I’ll say this about Tumblr, it’s the best way to quickly start a new meme blog. The Rich Kids of Instagram is no different. It’s sick, funny, and sad in all sorts of ways.
Interesting question posed by Randy Murray:
Of all the things that we carry, the bits and pieces that help to get us through the day, I sometimes wonder what the people who are required to sift through these things think about us when one of us is struck down in the course of daily life. What sense, what meaning, do they take from the things that we carry in our pockets, in our bags? What do these things tell them about us, who we are, who we cared for?
I never thought about it like that before. I just jumped to the conclusion that all the intrusion won’t actually do much. I never once thought about what the contents of my bag said about me; because they are so common to me, they are just normal things.
If I were to guess what my carried articles say about me: way too many Apple chargers.
Ben Brooks arguing that Yahoo! should acquire two companies to help turn it around immediately: 500px and Duck Duck Go. Of Duck Duck Go, he says:
“It would pain me to see DuckDuckGo bastardized with ads, but I think there is a smart play here. Yahoo buys DuckDuckGo and starts serving ads on it, and make it the default Yahoo search engine. Yahoo is already an option on most browsers and devices (like iOS) so the potential user base is there. Putting the Yahoo brand behind the DuckDuckGo power, might be a win-win for both.”
Duck Duck Go is one of the internet properties I thought Apple should buy if it wanted to compete with Google and Facebook. At the time, I wasn’t sure if Flickr or 500px would be a better fit for Apple so I never committed to one over the other. From Yahoo!’s perspective, though, buying 500px would kill an immediate competitor or, as Ben puts it, give Flickr more life – Flickr 2.0 if you will. I’m not a 500px user but I wonder if being bought by Yahoo! would damage their brand and allow for another entrant to come in and steal away business.
And I like Ben’s idea of charging $10/year for a premium or ad free Duck Duck Go under former Google’s search lead, Marissa Mayer’s, watch.
It will be interesting to see how Mayer works to turn around Yahoo!. Ben isn’t the only one to think Yahoo!’s new CEO should go on a buying spree in the next few weeks.
Over at Wired’s Threat Level, Quinn Norton has an interesting look at what motivates Anonymous and how they work to take on the world’s most powerful organizations. It also goes into a bit of history of how they became political:
What first pushed Anonymous in a political direction was the only thing that could have: an attempt to interfere with their lulz. In January 2008, a video leaked out of the Church of Scientology. In it, over the thrum of an action-movie-style soundtrack, Tom Cruise enthused about his total devotion to the doctrines of Scientology. The video flew around the Internet, spawning parodies and commentary. It was epically lulzy, in just the sort of way that made perfect fodder for /b/. But the legendarily litigious church acted to stop the spread of the video, sending legal nastygrams to anyone hosting or sharing it.
The church’s effort to expunge the video so enraged some anons that they set out to destroy the church itself. It’s crucial, though, to understand the oddly contradictory spirit in which this campaign was conducted. Was Anonymous serious about destroying the church? Or was it all a joke? The answer to both questions is yes. The anons took on Project Chanology (as they called their Internet fatwa against Scientology) for the lulz, but they also wanted those lulz to have a real-world effect. And in dedicating themselves to that latter goal, Anonymous began to develop a real political consciousness—along with some new and ingenious methods for taking mass action.
From there, it moved on to IP maximalist organizations like the MPAA and RIAA. Then, detractors of Wikileaks, governments, and “computer security” companies.
It’s an interesting read – if not for the history – but for the psychology of an organization that doesn’t seem to be organized yet is in some very strange way.
Check out this awesome video of lightning captured by a high speed camera taking over 7,200 frames per second.
via Aaron Cohen