Outside the box thinking

I'm not sure how I feel about doing an ad for an ad for a product, but here's something pretty cool.  Besides, this whole blog is one huge set of ads for Google products, so I should get over myself.

Nice creative use of YouTube:

This post was brought to you by YouTube (a Google product, owned by Google).

YouTube gamefoolery

To play the Grand Theft Auto and FIFA-type games these days, you need to have genetically modified hands with eighteen fingers.  At least.  And then you need to be one of those lucky people with a few extra eyeballs, to keep track of everything that's happening on-screen.

Now, in the first interactive YouTube game, that gameplay complexity has been pushed to a whole new level of rock-hardness. Have a go, but be warned. You're unlikely to be ready or to cope.  Your fingers are going to bleed with the speed that you need:

(you may need to double-click to play it, within YouTube)

Actually, it's quite charming really.  If that doesn't sound too patronising.  Do you know what patronising means?

Anyway, here's a significantly more surreal interactive YouTube game, that's closer in spirit to the breakthrough classic Dragon's Lair that I wasted all my pocket money on back in 1927.

Google Maps moves in mysterious ways

A rather contrasting use of Google Maps here, versus the last post. But I'm confused.  As a devoutly atheist liberal Obama supporter, what do you think - should I support a Pray For Sarah Palin initiative?    

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.  Actually, yes I do.  Sniff.

Pot plot

If you're in the police, then please stop reading now.

OK, good.  That should do it.  I would hate to be the one to spoil the fun for thousands of college kids.

Potlocator uses Google maps to show you where you can get marijuana.  

How did these dudes stay focused enough to actually make this?

In no way do I condone this appalling atrocity, or the taking of any illegal drugs whatsoever.  On a completely unrelated matter, I need to go now because I'm really hungry.

Foreign places suck

We all love to splurge 52 weeks of hardly earned cash to spend 2 weeks a year getting mugged, skin cancer and diarrhoea.   Beats working, right? 

Well, just in case you're mad enough not to want all that, there's help at hand.

Mike Moran has used Google Maps to create a World Atlas of Disappointing Holidays.

He has also written a book called Sod Abroad.

They say that planning a holiday is half the fun.  Well, why not plan two holidays and go on neither of them?  You'll get one full holiday-worth of fun, and save yourself all the cash.  

Giant hide and seek

Growing up in Britain, and being a million years old, I never really had the presumably hilarious and endless fun offered by 'Where's Waldo'.  We had to make do with throwing stones, because even sticks weren't invented back then.

Anyway, here's a big new twist on the wonderful world of Waldo.

Melanie Coles is a web designer who 'hid' a huge painting of Waldo on a rooftop somewhere in Vancouver (and later, another one in San Francisco), to be found on Google Earth.

 

Attention all school night boozers

Let's say you were out drinking one night, reached a very advanced state of refreshment, rolled home at 4am, then got up three hours later to go to work. Chances are you'll be craving a bit of glorious shut eye on the train.

Well, someone has created a pretty cool iPhone app to help, using Google Maps.

It's called iNap.

You plot your destination on Google Maps, and the iPhone will use GPS to sound the alarm and rouse you from your slumber, just before you get there. Sure, you'll still need to drink four Red Bulls and grab naps in the toilet cubicle throughout the day, but at least you won't have your pay docked for being late.

Hi-res walkabout

Mapjack uses Google Maps and borrows just ever so slightly massively heavily from Street View.  Only, this is Street View after laser eye surgery... the image quality is amazing.  Only a few places have been snapped so far, but it is well worth clicking here and taking a stroll over The Golden Gate bridge.  

Eggs not so easy

Good morning sir, how would you like your eggs?

Oh, about 90 feet wide and served on concrete, please. 

Yum.

Henk Hofstra is a Dutch artist who likes to use a fairly big canvas.  So big, in fact, that he creates it to be best viewed on Google Earth.

Surreality show

You thought Google art was when leprechauns are drawn into the logo on St Patrick's Day, right?  Well, yes, but in addition, Jeremiah Palecek is an artist who has used Google stuff quite a bit to inspire his work.

Last year he created a gallery of images by using a Czech to English dictionary, Google Images and dice.  Yeah, like we haven't all seen that a million times.

More recently he has created two YouTube-centric projects.  In the first, he creates pop surrealism paintings of famous YouTube moments.  Like the not-at-all-to-be-laughed-at Tom Cruise Scientology video:

Or the splurgetastic: Coke-mentos thing:

Secondly, he has a YouTube channel (called Pothead Pundit) where he invites people to tell him what to paint.  Here are some of the results:

We like him on this blog.  He can come again.

Ethical cleansing

Never let it be said that rich people don't give back to their communities.

In a tale that warms the cockles of the heart, people swimming in cash are now opening up their swimming pools to the great unwashed.  Read it and weep, here.

It's good work you do, people, it's good work you do.

Well, there's good news, and there's good news

News isn't news unless it's miserable.

Economic meltdown, climate disaster, genocide and global poverty.  THAT's what we want from our news.  Nobody wants to hear uplifting chronicles of kaleidoscopic optimism.  The Pollyannas of this grisly world are mere fictional confection.

No news is good news, right?  Wrong, according to Google News (well, a reskin from Fugue).

Earth Sandwich, Anyone?

This is from a few years ago, but it's a funny enough use of Google Earth to deserve another airing.

What's the biggest sandwich on planet earth?  Why a planet earth sandwich, of course.  Pieces of bread laid down at opposite ends of the planet.  Here's the zefrank movie.

And here's the Google Earth app to find the polar opposite of where you are right now.

This reminds me of the wonderfully ludicrously hilariously pointless app that lets you find out where you would pass through if you walked in a straight line around the world.  Useful for crows.

Disneyworld For People Haters

It's great that people are starting to render 3D buildings within Google Earth (e.g. with Sketch Up).  Great possibilities.

There are various YouTube clips of the Disneyworld world that Disney have created.  I like this version best because it has the 'It's A Small World Music' in French, for some reason.  Makes it a bit weirder. Shame there's no virtual Donald Canard or Mickey Souris.

What's great about this is that when I have kids, I can just sit them in front of this instead of taking them to Florida, and spend the money I save on drugs and hookers.

Baby Retard Poodle

Funny:

http://www.searchenginerapbattle.com/

Treadmill 2.0

OK so this is a post about running naked through the streets of Tokyo.  Come on, we've all been there.  Well now you can do it with fewer people pointing at you and laughing, with you insisting that it's really cold.

This is a mashup between Google Street View and the Wii Fit, that allows you to run round a city from the comfort of your own boudoir:

Pretty crude at this stage, but it could be the start of something amazing.  How about linking a real bike up to the Tour de France Google Maps app:

That way you wouldn't have to be seen in public wearing lycra.

Good Chemistry

In case you didn't catch it, here's the Chemical Brothers' Midnight Madness Google Earth video.  They got their fans to upload video clips and photos, geo-tagged on Google Earth, and themed around 'midnight madness'.  

So the fans created the band's video.  Pretty innovative.  Or lazy.

Google Omniscience

Oddly interesting:

http://www.whatgoogleknows.com/index.html

But do you think Google knows what whatgoogleknows knows about what Google knows?  Who knows?

Google Earth Got Game

You're setting yourself up for a fall by prefacing something with 'here's a pretty cool thing'.  But what the hell.

Here's a pretty cool thing.  It's a Google Earth/Sony Playstation mashup.

Yes, I know, this came out a few weeks ago, but I'm populating this blog from scratch, and I love this thing too much to leave it out.  This is just the start.  I want to see a London version where the whole crowd just stop at the nearest pub.