Smile Though Your Day Is Crumbling...

Admittedly, it's not really easy to flash a smile when you're in the middle of a chaos, like working inside a train station. But for people in Japan, not smiling is almost a crime! And because of that (coupled with classic Japanese ingenuity), they created the Smile Scanner. I am betting it has the same principle/technology behind the Smile Shutter function of the newer Sony Ericsson mobile phones and Sony Cyber-shot digital cameras, wherein it actually looks for your smile. Only then will you be able to click.

So why is smiling a prerequisite in the Japanese train system?

The Freakonomics section of New York Times Online tells readers:

Japan’s Keihin Express Railway Co. has set up “smile scanners” at 15 of its stations, where railway employees have their smiles assessed by software in the hopes of perfecting a customer-friendly look.

However, BBC reports that it's not really a compulsory thing:

Some of the busiest train stations in the world have installed computerised 'smile scanners' to help employees deliver a better service.'

Well, forcing people to smile is really something. But if it's for the sake of achieving satisfactory customer feedback, then let's all hold a peace sign, smile, and say "kawaii!!!"

*Image aggregated from Destination360.

**Parts of news article courtesy of BBC and NYTimes.

Ford Automobile's "Rear-view" Message

Wow. One look at this Ford ad and I get it! Fantastic messaging. I hope soon every automobile company will employ this feature on their cars. It will help reduce the number of deaths caused by accidentally backing a vehicle over an innocent kid playing by the driveway.

Copy:

Ford Expedition Wth Rear View Camera.

*Image aggregated from WPP and is copyright by ad agency JWT.

The Ten Commandments of Facebook...

...and that's according to TremendousNews! This list is hilarious so you may want to check it out. This one really cracked me up:

7. I will not make my profile picture a picture of myself when I was a baby.
Yeah, you were an okay-looking kid. There’s nothing grotesque about you, which is disappointing. But all kids look the same and you’re old now. Stop trying to recapture your fleeting youth by pretending you’re six again. Also, I refuse to engage in a serious wall-to-wall conversation with an eight year-old boy in a sweater-vest sitting on a staircase. Why do all baby pictures take place on a staircase?

Read the rest of the commandments by clicking here.

More hilarity at TremendousNews.

Parts of article/content aggregated from TremendousNews; Image aggregated from Lonewolflibrarian. Please contact them for commercial use of their content.

How To Freak Out Your Neighbors

No, the image isn't playing tricks on you. That seemingly "ghostly" figure in the middle of the woods is really a sculpted wire mesh. If you want your own scare piece, click here for the step by step instructionss on making one. :-) Perfectly for Halloween--and it's fast approaching!

Boo!

Image aggregated from Vision02.

An iPhone Lost Is A Life Lost...

This is just sad.

I can understand the strict security measures with new product releases. But I don't think it has to end this way:

SHENZHEN, China — When a closely guarded prototype of a new Apple iPhone went missing at a huge factory here two weeks ago, an internal investigation focused on a shy, 25-year-old employee named Sun Danyong.

Mr. Sun, a college graduate working in the logistics department, denied stealing the iPhone. But he later complained to friends that he had been beaten and humiliated by the factory’s security team. On the night he was questioned, he sent an anguished text message to his girlfriend.

“Dear, I’m sorry. Go back home tomorrow,” he wrote, according to a message she later posted online. “I ran into some problems. Don’t tell my family. Don’t contact me. I’m begging you for the first time. Please do it! I’m sorry.”

Soon after, in the early-morning hours of July 16, Mr. Sun apparently jumped to his death from the 12th floor of an apartment building in what his employer, Foxconn Technology, says was a suicide.

Apple and Foxconn, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of consumer electronics and a major Apple supplier, issued statements last week expressing sorrow for the death. Foxconn said it suspended one security officer, pending a police investigation, and that the company was now considering counseling services for its employees.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Parts of the article aggregated from NYTimes.com

What?! No two raindrops are alike?!

Well, not that I'd be surprised. Being a hobbyist photographer who loves macro photography at its finest, I have always known that raindrops vary in size and shapes. It's just that simple for me. But some scientists think otherwise :-) They have finally figured out the science behind the variations on size and shapes of these raindrops:






To read the rest of the story on how they were able to prove that fact, click here.


Fantastic! Now I love raindrops more than ever!


Image and parts of article aggregated from Dailymail. Check out the comments section of the article, some are just too witty not to notice :-)

The Paper Castle

The picture definitely looks like an aerial shot of a grand, uber-lighted castle somewhere in Europe. But it's a castle made of paper--hand made craft that took four years to complete! That's like graduating in high school! But I must say, I am amazed at the outcome of this project.

Tokyobling takes us to this amazing creation through photos taken from the gallery. Click here to view more of this paper castle.

Image aggregated from Tokyobling.

Classroom Stripper

Now that's what I call "specialized education"! :-D


716 comments and counting, this photo's definitely a winner at Failblog.org :-)

We Choose The Moon

A friend of mine sent me a link to a very very very superly interactive site that lets users (as in, users around the world) see the real-time recreation of Apollo 11's trip to the moon (which happens to be John F Kennedy's ultimate dream). Well, it's happened, and We Choose The Moon is letting us experience the ride, first hand!

Do check the site out by clicking here--best viewed in Firefox. Please note, though, that optimal site experience is best achieved with a stable internet connection.

To the moon and back! :-)

The Energy Giant

Heart-warming short clip/tv ad about this gentle giant who toys around with earth's energy sources. And the giant looks a bit like Shrek!

The ad's tagline says: It can be so easy to make big things happen. When you're a giant.




Video source from Youtube user duccnguyen. Please contact rightful owner for the use of the video.

As If They Never Really Left Us

What would be the best way to remember your dearly departed loved ones?

By wearing jewelry with pieces of their human remains! But save yourself the panic attack because we're not talking gore stuff here. Anna Schwamborn, a design student, has created a range of jewelry containing post-mortem memorial pieces which include hair and cremated ashes taken from a corpse. (See sample below)


According to Schwamborn herself:

The objects are supposed to be worn close to the body of the mourner symbolizing a lasting physical connection between two individuals even after death. This collection is supposed to remind the wearer on the fragility and appreciation of life and most importantly, acting as a keepsake.

To see more of Anna Schwamborn's "everlasting" jewelry, click here.

This would probably make interesting conversations at cocktail parties.

Images aggregated from Dezeen.

Webcams for Music Video

Here's a very interesting music video from Sour. Sour is a Japanese post-rock band formed in spring 2002 by hoshijima (gut guitar/voice), Sohey (eub/bass), KENNNNN (drums/toys). The video for their single 'Hibi no Neiro' (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album 'Water Flavor EP' was made with the help of their own fans. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, of which many are from outside of Japan. Dig this: each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam.

So how did low-res webcam videos made this particular music video very interesting? Well, watch and see:




If you can't view it here, try clicking on this link.

Video source from Youtube. Video copyright by Sour's music label. Please contact them for commercial use of the material.

Found at Adverblog.

The Other Use of Personal Computers

For this anonymous guy, the other use for his personal computer or PC (that's running on Windows XP, if I may add), is to fry an egg, sunny-side up!

If you don't believe me, check out his step-by-step instructions with images by clicking here. Apparently it took him 11 minutes to wrap up the cooking. It's a no-brainer, actually, given how most hardware units fire up after three or four hours of running major applications, but I still don't think it's something I'd promote, so careful careful, guys.

Mac users, you must be all cheering :D

Image courtesy of the author.

The Skating Babies

With almost 2.7 million views on Youtube, this viral video for Evian is certainly one of the latest buzz on the net.

So is it cute, or creepy? ;-)

They remind me of that dancing baby in Ally McBeal!

The WayBack Machine

That may have sounded like news about the recent development on time travel technology, but really, The WayBack Machine is simply an archive of web pages, images, and even music! I personally find it very interesting because it has kept record of the changes of (most) major

websites on the internet from 1996 to present date. So if you want to remember how your favourite websites looked like in, say, 1997, just type in the url and hit "Take Me Back"!

To try it yourself, click here.

Here are some of the indexed web pages I have uncovered. Hahaha do you guys still even remember the old Lycos? ;-)

Yet Another Michael Jackson Tribute...

...but this time, in a form of flash mob!

Isn't it fantastic just seeing people dance in unison in the middle of a park? I mean, seriously. :-)

What's crazy is how these guys suddenly disperse after the chorus of Michael Jackson's hit song Beat It.

I guess this goes to show just how much people miss the king of pop.

Watch it and enjoy!




If you can't view it here on this page, view it on this link!

Video aggregated from Youtube.

Moonwalking Forever

Michael Jackson's death has spawned online tributes of all sorts during the last two weeks. But this has got to be my current favourite.

Eternal Moonwalk is a tribute site from the creative minds behind Group94 and Mortierbrigade for Studio Brussel. The site showcases uploaded videos of people from different parts of the globe, all moonwalking to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean beat sampler. Fantastic project, really, so check it out by clicking here!

Upload your video as well, if you can do moonwalk better than them :D

Would You Bite Into This Apple?

All I know is that I don't want to bite into anything that's sleeping or staring at me! :-P

Nice concept and execution--found at Maconlysource image gallery.

Youtube Vigilance

The things that we capture and upload...who knew that one of them will help bring justice to a person who was stripped of human rights in a rally in 2008?

The news from New York Daily News states:

"Victim in one of most popular YouTube "gotcha's" of 2008 sues NYPD for $1.5 million

The biker who was shoved by an NYPD officer during a "critical mass" rally last year, only to find a video of the incident uploaded to YouTube by a bystander, is now suing the NYPD for $1.5 million. Though the officer originally claimed that the biker had provoked the altercation during the rally, the video - which racked up over 2 million views - demonstrates otherwise."

The victim's lawyer was quoted as saying that "nobody would have cried foul if it wasn't for that video."

Here's the controversial video, which got 2 million views. 2 million views just can't be wrong, you know.

Parts of news aggregated from New York Daily News

Video source from Youtube

Linked from Citizentube

8 Bit Music

Are you an 80s child who grew up loving computer games like Goonies and Super Mario? Or were you a Game Boy slave in the 90s? If yes then you'd probably have a place in your heart for 8 Bit Music, otherwise known as chipstyle sounds. Can't figure out what I'm talking about? I couldn't embed the song file here but you can click here to listen to the music sampler. Prepare to be taken back to the good old days...

The song is produced by Random, and you can view his artist profile by clicking here. He is one of the 11 crew of this cool website 8BitPeoples, where their ultimate goal is to "just have fun".

According to the website:

"The 8bitpeoples first came together in 1999 as a collective of artists sharing a common love for classic videogames and an approach to music which reflected this obsession. Our primary interests were to provide quality music for free and most importantly to have fun."

But then you've got to see it to believe it. So go check the site.

Random also has his own website so don't forget to check it out: Random.se

Image aggregated from 8BitPeoples.

Random's music sampler hosted at 8BitCollective. If you go to the site, you'd be surprised at the large number of music submissions. Darn, I can't believe I almost missed out on this really cool website.

Upside Down Celebrities

Best viewed when drunk! :-P

The images here are from FreakingNews, a website that promotes Photoshop contests...I am not so sure of the prizes, though. Probably just bragging rights to Photoshop Wizardry level. But hey, the stuff there are really good so you may want to check the site out.

I must admit--I'm pretty impressed with the senders' photo editing skills!

So now you know where the images from most funny forwarded emails are taken from! :-)

View the rest of the Celebrities Upside Down gallery by clicking here :-)

Image aggregated from FreakingNews.

Claiming What's Mine

Just for finalization and documentation...

wcduxse6nt

Moving on...

Just Add Letters

In 133tspeak, this probably means a lot to Star Wars fans...

Well, why not just add your own message just for fun? Yoda might just like the message :-)

Create yours by clicking here!

Image courtesy of Star Wars.

Minus The Crash-Bang-Pow!

I couldn't believe it either, but a flash game could actually work without the crash-bang-pow killer synth sounds! If you play Music Catch, the first impression would be it's another one of those Carpal Tunnel Syndrome-inducing games, but it's not. It's so relaxing, you won't even mind if you don't score high points. It's like enjoying a kaleidoscope of different colours and shapes. The music and graphics are just fantastic and they kind of lull you to the point where you just stare blankly at the screen, enjoying the pink, blue, green and yellow objects that float. Definitely not the game to play in the middle of work, but definitely a good source of relaxation after a day's shenanigans.

You actually unlock songs and other options with a high score so yeah, I think it's also a plus to score high on this game :-)

I've embedded the game here on this blogpost but since the game is too big for my page layout, you can only see half of the screen. But at least you get the whole idea why it's nice. Better to just play Music Catch by clicking here!

Game aggregated from Reflexive.com and is copyright by its respective developer.