make some cash back from the ads put around your content. Nice idea and something we can expect to see a whole lot more of as people try to commercialise their creativity
Revver

As we know, text isn’t dead, and the internet isn’t just about video. Reviews remain a pre-eminent resource online, and as the repositories grow, restaurants, hotels and other companies just aren’t able to seed positive reviews that that outweigh negative ones. Trip Advisor is huge now and had thousands of hotels listed, but there are masses of other great sites growing just as vast.

Yelp is a US site that got a really great interface. You can read what "real people" are saying about restaurants, hotels, nightclubs, etc… in New York, Seattle, Phoenix and 21 other US cities. The site is yet another example of mixing up brilliant tools like Google Maps with user generated content. Try searching for a restaurant in New York (if you don’t know any try Balthazar). Scroll down the results page and see how the map follows you down. Hovver over pins in it to see pictures and contact details for results. Click through to the top result for reviews, other places you might like, nearby nightlife, shopping etc.. and new restaurants. Lets hope they come to the UK soon.
Yelp

If its TV you want to know about rather than eating, go to Television Without Pity for incredibly acerbic in depth reviews on all US shows.
Television Without Pity

And if you’ve got your own site, or blog and want to know just how its doing (did you know the average blog has one reader – the author!) once again good old bloody Google has the solution. Track how people came to your site, Geotargeting (where in the world your traffic came from), effectiveness of ad campaigns and performance of Google AdSense. From very very simple pages, to complex ecommerce sites, Google claims this can tell you all you need to know.
Google Analytics



So that covers the small, lovely, artistic sites, and the big 2.0 sites that are hankering after acquisition. Finally, however, one of the opportunities bubbling up with broadband penetration and video, centres around video education. Sounds dull. It isn’t. Imagine how-to guides for everything from cookery to treating injuries; or from hooking up your PC to your TV, to how to fix your car - basically its on demand video instructions for everything you’ve ever wanted to do.

The first is Videojug who’s tagline is “Life explained. On film.” Search for instructions on something specific, or browse by category. There’s no doubt room for improvement on the execution of some of the videos, but I have to say, cookery books with instructions on how to poach an egg perfectly have frustrated me endlessly as they never really explain exactly what they mean – here on videojug you can sit and watch.
Videojug

But if you still really like printed instructions, there’s a wiki that you can check or contribute to which is the ultimate “how to” manual
Wikihow

Finally CNet have set up a section of video tutorials to teach teach non-geeks how to do all sorts of technical things from upgrade to high-definition TV, set up a wireless home network or stream digital music from a computer to another room in the house. The "convince me" pages offer reasons why you should take on a particular job in the first place-which comes in handy if you’re sceptical. Visitors are invited to vote on which projects CNET's experts should tackle next.
Digital Home


But despite all of this wonderfulness, it seems only right to end with the type of site that makes you ask “don’t these people have anything better to do??”
Songs For My Funeral


Funny old thing the internet…

25th September 2006 - Another Week In Web Paradise

The weather is crap, Winter is here, surely its time to forget the nonsense that is reality and immerse yourself instead in the world wide webosphere instead.

This week, I’ve gone the way that all good nerds do and decided to seek fame beyond the limits of my email list. As a result, I’ve turned my sporadic communications into a blog. So far, no comments and just a few views (mostly people I’ve bribed no doubt) but its early days so wish me luck in getting discovered.

http://channel4finds.blogspot.com/


So, back to the matter at hand. Things to look at online. This week there are so many things to show you, anyone would think this internet thing is really taking off.


YouTube was a notable absence last email but its back with a great big vengeance this week.

First – is this the best thing on there? If not send me something better. Go on, I dare you…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-NLPH8JeM

Next, the kind of people who upload videos to YouTube, are, no surprise, the kind of people who enjoy re-enacting computer games in the real world. Now I’ve seen some scary examples which I won’t share (people rushing around with fake guns pretending they’re in Grand Theft Auto, or recreating human pacman in lecture theatres - just plain weird frankly) BUT, there are two stop-motion examples below that are basically brilliant. One recreates space invaders, the other Pong (or bat and ball tennis as my brother and I used to call it). Trust me, this is brilliantly done

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyzStoxnTKs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yH0LHO7tcA

But if you would still rather see nutters doing this kind of thing in a very dumb, low-fi way, check out this lunatic as human tetris in Ohio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZhvWTUr_8g

As you know, I include old stuff in every mail, just to fill in all your new media “gaps” from the past. This gem has been loved many times over. Do your stuff Human Beatbox:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9698TqtY4A


But its not all “user-generated” chaos. TV content is still a great draw even on user-generated sites. Currently the 7th most watched thing of all time on YouTube (9 million views and counting) is this utterly bizarre scene from NBC’s America’s Got Talent show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB-wUgnyGv0


YouTube is an amazing thing. If you’d told me a couple of years ago that you were setting up a site where people could upload any video they like, I’d tell you that you were crazy. That the whole thing would turn into a repository for porn, slander and spam. Now I’m not saying that lots of that isn’t there, and that the vast majority of videos aren’t dumb, pointless or nuts, however, clicking on today’s Most Watched clips the number one video is Bill Clinton taking 11 minutes to lay into Fox News’ agenda during an interview – think about it. Maybe we’re not dumbing down after all.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1j79y7i10FY


Ok, serious bit over for now. Back to having fun. The insanely fabulous Scissor Sisters have an amazingly well executed piece of kit on their site that brought a new media meeting to a standstill this morning with people crying with laughter. It involves a small amount of effort but is most definitely worth it. Upload a picture of yourself and have a good old dance. It’s all in the execution and not the concept. Do it now, you won’t regret it.

http://www.dancesisterdance.co.uk/

I love Flickr. I REALLY love Flickr. I love it in ways I hadn’t anticipated and I use it really often. Like all big web outfits, there are now dozens of businesses which feed off it in a symbiotic way. Two of this week’s best are as follows:

Take all your lovely Flickr pictures and make hundreds of business cards each with a different image.

http://www.moo.com/

Alternatively, here is the inspiration for our Film 4 create your own online ad campaign. Add speech bubbles to your pictures, smoothly, bubbly, loverly

http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/


Last time I sent you a link to Human Clock, this is a simpler and more artistic execution of a similar thing. There’s something quite mind-numbingly hypnotic about it

http://www.yugop.com/ver3/stuff/03/fla.html


Talking of artists, this did the rounds a few months ago, and provided lots of creative inspiration. Seen from a different angle these look like nothing, its all about the perspective of the exact angle they were taken at.

http://www.thepuzzlefactory.com/2006_chalk.cfm


All my good intentions to send you forward-looking, thoughtful sites have basically gone out the window this week. There are lots of things to share for next time but if you’re anything like me then a load of crap YouTube videos will be more than enough to keep you occupied on this rainy, grey end of September week


(Oh, and for those sad individuals who love airlinemeals.net more than any other website I’ve ever recommended (yes, these people do exist) here is a nice little “ps” to end with http://www.bagophily.com/ (airline sick bags from around the world)

5th September 2006 - Get a New Media life

Its that time of the week again when I send round an email full of useless links to a bunch of pointless websites for you to peruse at your leisure.

So what kind of crap are the crazy time-wasters in New Media Marketing looking at this week I hear you ask…


Well, everyone knows that New Media uses way more jargon than any other department at Channel 4. Want to know where we get it all from? Click on this wonderful bullshit generator

http://emptybottle.org/bullshit/

Now for something random. This site shows a photograph of the current time, with the photo changing every minute of the day. How the time is actually displayed is a whole different matter. A lot of photos have the time written on a piece of cardboard, some have it on car registrations or street signs. Its hard to explain but incredibly simple in reality. Click on the link, and then go to “view the clock” on the left hand side. The time will reflect the time showing on your PC and changes every minute. If when you get there, there’s something obscure, wait a minute, and see it change.

http://www.humanclock.com/

Those of you who have ever played console games will probably have heard of Grand Theft Auto. The game allows the player to take on the role of a criminal who can roam around a city. Various missions are set for completion, such as bank robberies, assassinations, and other crimes. Nice! Coke have created something (we think in association with the game designers) which shows how even traditional advertisers are being creative in the right environment when it comes to digital media.

http://www.jaffejuice.com/2006/08/grand_theft_aut.html

And others are too. Profero have done a really interesting campaign for Mini. Rather than click through from the banner to a Mini website, the banners take you on a tour of random independent websites and the Mini ad acts as a kind of time tunnel into the different locations. Steve and I are talking about how we could use an idea like this for a clue-based campaign on our own site or others for a show like The Search. Keep clicking on the Mini

http://www.urbanjunkies.com/adventure/

Pirates of the Caribbean did a clever partnership this year with Google Earth. Basically they have created a map within Google Earth of a fictional island in the Caribbean, on which users can navigate and discover the movie related content.

http://www.discoverpirateisland.com/

Radio 1 has launched a new project called the Musicubes. Musicubes are a new way to share and express your musical taste online. It is essentially a music player you can customise according to your tastes, and then you can share it with your friends and with the visitors of your blog. It’s an interesting concept, taking advantage of blogs to generate awareness and word of mouth around BBC radio, and also a very good idea for a music interface.
http://www.radio1musicubes.co.uk/constructor1.shtml



Ok, now for something completely different. You love karaoke but can never get a room at Lucky Voice when you want. Solution – subscribe to Singshot or kSolo. Here with a pair of PC speakers and a microphone you can karaoke to heart’s content. The site streams the lyrics while the songs play, there’s a huge selection and you can upload and share your greatest X Factor style auditions. Get a big screen, get your friends round, save yourself £60/hourhttp://www.singshot.com/index.html
http://www.ksolo.com/home.do

Next conundrum – your photographs need more recognition than a tacky photo album, your writing skills are wasted in a diary no one looks at, or your recipes are scattered on post it notes with fingerprints all over. How about creating a proper book? Blurb is an incredible piece of free downloadable software that helps you create a book (full colour, hardback) for about £20. You download the software, drop in pictures and images (it comes with standard pages that you can adapt) and only when you click publish you pay and it gets printed in the States and sent out. They don’t currently ship to the UK, but that will change soon, and its quite amazingly easy to do it all. Trust me, this is one of the best things I’ve discovered recently and I’m in the middle of creating one myself. Incredibly straightforward software and its set to be one of the best presents I’ve ever given.
http://www.blurb.com/

Many of you will already know about the Craigslist phenomenon. Craig Newmark set up a kind of free ebay in San Francisco in 1995. It’s a collection of classified ads, sorted by location. It now serves over 4 billion page views per month, putting it in 30th place overall among Internet companies world wide and 7th place overall among Internet companies in the United States. With over 10 million new classified ads each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over 500,000 new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world. Its included London for some time now on its listings, and is definitely worth a search from time to time.
http://london.craigslist.org/

Now for something practical. Want to send big files but limited due to our network, or your ISP limits. Try Pando. As with all the best sites its still a beta for now

http://www.pando.com/beta/

Ok if that was this week’s one useful thing, lets head straight back to the pointless stuff. Mosquito ringtones. You probably heard about this a while back. Basically it’s a sound that was hijacked from a technology that was originally used to repel loitering teenagers from shops. This device emits a sound that proves to be a great annoyance to teenagers or anyone younger, but leaves most over twenty years of age unaffected. This is due to Presbycusis, a normal loss of acute hearing that occurs with advancing age. The ringtone was developed using the same technology, it is primarily used in the classroom, allowing students to hear incoming text messages on their mobile phones without the knowledge of their teachers. If you want to check out whether you have teenage hearing or not, check out this link and click on the play buttons for different frequencies. However, I must warn you, I spent a while listening to them myself and went home with an almighty headache. So click with care…

http://www.ultrasonic-ringtones.com/


Phew, a whole email without a single link to YouTube. That’s New Media for you, its already last month’s news.

18th August 2006 - A Friday installment of things to make you go hmmmm

So the internet has rumbled along for another few weeks and if I hear one more person mention YouTube or MySpace I think I’m going to scream. When GMTV fill a five minute slot discussing the wonders of video upload you know its time to move to a new site, but just before we all do here are some more things to occupy a minute or two…

Ok, I know most of you have already seen this, but its so good it really has to be included on this week’s email. Allegedly done in a single take, here is the only good use ever invented for running machines
http://www.videobomb.com/posts/show/3484

This week on YouTube, in amongst the girlfriends and boyfriends bitching about each other, and teenagers in Croydon wiring up roundabouts to motorbike engines, there is something really rather special. This guy has fast become a legend. He’s had hundreds of thousands of views of his videos in the last week and many thousands of comments. Here is an elderly man who says that YouTube has changed his life. His videos are full of stories about the war and his youth, and general observations on what’s going on in the world. Is he too good to be true?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_YMigZmUuk
For more of his pieces check out “Telling It All” parts 1 to 6
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=geriatric1927

On a different topic entirely, a number of sites recently seem to be full of consecutive pictures of people taken over a number of years. Take a look at these two fascinating examples below
http://zonezero.com/magazine/essays/diegotime/time.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55YYaJIrmzo

Ever wanted to use a video from YouTube in a presentation, or put something from Google Video on your ipod? Well now you can – here is a site where you paste the url you want, and it will download the video to your machine
http://feelingtea.com/decode/google/

Ok, enough of YouTube for another few weeks, here are some other interesting things to take a look at:

For general trendwatching, there are many great sites out there, one of the best being The Coolhunter. One of the categories it specialises in is advertising, and there are some seriously clever international ads featured in this section.
http://www.thecoolhunter.net/ads/

This next is something that I remember from a number of years ago, but not sure how many people have used it. Basically you type yourself a message and it will mail it to you at a later specified date. Could be useful as a car insurance renewal reminder, or for people’s birthdays, but how about writing something and sending it to yourself in 5 or 10 years time. Providing your email address stays the same (hotmail, gmail etc…) it could be pretty amazing to receive something from your former self
http://www.futureme.org/

Remember the days before everyone banged on about social networking? At that time the big buzz was all about recommendation, with reviews, ratings and “if you like this” technology. Since Amazon in the US started selling groceries, the functionality for books has extended to more everyday products. As you can imagine this has allowed for some bizarre reviews - some serious, some just plain taking the piss. Check out the user reviews of milk!

Amazon

Travel remains one of my web passions and with hundreds of sites to support my addiction I’ve included some examples ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.
This site shows you all the good and bad seats on just about every airline imaginable. Choose your airline on the left and the type of plane you are due to travel on, and hover over the layout – online seat selection on BA just got a whole load more competitive
http://www.seatguru.com/
So now for the ridiculous. Airlinemeals.net is a contender for one of the most comprehensive and random sites ever devised. Basically it has pictures of airlines meals from just about every airline in the world (Air Vanuatu anyone??) and reviews by passengers. From eulogies about Concorde lunches to eyewatering gems about dinner on Ethiopian Air “Not bad taste for Ethiopian Airlines, but the salad & cake was SUCK”, it’s a hilarious way to while away a few minutes. (Make sure you also check out the “special meals” “crew meals” “meals in movies” and “behind the scenes” areas). Priceless
http://www.airlinemeals.net/indexMeals.html

In the last week I got a new Sony Ericsson Cybershot phone. Aside from being a great phone with incredible photo ability, it does something that has completely changed my view on the potential of mobile. As soon as you take a picture with it you are presented with a “blog this” option. By clicking on it, it immediately created a “mobile blog” space for me online and uploaded both the image and associated text. The whole thing probably deserves a standalone demo if any of you are interested, but it completely changes the relationship between mobile and web and allows me to have an online space updated from anywhere in the world with no need for internet cafes or the like and with the ability for people to leave comments and for me to access it at a PC or on a mobile. The genius with the whole thing is its profound simplicity and accessibility. Here is my VERY unexciting blog so far to give you an idea of the manifestation of this new behaviour that many believe is set to be the next shift in new media.
http://mobileblach.blogspot.com/

So how do I discover some of the gems I pass on to you? Aside from sites I’ve talked about previously like Delicious, I recently discovered a wonderful new tool. Stumble Upon ads a toolbar to your screen. You define categories you are interested in (such as travel, literature, bizarre etc…) and each time you click on the “stumble” button, it generates a site that someone has recommended within that category. You also have a thumbs up and thumbs down button to help it learn what you like, and this also allows you to recommend new sites and pages for it to serve to others with just one click. It does involve a quick download, but I massively recommend giving it a go. If you find links you like through it, pass them on (no one has recommended anything to me yet) and enjoy stumbling around the web at your leisure.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/

30th June 2006 - What is the internet really all about?

Here is another update about what's hot. Less comedy gems this time, more sites which show general new media trends and how they are being executed. As with all things web 2.0 - its all about user generation, so if you find a great site, get sent an unmissable video or simply want to increase your friends on MySpace, please do send me links for the next email.

Its quite long, so best either to dip in and out, or come back to it when you have some free time.

But to start, and as a reminder of what the internet is REALLY about, I've attched a song from Avenue Q (which if you haven't been to see you really should, its on at the Noel Coward Theatre and is hilarious)

ForPorn.ytmnsfw.com

The first site to take a look at is one that people are talking about on blogs and tagging sites as it makes for a pretty awesome homepage. In essence its "an aggregator of aggregators". Everyone knows the web is now about collections of things where the best rises to the top – whether its pictures on Flickr, videos on YouTube or news on portals. This page (refreshed every 15 minutes has lists of the top things which are showing on these different sites – you can rearrange the order of sources or make the lists longer or shorter. But the best thing about it for me is the search box on the right hand side. Instead of just searching lets say Google from a single page, you can now search for your word or phrase directly from a range of sources from Ebay to Myspace, Wikipedia to Flickr. Take a look, scroll through it, play around
www.popurls.com

As we all know, everyone loves a list. 43 Things is a site where people write a list of 43 things they want to do. You can see the things that most people want to do with tag clouds (ie the bigger the word the more people have listed that), you can look at other people’s lists for inspiration and you can see what other people are doing where.
www.43things.com

Another site has spun off from this which is all about travel (another favourite internet theme). Here people say where they want to go, and others say if they’ve been there, if its worth going, or what to see and do when they get there. You can ask people who live in different destinations questions and check out reviews. Its quite young, so I don't recomend using it for restaurant reviews, there are other better sources, but its a nice way for people travelling to make connections and suss things out.
www.43places.com

Still on the travel theme, if you’re deciding whether to go somewhere, and want to see some pictures of the country, city, landmark etc.. the mass of images now on Flickr means that searches of even the most random destinations throw up dozens of images that give you a real sense of what somewhere will be like. Results come up under a "most relevant" heading, but if you click on the "most interesting" button to the right of the "view" list (above the images) you’ll tend to see some really amazing pictures. This is just one of the more lateral ways one can use some of the larger user generated sites.
www.flickr.com

On my Flickr profile, I have a map with all the countries I’ve been to, coloured in red. If you’re well traveled this is a pretty cool thing to do (even if one trip to Moscow does seem to colour in half the planet!). More and more people are writing code that does different stuff, which can then be pasted onto your own website, your blog, your MySpace profile or can just be looked at once. This guy has created a very plonky site, which generates the map and can then be inserted elsewhere on the web. Click on all the places you’ve been to, it will generate a map and a piece of code which you can then place where you like.
http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries

Another example of insertable code is Personality DNA. This is a classic questionnaire, executed really well with sliding scales. It creates your personality profile which lots of people are starting to insert in their MySpace/Bebo pages to give a quick snapshot of what they’re like. It takes a while to do, but like similar things is quite fun and the report page is great.
http://www.personaldna.com/

Back to the way the internet loves associations and recommendations, here is another beta site that will create a "map" showing you recommendations based on films, music, actors or directors that you like. Some more obscure content isn’t there yet, and it will only improve the more people who use it but it’s a bit "rock family tree" and is a great visual way of finding new things.
http://liveplasma.com/

Google is great, but if you take the "Dyson approach" to development , things can always be improved on. Snap is a site based on two principles – 50% of searches end in failure, and the average search times from start to finish is 15 minutes. This search engine shows you snapshots of the pages that include your result, so you get a good sense of whether they are where you want to go, before you click all over the internet.
www.snap.com

Alternatively, there are often questions we have that can’t be answered by a traditional search engine ie: a computer. "How long is a piece of string", "do Germans play World War 2 computer games" and "what is the best treatment for cellulite" are just three of the questions people are currently asking on Yahoo Answers. This site allows real people to respond to questions – you get points for answering questions and more if your answer is rated as the best one given. Its in its infancy, and as you’ll see there are a lot of silly or random things on there, but in the future, this could be a far more sophisticated way of harnessing the wisdom of crowds.
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/

"Crowdsourcing" is a phrase coined by Wired for this type of activity. Whilst Yahoo Answers is free and for fun, networks are creating a way for people to sit anywhere in the world and generate low level revenues based on the power of networks. For a full read here is the article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
Basically it means that stock photography (good enough for most small businesses) can now come down from $100 a shot to something like $1. Sites like iStockphoto http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php allow anyone to upload their images and get a few cents if people want to buy them. Most interesting of all, the Wired article suggests that the future of corporate R&D could lie in this type of network. Innocentive http://www.innocentive.com/ is a site that matches scientists to challenges facing companies like Proctor and Gamble. Anyone can sit at home and work on a scientific solution – if they crack it, they can earn anywhere between $10k and $100k – hobbyists (retirees or people who want a different quality of life) are solving problems from a more diverse perspective than is able to be solved in-house. Do read the article for a full explanation.

Ok, enough heavy stuff for now. How about some more random YouTube videos?
As I said, travel is always popular, and here’s a link to one of those things you wish you’d thought of yourself – 1.75 million views and counting!
http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries

As we know, recreating or "mashing up" is endlessly popular, here is Claire's current YouTube favourite
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2yNzw00mpA&search=torn

Other than reversions of familiar things (usually involving Star Wars), You Tube’s other current obsession is that old favourite - Japanese "Beadle’s About" type content. No need to understand the language – cruelty reigns and many involve toilet stunts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gNsDp2N6yM&feature=Views&page=1&t=a&f=b
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrJSMxRPzPU&feature=Views&page=1&t=m&f=b

25th July 2007 - Be in the New Media "know" on a Friday afternoon

Yesterday I was at a conference at which a speaker from Google showed the audience some of the biggest rating stuff on YouTube and asked who had seen it. I was the lonely geek who raised a hand.

I figured on this basis it would be good from time to time to circulate some of the stuff doing the rounds so that next time someone asks if you know about The Chinese Backstreet Boys you can nod knowingly and point out the very best diet coke Mentos viral back at them. If you don’t understand a word of what I’m on about, I’ve pasted some links below. This isn’t about huge sites like Bebo, Flickr or Last.fm but about random videos and obscure sites that people are talking about. Feel free to share your own or tell me not to bother…

This week in new medialand

Chinese Backstreet (ancient in the world of new media, but mentioned above so I thought I’d include it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNjVHmN7uco&search=chinese%20backstreet%20boys
you’ve almost certainly seen this. Done in a bedroom, millions of views to date, these kids are now sponsored by Pepsi and indeed Mastercard did a rip off at the Brits. Big brands parodying unknowns – this was the start of the future (and other horrible new meeja clichés)

Mentos
“Mentos sweets react with Diet Coke causing an almost immediate release of the carbon dioxide. The escaping bubbles quickly turn into a foam, and the pressure builds dramatically”. This rather arcane chemistry experiment quickly became one of the biggest “explosions” of video on YouTube with hundreds of ways of showing the effect.
From the basic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5_V5FB23tE&search=mento
To the highly produced
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw-eEWtPm8Y&search=mento
To the totally hilarious (made by some guys who now make virals professionally)
http://www.davideodesign.co.uk/pepsigirl.htm

Spoofing well known content is one of the most extensive uses of YouTube, here is Tango’s take on Sony Bravia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qRvXh_0HbU&search=bravia%20tango

This is the “banned” South Park/Tom Cruise video which is a rip off of a hideous R Kelly “Closet” video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRCK3Wi9Nv4&search=in%20the%20closet


Many of you will have seen all that stuff already, much of it has been lurking for ages, so here are some cool sites to look at instead:


You’ve probably heard of RocketBoom. It’s a daily show about weird stuff on the web (go to www.channel4.com/thisisaknife for C4.com’s weekly show inspired by the origianl). RB started out being produced in a New York bedroom (as all the best things are). After a couple of months they auctioned the opportunity on Ebay to be the first advertiser to feature within the show. Someone paid £40k. Most days RocketBoom gets over 300k plays with some popular days receiving over1 million plays.
http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/

Upload a photo of yourself or your friends and find your celebrity double. Some are rubbish, some hilarious (especially when they are of the opposite sex)
http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/face_recognition.php

The Swarm is a site that allows you to see in real time which websites people are looking at. You get to see a visual map of all their current screens and can click on them to go straight to those sites
http://www.swarmthe.com/

This site aggregates the music people are talking about in blogs and allows you to play it directly
http://hype.non-standard.net/about.php

Every World Cup goal in one place. Select the game you want (click on the score), then click the ball icon to see each goal
http://www.11football.com/coupedumonde2006/index2.php
Uploaded almost instantaneously as it happens in real time

Celebrities before and after touchup. Horrifying. Brilliant.
http://www.fluideffect.com/

This has been sent to me three times in the last week, several versions are doing the rounds. Works on a basic mathematical principle but its spooky the first few times you try it
http://www.milaadesign.com/wizardy.html

Totally pointless but quite fun – lots of 80’s videos (apparently 80’s vids are the most uploaded content on YouTube in the last few weeks)
http://www.freephotosandvideos.com/