We Love the Internet 2014/09: The Instant Karma edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• I’ve Discovered the Internet’s Most Internet Sentence, and Your an Idiot if You Disagree
• Chips With More Transistors Prolong Human Life – correlation doesn’t equal causation
• Everything is connected – the idea works better than the execution, at least at the moment
• For 7 years, L.A. Times’ Homicide Report has wrested stories from grim data

Reference points

• Graph TV – graph ratings of TV programmes
• Eight layers – a strategic checklist for the modern content business
• 6 Dogs Who Know How To Have Fun – from the Onion
• Pixel perfect precision – a design/UX resource

Longer reads:

• It’s complicated – danah boyd’s book on social networks and teens is available for free download from her site
• Sex! Drugs! Apps! SxSWi at 20
• Is the Internet good or bad? Yes.
• Inside the High-Stakes Battle to Control How You Talk to Friends
• The Playboy Interview: A Candid Conversation with Gawker’s Nick Denton

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to watch/listen to/play with:

• Postmodern Jukebox’s one take 2013 mash-up
• “Eye of the tiger” on dot matrix printer
• Speed skating, Mario Kart style
• News-reader edited to Rapper’s Delight
• Mario Seinfeld

Things to look at/read:

• 23 Instant Karma Gifs
• Little Boots on her experience of going to The Brits
• 12 Helpful Charts Every Londoner Should Live Their Life By – number 1 is incorrect
• The 26 Most East London Things That Have Ever Happened – more like a certain district within East London
• Why aren’t we all using Japanese toilets?

Animal corner:

• His Scream is Worse than His Bite
• Cat doesn’t want to play with husky
• Cats and Dogs Hate Kisses
• Skimbles cat fail

This week on Tumblr:

• Cook suck
• Experimental music on children’s TV
• Today is the day Marty McFly went into the future – to combat all the incorrect social media posts

Tweets of the week:

• When Dan Patrick has a twitter typo, he has one heck of a twitter typo. pic.twitter.com/1gRwqKqNGP
• Chinese bootleg of OLDBOY remake features the best review quote. pic.twitter.com/tdV4vTgsMl
• Whenever someone yells stop, I don’t know if it’s in the name of love, it’s hammer time, or if I should collaborate and listen.
• Still the best typo in a takeaway menu ever. pic.twitter.com/3j1eJWDorN
• Hard to see this headline being beaten in 2014: pic.twitter.com/vhryq6MIVv (via @neil_gillon)

Part 3: For the weekend

Reference points

• Hack the menu – no idea how many of these secret menu items are available in the UK

Long-form articles:

• The broken-down grace of Bill Murray – reviews of all of his films
• The footballer trapped in ‘The House of the Beautiful Sleeping Athlete’
• Voice Hero: The Inventor of Karaoke Speaks

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We Love the Internet 2014/08: The Cat curling edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Whatever Happened to the Twitter-TV Growth Story? – Brit Awards aside, I think this is true for the UK as well
• The social conglomerate – on Facebook’s purchase of What’s App
• Punching Above Its Weight, Upstart Netflix Pokes at HBO and what happens, technically, when House of Cards goes live
• Brands Aren’t Dead, But Traditional Branding Tools Are Dying – the argument is that branding is required to do different things in the information age
• Wikipedia vs the small screen – the editing tools aren’t mobile friendly
• A vision of the future – a fictional piece on how screens may develop

Reference points

• White lines + changing focus = 3d-looking gifs
• Dan Ariely is doing a free course – the beginner’s guide to irrational behaviour, starting in March
• Trend Hunter 20 trends for 2014
• IFFT – create “recipes”/automated tasks, whether scraping data from Instagram or forwarding photos to Dropbox

Longer reads:

• Fast Company’s 2014 edition of the world’s most innovative companies
• Amazon is good for consumers. But is it good for books?

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to watch/listen to/play with:

• Movie title break-up – a skit where a couple break up using titles from 154 films
• Wolf of Wall Street meets Meshuggah
• Is This The Most Creative BMX Bike Rider On Earth?
• Black guy breaks into a car
• Here’s what the Winter Olympics looked like more than 80 years ago

Things to look at/read:

• Drinking cinema – games to play while watching films. Act responsibly etc.
• Neknomintions are what this generation has instead of punk or rave

Animal corner:

• Cat curling – a twist on the Winter Olympics
• Goats balancing on a flexible steel ribbon
• Tucker The Boston Terrier Makes Funny Noises When He’s Cold
• 19 Photos That Prove Love Knows No Bounds
• A penguin follows the zoo keeper
• Mr bouncy cat
• Dawn the fox wags her tail

This week on Tumblr:

• Miliband – man of destiny
• The made-up words project
• Smarter every day
• Art on TV

Tweets of the week:

• Earthquake felt across the southwest. We will rebuild. pic.twitter.com/9eGcCemRuw
• Here’s confirmation that @annfriedman is the best. pic.twitter.com/6N74gd2ZGa
• These two would make a brilliant comedy double act…  pic.twitter.com/dqonrtsERh (via @jackseale)
• A protest we can all get behind (via@neilStuke) pic.twitter.com/Z1Vf7TyqJL
• Despite all my rage: pic.twitter.com/SFd99HBDUZ

Part 3: For the weekend

Long-form articles:

• How dare Lolo Jones be beautiful and good at sports
• Living in the nineties (age, not era)
• Love me Tinder – and how Tinder has seen a spike in use in Sochi
• Think You Could Be A Professional Gambler? Here’s What It’s Actually Like
• The case for blunders

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We Love the Internet 2014/07: The Infinifriends edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Netflix long-term view – pretty provocative
• NY Times has a great multimedia piece on Slopestyle
• You won’t believe Upworthy’s new way of measuring audience engagement until you read it – attention minutes does sound like a good attempt
• One sentence and six charts to explain why Comcast is buying Time Warner Cable
• Buzzfeed CEO: Here’s Why Facebook Isn’t Crushing Us

Reference points

• Infinifriends – an algorithm chops up Friends scripts into new episodes, and a scene has been created with avatars and speech
• 14 Incredible But Fake Viral Images — And The Twitter Account Debunking The Picspammers
• Buzzfeed style guide
• Dave Benson Phillips will do shows for stuff

Longer reads:

• TED talk and transcript on the dangers of neuroscience research
• Growth hacking – presentation, with case studies, on growing quickly at scale

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to watch/listen to/play with:

• How To Beat Flappy Bird (for the record, my best score is 31. I’m incredibly proud of this)
• Can You Guess Famous Mean Girls Lines From Just a Freeze-Frame?
• All of Jesse’s Yo’s (from Breaking Bad)
• iPhone destroyed by rifle – because it blocked a bitcoin app from the app store
• A compilation of wake up pranks

Things to look at:

• Photographer Gets A-List Celebrities To Re-enact Stunning Scenes From Disney Movies
• 11 Emotionally Repressed Valentine’s Cards For British People
• Twenty amazing Lego sculptures

Things to read:

• 32 Things You Always Believed That Simply Aren’t True
• The Shortest And Most Accurate History Of The World You’ll Ever Read
• A Linguist Explains the Grammar of Doge. Wow. – and why the Doge mean has attracted an (allegedly) more intelligent crowd
• Take Home The Gold Medal In Olympic Knowledge

Animal corner:

• Squirrel hides nuts in a Bernese Mountain dog’s fur
• Battle play of Maru and Hana
• Toronto Zoo Giant Panda Enjoys Epic Snow Fall
• 22 different types of hangovers – illustrated by cats
• Hot guys with cats

This week on Tumblr:

• Flappy Bird think pieces
• Shoshi Games – Girls meets the Winter Olympics
• Wiki picks
• Citation needed – the best of Wikipedia’s worst writing
• The art of the rap logo

Tweets of the week:

• One Direction vs Welsh rugby team: pic.twitter.com/h1yWQ1Whh6 via @chrisdeerin
• Was this the world’s first selfie? New York City, circa 1920. pic.twitter.com/IxByqA164q
• twitter mate you’re not helping pic.twitter.com/NL8dVoVRNP
• Worst Boden catalogue ever: pic.twitter.com/p5waHNFBtR
• Dear @BuzzFeed, @rupertmurdoch took the quiz and confirmed that he is in fact Rupert Murdoch. Phew. pic.twitter.com/sKknuiRG1H
• There is nothing about posing with your sons like this that is alright http://huff.to/1c0wfGe  pic.twitter.com/ol4k863oGc

Part 3: For the weekend

Reference points

• How many hours of minimum wage work it takes to earn a beer

Long-form articles:

• How to be popular
• A History of the Selfie
• The eagle has landed – how Michael Sam, NFL draft prospect, came out
• That “distressed baby” who Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

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We Love the Internet 2014/06: The Inner City Pressure edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Market research can no longer predict what consumers will like – in purchase situations, because research doesn’t (necessarily) reflect information gathering/consideration process
• The 2 Teenagers Who Run the Wildly Popular Twitter Feed @HistoryInPics – and why these accounts are bad for both history and us
• How slow motion replays mislead us
• Ten lessons from a maker
• Advertising in the age of scepticism

Reference points

• The anatomy of a viral launch site – http://whatthefuckismytwitterbio.com/ is in the vein of similar sites for Briefs and Wearables (but not yet wearable briefs)
• Mediamass – a made-up celebrity news site that is created by algorithms, and an article about it
• ‘Why Is Pennsylvania So Haunted?’: The U.S. According to Autocomplete

Longer reads:

• Culture Lab’s 10 trends to watch in 2014
• You don’t want your privacy: Disney and the meat space data race

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to watch/listen to/play with:

• Build with Chrome – Lego. In your browser.
• Ski ballet – a former Olympic demonstration sport
• Go Pro Heroes – a site bringing together the best uses of Go Pro cameras, and why Go Pro are doing well at being about culture
• Comedians in cars getting coffee – Seinfeld reunion. Similar idea to Robert Llewellyn’s Carpool
• What happens when you put a magnet into a copper pipe

Things to look at:

• Stars of the Britpop era encounter inner city pressure
• What is the most bullshit-sounding-but-true fact you know? – Reddit thread
• 25 Completely Scientific Reasons Why Women Live Longer Than Men
• Famous Movie Scenes In The Style Of The Ottoman Empire
• The Philosopher’s Mail – spoof on the Daily Mail

Animal corner:

• A kitten goes crazy at its reflection
• An Arkansas animal refuge has 60 animals that hang out together
• Animals riding animals
• The definitive ranking of animals riding on tortoises and turtles – Tortuga doesn’t qualify
• 21 cats that are about to sneeze

This week on Tumblr:

• Life advice from machines
• Dimly lit meals for one
• Matching monsters
• Too long; didn’t see – illustrated synopsis for TV programmes and films
• Deep, dark fears

Tweets of the week:

• Things to do before you die #47: pic.twitter.com/LO1nkBQ6l3
• When you’re filming in the “secret, first of its kind command center” try to not give away the WiFi password pic.twitter.com/N7EuSuBKYC
• #Sikh chic pic.twitter.com/12KkvEcs9R
• Travelling in London today? Here are your options… pic.twitter.com/GYnpxGMvY6
• We prefer to be called “white people” pic.twitter.com/9TMpI9FtZV
• Close enough. pic.twitter.com/NrhIEgqO3N

Part 3: For the weekend

Reference point

• Time Out’s top 100 London cheap eats

Long-form articles:

• What is rape culture?
• Street Fighter 2: An oral history
• Over The Edge – an oral history of Matt Dillon’s teen rebellion first film
• Breaking Madden – pushing the Madden computer game beyond its limits

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