And so it begins, influential websites start trying to pull one over on their readers; happy April First everyone. Tech Crunch is throwing down a doozy of a joke by claiming their founder Michael Arrington is filing suit against Facebook for $25 Million in statutory damages. The article starts out with Arrington stating his online awesomeness (which is fact, the man started a weblog that draws 727,000 subscribers) and claiming Facebook’s third party adverts are taking advantage of his celebrity status. Let’s not even mention, the article links to former TechCrunch April Fools jokes. It’s like they aren’t even trying anymore…
Last year, Google offered new services like GMail Paper which allowed a user to request their entire catalog of archived GMail in printed paper form for free. The cost was off-set by unobtrusive adverts that would be placed on the back of the printed forms and would pertain to the content of the printed email. Google assured the environmentally conscious that this service would be provided on 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum. And as if not to stretch the joke too far, they added that photo attachments would be printed on high quality, glossy photo paper, and attached to the corresponding email with a paper clip.
So keep your eye out for the fun; internet hoaxes and practical jokes. It probably wouldn’t hurt to be on the look out for pranksters at work too.
Update:
No sooner than I post this article, but a RSS feed comes in from TUAW. Looks like the iPhone-Dev team pulled one over on The Unofficial Apple Weblog. They have since apologized to their readers…
The iPhone-Dev team also got TUAW’s sister site, Engadget. Who after realizing the prank, said they would go “offline” until April second.
It appears that Ted Winder has gone April Fools fishing, and might have caught an unsuspecting Josh Holat.
And here is Google again, showing up for April Fools in true form with Custom Time (send an email anytime in the past), Virgle (joint venture to mars with Virgin), Wake Up Kit (set wake up alarms in Google Calendar) and Future Search in Australia (search tomorrows results today).
This video is a time lapse made over the course of a year by the folks at Photojojo. They took a picture out a window over looking Bryant Park in New York City once every two hours for a year which totaled a whopping 4,385 frames. This was a project that complemented their tutorial on time lapse photography they published and appropriately titled: The Ultimate Guide to Time Lapse Photography. I found the article to be very interesting and plan to give it a shot and add a few time lapse projects to my personal portfolio, that is, if I can ever get around to it.
Over the course of the video you see the seasons change, annual events take place and people come and go. The music is by artist Leona Naess which adds to the hypnotic visual beat. The song titled “New York Baby” from the album “Comatised.” You can find this song and more like it on iTunes and/or Amazon.
Last week I mentioned a new service dubbed: Muxtape. It’s a free service that allows you twelve song uploads to create a virtual mix cassette tape. I’ve really enjoined creating my own mix as well as exploring other peoples muxtapes.
In the past week, the creator of muxtape has rolled out several new features. One new feature is a colorful table on your login screen that displays the muxtapes of other users. It loads to the beat of a secret algorithm that detects muxtapes you may not have listened to yet; which helps focus the site in a way that users can continue to find new music. Also included in the updates are RSS feeds and favorite subscriptions giving you the ability to track other users muxes that you enjoy. You can have up to twelve favorite muxes at a time, similar to being limited to just twelve songs in your own muxtape.
Though it may seem that the service is almost too simple and limiting; I feel instead that it rather makes it very welcoming and useful. Only getting twelve songs and twelve favorites pushes the users to only keep what they feel is the cream of the crop, the best of the best; keeping quality up and over complication down. It really is making a big splash as a fast and upcoming web application.
Muxtape has captured attention of such notable websites as:
I remember going to the library in elementary school and how it was always a competition to see who could get the next available Garfield book, otherwise, you would get stuck with something educational.
Garfield was my first favorite comic strip that I then moved on to a stronger love of Calvin and Hobbes which I own the entire collection of. Unlike Calvin and Hobbes, having read every single Garfield comic known to the general population, I’ve found it kind of lost it’s appeal. Somewhere between sixth and seventh grade the simple three pane funnies of Jim Davis lost me and became stale.
Awhile ago I found a website called: Garfield minus Garfield that has refreshed my love for Garfield by subtracting Garfield from, well, Garfield. They have been going through, removing Garfield from the strips and leaving only Jim Arbuckle to his own devices. It makes for a really hilarious, twisted and often psychopathic good time.
Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.
Similar to last week’s Flickr Pick, this one seems very different at first glance. It’s only after the second or third take that you realize what this image is composed of. What seems to be out of a 1930’s Walt Disney Sci-Fi flick gone awry, is in fact, made up of everyday objects that one might find around an antique shop - or in this case, Martin Taylor’s office:
Invention constructed from objects found around my office/playroom. Was going for a sort of robot Mickie Mouse effect.
I think he nailed exactly what he was going for. This piece is a part of a 366 day project where Martin produces at least one image per day for an entire year, plus a day. This picture is number 81 of 366. If you have some time to spare, swing by Martin’s Flickr space and check out the other great work he has on display. You will also find some very interesting homages to other well known photographers such as Andreas Feininger, Andre Kertesz, Irving Penn and Chema Madoz.
A new service launched today called Muxtape, a very simple way to share music with your friends via the world wide web. It is based off of old mix cassette tapes where you would make a mix of your favorite tunes, record them to a cassette and pass it along to a friend or prospective significant other. Muxtape allows anyone to create an account and gives you enough space for what would normally fit on an old cassette: 12 songs no larger than 10MB each.
Everything about Muxtape is simple; from account creation, uploading your music, rearranging the order, sharing your music to playing the songs with just one click. I took a few minutes and got mine up and running, check it out at: http://evansnyder.muxtape.com/
Muxtape was created by Justin Oullette who had this to say about it’s development and launch:
I’ve been working on this literally every spare moment I’ve had for the past few weeks so I’m very excited to be at a point where I can start sharing it with everyone. Please give it a try and tell me what you think (good or bad, bug report or feature request.) My goal is nothing short of changing the way we consume, distribute, and discover music.
Justin also has plans for more features as he states at the Muxtape Blog:
There’s already some great muxtapes! The ability to discover relevant new muxtapes will be the very next thing I do after a couple bug fixes. Also coming soon: M4A support, RSS feeds (last minute omission from the launch schedule), more customization, many many many other things.
Note: As of right now, the service only allows files in the MP3 format. Your DRM‘ed music from services like the iTunes Music Store will not work unless you find some way to strip the DRM from the file.
It’s everything I would want Flickr to be… but for music.
Last week, Paul Stamatiou posted a review of his MacBook Air. He purchased it nearly three weeks ago for $15.00 (See: How I got a MacBook Air for 15 Dollars) and has since replaced his MacBook Pro as his primary computer. He concludes his review with an answer to the question, “Any Regrets?”
None at all. The Air has enough power to do my work tasks and small enough to bring everywhere. Down the line I can see myself eying Mtron’s 128GB 1.8-inch SSD capable of 100MB+/sec read/write throughput. Hopefully it comes in a PATA/ZIF flavor as the Air does not use SATA at the moment. Subtle rumors indicate a move to a 45nm chip and a SATA drive in the summer, but we’ll have to wait and see.
If I had to pick out one thing about the Air and call it my favorite, it would be the sturdy construction. This thing is solid and feels like it was carved from a block of aluminum. Despite the bugs and issues, the Air gets a 9/10.
The MacBook Air has met both praise and criticism since it’s announcement at the MacWorld Expo in mid January. As for many Apple products, the arguments for and against the product are of different sides of the same coin. It’s too thin or it’s amazingly thin. It’s too basic or it’s perfectly basic. It will never serve as a primary computer or it’s perfect for my primary needs. Apple has always had a knack for stirring the pot of innovation and reacting with the critics strong emotions.
I for one will wait to see the product line mature and expand the features that are available to it as technology and the industry catch up before I consider purchasing one. But it is great to hear such good feedback from the early adopters.
I found this video this past weekend while I was killing time before my Easter dinner drive. It is a Lip Dub of Harvey Dangers popular song “Flagpole Sitta” which was released in 1998 on the album “Where have all the Merrymakers gone?”
This video was put together by the employee’s over at Connected Ventures who manage the well known websites: Busted Tees, College Humor, Crazy Wire and Vimeo. The amazing thing is, they did this in one take and one long single shot. I can only imagine the planning that went into setting this up. Shortly after this video went live on Vimeo, other people enlisted co-workers and friends to record and lip dub the same song in response. People taking time out of a busy or boring day to shake things up and have a little fun in the office.
Kudo’s to the folks over at CV for showing us not everyday has to be a Monday.
A new service launched today called