Haik U Glenn Beck

In case you missed this last week, Haik U Glenn Beck was a website set up to reprimand talk show polemic commentator and human asshat Glenn Beck for instructing viewers to leave churches that preach social justice.

The Twitterstorm protest was orchestrated by New York-based philanthropy group Jewish Funds for Justice. Beck's Twitter account was bombarded with haikus like the ones below. These are the top 3 rated haikus:

And Jesus said to
All his hungry disciples
"Hands off my fish, chumps"
Submitted by drugdevo.

Bend it like Beck - and
Kick the words around until
Justice is "Just-Us"
Submitted by sam slate.s


Give me your fearful
Your easily influenced
Oh- and a chalkboard
Submitted by Laura Silverman.

Enjoy!

(From KB)

Nine surprisingly useful single serving sites

Nine surprisingly useful single serving sites is a list article on Royal Pingdom describing the best single serving sites. I like how wholly visual and useful these sites are. Examples include "What time is it there?" "Stopwatch" and a site very similar to previous TOTI winner "Umbrella Today?." A+.

(From researching single serving sites)

Stereomood

Stereomood is a streaming internet radio site that, provides "music that best suits your mood and your activities." Click on the mood and listen away.

A playlist appears and you can click on any song to hear it. You can skip, pause, and register free. Enjoy!

(From Metafilter)

Harmony

Harmony is an online drawing java application by Mr.doob (Ricardo Cabello) that allows your sketches to look all tricked out with shading, and fur, and circles, and other odd brushes.

The metafilter post about it claimed it made your shitty drawings look less shitty. This is a controversial statement, but it did bring me joy.

Enjoy!

(From Mefi)

9gag

9gag is a simple microblog that features humorous, beautiful, or non-sensical images. Can we talk about how I hate starting sentences with numerical digits? It's an affront to grammar. But I didn't want to break tradition here.

Anyway, on 9gag you can navigate the blog with the keyboard letters k and j, as well as loving things with a quick L keystroke. Lots of hits and misses. Enjoy!

(From NB)

GREG RUTTER'S DEFINITIVE LIST OF THE 99 THINGS YOU SHOULD HAVE ALREADY EXPERIENCED ON THE INTERNET

GREG RUTTER'S DEFINITIVE LIST OF THE 99 THINGS YOU SHOULD HAVE ALREADY EXPERIENCED ON THE INTERNET is an obnoxiously-titled, large-fonted list of links you should be aware of. Pretty self-explanatory.

(From I forget)

Letter Me Later

Letter Me Later is a website that lets you send out emails at a specific time in the future. According to their self-description, the site "allows you to send emails to anyone you wish, with the ability to have them sent at any future date and time you choose. "

The basic service is free, and of course there is an upgraded service available for a fee.

Overall very useful for Gmail, which currently does not have the capability to natively schedule emails in advance--a feature necessary for large scale social organizing and general productivity. Sure, you can use Thunderbird, but your computer has to be on for the email to be sent at the future date.

This site is a decent but not perfect fix (are you hearing me, Google Gmail team?! Make my dreams come true!). (From my frustration with not being able to preschedule gmails)

Posterous

Posterous is a new blogging platform that Newsweek said is "...already making Tumblr seem archaic..." Indeed, it looks hot. I've imported TOTI over there if you want to check out what it would look like on there instead of blogger:

http://todayontheinterwebs.posterous.com/

From their FAQ:

"Posterous lets you post things online fast using email. You email us at post@posterous.com and we reply instantly with your new posterous blog.
...

Posterous is NOT a micro blog. There's nothing micro about it! There are no limits to what you can post."

The design is slick, the ease of posting masterful. It auto resizes picture, figurest out links and video-sizing. I would consider switching over except they don't yet have the ability to natively schedule posts in advance. Currently if I post there, it auto reposts here, but not vice versa. Unfortunately, I need posts scheduled in advance because I now live in CST and I'm not normally awake at 12:01 PST.

(From a link off a link off a link at Kottke)

The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures

The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures is an article on the dating site OKCupid that takes their user data and analyzes which kind of pictures get the most responses.

Interesting photos get the most conversations, intimate flirty-face shots and showing off your bodies get the most responses. A lot of results fly in the face of what we want to believe about internet dating photos.

Maybe people hate these because they're so common... and they are common because they work? This article is pure fascinating social science.

(From Peggy's Buzzfeed)

Conversations About the Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee

Conversations About the Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee is an article by Phil Wong written for The Rumpus. It may or may not be fiction. The articled talks about the inner workings of Facebook, the company,

Some choice bits:

Rumpus: So in what other ways do you track behavior, that isn’t necessarily obvious to users?

Employee: We track everything. Every photo you view, every person you’re tagged with, every wall-post you make, and so forth.
...
Rumpus: You’ve previously mentioned a master password, which you no longer use.

Employee: I’m not sure when exactly it was deprecated, but we did have a master password at one point where you could type in any user’s user ID, and then the password. I’m not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out ‘Chuck Norris,’ more or less. It was pretty fantastic.

Rumpus: This was accessible by any Facebook employee?

Employee: Technically, yes. But it was pretty much limited to the original engineers, who were basically the only people who knew about it. It wasn’t as if random people in Human Resources were using this password to log into profiles. It was made and designed for engineering reasons. But it was there, and any employee could find it if they knew where to look.

I should also say that it was only available internally. If I were to log in from a high school or library, I couldn’t use it. You had to be in the Facebook office, using the Facebook ISP.

Rumpus: Do you think Facebook employees ever abused the privilege of having universal access?

Employee: I know it has happened in the past, because at least two people have been fired for it that I know of.

Oh Facebook. There is no quicker way to ignite the blogosphere than to juxtapose the words "facebook" and "privacy." Or maybe to write inacture details about computer science. Click through on "from" link to see what I mean about the raging discussion on metafilter.
(From Metafilter)

Hipster Runoff

Hipster Runoff is "intended to be a 'culturally relevant' blog."

It's laid out like a zany online zine. Everything is way too big. What caught my attention was the linked article about the guy who "tattooed" "child molester" glasses on his face.

To anwers the questions on the bottom of the article, yes he is trying too hard. And yes this makes me kind of sick.
EDIT: The article in question was based off of a youtube video by Neverhide films which does viral marketing for RayBan. F. Y. I. it's probably a faaaaaaake. Again: trying too hard, corporate hipster douche.

(From Firmhument)

30 Best Blogs of 2009

30 Best Blogs of 2009 is a list article on Fimoculous.

One of my favorite sites is Look At This Fucking Hipster, glad to see it made the cut. I also agree with the assessment that "no site in the past year has better personified the internet in all its complex contradictions than 4chan. "

(From kottke)

Resolution Generator

Happy New Year! 2010, fresh start.

I said I'd start again Dec. 15th but the blog had its own idea.

Resolution Generator is a website for the person, like me, who never has any resolutions. It comes up with resolutions for you.

Except this year I've resolved to become a list person for at least 6 months.
(From buzzfeed)

This Peanut Looks Like a Duck

This Peanut Looks Like a Duck is a website about things in the shape of a duck. If you spin and squint real hard. Love it.

The splash page is really classy, and once you get in it's really trashy. The huge ads atop, the clutter at the bottom. Still, some nice duck-looking images.

(From Kian M.)

I Love xkcd

I Love xkcd is a cute internet video by noamR based on the comic strip "xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel." It's kind of whimsical and darling.

(From Metafilter)

Deezer

Deezer is one of those old-fangled interweb radio sites. It used to be called blogmusik.net. It's french. And I found it by looking at my AIM profile (I hadn't checked that since 2007!) There you go.

100 GREATEST HITS OF YOUTUBE IN 4 MINUTES

100 GREATEST HITS OF YOUTUBE IN 4 MINUTES is a meme-fest video. It joins together a bunch of snippets from recent web memes. It's sadly itself not that great.

(From Buzzfeed)

Today's Web Crush -- Peggy Wang, Blogger and Musician

Today's Web Crush -- Peggy Wang, Blogger and Musician is an article on Asylum about the best senior editor at Buzzfeed: Peggy Wang. Apparently, she moonlights as the keyboardist and backup vocals singer for an indie band called The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Who knew?! A+.

PS: yes, I know the picture is ill cropped. ARTSY!
(From Buzzfeed, immodestly)

Internet Stats

Internet Stats is a website for stats about the internets. Pretty dry, unless you're into geeky web stuff.

By election day, fully 25% of people who pulled the lever for Obama were already connected to his campaign electronically.New York Magazine, January 2009

Social media use has taken off in the UK. eMarketer estimates that 39% of UK Internet users - more than 15.4 million people - will use social networks at least once per month in 2009.eMarketer, April 2009

According to Nielsen, 67% of the global online population visited a "member community" site in Dec 2008.Nielsen, March 2009

20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.YouTube, May 2009

Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women.HarvardBusiness.org, June 2009

In mid-2008, social networking accounted for around 10% of worldwide online time. This is a category that didn't exist 3 years ago.Nielsen, March 2009

Social networks have a penetration of nearly 75% among European Internet users.Comscore, February 2009

5% of all time online is spent on Facebook.Comscore, April 2009

Of the 282.7 million European Internet users age 15 and older who went online via a home or work computer in December 2008, 211 million visited a social networking site – representing a penetration of 74.6%. Comscore, February 2009

eMarketer estimates that 39% of UK Internet users - more than 15.4 million people - will use social networks at least once per month in 2009. By 2013, the social networking population will reach 21.9 million and represent 50% of UK Web users.eMarketer, May 2009

Globally, social networks have enjoyed a 25% growth in unique visitors in the last year. Some sites have doubled their user base.Comscore, August 2008

In May 2009, YouTube reached 15.4 million unique users in the UK.Nielsen, May 2009

93% of Brits are making major financial cutbacks in the home to survive the economic turmoil. The top 5 ways to beat the downturn are: 'buying cheaper food' (65%), 'savvy initiatives to keep fuel bills down' (65%), 'cutting down on takeaways/eating out' (50%), 'switching energy suppliers' (39%) and 'shopping around for cheaper home insurance' (32%).Legal & General Report, November 2008

In January 2009, JP Morgan estimated that 2008 worldwide retail eCommerce spending, excluding travel, totaled $438 billion - of which one third ($152m) was in Europe.JP Morgan, January 2009

41% of Europeans claim to have changed their mind about what brand to buy as a result of researching choices online, according to EIAA's latest Mediascope survey.Mediascope Europe, November 2008

In the UK, searches for "discount vouchers" grew by 94% between November and December 2008.Google Insights for Search

In the past year, UK female Internet users have made an average of 17 online purchases of products/services and spent an average of £600.eMarketer, February 2009

97% of UK female Internet users research products online and 92% of UK female Internet users buy products online.eMarketer, February 2009

In February 2009, Eurostat reported that 32% of citizens in the EU-28 had purchased an item over the Internet during 2008. (Figures for big markets: UK 57%, FR 40%, DE 53%, IT 11%, ES 20%).Commission of the European Communities, February 2009

According to Forrester, nearly 45% of European Internet users say that in the past three months they have researched a product online and then bought it in a shop.Forrester, March 2009

33% of shoppers in the UK shop a lot more online since the recession.Media & Marketing, March 2009

Online spending in the UK grew 25% to £18.4 bn in 2008, outperforming the 2.1% increase in total retail.Verdict Research, May 2009

Price has become a less significant determinant in online purchasing: online shoppers citing price as the deciding factor in choosing a retailer has fallen to 44.0% in 2008 from 50.0% in 2007.Verdict Research, May 2009

Despite the recession, UK online shoppers had spent an average of £10 more per site visit in April 2009 than this time a year ago. (April 08 to April 09)NMA, May 2009

34% of Brits spend a whole day trying to find the best holiday deal online.Greenbee.com survey, January 2009

20% of Brits will spend at least 8 hours trawling the Internet for a cheap travel-related deal. Greenbee.com survey, January 2009

YoY from the 2007 to 2008 Christmas Sales period, online sales increased by 31% while in-store sales decreased by 1.3%.Retail Week, January 2009

50.1% of online shoppers who placed items in their shopping carts did not go on to place an order.Core Metrics, March 2009

With online sales up 13.3% in 2009 and 10.9% in 2010, the Internet will take further share from the high street.Verdict Research, May 2009

51% of Internet users purchased a new Financial Services product in the past year.GFK, February 2009

Remote (home) shopping has grown three fold in a decade - from £9.7bn to £26bn. Growth fuelled by the Internet accounts for 74% of the market, compared with 4% in 1998.Verdict Research UK, 2009, December 2008

UK Internet visits to the Insurance category increased by 43% over the quarter.Hitwise, January - March 2009

Moneysupermarket.com received the most traffic from searches in 6 out of our 8 featured insurance and finance product ranges over the quarter.Hitwise, January - March 2009

Searches for health insurance increased by 165% over the quarter.Hitwise, January - March 2009

Searches for ISA’s increased by 176% over the quarter.Hitwise, January - March 2009

Searches for mortgages decreased by 19% over the quarter.Hitwise, January - March 2009

Over 1 in 3 (34%) UK adults have researched a brand that they have seen advertised online.TGI Net Q109 (Oct 07 - Sept 08), Q2 2009

41% of shoppers use search engines to identify new websites.Verdict Research, May 2009

According to the European Commission, cross-border eCommerce remained stable between 2006 and 2008, despite EU consumers shopping online increasing from 27% to 33%.Verdict Research, May 2009

Average spend per head in the UK was £691 in 2008… and is forecast to reach £895 in 2013.Verdict Research, May 2009

For the third successive year it is those aged 25 - 34 who are the most frequent online shoppers.Verdict Research, May 2009

Over half (51.0%) of consumers are using the Internet before making a purchase in shops, educating themselves on the best deals available.Verdict Research, May 2009

Over 8 million people used the Internet for arranging the purchase of a new financial product in 2008.GFK, February 2009

A reported 28% of TV viewing time by UK broadband users (aged 16-55) is now on demand (either recorded for later viewing or using an on-demand TV service or watched on the Internet).TNS/YouTube Media & Audience Study (broadband users aged 16-55), December 2008

The big screen continues to do well in the recession as Cineworld, the UK's second-biggest chain, announced box office takings have risen 19% in the 17 weeks preceding April 17. Cineworld's results follow figures released by the Film Distributors Association UK in March showing admissions rose 1.1% to 164.2m in 2008 with box office takings rising 3.7%. The rise in cinema takings comes as consumers continue to desert UK pubs and clubs. Traditionally the leading place for consumers to spend money socialising, rising taxes and a growth in home drinking have led many pubs to struggle. This was underlined by figures released by PRS for Music, the organisation that collects royalty payments for musicians. It said its takings in pubs and clubs were down 2% to £39.7m for 2008 and blamed this on the recession forcing many venues out of business.Film Distributors Association, March 2009

Many people are forgoing expensive nights out, but are instead willing to pay more for home entertainment. The number of customers using “video on demand” services, which allow customers to watch films on a pay-as-you-view basis, almost doubled last year with an average 45m views a month, according to Virgin Media.Enders Analysis, September 2008

In the three months to the end of December 2008, sales of premium high-definition (HD) TV subscriptions doubled on the previous three months, according to Sky, 39% owned by News Corporation, owner of The Sunday Times. Charlie Ponsonby at price comparison service simplifydigital.co.uk said: “It’s taken a while, but high-definition TV is going mainstream in the UK, with over 1m UK homes now enjoying a high-definition service.”Enders Analysis, December 2008

39% of UK broadband users (aged 16-55) watch TV programmes on the Internet. Among those that watch TV online, on average 16% of their total viewing of TV programmes was on the Internet.TNS/YouTube Media & Audience Study (broadband users aged 16-55), December 2008

Nearly three in five (57%) of youth consumers logged on to YouTube to watch a music video in the last 12 months, compared to 56% who watched a music TV channel.Ipsos MediaCT, March 2009

In 2008 the digital music business internationally grew by around 25% to $3.7Bn. Digital platforms now account for around 20% of recorded music sales, up from 15% in 2007.IFPI, 2008, January 2009

There are 1.5 million business searches daily on YouTube, making it the second-most-visited destination for business searches, behind Google.Google, Forbes, BtoB, June 2009, June 2009

64% of C-level executives conduct six or more searches per day to locate business information.Google, Forbes, BtoB, June 2009, June 2009

76% of UK adult Internet users find out about local services online.Ofcom, August 2008

76% of Internet users said they had looked up news online in the past month according to a TNS survey of 30,000 Internet users in 16 countries in late 2008. TNS, December 2008

1 in 3 YouTube users are DIYers.TGI Net, April 2007-March 2008

In May 2009, Google had over 4.0 billion search page views in the UK.Nielsen Netview, May 2009

There you go.
(From Guy)

Blogs.com Top Ten

This is the most meta article ever.  Especially considering that 10 lb. weight banner I chose. (I picked it because I leave on the past 10 TOTIs. Also, because I happened to photograph a 10 lb. weight.) I digress:

Blogs.com Top Ten is a running list of top ten lists. That's right. They feature lists such as: "Top 10 Web 2.0 Blogs," "Top 10 Trading and Investing Blogs," and "10 Popular Blogs about Blogging."

Whoa. Think about that.  This is so meta it's practically evolved cognition.  

(From Justin, who's on fire!)