BREAKING SURF
| Google-Bombing Political Campaigns |
| Google vs. Booble |
| Solving Puzzles for Porn |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Roll Over, Picasso |
| Rejected Crayola Colors |
| The Deck of Many Found Things |
| HugeURL |
| Law & Order Coloring Book |
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| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
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BREAKING SURF
The MyDoom Worm: Biggest in History
You've probably noticed the latest mega-worm winding its way from mailbox to mailbox. The MyDoom/Novarg/SCO worm appears to be especially virulent - some sources estimate that it accounted for up to 20%-30% of all worldwide e-mail traffic on the Net at times this week. That would make the worm the most widespread in history, handily beating last year's SoBig infection. The worm installs a Trojan program that allows remote access to the infected PC, and also contains a payload that will launch a denial-of-service attack against the Web site of SCO Group. SCO has raised the ire of the open-source community by asserting that it owns some of the intellectual property in the Linux operating system. Rightly or wrongly, the worm is seen in part as somebody's misguided attempt to pay back the company for its anti-open-source stand. SCO has placed a $250,000 bounty on the head of the worm coder. CNET has some quotes about the size of MyDoom, while Symantec has a technical analysis of the worm.CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-7349-5149764.html
Symantec: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.novarg.a@mm.html
Scott Grannemen, who teaches technology at Washington University in St. Louis, recently hosted FBI agent Dave Thomas, who came to give a talk on computer crime. Thomas revealed some chilling facts about computer security to Scott's class. It wasn't so much that what Thomas said was new - anyone who's been paying attention here has heard all this before - but that his report came from the front lines. He stressed that people need to develop better computer smarts. One of the easiest ways to steal money these days, he said, is "phishing" - setting up phony Web sites that imitate those of well known companies. He also reminded the students that many of the viruses and worms released on the Internet contain code designed to make the PCs they infect controllable by outsiders, either for entertainment, harassment, or illegal purposes. Bank-hacking is common, but banks are often too embarrassed to reveal break-ins and seek help. Thomas informed the audience that the FBI's security staff prefers Mac OS X for reasons of flexibility and security. He also had a warning for all the bad guys who use Macs for the same reason: the RCMP handles most of the Mac cases. Yes, the Mounties always get their Macs. Grannemen tells us more at SecurityFocus.
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/215
Newsday has an excerpt from "Comm Check...: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia", a new book by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood. Excerpt is not the right word, perhaps, as the text is an extensive minute-by-minute analysis of the break-up sequence as the Space Shuttle entered the atmosphere. Intriguingly, the crew cabin separated intact from the rest of the disintegrating shuttle, just as it had in the 1986 Challenger disaster. After the accident, searchers found nearly 85,000 pieces of Columbia, about 38% of it in total. Very few people will not read this piece from start to finish, and if you're inspired to get the book, we have a handy link for you below. You can also check out the exhaustive and very technical final report from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
Newsday: http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hscov0127,0,442476.story
"Comm Check": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743260910/netsurferdigest
CAIB Report: http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/caib/html/start.html
BBC Bought Google Ads for Own Hutton Story Coverage
The practice of buying search engine keywords that coincide with breaking news is not new. We've been known to do it ourselves. What's not so common is to see a media outlet at the eye of the story doing so in order to bring up ads for itself on the search engine. That's what the BBC did at Google, for the story of the Hutton Inquiry into the death of David Kelly. The news service is an integral part of its own story. It was the BBC that reported, based on information Kelly passed on, that the UK government "sexed up" an intelligence dossier on Iraq. This in turn sparked a public row between the BBC and the government of Tony Blair, resulting in the Hutton Inquiry and the subsequent resignations of the BBC's director general and chairman. We predict that other news organizations will not only repeat the experiment of buying news-related ads on Google but will try to make deals for permanent news-related keyword links on search-engine result pages. The Guardian has the keyword story.Hutton Inquiry: http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2003/david_kelly_inquiry/default.stm
Guardian: http://media.guardian.co.uk/bbc/story/0,7521,1130050,00.html
Amazon's One-Click Political Contributions
Amazon wants to make it easy for Americans to support the presidential candidate of their choice, and so has brought one-click shopping to political donations. You can contribute any amount from $5 to $200 to any or all candidates, who are listed alphabetically by surname. Democratic Senator John Kerry leads in the amount collected through Amazon so far, although his $1,259 sum won't buy too many placards. If you're thinking of contributing, be aware that Amazon takes a 5% cut of your donation and must, according to US election law, release the names and credit-card billing addresses of donors. One thing we learned from perusing Amazon's list of candidates is that more folk than we realized have thrown their hats in the ring. Among the contenders is that household name, Lucian Wojciechowski, who is running as a Democrat. A couple of Libertarians are hoping for your support as are an independent and someone who can't even bother to supply a photo. So far, President Bush and Senator Joe Lieberman haven't agreed to accept contributions through this route, although they are listed. To contribute, you must be 18 and a US citizen or resident plus have a credit card in your own name. CNET has a brief item on this latest Amazon store front.Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/misc/flag.html/102-6265520-2988148
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5146834.html
Dean Dean the Screaming Machine
Despite what you might suspect, Dean Goes Nuts supports Howard Dean's candidacy for president of the US, and does so with cool style. The title of the site refers to Dean's concluding primal scream in his post mortem to campaign workers after the Iowa primary. Dean earned some derision and a heck of a lot of fame for his "Yeeeeeeeearrrrrrhhhhh!", as USA Today spells it, although Dick Meyer at CBS News doesn't see what all the fuss is about. A variety of tinkerers have sampled Dean's scream and mixed it into music, and those tracks are what Dean Goes Nuts is all about. The mix of music and message is well done, and showcases the power of the Net in the battle for political mindshare. You may like Dean; you may not. Doesn't matter. You'll want to check out the mixes, because good stuff respects no ideology or political boundary.Dean Goes Nuts: http://www.deangoesnuts.com/
USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/2004-01-22-dean-usat_x.htm
CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/23/opinion/meyer/main595508.shtml
Inter-Game Currency-Exchange Market Opens
You've heard of virtual reality, and maybe even experienced it. But there's also virtual realty, and even virtual currency. In the past, we've covered gamers who have built up possessions in virtual worlds such as EverQuest's and sold them for real-world cash. Such scattered incidents may become a deluge if the Gaming Open Market (GOM) succeeds. GOM hopes to cash in on the trend by serving as a virtual clearinghouse for exchanges of virtual currency. It wants to cut eBay out of the market and to establish a secure transaction zone. GOM views this as just an approach toward consolidating a virtual foreign-exchange market, but this stretches the definition of "foreign" from international to intergame. Wired has a story.GOM: http://www.gamingopenmarket.com/
Wired: http://wired.com/news/games/0,2101,61999,00.html
What Do You Get When You Cross a Search Engine with a Social Network?
Mate Google with Friendster and what do you get? How about Eurekster, a new site that claims to be the next step in the development of both social networking and search-engine software. You have to be invited to join the site but once you have access, you can see the searches that your friends are doing. Let's say you want to buy a camera. With Eurekster, you can see what sites other people have found useful in researching and purchasing that camera. On the other hand, you could just call or message your pal, but those media don't have places in Eurekster's universe. Mind you, the privacy implications of this are staggering. Surely someone will learn how to crack the site and then everyone will know about your Hello Kitty fixation. CNET has more.Eurekster: http://www.eurekster.com/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5144567.html
Security Problems Force Google's Orkut Offline (But It's Back Now)
NSD readers and many others have heard about Orkut, the Google-affiliated social-networking site (see NSD 10.03). Until now, though, only a select minority knew that "orkut" is Finnish slang for having an orgasm. Considering the circumstances, that may not be a bad choice of name. On release, Orkut was quickly mobbed - but, more to the point, was also penetrated (we hope you saw that coming). According to the Register, Orkut became the target of cross-site scripting attacks that forced Google to take the site down for a few days. Cross-site scripting lets hackers hide URLs behind links to other, well known domains, and lets them scarf up personal info from victims. PC World has info on an Internet Explorer bug which allows this kind of hack. Microsoft's support page basically tells users, "don't use links, paste URLs." Helpful, no? Slashdot has a helping of derision. Meanwhile, rumor has it that Orkut has already gained over 100,000 users despite being an invitation only site.Orkut: http://www.orkut.com/
NSD 10.03: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.03.html#BS11
Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35129.html
PC World on IE Bug: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113831,00.asp
Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;%5Bln%5D;833786;%5Bln%5D;833786
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/01/30/0428242.shtml
Helmut Newton, a widely admired portrait photographer who fled Nazi Germany and practiced his art for decades in the US and more recently in Monte Carlo, died recently in a car crash in Los Angeles. It's impossible to do justice to the brilliant 83-year-old in a paragraph, but we've selected five sites that together provide a good overview of the man and his work. Newton was perhaps best known for his arresting female nudes, often photographed in strange settings that created mysterious undercurrents and lasting impressions. Understandably, Germany has been particularly fulsome in its testimonials to the man and his art. A decade ago, Newton abruptly decided to stop photographing nudes, as we learn in a Salon piece, claiming that while nudes had liberated him and refreshed his art, he needed to move to other photographic challenges. Blowup has a gallery of his snaps and some words. In an admiring and informative essay in Eyestorm, JG Ballard points out that Newton's images typically reveal a profound depth beneath the attractive surface. CNN has a brief obit.
Newton: http://www.helmut-newton.de/
Salon: http://www.salon.com/07/features/helmut.html
Blowup: http://www.designautopsy.com/blowup/portfolios/n-r/Newton/index.asp?link_id=23
Eyestorm: http://www.eyestorm.com/feature/ED2n_article.asp?article_id=17&artist_id=101
CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/West/01/24/newton.germany.reax.ap/
What would happen if you ate only McDonald's for 30 days? Yes, you'd gain weight, but that turns out to be the least of your problems. Independent filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's new flick, "Super Size Me", chronicles his month-long McDonald's feast. The results aren't pretty. Not only does he gain 25 pounds, but his liver function suffers and he weathers multiple other health problems. Spurlock made the film to address the epidemic of American obesity. He interviews fast-food patrons in several American cities as his month progresses. Needless to say, McDonald's never provided a spokesperson for Spurlock to interview - reminiscent of Michael Moore's "Roger and Me", which was obviously a big influence. "Super Size Me" has been screened at the Sundance film festival and Spurlock is looking for a distributor. If getting people to think about fast food is his goal, he may not even have to get people see the film. After reading this New York Post article, you might think twice about having your fries and drink supersized.
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/16393.htm
Oscar Nominations and the Mount of Doom
It was predictable that "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" would wind up with a mumakload of Oscar nominations - it garnered 11. But who would have thought that "Master and Commander: Etc. Etc.", good though it was, would come up with ten of its own? Of course, if the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who vote on the matter have any sort of sense of humor, Johnny Depp would get the Best Actor nod. Don't hold your breath. If Peter Jackson doesn't get Best Director you might as well take all those statuettes and toss them into the nearest volcano. That would probably be Amboy Crater, which, sadly for those who would like to see Los Angeles blown up, has not been very active in recent memory.Oscars: http://www.oscars.com/nominees/nomineelist.html
Amboy Crater: http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/California/Amboy/framework.html
Atom Films, the online indie film site, has a new service whereby you can watch near-DVD-quality full-screen films from its vast and entertaining collection. Its client software will download movies in the background while your computer is not doing anything. At the moment, the software is Windows only, and you'll want a broadband connection to deal with the bandwidth. Every week, Atom will pick three of its short movies, ranging in length from one to 30 minutes, for automatic download to your hard drive. The process employs the WMV-HD format - hence the need for a Windows machine. Atom claims almost 10,000 users of the service since it launched a beta test last December. It's free for now - but commercials will be played at the beginning of each film.
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/spotlight/collections/hidef/
The Edsel may be the poster dud car of all time, but mechanically it was actually a pretty decent piece of kit. It just looked weird for the time and so didn't sell well. The Edsel actually stood head and shoulders over such gems as the Chevy Vega, the 19-horsepower (!) Renault Dauphine, and the legendary metal-deficient East German Trabant. These are just a small sampling of the masterpieces on Forbes honor roll of the worst cars of the postwar era. It's highly entertaining, though if you've ever owned one of those cars you may want to consult a doctor before looking, lest the traumatic memories overwhelm you. Thank goodness the Renault Alliance isn't there - brrrrrr.
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2004/01/26/cx_dl_0126feat.html
Welcome to the Year of the Monkey. We're not all that late - the new year only started Jan. 22. In Chinese chronology, it is now the year 4701. The Chinese calendar is very old - it dates way before the Julian calendar that most everybody uses today. China the Beautiful will teach you all the details. In 104 BCE, Chinese mathematicians determined the length of a year to be 365.2502 days. The accepted modern value is 365.2422 days. It only took a couple thousand years for modern science to hone the accuracy by 0.008 days or so. We're a few days late in our celebration of 4701, but only because we couldn't find any place that would sell us fireworks. (No, no, it was just the waiting period at our local gun shop - AB)
http://www.chinapage.com/astronomy/calendar/calendar.html
Experimental Yahoo RSS Feeds Capability
You can now add RSS feeds from just about any source to your My Yahoo pages. Jeremy Zawodny's blog has instructions on how to do that and about other Yahoo RSS related efforts. This is all still in beta test, but seems to work as advertised. Jeremy's blog also has information for RSS content publishers, info about the Yahoo RSS crawler, and how to use the Yahoo ping interface. If you don't know what it all means browse around all the links and all will be made clear.Instructions: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/001474.html
Adding RSS to Yahoo: http://add.my.yahoo.com/rss
ONLINE CULTURE
Google-Bombing Political Campaigns
If you're a careful reader of NSD, you already know what Google bombing is: the use of Web page links to force a specific Web page to the top of a Google Web search, best exemplified by the successful campaign to get a Google search for "miserable failure" to present the White House biography page of President George W. Bush. With this and other obvious successes, several efforts work at cross-purposes, at Google and at other search engines. Secondary results for "miserable failure" bring up references to former President Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, and Michael Moore. Another, far more pungent, example is Dan Savage's bold attempt to redefine "santorum" as a noun rather than as a certain US senator's name. With the upcoming US election, Google bombing is becoming part of every candidate's unofficial arsenal. Read all about it in this reprint of a New York Times article on CNET.http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5145549.html
It's a story as old as the electronic hills: Web site parodies better known site, better known site gets annoyed, lawyers buy boat. However, this story adds the all-important boob factor, literally. Booble is an adult search engine that parodies Google. You can find a modest selection of mostly pay sex sites on it. The thing is, they are not only functional but are attempting to make money with Booble gear and an online adult store. Google's lawyers don't take kindly to all this money-making - and given Google's co-opted look and feel, we can see their point - so there's a cease and desist demand. The publicity has made Booble tremendously popular with netsurfers, who inadvertently took down the site's servers for a few days. Search Engine Journal has the story and a copy of the Google letter.
Booble: http://booble.com/
Search Engine Journal: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=222
Many Web sites these days require you to pass some sort of minor Turing test before you can sign up for a free account. For example, you might be required to type in some text you see in a distorted graphic that would be difficult for a machine to parse. The days of such methods may be numbered since, as Cory Doctorow notes in Boing Boing, you can easily recruit people to solve this kind of puzzle en masse by simply offering them free porn. Thus, porn spammers can harvest vast legions of volunteers to create free Yahoo e-mail accounts for their use in return for free porn. In fairness of attribution, we should note that we first heard of this idea some weeks ago from one of our own (Bill Woodcock) but did not have anything to point to on the Net as an example. We still don't, but at least now Doctorow has put it into print.
http://boingboing.net/2004_01_01_archive.html#107525288693964966
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National Lampoon's Big Book of Love
Lifeboat
Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things
Mississippi to MaliSURFING SITES
Real Lincoln Notes and Fake Lincoln Quotes
There's a huge market in the documents of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States. The market flourishes because the only copying machines of 150 years ago were human scribes. Important letters, speeches, and other documents were copied by assistants whose sole chore was making facsimiles as close as possible to the originals. Lincoln was so important a figure in American history that the number of documents he created has continued to increase long after his death. This topic and many others surrounding Lincoln are highlighted by the Abraham Lincoln Society of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. These folks are Lincoln's true protectors. They are devoted to his actual words and writings and merciless in exposing fakes. They also know that as brilliant as Lincoln was, he didn't originate all of the brilliant quotes ascribed to him today. He certainly didn't say "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." But it still sounds good, and he still gets credit for it almost universally - just not on this Web site.http://www.illinoishistory.gov/facsimiles.htm
Civil War buffs and teachers of American history should head for the Gettysburg Battle Simulation, which asks, "Could You Have Won the Battle of Gettysburg?" Learn a little history about the Civil War's bloodiest battle while you ponder your next troop movements as General Robert E. Lee. The rules for each military decision are simple: study a field map, consider two tactical options, and click on your choice to learn the consequences of your action. Repeat these steps to continue the imaginary bloodshed on the next page. This simulation is mostly text-based; there are no multimedia, no high-bandwidth swordplay and kickboxing. The challenge and feedback are cerebral. Don't rush. You may choose wisely and lose. Such is war. Our reviewer lost three battles before he discovered a way for the South to win. Sorry, Dixie, no clues from us. Spend some time here, and you're bound to wonder what kind of complex war simulators the Pentagon may be working on.
http://www.military.com/Resources/Games?file=gburg-intro.htm
Personal Accounts of World War II
The BBC's WW2 Peoples War project is an ambitious effort to collect personal stories about World War II from the people who were actually involved. The site accepts and posts stories from everyone: rich and poor; civilian and military; British and non-British. The design allows the visitor to browse a wide selection of categories. Some areas are rich with content, some are essentially just category titles. While there is a small amount of "expert" content commissioned by the BBC, most content is visitor-generated. As such, the quality varies. Any story can be the basis of a threaded discussion, although this feature is barely used at present. The design is superb, the intent better, but the reality still needs work. The site is easy enough to deal with that a regular check of your areas of interest is an excellent idea. This site will improve; it only needs time and participation.http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/
Feral Children - Fact or Fiction?
Legends abound, as they have for ages, regarding feral children. Is there such a thing as a wild child, or are they simply children with mental disorders, perhaps cruelly abandoned? This feature-rich site is appalling, in general - because so much of the content is documented. Although much room is left for speculation in some cases, the evidence is irrefutable in others. Has any child actually been raised by wild animals? Hard to say, although given the publicized rescue of human children by species such as gorilla, the door is certainly not closed on that issue. It's clear, however, that some wild children do exist, and have had this state willfully imposed upon them - as in the case of a 13-year-old girl who was strapped onto a potty chair in a small room for her entire life. In many cases, this site notes, accounts of historical feral children coincide with behavior that would now be recognized as autism. Certainly, not all can be attributed to this cause, but the argument remains that these children may have been abandoned because they were autistic. In all, this site is well documented, highly interlinked, and offers an in-depth exploration of subject material that may be at once arcane and repugnant, but none the less fascinating.http://www.feralchildren.com/en/index.php
Musicplasma is a music-matching service - submit a band, and it will spit out what it thinks you'll like. It's a straightforward enough mission, but what makes this new site appealing is the way in which it presents the results. Type in a band or artist you like and you'll be taken into a visually pleasing display of colorful spheres connected by colored lines. Each sphere represents an artist and the relationships between them can lead you to music that's similar to what you enjoy. It's basically a simple relationship diagram jazzed up with nice visuals. Don't go looking for very esoteric bands though. Most of the artists represented here are well known and their links lead to other fairly well known bands. It's a shame there's only limited interactivity, because the database might be improved with some input from fans.
http://www.musicplasma.com/
True Pathetic Geek Stories Comics
Meet Maria Schneider - no, not the jazz composer. This Maria Schneider is a self-proclaimed geek, who ten years ago began illustrating a comic strip of tales from other geeks, near and far. Emerging from these accounts is the Pathetic Geek Stories site, where guests are encouraged to e-mail their nerdish tales for future consideration as one of Schneider's cartoon odysseys. Visitors will find a flood of stories that depict often humorous, often sad, and, more often than not, truly pathetic tales of real life. Most occur in the formative grade-school and teen-age years. While the confessions you'll read here are not the most extreme you've heard, anyone who has had an embarrassing moment seared into their being can relate. One subject that Schneider will not approach with her pencil is a story of bodily functions - or malfunctions. Don't worry, though - Schneider has instead opted to just post the many stories of bodily functions submitted to her, so you can read to your heart's content.http://www.patheticgeekstories.com/
What's a dreamtoon? Well, you take an account of your dream, send it to Jesse Reklaw at his Slow Wave Web site, and he turns it into a witty black-and-white comic strip called a dreamtoon. It's simple, really. Reklaw posts a new dreamtoon each week. He has been doing this for more than three years now and has enough dreamtoons for a book - which he sells at the site, naturally. You can even buy an autographed copy. If you choose to submit a dream, make sure you describe yourself so that you can accurately appear in your own dream. Just think, all those dreadful nightmares about being late for your important exam or those bizarre dreams about saving the world from an attack of killer squid with the help of Brad Pitt can now come true, at least in comic-strip format. Just spare us the ones in which you're naked, OK?
http://www.slowwave.com/
Ever dream about quitting your job and touring the world? Cherie Sogsti didn't. She was 27, working 70 hours a week, and owned two houses when she met a 78-year-old woman who had visited 78 countries. Then, as she describes it, she got "the Amelia Earhart Complex..., the sudden urge to get on an airplane and just disappear." Since then, as her Web site outlines, she has been chased by an ostrich in Chile and been bitten by insects in Peru. She has climbed volcanoes, fallen down glaciers, and jumped out of airplanes. Five years after her epiphany, she has been all over, above, and below the world. She has recently crewed on the USS Midway and flown in a 1940s airplane. Best of all, she reports on her adventures in her blog. Crisp, clean photos accompany her crisp, clear writing. Needless to say, she comes across as upbeat. Like most people who follow their dreams, she is happy and wants to share it.
http://www.wherescherie.com/
Imaginary Automatons of the Victorian Era
The Victorians were naturally fascinated and charmed by the automaton, but not as much, we suspect, as Paul Guinan is fascinated with that fascination. "Robot" is a term only coined in the 20th century, and that is a clue that Guinan's History of Robots in the Victorian Era is a sham, albeit a well crafted one. The site uses a mix of contemporary and Victorian design to honor some of the fictitious mechanical men of the time. Discover the Steam Man, the Automatic Man, and Boilerplate Man which was the robotic Zelig of his day. These marvels all come from Guinan's imagination and tie together in an opus-in-the-making of speculative fiction. Links on the robot pages take you to other facets of the imaginary world and before you know it, you'll have spent several revolutions of the two-handed time device picking your way through his pages.http://www.bigredhair.com/robots/index.html
Advertising in Edo (and Later) Japan
The Edo Era in Japan (1603-1867) was the age of feudalism and shoguns, but what comes as a surprise is that it was also a time during which the urban culture and advertising flourished. This museum site showcases the historical paper trail that remains, in the form of colorful prints, handbills, and signboards. As early as 1600, Japanese posters advertised kabuki plays. Famous actors in those plays shaped fashion trends, and the plays themselves sometimes used the technique we would now call product placement. The biggest contrast to most modern advertising comes in the form of the delicate artistry of the wood-block prints from 1860 newspapers. They differ immensely from the television commercials and newspaper ads of today, but they served the same purpose. This site should be on the reading course for all new ad execs if only to save us from the next annoying campaign no doubt now in planning.http://www.dentsu.com/MUSEUM/
Vintage Commercial Pop Culture
Take a journey back in time for a nostalgic glimpse at consumer marketing. The vintage collectibles showcased here are virtually limitless. Begin by browsing vintage supermarket photographs, and reminisce of the days when buying corn chips would get you a free beach ball. After your tour of the market, stop by the Food Packaging pages, which focus on the 1950s to 1970s. Here you'll discover that Bugs Bunny was more than just an animated superstar. He also was the spokesbunny for Bugs Bunny Fresh Carrots. Other characters who used to tout various items include Mary Poppins for Hefty garbage bags and Raggedy Ann for Spray Starch. Once you've finished scouring the food-packaging photos, stop by the Fast Food pages for a look at some of the biggest names in '70s greasy food, as well as some of their lesser known counterparts. Of course, there are more than just food item photos to browse at this online haven of all things vintage. In fact there are so many items to peruse here, that we couldn't even begin to list them all. Visit this site and check them out for yourself.http://theimaginaryworld.com/page4.html
Consumer package design is an important marker of a culture. The American Package Museum has a nice collection of classic American designs primarily from the first half of the 20th century. Particularly fascinating are the products exhibited with multiple examples spaced over time. It's easy to see how changes in society are reflected in the package designs. Also worth checking is the Robert Opie Collection which is devoted to British nostalgia and advertising memorabilia. It claims over 500,000 items and is an excellent window on British consumer culture. Its American cousin is much newer and thus much smaller, but with a little mouse grease should someday rival the Robert Opie site.
American Package Museum: http://www.packagemuseum.com/
Robert Opie Collection: http://www.robertopiecollection.com/
Paul Virillo, under the auspices of Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, explores the conjunction of accidents and reality in today's world. The philosophical arguments are backed up by a stunning collection of photos of "accidents" - events that occur as an expected result of human progress. Some of the photos are familiar; many are rare or possibly unique to this site. The photos are categorized by type of event and each section has accompanying text. The only drawback is that the photos have very sketchy captions. In many cases that was deliberate, for the details are not as important as the big picture. Nonetheless, greater caption detail would be useful in most cases.
http://www.onoci.net/virilio/pages_uk/accidents/liste.php
The Internet is host to some of the most unusual collections, and this is no exception. Explore this online assortment of toothpaste as presented by Dr. Val Kolpakov, a practicing dentist in Saginaw, Mich. Kolpakov's collection of oral hygiene products consists of over 1,000 items, many of which he makes available for online viewing at his aptly titled Toothpaste World. Search the site by location, brand name, or year of production - or jump in and browse the latest additions to the self-proclaimed world's largest toothpaste collection. The oldest toothpastes in Kolpakov's possession date back to the early 1800s, while the most expensive item in this collection is the Hopalong Cassidy toothpaste valued at $203. That'll remove some tartar from your wallet. Visitors are also treated to a brief historical look at oral hygiene, including an ancient Egyptian toothpaste formula.
http://www.toothpasteworld.com/
Apronyms are hot these days. What's an apronym? An apronym is a special kind of acronym where the initials spell out a word or phrase relevant to the expanded version. Here are a couple of examples: QUAKERS stands for Quiet, Unaggressive, Agrarian Kinfolk, Extremely Religious Souls; ASK is Acquire Some Knowledge. The Apronyms site currently has over 8,000 of the things. Virtually all are visitor donated, and contributors earn ephemeral fame with their name posted alongside their contribution. Apronyms are gaining popularity among the most punning people, but not surprisingly, they've made little headway among the serious acronym users of the world. This pleasant site does not take itself more seriously than it should, and is a serious pleasure to visit.
http://apronyms.com/
John Ross is a brave man. He has written the rules of dealing with women. Many women will disagree with his advice but he certainly tells it how he sees it, and the more honest may admit to a grain of truth amid the humor. His thoughtful insights include "Women base their actions on how they feel at the time," and "Women read things into men's actions that aren't there." The advice he draws from these initial concepts will probably get him run out of town by a posse of irate females, but it could also turn him into a guru for modern men. For example, he suggests that if a woman is complaining - or as she will call it, "sharing" - you should not try to fix it, just listen sympathetically. He will even save the average boyfriend a few dollars by pointing out that small unexpected gifts are worth just as much as expensive holidays. Bubble gum may be cutting a little too close to that line, however.
http://john-ross.net/advice.htm
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Our reviewer hasn't had this much fun playing artist since he was of an age to enjoy Etch-a-Sketch. The Mr. Picassohead Gallery has a canvas and set of draggable facial features and abstract objects similar to shapes the Spanish master made famous. Assemble your own portraits and view others'. Search for "Pablo Schulze"....http://www.mrpicassohead.com/
According to the humor site Dribbleglass.com, Crayola considers hundreds of new names for its colored crayons each year, and often has to reject the proposals. Here you can see failed classics-to-never-be such as "time 'o the month" (sic) red, "klan white", and "flu phlegm green" in all their glory.
http://www.dribbleglass.com/subpages/crayons.htm
Is it possible to create an entire deck of playing cards from discarded single cards found on the street? The purveyor of this site is at 36 cards and counting....
http://www.cardhouse.com/a/deck/deck.htm
Kind of like TinyURL, except instead of making looooong URLs short it makes short URLs loooong. Totally useless. Totally neat.
http://www.hugeurl.com/
Very good black and white line drawings of characters and situations from the hit TV series. Great samples online - suitable for printing out - and you can buy the entire book from the author Brandon Bird with $15 and PayPal.
http://www.brandonbird.com/lno_color.html