Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Joe Biden's Teeth

Joe Biden's Teeth is a silly website by 8 bit studios, whose purported aim is to "reduce our dependency on porcelain and metal fillings through the investment in clean and renewable enamel."  

The disclaimer states that "Joe Biden is not affiliated with joebidensteeth.com, but we bet his teeth love it." 

So it appears to be a mildly confusing publicity stunt by Trident... but then again, who knows. If you send in a picture of yourself smiling, Trident sends you a free pack. 

The site is focused exclusively on Joe Biden's teeth. The tooth chronicles are especially cute, and have that mock-serious tone to it. You can play picture games guessing which set of teeth are Biden's. Or you can not bother. Whatever floats your boat. 

(From David B.)

Monday, March 30, 2009

Don't Judge Too Quickly

Don't Judge Too Quickly is a brilliant ad campaign by Ameriquest Mortgage. I was looking for an embedable link and found this montage of 6 Ameriquest + 2 non-Ameriquest commercials tossed in.  A+.  Actually, someone translated "Don't Judge Too Quickly" into Portuguese, making this video an A++. 
(From Evan F.)

Sunday, March 29, 2009

A.J. Jacobs: My year of living biblically

Welcome to TED Sundays. I think I'll make this a regular thing for a bit. //

A.J. Jacobs: My year of living biblically is a TED talk by A. J. Jacobs, a writer for Esquire magazine. He approaches his articles in a sort of method-actor manner, but for writers. He likes to dive right into the research. 

So A. J. spent a year trying to take the Bible literally, and following over 700 rules from all the Bibles he could gather.  Mainly the catalyst for this was that A. J. was concerned about the rise of religious fundamentalism in America.  

It's a charming tale of him being fruitful and multiplying, not shaving and getting stuck at airport security, and failing to properly stone people. 

I knew this topic would be a win when he introduced himself as such: "I'm Jewish in the same way The Olive Garden is Italian: not very." Win. 

(From my iPod)

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Megavideo

Megavideo is another of those watch-tv-on-the-web sites. The quality is pretty good, and I have yet to find a dead link.  Besides the streaming option, there appears to be a download option (that I haven't tried).

The pesky thing about the site is, besides having to click through two ads to get to the content, it only lets you watch 72 minutes of continuous videos at a time.  After that, it interrupts the video and tells you to sign up for their fee-service or come back 54 minutes later.  No free lunches, I guess. Let me know what you think. 

(From TV Duck)

Friday, March 27, 2009

Isabel Allende: Tales of passion

Isabel Allende: Tales of passion is a TED talk by Isabel Allende.  I had never seen her talk prior to this, and she is very funny.  I did not expect this.   Isabel reminds me of my Aunt Godmother. 

Between funny stories about flag-bearing, the Olympics, and Sophia Loren, Isabel tells tales of extraordinary strength and makes a very strong case for feminism today. She introduces herself as such: 

"I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal, Catholic, and conservative family.  No wonder that by age 5 I was a raging feminist. Although, the term had not reached Chile yet -- so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me. I would soon find out that there was a high price to pay for my freedom and for questioning the patriarchy, but I was happy to pay it because for every blow that I received I was able to deliver two."

Isabel's daughter Paula insisted once that feminism is dated.  They had a fight. Isabel rebutted that feminism is dated for privileged women like her daughter, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world:

"Who are still forced into early marriage, into prostitution, into forced labor.  They have children that they don't want or that they cannot feed.  They have no control over their bodies or their lives.  They have no education and no freedom. They are raped, beaten up, and sometimes killed with impunity.  For most western young women of today, being called a feminist is an insult. Feminism has never been sexy. But let me assure you, it never stopped me from flirting. And I have seldom suffered from lack of men. 

...

Feminism is not dead, by no means. It has evolved. If you don't like the term, change it... the name doesn't matter, as long as we understand what it is about, and we support it.

...

Although women do 2/3 of the world's labor, they own less than 1% of the world's assets. They are paid less than men for the same work, if they are paid at all, and they remain vulnerable because they have no economic independence and they are constantly threatened by exploitation, violence, and abuse. It is a fact that giving women education; work; the ability to control their own income, inherit, and own property benefits the society.  If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off.  If the family prospers, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country.

The poorest and most backwards societies are always those that put women down. Yet this obvious truth is ignored by governments and also by philanthropy. For every dollar given to women's programs, $20 are given to men's programs.

...

In this case, the trickle down effect which does not work in economics, works perfectly. Abuse trickles down from the top of the ladder to the bottom. Women and children, especially the poor, are at the bottom. Even the most destitute of men have someone they can abuse: a woman, or a child.  

I'm fed up with the power that a few exert over the many through  gender, income, race, or class... We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men. I'm talking about men with young minds, of course. Old guys are hopeless, we have to wait for them to die off."

Those are the weighty, hefty bits with statistics and fighting words. Isabel sprinkles those amongst human stories which are much more interesting, but which I'll leave up to the video. This is one of my new favorite talks. 

(From my iPod)

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Xavier Sala-i-Martin's Home Page




























It's opposite day here on TOTI, and so instead of best thing on the interwebs today, the TOTI winner is the worst.

Xavier Sala-i-Martin's Home Page wins.  It starts with an incoherent warning:

"Over the years, I have observed an annoying tendency for people to bother the flies in my website. In order to prevent this from happening, I decided to keep an eye (actually, two eyes!) on your mouse. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I had no alternative." Right.
First of all, there's a gloat splash page from circa 2006.  If you click through, you step into vintage web from the 1990s.  Is this the personal web-page of your fourteen-old-cousin? No.  A zebra-hide wearing pimp? No, but closer. It belongs to Xavier Sala-i-Martin, professor of economics at Columbia University.  

According to wikipedia, Xavier  "was recognized with a 'Distinguished Teacher in Graduate Economics' award 3 times, both at Columbia and at Yale, with the King Juan Carlos I prize 2004 (a biannual prize given to the best economist in Spain and Latin America), and the Lenfest Prize 2006 awarded to the best teacher at Columbia University." According to his site, he was also president of Fútbol Club Barcelona. 

 He is likely under consideration for a Nobel prize in economics, and also, for worst sustained use of gifs and layout on a professional web page.  Congrats.  Please hire someone to fix this, Xavier.

(From T.J. and Archana. Blame them.)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

SideReel

SideReel is the latest and best designed of the watch-TV-on-the-web variety of website.  

According to the site, "here, you can be the guide, the critic, the expert, and of course a fan." They look all organized and such, with their company group picture and listed positions and such. And for once, the design doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out. Good work. 

Heck, we'll up it to great work. Enjoy!


(From T.J. and Archana)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Our Courts

I have often maintained that Sandra Day O'Connor was the coolest modern judge, and this website proves why. // Our Courts is Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's vision, designed to, "teach students civics and inspire them to be active participants in our democracy." She was concerned that students, "are not getting the information and tools they need for civic participation, and that civics teachers need better materials and support."

It includes web gamez to be rolled out this summer!!! With Robotzes and everything! O Sandy. You're too much, I love it.


(From Metafilter)

Monday, March 23, 2009

Portia De Rossi's PSA

Portia De Rossi's PSA is a parody Public Service Announcement by Portia de Rossi that aired on Jimmy Kimmel Live.  In a mocking jab at the passage of California's Proposition 8, Portia apologizes for only thinking of her selfish self when getting married.  

Way funnier than Arrested Development.  There, I said it. 


(From T. J. . . )

Sunday, March 22, 2009

David Carson: Design, discovery and humor

David Carson: Design, discovery and humor is a good-humored TED talk about fonts and design.

David is a "grunge typographer" whose magazine Ray Gun helped, "explode the possibilities of text on a page... Squishing, smashing, slanting and enchanting the words on a layout, Carson made the point, over and over, that letters on a page are art."

He is single-handedly responsible for thousands of crappy illegible rock-and-roll scribbles that you've seen countless skateboards and T-shirts.

The talk itself is extremely jumpy and jumbled, but high on laughs if you can keep up.  David shows some examples of his work, and his mind seems to work much like his typography.  He talks about design principles, his book: The End of Print, and what makes a job or career worth pursuing. 

(From TED. Good luck Justin!)

Saturday, March 21, 2009

MPL

Most times, I generally succeed at keeping this blog from devolving into a series of inside jokes and narrow-audience humor. This is not one of those times.

MPL is a song by three University of Illinois College of Medicine students: Alex Cantrell, Jon Paul Youakim, and Christian Nuñez, set to the tune of Howie Day's "Collide". The song chronicles their experiences as first-year students (M1's). It is named after the Minimum Passing Level (MPL), meaning the minimum grade a student must achieve to pass a test or class. Most M1 medical school classes are graded pass/no pass/outstanding. MPL is usually between 60% to 73%.  Recurrent themes include having no time, barely making it through the year, and accidentally signing up for med school.  The song was performed at a variety show/fundraiser after a series of soul-crushing exams. 

Lyrics as performed:

The dawn is breaking
A light shining through
I've been dissecting...
So-I-just dont have a clue
Yeah

This guy I'm carving
Been here for so long
Why am I starving in this place?
That sounds so wrong

M-1 is way too hard sometimes
Knowing I'm always out of time
Think I'm going out of my mind
I somehow find
I get M-P-L

Labs every evening
So much used latex
Can't think of seeing
all-of-that without the sex

What a smokin' class
So many hot girls
Some love could be worth makin'
Too bad that most are taken.

No girl for me
No S-T-Ds
No girl for me
(Yeah, I'm still free)

Signed up to shadow
Doctors think I'm smart
Until I saw the patient in the nude
I had to barf!

What the hell is that?
I've never seen that!
I'm not touching that!
(I didn't sign up for THAT!)

Even if I survive this time
I'll graduate without a dime
Think I'm going out of my mind
I somehow find
I get M-P-L

Els taught Physio
My brain stenoses
But he assured me...
[Fake South African accent] "It-can't-get harder than this"

Immuno-micro
So many gross pathogens
I know that I shouldn't for-
-get to wash my hands!

Even if I survive this time
I'll graduate without a dime
Think I'm going out of my mind
I somehow find
I get M-P-L

Can't stop to
Procrastinate
I'm so behind

M-1 is way too hard sometimes
Knowing I'm always out of time
Out of the doubt that fills my mind
I somehow find
We will all survive
(From Christian)

Friday, March 20, 2009

Six-Word Reviews

Last year, I wrote about a hero of a music reporter, Paul Ford. You see, last year Paul Ford of The Morning News reviewed 763 songs by musicians hoping to make it big at the 2008 South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive, film, and music festivals.  Most of the "new" and "edgy" songs currently on my iPod came from this article. 

Paul reviewed all of them in six words, paying homage to Hemingway. (In the 1920s, Hemingway bet his colleagues $10 that he could write a complete story in just six words. His story: "For sale: Baby shoes, Never worn." They paid up.) With this in mind--brevity, not miscarriages--Paul did it again. But better. 

He listened to 1,302 SXSW songs  and wrote six word reviews for each of them.  Here is this year's Morning News article: Six-Word Reviews of 1,302 SXSW Mp3s.  

In Paul's own words: 

"For brevity, I kept each review to exactly six words. Clicking on a band’s name takes you to its web site. Clicking on the song title takes you to its page on the SXSW web site. Full band information is not always available, but clicking on the rating circle (●) or circles always takes you directly to an mp3 file so you can listen to the song. Right-click to download. By popular request, all links pop up in new windows/tabs.

Many bands appearing in Austin did not release mp3s directly to SXSW; only those bands that did so were reviewed."
ENJOY!

(From the buzz)

(PS: This year's SXSW site considerably fuglier than last year's. )

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Mind-Melting Demo Disasters

Mind-Melting Demo Disasters. As New York magazine explains, "Some awesome anonymous country label has started a tumblr on which it's posting the worst (i.e. best) unsolicited demos it has ever received in the mail. They are all, without a single exception, fantastic."

I guffawed-out-loud at the Step Aerobics Class From Hell. Also, I embarrassedly kind of liked the track that sounds like something that was made on a 1988 casio keyboard... that is, until the singer started singing. It was all chill, pseudo-French and whimsical up until then. Then it was like, ew, no. Let's NOT get it on.   Anyway, the list of finds goes on and on. Enjoy!

(From my friend Courtney, who should not be occupied past 11 and New York Entertainment, and primadona926's flickr)

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The Health-Care Crisis Hits Home

I try not to get all preachy and stuff, but when I heard the podcast version of this story at the gym I thought, this indeed is the best thing on the interwebs today. And it's important. I found the print version, and tried to pick the best exerpts, but really, you should  just read the whole thing.  // 

The Health-Care Crisis Hits Home is a Time article by Karen Tumulty.  Karen has written extensively about health care, but recently, the problem has struck very close to home: her brother Pat was diagnosed with kidney failure.

"For six years — since losing the last job he had that provided medical coverage — Pat had been faithfully paying premiums to Assurant Health, buying a series of six-month medical policies, one after the other, always hoping he would soon find a job that would include health coverage...

Kidney failure would seem to be one of those disastrous 'unexpected illnesses' that Pat thought he was insuring himself against. But apparently he was wrong. When my mother, panicked, called to tell me that the insurance company was refusing to pay Pat's claims, I told her not to worry; bureaucratic mix-up, I assumed. I said I'd take care of it, bringing to bear my 15 years of experience covering health policy, sitting through endless congressional hearings on the subject and even moderating a presidential candidates' forum on the issue.

Confident of my abilities to sort this out or at least find the right person to fix the problem, I made some calls to the company. I got nowhere. That's when I realized that the national crisis I'd written so much about had just hit home."

...

Pat represents the shadow problem facing an additional 25 million people who spend more than 10% of their income on out-of-pocket medical costs. They are the underinsured, who may be all the more vulnerable because, until a health catastrophe hits, they're often blind to the danger they're in. In a 2005 Harvard University study of more than 1,700 bankruptcies across the country, researchers found that medical problems were behind half of them — and three-quarters of those bankrupt people actually had health insurance.

...

Pat's decision to save some money by buying short-term insurance was a big mistake, says Karen Pollitz, project director of Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute and a leading expert on the individual-insurance market. 'These short-term policies are a joke,' she says. 'Nobody should ever buy them. It is false security that is being sold. It's junk.' 

...

While Pat had been continuously covered since 2002 by the same company, Assurant Health, each successive policy treated him as a brand-new customer. In looking back over Pat's medical records, the company noticed test results from December, eight months earlier. Though Pat's doctors didn't determine the precise cause of the problem until the following July, his kidney disease was nonetheless judged a 'pre-existing condition' — meaning his insurance wouldn't cover it, since he was now under a different six-month policy from the one he had when he got those first tests. 

...

There was at least one thing we didn't have to worry about, Haile assured me. Pat's kidney doctor, Peter Smolens, would keep treating him even if he couldn't pay. Smolens, a thin, soft-spoken man, later told me that about 10% of his patients have inadequate insurance or none at all. He has agonized with some as they struggled with hard choices, like whether to have a hospital biopsy or pay their mortgage. As a physician, he said, 'you just see them. You know you're not going to get paid.'

...

A paradox of medical costs is that people who can least afford them — the uninsured — end up being charged the most. Insurance companies, with large numbers of customers, have the financial muscle to negotiate low rates from health-care providers; individuals do not. Whereas insured patients would have been charged about $900 by the hospital that performed Pat's biopsy (and pay only a small fraction of that out of their own pocket), Pat's bill was $7,756. For lab work — and there was a lot of it — he was being charged as much as six times the price an insurance company would pay. One pathology lab's bill alone was $3,290.

...

Pat's kidney function, which was 48% when Smolens first saw him last summer, has fallen to between 35% and 40%. And there are now outward, obvious signs of Pat's illness: he is lethargic, his eyes are puffy, and his lower legs and ankles are swollen to twice their normal size.

...the average cost of dialysis treatments in this country is $60,000 per year plus. There's another paradox: if Pat gets sick enough to need dialysis, as he well may, the Federal Government will pick up those staggering costs under the Medicare program for end-stage renal disease. But until that point is reached — and the goal is to keep him from getting there — his options are limited. Now that he is sick, it would be nearly impossible for him to purchase another insurance policy on the individual market. Since he lives independently and holds a job, it would be difficult for him to qualify for Social Security disability benefits. 

...my brother would have to wait 12 months to join with a pre- existing condition, under the state's 'adverse selection' regulations that seek to prevent uninsured people from joining the pool only after they get sick.

...

As this country prepares to engage in its first serious debate over comprehensive health-care reform in 15 years, there are two leading approaches to covering the 45 million uninsured and reining in costs. One, which President Barack Obama is putting forward, would force more employers to offer coverage to their workers, with subsidies and other incentives to make it more affordable. The other, advocated by Republicans (including Senator John McCain in the recent presidential campaign), would take away some of the tax advantages that come with getting coverage at work and thereby put many Americans who are now covered by their employers into the marketplace on their own. The idea is that they would be the ones best equipped to decide which plan suits their individual needs.

...

Pat's experience suggests it is difficult for an individual to make such judgments. And the existing market for these kinds of policies leaves a lot to be desired. A 2006 Commonwealth Fund study found that only 1 in 10 people who shopped for insurance in the individual market ended up buying a policy. Most of the others couldn't find the coverage they needed at a price they could afford.

The individual health-care consumer has very little power or information. Still, it turns out that there are ways to fight back. As I was reporting my brother's story, I discovered something about Pat's former insurance company: last May, insurance regulators in Connecticut imposed a record $2.1 million in penalties on two Assurant subsidiaries for allegedly engaging unfairly in a practice called postclaims underwriting — combing through short-term policyholders' medical records to find pretexts to deny their claims or rescind their policies. In one case, a woman whose non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was diagnosed in 2005 was denied coverage because she had told her doctor on a previous visit that she was feeling tired. Assurant agreed to pay the fine but admitted no wrongdoing.

So I contacted the Texas Department of Insurance, identifying myself as both the sister of an aggrieved policyholder and a journalist. Officials there suggested that Pat file a complaint against the company. Each year the department receives as many as 11,000 complaints and manages to get $12 million to $13 million back for consumers, Audrey Selden, the department's consumer-protection chief, told me. 'It is important to complain.'

And it's easy too. It took Pat and me less than 10 minutes to fill out the complaint form over the Internet. That was Jan. 14, 2009. On Feb. 9, we had an answer: Assurant maintained that it had done nothing wrong and that Pat should never have relied on short-term coverage over a long period. But given 'the extraordinary circumstances involved,' the company agreed to pay his claims from last year, when the policy was still in force. (Pat canceled it on Aug. 22, 2008.) Those extraordinary circumstances, I assume, included the fact that the state insurance department was sniffing around."


There is a very interesting audio story on the same topic by WHYY's Fresh Air. Enjoy!

(From Fresh Air )

PS: Happy birthday to my dad on St. Paddy's Day. 

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Listable

Listable is "a web site where you can type up some lists and have them handy if you need them later," according to creator Andre Torrez.

I like the banner, its goofy faux-50s caricature and the dynamic block letters. The list of lists is a little wonky, but not too bad.

Also, I'm secretly (well not so much secretly anymore) pleased that Bickham Script is doing well on the "Designer's Most Used Fonts" list.

Also, I am a frequent violator of the item "Vajayjay" listed under "Words it is NOT ok to ever say." I mean, I can't help it, it's the only surefire, 3-syllable way to jazz up the Pelvis and Perineum unit from tedious to droll.

Also, that's it. 

(From Laughing Squid)

Monday, March 16, 2009

The Yelp Tee

The Yelp Tee is an article on 7x7 about Pizzeria Delfina and their snazzy new publicity stunt T-shirts. According to the article, Pizzeria Delfina, "made Yelp their bitch and taken quotes from one-star reviews posted on Yelp about the pizzeria and made them into T-shirts for their staff to wear. "

Snarking on the snark, I like it. I also like that the stub-of-an article included bad reviews about its own publication. Namely:

"Following are some of 7x7's better one-star reviews on Yelp.

1. 'This magazine is whiter than my ass cheeks in January!'

2. 'San Francisco Paris Hilton wannabies now have a handbook.'

3. 'Nice bathroom material... Though it chafes if you don't work the paper in fully.'

4. 'It actually burns my eyes if I dare to read it.' "

A+ for daring to be yourself. 

(From Laughing Squid)

Sunday, March 15, 2009

The Vintage Web

The Vintage Web is a website by Veronica Belmont and Ryan Block that chronicles the worst transgressors in current web taste. 

As Kottke says, it's mostly "screenshots of sites whose current design appears to have not been updated since the 1990s." 

Oh the tables! The 90's color schemes! The flat grey buttons with the rounded corners! It's all there, untouched, as if Clinton was still president. 

(From Kottke)

Saturday, March 14, 2009

The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist

The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist is an article on Wired about a crazy Antwerp diamond heist/insurance scam that went down, supposedly for reals reals.

According to Wired, "This article will appear in Wired magazine's April issue, on sale March 24, 2009. It is being published online now because the subject of the story, Leonardo Notarbartolo, was released from prison in Belgium this week."

(From Hart)

Friday, March 13, 2009

8 Tracks

8tracks is a site where people can,
"share and discover music through an online mix.

A mix is a short playlist containing at least 30 minutes — roughly 8 tracks — of music. 

On 8tracks, people can do two things: listen to a mix, or create a mix. Listeners can search for a mix by artist or genre, stream it in a legal, radio-style manner, and follow others who make compelling mixes. DJs upload MP3s or select tracks from the 8tracks library to craft a playlist, add context with description and art, and publish their mix on 8tracks.com and a personal webpage.
... 

8tracks believes handcrafted music programming trumps algorithms. Think radio in the 1970s, mixtapes in the 1980s, and DJ culture of the 1990s through today. DJs share their talent in taste making, providing exposure for artists. Listeners get a unique blend of word-of-mouth sharing and radio programming — long the trusted means for music discovery — on a global scale."

They summed it up so well I just copy-pasted their about page. Yeah, I'm feeling THAT LAZY today, sorry. Anyway, you can browse recent, popular, or random mixes, as well as mixes by genre. Or, create your own. Create your own terrible, terrible mix like this one: 


Enjoy! (From TechCrunch)

Thursday, March 12, 2009

MixWidget

Mixwidget is the open-source version of Mixwit.  You can use it to put streaming songs on your site. The songs will appear to be playing out of a tape.

Mixwit was the previously mentioned/featured mixtape sharing site by Radley Marx and Michael Christoff, that got shut down by the RIAA in December 2008. Users with zero computer literacy could upload mp3s and share streaming songs with friends on it. The interface was cute--the tape progressed as the songs played.

Anyway, the second generation site, Mixwidget, is basically a way to let people continue to make and share mixtapes, but sharing it on their own servers and spending their own bandwidth, thereby limiting the creators' liability.  After much legal fighting, Radley and Michael built a mixtape widget for the open source community before moving on to their next venture, cloud.tv. Mixwidget requires quite a bit more computer literacy than its predecessor.

Check it. There is an example tape on the site. If you hover under the tape controls will appear and you can hear (presumably indie, user-created) content. Skip ahead and back... Pretty neat.

(From Radley and Michael)

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Mixwit is Dead (Revived)

Mixwit is Dead, (revived) is a site that resurects your old Mixwit tapes.

If you remember the previously featured Mixwit, it was a site where users were able able to upload songs onto a flash page, and share said songs (streaming) with friends. Needless to say, that got shut down real quick.

But today, an email came to former owners, stating the following:
"Hello (former) Mixwit user,

We saved your mixtapes =)

Mixwit is dead, but the spirit of mixtapes lives on through the
open source community. Over the past month we've completed
mixwidget.org - a new open-source mixtape project based on
our former Mixwit mixtape.

As part of this project, we have published each Mixwit
user's data on a temporary site. This site will be available
through April 2009, after which it will cease to exist.

You'll find all of your mixtapes and favorites here:

http://mixwit-is-dead.com/username

Inside the .zip file are "ready-to-play" folders containing
all of the files you need to play your mixes. Simply add
one or more of these folders to your blog or website and
point to the index.html file.

For more information on how to create or edit your new mixtape,
please refer to _instructions.html in your mixtape folder
or visit http://mixwidget.org/how_to.

http://mixwidget.org : the open-source Flash mixtape player

http://mixwit-is-dead..com : temporary host for Mixwit users' data

Questions or issues? @reply us on twitter (@mixwit)



Thanks again for all of your support. We'll be back in a
couple of weeks with more info on our new project: cloud.tv.
You can follow on twitter at: http://twitter.com/cloudtv

Take care,

Radley & Mike

http://twitter.com/radley
http://twitter.com/christoff"


How about that?

Oh, and P.S. I'm still not sure what the commenter's puzzle answer was (on the original TOTI write up of Mixwit). Any guesses?  

(From Mike and Radley)

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Malört Face

Malört Face is a Flickr group showing people who have just tried Malört. 

According to Buzzfeed's Peggy, this is "a wormwood-flavored Swedish schnapps. It seems like Malört face could describe the worst possible face you can make." 

According to Wikipedia, "Malört, a distilled beverage, is the name of a Swedish style of schnapps called "Beska Droppar", flavored with wormwood. The word malört is the Swedish word for the wormwood plant. The smell and taste is musty and extremely bitter. Malört is popularly alleged to be a cure for indigestion." 

According to me, that's crazy.


(From Peggy's Buzz. Photo Credit: Phil Dokas, Phil Dokas, and Phil Dokas. )

Monday, March 9, 2009

Super Intense ER Promo

Super Intense ER Promo is a College Humor video parodying the uber-intensity of ER. I know, I know, College Humor is PLAYED. But, I miss ER, and TV.

AND I'm out celebrating finishing a 6 tests right now, so good enough.

(From Hart)

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Wikipedia Names Your Band

Wikipedia Names Your Band is a made-up meme by Buzzfeed. The instructions are simple:

"Go to 'Wikipedia.' Hit 'random' and the first article you get is the name of your band. Then go to 'Random Quotations' and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. Then, go to Flickr and click on 'Explore the Last Seven Days' and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. Anyway, you're now looking at my new side project, which will probably sound like Evanescence if they were on 4AD."


Fun. Here's a few samples. The users have been posting them with obscure made-up categories and fake Pitchfork ratings. I lurve it.















































































(From the Buzz, obv. And Peggy.)

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Picture is Unrelated


















Picture is unrelated is a website about pictures that don't make sense. It's exactly what you think: a string of pictures stripped of context, ran by a guy named "Pizzaburger". The catalog isn't very deep yet, but it's strangely addicting. Charming, really. GREAT FIND, ANDREA.










































(From reader Andrea L.)

Friday, March 6, 2009

But Can You Hear THIS?

But Can You Hear THIS? is an article on Noise Addicts.

In their words:
"Here is a list of tones that go from 8Hz all the way up to 22,000Hz. It’s fairly common for people who are over 25 years of age to not be able to hear above 15Hz, so this will help you find out where your high frequency hearing cuts off."


I'm at 17 kHz and working down from there one iPod-fuelled trip to the gym at a time.

(From Margaret)

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law

Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law is a Ted Talk about how current copyright law makes no sense, and is strangling creativity.  I especially  like the chicken picture.  This is the first TED talk I remember seeing get a standing ovation.  

I'm sure there were others, so if you see them, send them in. 

(From my iPod)

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

ShamWow Overdub

ShamWow Overdub is a video on YouTube spoofing the Shamwow commercial. It's kind of totally wrong, but I admit, I did chuckle at "caca water." You just can't see the commercial the same way after this.

(From Buzzfeed's Peggy Wang)

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Bad Bank

Bad Bank is episode number 375 of This American Life, where the team that put together the best episode ever, (The Giant Pool of Money) are back. Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson put together another show to help all of us understand the collapse of the banking system, with analogies of dollhouses and simple sums.

They explain a bank balance sheet, and a bank’s assets and liabilities, and the squishy business of what banks say about their balance sheets as compared to what they actually look like.  

I think it made a pretty good case for a swift weekend of bank nationalization and cleanup, but what do I know?  

(From astropop's flickr )

Monday, March 2, 2009

Wittypedia

Wittypedia is a wiki of half hearted jokes. In their own words,"Here at Wittypedia we strive for mediocrity and, although it's hard for us to be subjective, we think we've finally achieved it! "

I think you're right, Witty.

They define every day objects with phrases such as, "Ice: If you put water in a freezer it goes all solid - that's ice. If you put a cat in a freezer it'll die - so don't do that. Ice has many purposes - such as providing a name and lyrics for the popular beat combo 'vanilla ice.'" The site is littered with ads, but it generally does a good job of finding entertaining pictures for their articles. C+.

(From reader JP)

Sunday, March 1, 2009

10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know is an article by Nick O'Neill on AllFacebook.com. I didn't even know there was a fan site about Facebook, much less that there are articles on it. But there you go, it's how to mom-proof your Facebook, for all those people whose parents joined Bookface.   

(From Metafilter)