Random Culture

YouTube Doubler

Why enjoy just one video of a baby laughing, when you can enjoy two? YouTube "Doubler" allows you to embed and play two YouTube videos side-by-side.

Usability In The Real World

The Maison a Bordeaux is one of the most amazing houses in the world. It was created 10 years ago by famed architect Rem Koolhaas. The house features moving walls and floors, all designed to help a man in a wheelchair become more mobile. Gizmodo has a great post about the house, and an amazing video of the interior.

This got me thinking about how undervalued usability is in the creation of websites. It's hard enough for consumers to get around many sites, let alone those with real limitations that keep them from having an even basic experience on a site.

The next time I'm creating a website, I'll be thinking about this.

The Internet? Bah!

In 1995, Clifford Stoll used his Newsweek article to tell the world exactly how he felt about this new fangled thing called the "Internet"... His prophetic vision included the following:

"After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney."

Poor Clifford... he'll be getting flack about this article for years to come. Read his complete 1995 LA Times article here.

Do You Know About The "Rick-Roll"?

Have you been rick-rolled yet? If you don't know what that means, then click here.

This article from The Guardian explains:

"You're innocently browsing an apparently useful website and see a link to something else that might be of interest, but when you click through to that destination you instead find yourself confronted with Astley's boyish smile, his manly croon, his awkward 1987 dance-moves."

Yes, that's right... Rick Astley. Now get to rick-rolling!

Quick Links: March 17, 2008

Apple iPhone SDK Downloaded 100,000 Times
Enough said... tons of cool applications forthcoming.

How To Think
Straight from MIT, 10 guidelines for how to think creatively, thoughtfully and powerfully.

Flickr Video To Launch in April?
Yahoo announced it's going to launch Flickr video. This is long overdue, in my opinion... get ready for a contender, YouTube.

Hulu: Quality or Quantity?

Hulu is no longer in beta, and has now launched to the public. It includes some great television programming, such as the Simpsons, Family Guy, Saturday Night Live, The Office and more. It also has some great movies, such as The Big Lebowski, The Usual Suspects and The Jerk. Hulu has clearly taken the lead of ABC in developing the ad platform, offering single "sponsors" for each of the full episodes. In terms of movies, they're using the same ad model, but with significantly more ad breaks, due to the length. One of the other great aspects of Hulu is that they're allowing comments for episodes, clips and movies.

However, I have to say that the biggest drawback I can see with Hulu is the consistency of quality. This appears to vary based on the network it's from. The Saturday Night Live clips, for example, are high quality and in a widescreen format. Clips from The Simpsons and Family Guy, however, aren't widescreen, and the quality is noticeably less.

It will be interesting to see how consumers embrace Hulu versus going to the network sites directly.

Kenneth Cole Activist Blog

Kenneth Cole has launched a blog, and it's not about fashion. The Awearness blog is about politics, the environment, social responsibility and much more. The question remains, will users really care what Kenneth Cole thinks about this stuff? Read more at: Awearnessblog.com

Quick Links: March 5, 2008

BBC Redesign
The BBC have redesigned the website ala iGoogle and My Yahoo, allowing visitors to customize the content and appearance of the homepage.

Social Networking Around the World
Look at what the most popular social networks are across the globe.

Gaming YouTube
Can a video become the most viewed of all time on YouTube... without getting there legitimately? Looks like maybe it can.