I know I haven’t updated in a while. I’ve been insanely busy the last couple of weeks (business is good) and just haven’t had time to write anything. Rest assured though, I’ve been bookmarking a few things to post about. And more importantly, the site I’m passing along in today’s post will make up for my recent absence.
Last night I was catching up on Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur’s net@night podcast while burning the midnight oil plugging away on some code. As I’ve mentioned before, I absolutely love it whenever you can get a peek into the “hive mind” of the internet and simultaneously get a glimpse of both the macro and the micro of what a community is thinking. On episode 52 Leo and Amber discussed something that I knew I had to check out:
Here’s a screenshot:
Sweet Jeebus, this thing is cool.
What it does is scan the latest posts on Twitter for each of those six words on the left of the screen. Then it just displays those posts in a continually updating feed. It’s mesmerizing to watch. Some of the posts will be hilarious. Some will be deeply personal and serious. Looking at this evoked a bit of the same emotions I had the first time I saw PostSecret.
Anyway, I just thought this was exceptionally cool and beautiful.
Oh, and they even made a screen saver out of it. (I think it’s Mac only, though.) What’s especially nifty about the screen saver is that I have a dual monitor setup, and it will start the feed in different places for each monitor. So I may have “love” on one screen and “hate” on the other. And come on, that’s just totally wickedly cool.
8 Comments
BelowMe · 29 May 2008 at 7:23 AM
its cool and all, but I’d like to see it set up to HAL’s voice. Just seems like a ton of reading. I want my computer to read it for me in a monotone digital voice. Just enough digital so that some words it cant say like “pbttthhhh” or “akadjfa;lkdfja;l” it will just sound out all the letters.
Maybe have it stream like Pandora.com (the music genome project), which would also be a good topic to blog about.
BTW Bo, I am starting a new word I made up, “Blogdate”, its what you tell bloggers who don’t update their blog enough. Like, if I emailed you and said, “you know Bo, that car blog you have is fine and everything, but now its time for you to Blogdate!”
So, if you have some blogs that are in desperate need of an update/new post, tell them to “Blogdate” cause you know I will.
M.hardaway – founder of the word Blogdate, May 2008
BelowMe · 29 May 2008 at 7:42 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogdate
Bo · 29 May 2008 at 7:46 AM
Matt, you’re an idiot.
I think that’s why I like you.
BelowMe · 29 May 2008 at 7:53 AM
ahh the page is in “speedy delete” mode. Someone however has already sent in the “Hangon” to contest the deletion. Which was not me. I just need to write more crap on the page, it was not “long enough”.
If it sticks that would be cool.
I’d be a wiki magnet!
BelowMe · 29 May 2008 at 8:03 AM
ok, so maybe wikipedia is not the place for Blogdating. However, wiktionary will be all the rage! http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blogdate
BelowMe · 29 May 2008 at 8:15 AM
well that page got deleted! oh well. It turns out that my invention of a new word is called a protologisms. (which turns out to be the same type of word in and of itself that I was trying to make, but they get their own page… jerks!)
Anyways, search the B’s, Blogdate is now lost in the protologism page. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:List_of_protologisms#B
Bo · 29 May 2008 at 8:20 AM
I take it back, Matt. You’re not an idiot. You’re a moron.
cad · 9 June 2008 at 8:49 PM
why did i click on that?! why? why why why?
not a good thing, i’m so easily amused. I can stare at that for hours!
Comments are closed.