Trawling The Net

Bizarre Websites On Which You Can Kill Time With StyleBy Julia MayMay 25th, 2010Design42 Comments AdvertisementModern Web-building technologies allow designers to realize their most daring and creative ideas. Enhanced interactivity and a remarkable visual appearance can be achieved by means of such tools as Flash, JavaScript and Papervision3D, to name just a few. These strengths usually impress and entertain visitors and thus are often used for conceptual artistic presentations and promotional campaigns.In this post, you’ll find a collection of amusing websites that, by combining unconventional (and sometimes bizarre) ideas and clever JavaScript and Flash effects, will entice you to play on them for an embarrassing long time.[Offtopic: By the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has a mobile version? Try it out if you have an iPhone, Blackberry or another capable device.]

The Wisdom of the Hive: Is the Web a Threat to Creativity and Cultural Values? One Cyber Pioneer Thinks So Jaron Lanier rails against the social trends being fostered by the Internet--in particular its power to stifle creativity and grant anonymity as well as encourage groupthink and a lynch-mob mentality

The good people at Flowing Data uncovered this old graphic which they dubbed the "Engineer's Guide to Drinks." The name's fitting: unless you're an engineer these diagrams will probably leave you more frustrated than inebriated.

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur ’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. 2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian. 3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still. 4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption. 5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work. 6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery. 7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering. 8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart. 9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie. 10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. 11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it. 12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. 13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, “You stay here; I’ll go on ahead.” 14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me. 15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: “Keep off the Grass.” 16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, “No change yet.” 17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion. 18. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large. 19. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. 20. A backward poet writes inverse. 21. In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes. 22. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion. 23. Don’t join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects.

It’s easy enough for anyone to knock up a CAD model, but if they want to print it in 3D, they need to either lay out a lot of money for a 3D printer or find a local print shop who will do the work for them. Hewlett Packard wants to change all of that: just as their inkjet and laser printers are ubiquitous in consumer homes, HP wants to branch into affordable mainstream 3D printing

Click on this link.  Directions are in the small box in the UL corner.  Several thousand user-submitted results are stored in the gallery (where the most recent submission is entitled TYWKIWDBI...)

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