April Fools’ Day

Google did its usual array of hoaxes for 2009, this time featuring a panda named CADIE (the world’s first Cognitive Auto-Heuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity) who showed up everywhere! For one, Google’s Image Search was updated to include a message from CADIE featuring some of her favorite search suggestions. She likes searching for rainbows, bunnies, LOL cats and unicorns.

Trent Reznor continued to rip on Chris Cornell’s latest album with today’s announcement of a new full-length NIN album Strobe Light, produced by Timbaland. The inclusion of the Windows blue screen of death was a nice touch.

I want this to be real: “Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse Are Up to Something Really Cool.” So much name-dropping: “It involves the Flaming Lips, Julian Casablancas, Iggy Pop, James Mercer, and David Lynch. Yes, David Lynch.” Seems a bit too awesome to be valid news, but I can dream.

Here’s a nice compilation: “April Fool’s Day pranks around the Web.”

Self-publishing

Back in reality, here is a useful overview of different self-publishing services: “6 Ways to Publish Your Own Book.” The six services described are Lulu, Blurb, Amazon’s CreateSpace, CafePress, WeBook and Xlibris. And here’s one more: “Myebook: Self-Publish Multimedia Books Online.”

World Expo 2010

The awesome digital cloud skyscraper called “My Dream, Our Vision” was a finalist in Singapore’s recent contest to design a pavilion for the World Expo 2010. Here’s the winning design: “Singapore Pavilion to Orchestrate Urban Symphony at World Expo Shanghai 2010.”

Other amusements

Apparently the Pictures for Sad Children webcomic had its own April Fools-type joke, but randomly unveiled it three weeks ago, when it pretended to be sponsored by Long John Silver’s. Weird.

What is the relationship of these two aliens with pedestrian English names: Roger (the alien from “American Dad”) and Karl (one of the Visitors from “South Park”)? I sense that the fate of the universe hinges on understanding the connection between them.

I like this Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman American Gothic photo.

Here is the first of four new cartoons David Firth made for the Playboy website last year. This one is called TIME and has nothing to do with what Playboy is famous for. Good stuff.

(For the uninitiated: Stanley Donwood is perhaps most famous for producing a lot of Radiohead’s album and promotional art over the years. I love the guy. I received a Fast Track screenprint, inspired by Victorian engravings, for my birthday this year.)

This is cool: Lewis Carroll + scanning electron microscope + Photoshop = Alice’s Adventures in a Microscopic Wonderland.

In other book news: “The New Book Banning.” Here is an interesting quote from the article: “the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute.” (Let us all accept that 1984 was a turning point.)

Why did I briefly have to use iTunes recently for the first time in ages? To acquire these two free items: NPR Music at SXSW 2009 Sampler and an episode of Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic. And because I recently received an iTunes gift card for my birthday.

I have been keeping up with SXSW ‘09 this past week via Twitter, because a bunch of individuals I follow are currently attending in Austin, Texas.

Note: Despite having assisted clients with various social media efforts, I’d been avoiding active personal use of Twitter and Facebook for years because I feared they would be too addictive (and because I have an anti-establishment streak that makes me very skeptical of investing my own creative energy in anything that’s popular . . . perhaps until it becomes so popular that I can’t avoid it, if that makes a ridiculous kind of sense). And I guess I couldn’t hold out any longer. Now, after a week, the addiction has set in. I’m going to try to keep my Facebook/Twitter usage in check.

My Twitter profile is currently an experiment in ambiguous, sometimes nonsensical status updates (that I simply feed into Facebook and embed in this blog). I’m currently following over 60 people (including web developers, designers, artists, musicians, directors and actors). I think I’ve actually enjoyed Steve Buscemi’s Twitter updates the most (I still dislike using the word “tweets” for some reason). WeFollow, a user-powered Twitter directory, is the newest way to find people who use Twitter.

(Check out my previous posts about WebVisions for more social media/web technology talk.)

I guess I’ll end with this: Recently I stumbled upon another LOL site (specializing in WTF) called Picture Is Unrelated. Here’s a sample: In Present Day, You Eat McDonalds.