The Great “Just For Fun” Archive
Each weekly issue of Paul Gillin’s Social Media Report features something silly or offbeat that we’ve found on the Web. We call it Just For Fun. Here are all of them.
How old do you think this 
lovely young lady is? If you guessed 23, you’re among good company. Visitors to The Age Project site can spend (read: waste) a good many minutes guessing the ages of people from all over the world who have submitted their pictures for the guessing game. When you guess a person’s age, the site then pops you to a page that displays the average guess of site visitors, your guess and the person’s real age. (The girl here is 17 years old, by the way.) The results page also tells you something this person has learned in his or her years on the planet — but not the person’s name or location. This young woman has learned “mankind is the only animal species that trip[s] twice with the same rock.” If you sign into the site, you, too, can send in your picture to be included in the random rotation, along with that one tidbit you’d like to share with the world.
“Malls are being mauled. In case you’ve been paying closer attention to Wall Street or the housing market, rest assured that America’s once-bustling shopping meccas are doing just as poorly,” reads an entry from the blog at Deadmalls.com, a site devoted to preserving the history of shopping malls and documenting their decline. America’s shopping malls are in deep trouble, battered by the twin forces of falling department store sales and recessionary pressure. Deadmalls.com has news about America’s largest retail destinations and the factors contributing to their demise. Fun? Not so much. But kind of fascinating.
Real estate resource site Zillow.com has come up with a clever new game that not only advertises its property listings but also gives homeowners advice on improvement strategies. The feature is called Dueling Digs, and it delivers photos of renovation projects that visitors can vote upon. Each “duel” presents 10 pairs of photos of the same interior area of a property, such as a kitchen. Players vote for the design they like best until one is left standing. Zillow then tells them how their choice compared to other players’ and also directs them to the listing page for that property. Users can download photos for help in planning their own renovation projects. This is a great way to highlight top listings via crowdsourced selection and also to deliver value to casual visitors in the form of ideas for their own home improvements.
If the photo at right scares the bejeezus out of you – as it does me – then you probably don’t want to spend much time looking at this gallery of the most dangerous rope bridges in the world. “You can find a wide variety of these bridges in countries like India, Malaysia, Philippines, New Zealand, Pakistan, Nepal, as well as in the interiors of some other countries,” says the site, in a description that serves as a warning against traveling in those countries. It’s hard to believe that anyone would set foot on some of these contraptions, which appear to come right out of an Indiana Jones movie. Then again, maybe staying in the same place is worse.
Is that a penguin on the telly? Well, a few penguins, actually, but click the image to see the truly awesome spectacle of what happens when penguins congregate. This is one of the photos on Incredimazing, a website devoted to collecting bizarre images submitted by people like you and me. If you want to scramble your brain, check out the M.C. Escher car.
Page Tutor came up with a fun way of thinking about the huge financial hole our banking industry has gotten itself and us Americans into. Well, fun may be overstating it, but try to enjoy this and not think about what it will take for generations of Americans to fill the hole back in! What does a million dollars look like? You’ll be astounded.
I came across a wonderful collection of pictures online that gave me more than one smile. I wanted to share it with you somehow, then realized I have the perfect opportunity in my Just For Fun. So enjoy Marco Folio’s collection of hilarious, odd, and adorable pictures! They’re organized by month of posting, so click through to any gallery for about two minutes of delight.
My Newspaper Death Watch blog is my labor of love, and is also garnering attention from large news organizations like El Mundo and, most recently, CNN (keep an eye out for the story in the coming week or two). So I have a soft spot in my heart for blogs that keep tabs on the newspaper industry. Criggo keeps tabs on stories, picture captions and classified ads, among others, that tickle your funny bone or just make you wonder why on Earth anyone would put this stuff into print in the first place. PLEASE NOTE: Some of the stories on this site are not appropriate for all audiences. If it were a movie, it would be rated R.
One of our favorite new Internet companies is someecards.com, a distributor of online greeting cards that bear delightfully cynical, snarky and even obscene messages. Someecards is to greetings what Despair is to motivational posters: an irreverent stick in the eye of an industry that suffers from unbearable cuteness. Now someecards has launched a user-generated companion site, yourecards.com, where visitors can work from a collection of templated illustrations to create their own bizarre messages. A sampling:
- “The fact that you thanked Hugh Hefner, and not your family, in your bar mitzvah speech was highly inappropriate.”
- “Here’s hoping your new music degree will get you a better Mcjob.”
- “Sorry that restricted number I ignored was your one call from prison.”
Who says user-generated content doesn’t have a future?
If you’ve ever been to Disney World or Disneyland , you know that the experience is like no other on earth. So given Disney credit for personalizing it brilliantly in this viral video. I’m not sure how they pulled off some of the technical wizardry demonstrated here, but Disney Parks & Resorts VP for Global PR Duncan Wardle told me Goofy had to record 1,800 names to make it work. The promotion paid for itself in less than a day. Be sure to watch to the end for the best part.
Most of us love garlic and onions in our food — but not on our hands after we cook dinner. Did you know that the problem can be easily (and cheaply) solved by washing your hands with a glob of toothpaste? Bet you didn’t know that dryer sheets can be used to clean your shower or that wax paper can unstick wet pages of a book! Woman’s Day’s tips for alternate uses for 16 household items may just blow your mind. Which reminds me, check out the secret uses of hair dryers! Don’t forget to read the comments for even more tips and tricks.
We bring to you a nice story of enduring love from Jack Benny, the famous comic. The poem that is connected to him isn’t exactly true: He sent his wife a rose every day after his death, not a bouquet every year. But the sentiment challenges us to think of creative ways we can show our affection to our loved ones this Valentine’s Day.While you’re reading it, become familiar with Snopes, a fantastic resource of truth about urban legends. Was that really Sarah Palin in a bikini holding a rifle? Nope. Did Nostradamus really predict the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks? Sorry. Snopes has a knack for bursting bubbles, but it has truthfully researched thousands of popular myths and found that most of them are, well, myths. The good news: the true ones can be really interesting.
If you, like me, struggle just to write your name on an Etch-a-Sketch, you’ll marvel at the work of George and Greg Vlosich. The two designers operate a studio specializing in original artwork and design, but what makes them remarkable is the artwork they create on an Etch-a-Sketch. They sell their original creations for upwards of $5,000 and they even have a YouTube channel demonstrating the process. Just don’t shake the results!Learning a foreign language makes you learn more about your native tongue, but what if you learn that you’ve been speaking jibberish the whole time? This list of English oddities makes you ponder the nonsense of our language. If you’re not a native speaker, we pity you for having to learn English! And we’re sorry for making such a weird language.
Duct tape may be your go-to material when you find something broken. It’s sturdy, flexible and reliable. But the sticky stuff has come out of utility and into the fashion world. Fashion? Duct tape? No, we’re not kidding. You see, the tape not only comes in glittery silver, but now in almost every color you can imagine. Even Martha Stewart has illustrated how to make a duct tape wallet. So it must be classy. Check out DuctTapeFashions for hats, belts, purses, and even a rose for your sweetie (left).
My New Year’s resolution is to save you money. Well, maybe I’ll save some money for myself, too. But I’ve learned in the last month that almost everything you buy online can be purchased for less coin. There are sites (bless them!) that specialize in up-to-date coupon and promotion codes. So, next time you’re on Amazon or GoDaddy or Overstock.com, Google the site name and “promotion code” or “coupon” and you’ll find lots. I’ll get you started at RetailMeNot.com.
Everyone loves Top 10 Lists. They’re guaranteed crowd-pleasers, but they’re scattered around the Internet like so much loose confetti. In a recent issue, Time magazine collected the most comprehensive list of Top 10 rankings we’ve ever seen. Its 50 categories cover everything from “Fashion Faux Pas” to “T-shirt Worthy Slogans.” We don’t claim it’s the most exhaustive collection we’ve ever seen, but it’s a sure bet to consume some of those idle hours we spend at the office around the holidays waiting for the closing bell to ring.
If you’re looking for a holiday gift for that special snarky someone, trust us, there’s nowhere better to go than Despair.com. I’ve enjoyed their takes on the standard motivational posters for years. And nothing says Happy Holidays quite like putting a sly smile on someone’s face. Especially if they’re your subordinate. One of our favorites is Mistakes: “It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”
If December finds you half in the holiday spirit and half paying attention to work, you’re probably looking for a good distraction during those conference calls. After you finish making your shopping lists (and checking them twice!), try this paper airplane design. Yes, it’s 35 steps, but the sucker can fly! (Trust me, I built one today to test it out for you.) This is not your son’s paper airplane.
With the stock market down 40% this year, many of us may not think we have much to be thankful for this holiday season, but at least you don’t live in the Hole House in Texas. It’s one of 50 outrageous structures you can find on Village of Joy, a celebration of “Amazing, Interesting, Wonderful, Weird, Odd and Funny Things About our World.” We don’t think this particular abode fits into the category of “wonderful,” but we’re grateful that this site can at least temporarily take our mind off the pain in our IRAs.
In this economy, we’re all looking for that nearly impossible “free lunch.” And since we know that there is a blog for almost every wacky pasttime, it should come as no surprise that there is a “free geek” publishing on a useful list of ways to stick it to “the man.” Enjoy your coffee while studying for your course at MIT!
Who is this person to the left? If you were a fan of 1960s sitcoms, you’d know him as one of the most recognizable faces on television, but he doesn’t look nearly the same today. Click here to find aout. AOL’s Memba Them site has photos of 160 celebrities as you once knew them and shots of those same folks today. It’s a tribute to, er, aging gracefully!
When I was a kid, carving pumpkins required a kitchen knife and about 10 minutes of hacking and sawing. Today, it could be a concentration at a major art school. Check out these examples of some of the finest work of artists who work mainly in the medium of squash.
The Daily Show has been doing some of its funniest stuff lately, proving that misery can breed hilarity. But this isn’t about that. Eric Janszen, the founder of the economics blog iTulip has created a five-minute video that explains the current financial crisis using Wiley Coyote as the victim. It’s educational, entertaining and family-appropriate.
If you want to warn people that entering your cubicle (or your kid’s room) should be attempted at their own risk (or if you’re just looking for a funny distraction from work), make your own warning label. Or maybe you’re looking for decorations for the coming Halloween season? Check out the tombstone creator.
While strolling through Pet Rock 2008, the annual festival in east-central Massachusetts that brings hundreds of pet owners together in a celebration of their pooches and felines, I was struck by the old cliche that dog owners and their pets frequently look alike. I started snapping examples of where I thought that was true. While the cliche is by no means universally true, there are some striking similarities in some cases. Just for fun, here are a few examples posted as a Flickr slide show. Do you have examples of your own? Let me know and I’ll add them to the slide show. If you upload them to Flickr, use tags “lookalikes” and “dogs”.
Were you the kid who wanted a pet spider but your parents kept saying “NO!”? If you were, have you grown up since then, realizing there are probably more sensible pets than arachnids? Well, let’s revert Welcome to your pet spider. You can move him, feed him, and make lots of visual adjustments. Just don’t let the boss see!
The North is in the news lately, and while this happened in Manitoba and not Alaska, I thought I’d send out a little intra-species friendship story in hopes that we can all find a way to communicate, if not get along. This polar bear found a pack of sled dogs, started playing with them, and returned every night for a week. Pictures like this may become all we have left of the polar bears in a few years, so treasure them while you can.
Are you old enough to remember the days of vinyl records? One of the great things about LPs was that they were so damned big, which meant that the people who recorded them had to fill them up with something. We remember some of the classics (Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon), but what about the truly ugly covers of the LP age? Fortunately, many websites have captured them for our enjoyment and BizarreRecords is one of the best. See if you remember any of these classics.
If you’ve ever been at a summer picnic and seen people sitting around in lawn chairs and then watched kids playing with balloons and thought that maybe you’d like to combine the two and float across a few states, you’re not alone. Kent Couch’s determination and innovative spirit — or maybe just his wackiness – sent him floating from Oregon to Idaho earlier this month backed by his adoring family and nine corporate sponsors. I wouldn’t recommend you try to duplicate Kent’s efforts in your own town, but I do recommend you watch the highlight video of his aerial journey from his website.
On a trip to Hanoi in 2003, Matt Harding’s friend convinced him to perform a dorky little dance in front of the videocam. Matt obliged. His strangely endearing two-step drew a small crowd. Someone put the video on YouTube and, as they say, the rest is history. Five years later, Matt’s dancing is a viral legend. Some 20 million YouTube downloads attest to its popularity, Matt has a sponsor and he travels around the world dancing. If you’ve ever wondered what makes a viral video viral, this example won’t help you a bit. It’s funny as hell, but you couldn’t plan something like this. It just happens.
If you’ve signed up for a social network in the last two years, you’ve undoubtedly been asked to fill out a “hobbies and interests” field. Wouldn’t it be nice to say you can knit a penguin, grow a square watermelon and paralyze a chicken without actually hurting it? Can’t do any of these things? Well, surf on over to Instructables.com and learn! (And save me a slice of the watermelon)
Do your email servers (and your sys admin) a favor. Stop forwarding those joke emails. Instead, just tell everyone about LaughItOut.com –- all the joke and cartoon emails you’ve gotten in the past five years have been collected and diligently posted there by some anonymous good-will blogger. And if you don’t see a funny that you’ve gotten recently at which you’ve laughed like a donkey, forward it to them.
The next time someone cuts you off in traffic, mix it up a bit. Find an insult much more offensive and original than using language that makes you blush when you realize your 4-year-old is in the backseat. Brush up on your scurrilous vernacular with the Shakespeare insult kit. Take it from the Bard himself and don’t be a qualling hedge-born moldwarp.
If you’ve ever taken a “money shot,” you’ll appreciate this gallery of pictures that were taken just at the right time. A good 90% of them were no doubt accidental, but let’s pat the photographers on the back anyway. Everyone needs a good pat on the back once in a while.
A few weeks ago, I pointed you to OneBag.com. A week later,
the creator of that site was interviewed on NPR. Coincidence? (Quite possibly!) Now that you’re carrying on your one bag, let’s see if we can prevent you from getting arrested –- or worse -– in foreign countries with this week’s little Just for Fun gem. Avoid these seven seemingly innocent gestures when you are abroad. A wave isn’t necessarily a wave and the sky will probably fall down if a woman greets a man on the street with a dozen white roses.
Recognize the character at left? Today, he’s one of the world’s richest people, but 31 years ago he was just a kid who got caught speeding in New Mexico. He was booked, his mug shot taken, and the world got this image of Bill Gates to treasure for all time. Gates isn’t the only famous person to have been arrested. Hundreds of celebrities have had brushes with the law, and since mug shots are public information, these people’s little moments of notoriety have been preserved for us to enjoy. Thank goodness the investigative reporters at The Smoking Gun have done the leg work that was needed to share these gems with the world. See the entire archive here.
Planning on going to the beach this summer? You might think twice after viewing this gallery of bizarre sea creatures. Some come from very deep in the ocean but others can be found swimming around near that nice 24-foot pleasure boat your uncle owns. Just be careful!
Let’s face it — we’re all kids at heart. And most of us have fond memories of playing with kaleidoscopes. Now you can make your own virtual kaleidoscope online. Thanks to Ze Frank for this toy. Ze was the one who brought us sportsracers The Show, a daily videocast about newsworthy and not-so-newsworthy items that started on March 16, 2006 and ended exactly one year later. Ze is always experimental and always interesting. Check out his site for days of entertainment.
This one’s for all you busy travelers: OneBag.com is a labor-of-love site from Doug Dyment that contains all the tips you need for smart packing. What to pack, what to pack it in –- he’s got you covered for easy transport. Some tips from Doug:
- Make a packing list and stick to it.
- To minimize wrinkles, don’t fold each clothing item separately, but bundle wrap them instead.
- Make sure someone on the ground knows your travel plans (be sure to check out his other useful tips for before you leave).
Just imagine the tears of joy that your
“friends, family, coworkers, loved ones, liked ones, and anyone else with fingers” will get when they open up a special ecard from you that says what everyone longs to hear: Let’s temporarily stop communicating to ensure that we’ll have something to talk about tonight. How sweet! How endearing! How sarcastic! SomeEcards.com has pinpointed the tongue-in-cheek crowd for all of their ecard needs. Do yourself a favor and visit the site. And then send a card to show your friends that you “care enough to hit send.”
It seems I’m never satisfied with the season New England serves up. Spring has arrived, which makes me itch to get out to the beach. If you’re looking forward to summer, too, check out Corey Hamilton’s BeachWallpaper.net. He’s an Australian beach photographer who loves to travel and share his pictures. For free, of course. Some shots are animated to show the breadth of a harbor or timelapsed for sunrise, day, and sunset over a particular spot. Be sure to check out Corey’s collection of 20 Best Beach Wallpapers. This blog is new, so stick around for interesting and beautiful updates.
Do you have so much money you don’t know what to do with it all? I know I do. But it only takes a $1 bill to create a slippery snake or a slinky spider or a shirt for your kid’s pet mouse. Learn the fine ancient Japanese art of origami with a dollar bill while on a conference call that seems to have no end.
People always celebrate success, but they don’t give enough credit to really creative failure. Thank goodness, then, for The Fail Blog, a photographic tribute to failures big and small. Don’t look at this site in the office. Your colleagues will wonder why you’re laughing so hard. And don’t, under any circumstances, view it while you’re drinking milk, if you know what I mean…
You’re probably familiar with the Darwin Awards, a citation bestowed by no one in particular that salutes “the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it.” Basically, they’re examples of people killing themselves in incredibly stupid ways. This site has a list of more than 300 Darwins, all supposedly verified. If you fundamentally trust people to do the right thing, this site will knock your expectations down a peg.
The capacity for private and government organizations to come up with strange and confusing signs never ceases to amaze. In my home area of Boston, there’s a section of Route 128 in which two adjacent signs indicate that you’re going south and north at the same time! Your Daily Dose of Rad has collected photos of 27 of the strangest signs you’ll ever see. And I’m sure they only scratched the surface.
If you think you’ve got a rough commute, check out this site with pictures of the world’s worst intersections and traffic jams to get an idea of what a bad day really looks like.
And the next time you’re in China, Bolivia, or Russia, you might want to avoid these highways. This website lists the most dangerous roads and trails in the world, and some of these photos and maps are hair-raising. Just don’t say you weren’t warned!
Woot.com has a unique retail business model. The company stocks only one product at any given time — deeply discounted — and inventory changes every 24 hours. Customers wait eagerly for each day’s new offering to be posted at midnight and then debate the merits and costs in active discussion forums. One thing I love about Woot is its style. The voice is hip-snarky and just satirical enough to compensate for its sometimes rude style. “We love to hear from our angry, disappointed, and betrayed fans!” its contact page shouts. This company knows how to manage a community and its customers absolutely love it.
The idea behind PostSecret is simple. People send in anonymous postcards that reveal a personal secret in a novel and original way. This blog has been around for years, yielding a couple of books and a fanatical following. It satisfies the inner voyeur in all of us while also laying bare the human condition in ways that range from hilarious to heartbreaking.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has a web site called ready.gov that provides advice on how to prepare for an emergency. It’s a valuable resource, but some of the graphics that it uses to illustrate its points are hilariously ambiguous. Several parody sites have sprung up to offer alternative interpretations of the government’s intentions. A particularly funny one is here.
Are you addicted to market research? Then prepare to waste hours on BuzzDash. This site lets members create survey questions about every imaginable topic and post them on their blogs and websites. The results are aggregated on BuzzDash, which provides never-ending (and no doubt statistically suspect) snapshots of the minds of the Internet public. I predict that 98% of my readers will love it.
Here’s why you should never give an unrehearsed demo to a journalist. An executive showed off a new gadget to The Boston Globe’s Scott Kirsner, but the demo went so badly that the exec later posted an apology and explanation on YouTube. Kirsner tells the story and links to the videos on his blog
Guinness World Records launched an online community, which is very cool. But the release that went out on PR Newswire spelled Guinness with one “n” in all the URLs. As a result, every link led to a squatter site. Doh!
This is science, darn it! We’ve all occasionally stacked coins together to see how high we could build a tower, but the contributors to this coin-stacking site have elevated the pastime to high art. There are hundreds of photos here of intricate towers created out of nothing but coins and poker chips – and not a drop of glue in sight!
Sam Blomberg was always fascinated by the ways in which people dressed up their mailboxes, so he put up a Web page and posted a few photos of his favorites. Visitors apparently liked the idea, because the 1.8 million of them who have stopped by have contributed hundreds of photos of their favorites, too. You can see the whole collection here.
File this under the category of “creative people with too much time on heir hands.” This slide show of transparent screen savers will amaze you with its precision and photo imagery magic. These are not
Not fun this week so much as doing something nice for the planet. Freecycle.org is an organization that arranges for unwanted household goods to be distributed to people who really want them instead of dumped in a landfill. It’s like Craigslist, only everything is free. So next time you have an old utensil, appliance or item of furniture to get rid of, sign up for this service and offer it to someone who needs it. The cost is $0 and you’ll be amazed how quickly it works. I gave away an old toaster last week that was destined for the garbage can and now I’m hooked!
Buddy Greene is the Yo-Yo Ma of the harmonica, and in this amazing clip from a Carnegie Hall concert, he will change forever your impressions of the capability and range of this tiny instrument.
NorthPole.com presents a wealth of Yuletide activities for young and old alike. Send a letter to Santa, send e-cards to friends and family, play games and monitor Santa’s Christmas Eve progress via Norad. This site is a holiday institution and should be on everyone’s bookmark list at this time of year.
Ever wished you could create your own warning labels to print and paste onto your friends’ stuff? Well, now you can.
Googlewhacking is an addictive pastime in which people try to come up with two-word phrases that return just one result on Google. Every spoonable carpetbagger and aquarium rejectivist should try it. Warning: you can waste hours on this!
Mainframe – The Art of the Sale has Big Blue poking fun at what used to be its flagship product. Yes, this really is from IBM.
