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>>> April 29, 1999 Read the fine print While I love looking at ads all day, some of the more interesting ads have never seen the light of day. For one reason or another, some ads get as far as the client, only to be killed before garnering international acclaim and accolades. And what do you do when something's killed? Stick it in the graveyard--or in this case, the Advertising Graveyard (www.zeldman.com/ad.html). Within the graveyard you'll find dead ads from both print and Web. One of the funniest on the site is an ad that appeared on starwars.com for one day. Rumour has it that it was an idea of St. Lucas himself, a parody of the teaser for Godzilla (you know, the movie with the Iguana-Rex).
Truth or fiction? Could Dan Quayle have said that many stupid things? You decide: http://members.aol.com/gopstopper/gopstop.
Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod
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>>> April 22, 1999 Vengeance will be mine When it comes to revenge, there is always the pressing problem of doing it with style. Then there is the dilemma of where to shop for the necessary tools. Thanks to the net and Force-Ten (www.force-ten.com), it's never been easier. Force-Ten is a supplier of revenge, spying, police and military equipment. On the site you'll find the Evacuator (as seen in Mission Impossible), a liquid that causes its victims to uncontrollably "evacuate." If you prefer getting tech-revenge, you can always buy the Sonic Nausea, which induces nausea in its victims through a combination of ultra-high frequency sound waves. Or the surveillance spyglasses, which let you check out the action going on behind you. An added bonus is that they provide UV protection. Force-Ten also offers a few books on how to get even, plus much much more. All for entertainment purposes, of course. Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod
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>>> April 15, 1999 Keeping up with the techno Joneses Quite frankly, I'm often disappointed with traditional media's handling of tech stories. Usually full of hype and half-facts, it gets a wee bit annoying after a point. When you want your geek news, you ought to get it straight from the nerd's mouth. Two sites I recommend are Slashdot: News for Nerds (http://slashdot.org) and HNN: The Hacker News Network (http://www.hackernews.com). Both sites have been around for a while, doing a good job of reporting on subjects of importance to geeks. Slashdot has become popular enough that it now creates a "slashdot effect": a Web site becoming virtually unreachable because too many people are hitting it after the site was mentioned in a Slashdot article. SI pity the fool: The definitive Mr. T vs Everything site: http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~kljense3/MrT.html. Need I say more? |
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>>> April 8, 1999 Spring cleaning Well, it's spring, and it's time for us here at Networthy™ to clean out our bookmarks and get rid of our backlog of Sites for the Masses™. So buckle up and get ready, 'cuz it's a link-O-rama. I thought no one was filled with a larger hate of mankind than I, until I found the Misanthropic Bitch (http://bitch.shutdown.com/). Awww, you miss your mommy? Don't fret, visit the Virtual Talking Mom (http://dearmom.infospace.com/mtalk/m_talk.htm). Running out of words to impress people with at Liberal Arts parties? Check out Celerity--the Home of Seldom Used Words (http://www.celerity.co.uk/words/). Though don't be surprised if someone gets mordant with you.
Someone bugging your ass? Well, brush up on CIA Assassination Techniques (http://www.anusha.com/ciastudy.htm). |
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>>> April 1, 1999 Desktop contact Why waste your spare computer time moving toasters across a screen when you can pitch in with the search for ET? The folks at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) are bringing the search home with their new distributed computing project, SETI@home (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/). The program acts as a screen saver. While you're online, it automatically contacts the SETI@home server and downloads a little chunk of raw data collected from the Arecibo radio telescope to analyze. Later, when your computer's just hanging around doing nothing, it kicks in and processes the data. The next time you log on, it uploads the results to SETI@home, and grabs a new chunk to work on. Should your computer be involved in the discovery, you can be listed as a co-discoverer. Woo-hoo! Your ticket into the history books. The project is nearing launch in late April. Be the first on your block to sign up. Comes in 3 flavours: Unix, Mac, PC. |
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>>> March 25, 1999 Please, no screwing in the lavatory Planning a trip on a plane? Maybe you should brush up on emergency procedures first. Airtoons (www.airtoons.com), created by Taber C. Buhl, a student at Syracuse U, breathes a whole lot of new life into those boring old safety instructions. With a keen sense of humour, Taber has changed the captions (and modified some of the images) on those emergency instruction cards. You know, the ones that show how to slide down the ramp, or inflate your vest. Great stuff. It's da shit: Well, I don't know what to say about this one. It's Tom Winkler's Doodie.com (www.doodie.com). Each weekday Tom serves up another shit-related animated cartoon. Short and sweet, especially if defecation humour's your thing. |
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>>> March 18, 1999 Park Wars At this rate, there should be a new Oscar come next year for best Star Wars parody. Three months in the making, from some of the brilliant minds at Countdown:The Ultimate Fan Site (www.countingdown.com), comes the trailer for Park Wars Episode I: The Little Menace. A remake of the first Star Wars trailer starring the familiar faces of South Park., the short does a great job capturing the South Park look and feel. Some of the crossovers include Chef as Mace Wendu, Cartman as Yoda, Kyle as Obi-Wan, and Satan as Darth Maul. Created by fans of both Star Wars and South Park, the piece stays true to both universes. Unless you absolutely hate South Park, this one's a must see. |
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>>> March 11, 1999 Have a nice day. Honest. From the minds at Pleasant Productions comes Pre-Apocalyptika Gone Bad (http://gonebad.net/), a small net-zine featuring some games, a segment titled Raving Lunacy and the Year 2000 (coming soon), and the requisite About Us section, which is worth the read. With both a good sense of humour and style, Gone Bad's a good way to kill some time, and you'll find some flash games in the games section. My personal fave is Pepper the Protesters, where you pepper spray the "godless dissidents" to protect our leaders at the APEC conference. Of course, both the Hamster Golf and Baby BBQ games have their charm as well. While we're discussing great-looking sites, check out www.mediaboy.net. Produced by Taz, a programmer at Gone Bad, mediaboy has tons of slickness, sprinkled about judiciously. Stop by sometime. |
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>>> March 4, 1999 Entropy sucks Y2K, shmy-2-K. You think the millennium bug's a problem? It'll seem minor compared to the Y5B bug. In 5 billion years, the sun will combust no more. Thankfully, a site has sprung up to warn us before it's too late. At the Year 5 Billion Problem (www.y5b.com) Web site, you'll learn all about this flaw in the sun's design. Read up on some Y5B vocabulary, how to prepare your Year 5,000,000,000 finances or the Y5B what's hot (cold fusion), what's not (solar eclipse) list. Check out which of your electronics are Y5B compatible, and find out what the UN is doing to prepare. Enter the digital dragon: I recently came across this short computer-generated animation. It's a really stylized clip of Bruce Lee, muscles a-rippling with a nice attention to detail--très slick. Created by one Shannon Ma, it's well worth the download (7 megs) (http://www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~96471536/ex_videos.htm). |
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>>> February 25, 1999 Black bytes The locally produced Black History Pages (http://www.cam.org/~emru/bhp/) began in 1996 with the goal of serving up a daily piece of black history to the masses. Due to other commitments, the site then stagnated for a while. This February the site has returned to active duty, dishing out daily black history for all of February. All the back days are archived, so you can catch up on what you've missed. Well organized and easy to navigate as well Force fed: As the frenzy builds towards the May 21 release of Star Wars Episode I, a number of great Star Wars spoofs/parodies have been hitting the Web, including Trooper Clerks. It's a shot for shot copy of the Clerks trailer, with Stormtroopers working in a dep on the Deathstar. The site also provides instructions on how to make your own Stormtrooper costume (http://www.studiocreations.com/trooperclerks/). |