Sexcams without sex, literal radiohead and a wallet that screams at you and calls your mommy
All that, and 7 other ways to waste your time this weekend
This week we learned that our government lacks the tech chops to make a functional health-care web site — but has the tech chops to monitor the phone calls of heads of state. Reconciling those ideas is precisely the sort of enterprise we avoid at the Procrastinaut Tumblr ,where @gilbertjasono, @danielwbean, and I gather intel on the best diversionary wonders and amusements in the virtual world, all week long. Here are this week’s highlights, plus a few bonus items. Enjoy. (Oh, and follow the Tumblr here).
1. Hot Stuff
Here’s a fire-breather captured with a 24-camera GoPro array. Don’t try this at home. But maybe try it at work? Anyway, if you missed our story about the rise of GoPro, it’s here.
2. Who Said That?
Kyle McDonald and Lauren McCarthy present FriendFlop, “a browser extension for Chrome that scrambles the identities on your Twitter or Facebook timelines.”
More here: “Let’s face it, unique individual identities are so last year.” (Previously on Yahoo Tech: McDonald’s Social Roulette project.)
3. Connect The Dots
If you’re an iPhone 5c person, then here’s a game that exploits those dotty cases: Tap the holes in a Connect Four-like competition with a friend. Video demo of Flipcase, here.
4. Radioheads!
Delightful series of illustrations by Toni Demuro. Via Ghost In the Machine.
5. No, Seriously, What The Hell Is In Your Wallet?
Completely ridiculous money-saving concept: A wallet that creeps away when you reach for it — and cries out for help if you catch it. And if you do catch it, it will automatically call your mother's phone as a last resort.
6. Super Cut, Analog-Style
Very cool stop-motion animation made from laser-engraved woodblocks. Via Boing Boing.
7. Safe For Work
This site displays sexcam feeds — but only when the “performer” is absent. Use your imagination? Via Prosthetic Knowledge.
8. Mayor Bloomberg: Do Something About This Visual Blight!
New York subway signs remade in comic sans. Via The World’s Best Ever.
9. Dream Products
Steven M. Johnson’s “whimsical/strange invention-cartoon” design fictions have received heaps of praise (here’s a particularly good overview), so we’re excited to learn that he’s published Public Therapy Buses, Information Specialty Bums, Solar Cook-A-Mats and Other Visions of the 21st Century: Second Edition, Unabridged, with around 100 additional illustrations that weren’t in the original.
10. Get Moving
And finally: Don’t even worry about your boss catching you watching Raquel Welch’s Space-Girl Dance. You’ll get a raise.
Follow Procrastinaut.Tumblr.com for breaking news of the weirdest and the coolest collisions of technology with design, art, robots, hacks, science, games, music, pop culture, animation, current events, illustration, lulz, space-girl dances, and other stuff I can’t think of right now. Every day.
