World Series of Tubing

Yet more Augmented Reality bandwagonism, only this time it's cool because it involves YouTube:

Google Earth Alphabet

Picture researcher Rachel Young found all 26 letters of the alphabet on Google Maps, in just 15 hours.

Click here for the complete A to Z.

Next, I'd like her to tackle the Chinese alphabet.

Hong Kong in Pixels

Here's a shiny thing. Hong Kong as pixel art, on a Google Map. Kind of. Personally, I think this is makes Hong Kong look nicer than it actually is.

One Man Band 2.0

You know those one-man bands you used to see, who played about four instruments at the same time? Well move over old-timers, your 16 instrument e-nemesis is here.

In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative YouTube music and spoken word project, conceived by Darren Solomon. Very nice.

YouTube Addict

Ignacio Pilotto has created a way to turn your boring old 52" high-definition flatscreen TV into a much sexier YouTube window.

Googling Yourself

Here's some more Googling from The Vacationeers.

The first one is about masturbation. Yes indeed. Here's the thing... Googling yourself sounds a bit rude. Do you see?


This one is a little freaky:


And I've saved the best for last:

Let Me Google That For You

Funny. Check out Let Me Google That For You.

Streetview in real streets

Ever thought about making your photos look like they're in Google Streetview? I'm sure we all have at some point. Well, too late. It's been done.

Cable Art

This is an art project by Riley Harmin.

Not much else to say, really.

Go Ogle

The series Go Ogle by photographer Meggan Gould takes the first 100 responses to a Google image search, then overlays those 100 images into a single photographic "average."

So this, as I'm sure you don't need me to tell you, is the Leaning Tower of Pisa:



Interesting project. The same effect can be achieved by going to Pisa and drinking the local grappa.

One Trillion Dollars

It wasn't long ago that the number 'trillion' was considered made up. You know, like gazillion. Well, what with all this economic kerfuffle going on, it has been brought to our attention as a real number after all.

In fact, I get confronted with the term 'trillion' every time I turn on the TV. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard it recently, I'd have enough to pay off the world's debts and thus no longer be confronted with the term 'trillion' every time I turn on the TV.

Anyway, it's no longer an unimaginably large number. You don't even need to imagine it, because here's a site that shows what a trillion dollars looks like (using Google Sketchup).




That's a person in the bottom left corner. This is quite an easy scene for Zimbabweans to imagine. This is what it looks like every time they buy a pint of milk.

Where on Earth is James Bond?

Most of us visit other parts of the world to laugh at the locals. Not so for Bond. James Bond. He visits other parts of the world to kill the locals. Now you can explore all the places he had a license to do so, on Google Earth.

Thematic Maps

Bjørn Sandvik has been creating some pretty shiny thematic maps stuff, based on Google Earth:







And here's a presentation on it:

Using KML for Thematic Mapping

View more presentations from Bjorn Sandvik.

Alice Through The YouTube Glass

Here's a pointlessly wonderful YouTube thing.

This is an Alice in Wonderland version (because Alice in Wonderland needs more kaleidoscopic surreality, right?), but you can create your own here.

YouCube

Consider, if you will, the cube. Loved by Hungarian puzzle makers, sugar companies, office space designers and Picasso. We all love cubes. They would feature in most peoples' lists of their top 3 polyhedra.

Now we have YouCube, to delight right-angle lovers everywhere.

Fruit porn

Here's another use of YouTube interactivity, with annotations. This time, though, it's fruit porn.

Unlike most fruit porn you will have seen, this seems to avoid jokes about melons, plums, nice pears (doesn't work so well written), bananas and 'how do ya like them apples'. A better class of skin flick.

YouTube Aquarium

I'm scared of whales. Seriously. It's a real thing. It's called cetaphobia. Don't laugh.

So I can't bear to look at this use of YouTube.

Shame, because people tell me it's amazing.

Nine Inch Nails

Here's an interesting Google Earth App for the iPhone, if you're a fan of Nine Inch Nails (or even if you're not):

NIN: Access iPhone app walkthrough with Trent Reznor, Rob Sheridan, and special guest Kevin Rose from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.

(best bit is about 5 mins in)

Death of a pixel

The death of one of your own is a devastating thing to experience. Especially when it's one so small.



The Dutch artist Helmut Smits lifted a piece of grass, which represents the size of one dead pixel when viewed on Google Earth.

Spreadsheets Can Be Fun. Seriously.

Collaborative spreadsheet art, using Google Docs.



Come on, admit it, we all wanted to be collaborative spreadsheets artists when we were kids.

Google Landscapes

This is an art project from Fillipo Minelli. More here. But you get the idea.

Old Skool Google Slides

Kevin Van Aelst for The New York Times

Kutiman

Very cool YouTube mash.

Mapping the airways

Two million flights pass through New York's airspace each year. Artist Aaron Koblin used images from his piece, Flight Patterns, to create a Google map of US air traffic over a 24-hour period. Pretty cool. So, a bit like the airline route maps in the back of inflight magazines, only with this you're not being sold Toblerone or a toy aeroplane on a stand.

Giant Markers

Here's a Google Maps art thing from our friend Aram (see post below), up to his old tricks. Very old, in this case. From 2006. Bleeding-edge blogging at its bloodiest.

Google Portraits

OK so this is from a while ago, but I've only just encountered it. Ahead of the curve, as ever. Adam Bartholl is a German artist who's done some pretty cool projects around online intersecting with offline.

The painting above is a Google Portrait, which contains the Google search string of the portrayed person, in encoded form. Taking a picture of it on your phone leads to your phone browser doing a Google search on the portrayed person’s name. The National Portrait Gallery would be a bit weirded out if all their portraits looked like this, but personally I think I look better in this format.

Paper Rocks (with Scissors)

Here are some great data visualizations using paper. I love that 3D Google Map.

YouChoose on YouTube

Interactive YouTube game, based on the Oscars:



Not the first such game I've blogged about. Here are some others.

Google Images for Real

Make your own portable Google Image screen here. Ideal Christmas present. Although it's now January.

Cowboys and guerillas

What do we have here? Why, it's a guerilla campaign for the BilliKid brand. So a 'cowboy' campaign, if you will. Or even if you won't. It unofficially uses the images it co-opts and unofficially uses the Google brand. Do two unofficiallys make an officially?

More can be found here. It says at the bottom of the Compfight page 'respect the rights of content creators'. Oh the irony.