Tweet the lyrics

I really don’t know how to explain this in a way that makes it justice so perhaps you should better visit tweetflight immediately. If you insist, though, here is my best try. Electro-folk (yes, this classification exists) group Brightly have released one of the most clever web-based music videos ever, for their song Preflight Nerves.

 

It is basically a lyrics video, but the words of the song are drawn (almost) real-time from tweets. Clever huh?

Taking the words / phrases out of the context of the tweet and into the song and vice-versa is very interesting; sometimes poignant, sometimes ironic, sometimes hilarious.

I am dying to create a self-referential loop by tweeting about this and appearing in the video!

See also:

• I can see my house from here
• The perfect gin ‘n’ tone
• 10 more ways to visualize lyrics
• 10 + 1 ways to visualize lyrics

The state of social media

The end of yet another year: ideal time for reviews. 2012 was the year where social media have fully established their presence and have become a way of life, according to an infographic by The SEO Company and Nowsourcing.

via Mashable

See also:

• Data never sleeps
• The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity
• I can be googled, therefore I am

Data never sleeps

Data never sleeps? Well yes, if you consider that 206.166.667 mails are sent, 342 blog posts are published, 100.000 tweets are sent, 751 new websites are created every single minute of the day.

Infographic created by Domo

See also:

• Weapons of mass distraction
• The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity
• I can be googled, therefore I am

Weapons of mass distraction

by Hunter Langston

See also:

• The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity
• I can be googled, therefore I am
• Help the semicolon not to become extinct

In 60 seconds

Every 60 seconds, 168 million emails are sent, more than 13,000 iPhone applications are downloaded, over 600,000 search queries are made,  more than 98,000 tweets and more than 1,500 blog posts are published.Pretty amazing, don’t you think?

via TechPages

See also:

• The universe of social networks
• The internet in 2015
• I am socially stoned
• It started with the occasional profile update and now you are hooked: social media addiction

I am socially stoned

Well, we all know that all social media can be extremely addictive, but each one with a completely different way. Patrick Moberg compares each one of them with popular drugs and alcoholic beverages:

via Design Taxi

See also:

• It started with the occasional profile update and now you are hooked: social media addiction
• The drugs of Alice in Wonderland
• Multitasking is addictive

It’s all about me

OK, we all know that Facebook is the shrine of narcissism and self-reference. And the apps that I am going to present are a tribute to the “cult of me”. But they are so well done that they are practically irresistible.

Deutsche Post’s Social Memories creates a booklet filled with infographics based on the public info on your Facebook profile. While the digital version of the booklet is free, you need to pay 19 € for the bound version in glossy paper.

Intel’s Museum of Me, on the other hand, is a virtual exhibition of, well, you. Again using data from your public info it creates 3D gallery views of your photos, friends, words most used on your status updates, etc.

See also:

• Would you tell a stranger what you tell Facebook?
• At night your facebook profile comes to life
• Don’t give up on facebook just yet

The internet in 2015

How different will our digital life be in just four years from now? Watch this superb infographic video, “Digital Life: Today and Tomorrow,” created by NeoLabels and Inés Leopoldo to find out. It lasts almost 8 minutes, but worth every second.

via Fastcodesign

See also:

• The universe of social networks
• 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life, part 2
• Why crying?
• The sarcastic meta-infographic

The universe of social networks

Infographic created by JESS3

See also:

• The art of visual storytelling
• The sarcastic meta-infographic
• The meta-infograph

Would you tell a stranger what you tell Facebook?

See also:

• Don’t give up on facebook just yet
• Facebook in Bamako
• 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life, part 2
• At night your facebook profile comes to life

Don’t give up on facebook just yet

The first email of the day said this:

That’s all Folks!
I am deleting my facebook account (at least for the moment) because I am bored of it.

[goes on to give me us – all of his facebook friends- his new contact details].

And he’s not the first to do so. Infact, the number of my facebook friends is on a downward slope, at least for the last six months. People are getting fed up with Facebook. Has it simply run its course, like Friendster and myspace before it? Are people tired of all the overexposure? Are the original Facebook users maturing into Twitter users? Or is it simply because our Facebook newsfeeds usually look like this:

There are those, though, that are not ready to give up without a fight. Yo Zuck! Implement this is a tumblr blog with ideas on how to improve Facebook. It includes realistic, common sense suggestions that would indeed improve user experience. For example this one would be really helpful to me since my Japanese friends have the weird habit of writing in, well, japanese:

Newsfeed illustration via Thought Catalog. Link to Yo Zuck! via freeweird.

See also:

• Facebook in Bamako
• Tweets say the darnest things
• Focusing on usability traits instead of faults

Playing with reality

What would happen if what people share in their social networks turns real? And best of all, if you could play with that? Well, if you like the idea of the twittersphere becoming a virtual universe, this is for you. Welcome to Tweet Land, the first set of videogames that plays with reality.

This is the teaser of Tweet Land, a video game in development, which will blend reality and fiction, by incorporating users’ real time activity in Twitter into the game’s narrative. This means that every time someone tweets something, these tweets will affect the gameplay of Tweet Land by triggering certain action-keywords.

via Kickstarter

See also:

• The bad guys (in video games)
• Multitask: the game
• A history of videogames

Read it elsewhere

Mainly infographs on this set of quick links:

• The great toilet paper debate (infograph) – buzzfeed
• This kind of video is not my cup of tea, but this one is really incredible: skiers jump off a cliff to escape an avalanche (video) – youtube
• How to chart roads on Google Maps – GOOD.is
• MoMA, you call yourself a museum? – Alltop
• Interactive tweet topic infograph – Tweet topic explorer
• 10 consistent songwriters – flavorwire
• Infographs created in physical space – geekosystem

Read it elsewhere

Check them out:

• A dramatic reading of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, complete with a beret and (e)spanish accent (video) – kottke
• Is the cupcake dead? – Johnson Banks
• John Lennon’s bitter letter to Linda McCartney – flavorwire]
• Do you know how much power your appliances use? (interactive infograph) – GE visualization
• The evolution of web design – mashable
• He’s an actor, he’s a writer, he’s a musician: download Hugh Laurie’s new blues track for free – pop culture brain
• What if Barbie was real-size – msnbc
• The latest tumblr to take the world by storm – hipster animals
• If logos were honest – buzzfeed

From behind

Can you imagine how Twitter and Facebook would look like from behind? I am sure you can’t. Designers Jeff Lam and Josephine Yatar present in their blog Back of a Webpage a different and very creative ‘back view’ of most of our favourite websites. 

See more after the jump

Read it elsewhere

Slim pickings:

• It’s true what they say, there is a tumblr for everything – fugly android interfaces
• What kind of twitter user are you? (infograph) – daily infographic
• I assure you that a post with the title “Unspeakable Bodily Fluids and Genitalia: A Short, Revolting Intro to the Finest Metaphors in British Food Criticism” is a good read – GOOD.is
• Bringing the bling to Anakin: Darth Vader’s helmet gets the artist treatment – total film
• These post stamps for the 50 years of the Royal Shakespeare Company are amazing – creative review

Social networks from the Enlightenment

Long before Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, there was the Republic of Letters —  a self-proclaimed intellectual community of writers, scholars and other thinkers in the late 17th and 18th century in Europe and America, that managed to cross national boundaries and bring together, among others, the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

This vast community of intellectuals and philosophers, which included literary figures such as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Carl Linnaeus, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, and Denis Diderot, was the subject of a project by a team of students and professors from Stanford University. They used geographical imaging to display how this early social network and its various sub-networks intermingled and evolved over time. The Republic of Letters is perhaps an early example of what social network truly means- exchange knowledge and information.

via Braipickings

See also:

• Make up your mind about your mind
• Strange things that do exist: Computational Origami at MIT
• Can you take a hint?

Read it elsewhere

Some bad news, but mostly good news and a positive vibe:

• Where do the young and educated want to live? (infograph) – GOOD.IS
• Tragic irony: Japanese tsunami survivors sheltered in a nuclear power plant – boingboing
• In the mean time, it’s a new, carefree dawn for the wildlife at Chernobyl (audio) – gruenrekorder via boing boing
• TweetWhen is a web app that tells you when your tweets get the most retweets (we do on fridays around 5pm) – TweetWhen
• Kinda creepy: Google to launch app that scans a face and then finds the person’s google profile (including their contact details) – mashable
• Honest, down-to-earth, inspiring advice: “how to steal like an artist (9 other things that nobody told me)” – austin kleon via drawn
• Now I feel old. An exhibition to celebrate South Park’s 15th birthday – lost at E minor

Read it elsewhere

Jeff Koons gets the video game treatment, Time Zones get analyzed and religion falls out of fashion:

• Jeff Koons Must Die, the video game – Hunter Jonakin via boingboing
• What if Angry Birds were an action movie directed by Michael Bay (video) – the curious brain
• The fascinating and often absurd convention of Time Zones – BBC
• Rare Beatles photos – npr
• Since Radiohead published a newspaper (The Universal Sigh), Guardian writers are challenging them at their game, by covering Creep – Guardian
• Are symmetrical faces more beautiful? – toxel via holykaw
• 50% of tweets come from 0,05% of users – mashable
• Is religion falling out of fashion? – Discovery news
• Sex is no accident (MTV’s safe sex campaign) – buzzfeed
• This blogger asks his favorite authors to sign their books. The twist? Instead for dedications he asks for insults – insulted by authors via flavorwire
• Read it horizontally, read it vertically; the genius of Lewis Caroll – i love charts

Tweets say the darnest things

It’s true. Among tons of trivialities there are some truly witty tweets. Twaggies is a blog that selects and illustrates some of these tweets. 

See also:

• Real birds’ tweets on twitter
• Facebook in Bamako
• Truly social