Faces from arturo castro on Vimeo.
Watch developer Arturo Castro shows off his fancy new FaceTracker API, which allows users to harvest photographs of other folks’ faces, and project them onto their own. Here we see Castro variously becoming Vladimir Lenin, Chairman Mao, and Steve Jobs. Because, why not?
Awesome. Women on the Philippine island of Mindanao, growing tired of the continuing separatist warfare interfering in their everyday goings-on, decided to take matters into their own hands. And by hands, I mean pants. They organized a “sex strike”, which brought a quick end to fighting between the two villages.
Independent and Evening Standard owner, Alexander Lebedev showed up in an interview on Russian TV with fellow super-rich-Russian, Sergei Polonsky last night. Apparently Polonsky came off threatening, because midway through the interview, Lebedev’s KGB training kicked in, at which point he proceeded to beat the Russian oligarch.
I’m not clear on where the time and money required to make these things is coming from. Following last month’s OK Go-themed video, a new The Muppets trailer has been released, this time playing off David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which makes sense given how much common ground the two franchises share.
Because what every good recession needs is a plan to go to space. NASA today announced their new launch vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS), which should be able to take astronauts past the moon to near-Earth asteroids, and eventually to Mars some time in the 2030s.
To demonstrate the lethal speed at which the Texan wildfires are spreading, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department have released footage of the wildfire consuming the 6 000 acre Bastrop State Park – 84% of which has been burnt down as of today, in spite of firefighters’ efforts to save a number of historic Civilian Conservation Corps cabins.
Swedish designers have made a cycling helmet that isn’t totally obnoxious, which is pretty great. It won an award. Understand that no matter how nice this helmet is, it still isn’t okay to wear this guy indoors, because that’s rude. Still, it just won the Index:Award, the largest monetary prize for design in the world.
The president and CEO of Texas Armoring Corporation wanted to put potential customers’ minds at ease about the efficiacy of his company’s bullet-resistant glass. So, like any other sane person, he got one of his employees to shoot at him with an AK-47 while he stood behind the glass.
Foo Fighters don’t actually have to promote anything to get people to shell out cash for their upcoming North America tour, but because they had a fat wad of cash to spend on advertising and some guy in marketing wouldn’t stop saying the word ‘viral,’ they’ve put this video together for you. Take a look.
2oceansvibe reported earlier this week that Ard Matthews had apologised profusely to the nation, via Twitter and subsequent interviews, for his performance of Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, citing nerves. Matthews has posted a video of himself singing the whole national anthem without mistakes online. Click through for the video.
OK Go did a rendition of the theme song from The Muppet Show in their Green Album. Now they’ve made a video; it’s sort of like all of their other music videos, except it features Muppets. I don’t like suggesting that something going viral is a foregone conclusion, but this thing going viral is a foregone conclusion.
Screenshots from a Chinese military propaganda video uploaded to YouTube last month reveal a cyberwarfare app designed to make attacks look like they’re coming from any IP address. In the video, the Chinese government can be seen sending attacks from an IP address belonging to the University of Alabama.
46-year-old Swiss stuntman Freddy Nock is a bigger bad-ass than you are. And he proved it by tight-rope walking. He scaled Germany’s highest mountain — the Zugspitze, which stands 2962 metres above sea level — by walking along its kilometer-long cable car cable. Without a balancing pole.
The National September 11 Memorial is due to open in two weeks, on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks of 2001. The memorial has been under construction for the past seven years; click through for a time-lapse condensation of the construction process. Go on, make your day a little more poignant.
Bon Iver does nice music, and Bon Iver does nice music videos. It’s Friday, it’s raining, you really ought to be at the bar by now anyway, so take a look at their latest offering. Be prepared for big ol’ Icelandic vistas, volcanic terrain, and some kid doing stuff that may or may not pertain to the song lyrics.
And suddenly the real use of online flash-mobs becomes clear: stealing junk from convenience stores. Yesterday, a group of about 28 ‘young people,’ believed to have coordinated online, cleaned out a Maryland convenience store in under a a minute.The police have attempted online identification, but no arrests have been made.
You guys remember Dave Chappelle, right? The comedian. He was sort of a big deal. Then he burnt out on the Chappelle’s Show and disappeared for about five years, staying almost entirely away from the press, until he turned up on San Francisco’s WiLD 94.9 for a morning interview yesterday. Give it a whirl.
They made a robot seagull. It flies by flapping its robot seagull wings. I mean yes this is a huge breakthrough in terms of flight engineering, but even if that’s not your jam, you’re going to want to take a look at the awesome two-metre wide flying robot on display at TEDGlobal.
You’ve probably wondered about this yourself. What would happen if you had access to a backhoe, and a swimming pool, and weren’t constrained by issues like the law, or those stupid labels saying ‘do not operate heavy machinery while intoxicated’? Well you don’t have to wonder anymore; these Hungarian folks have the answer.
Melissa, a Brazilian footwear brand, is doing it right. They created this giant time-lapse video on the side of a building in SãoPaolo using Post-it notes as analog pixels. I’m not totally clear on why this would make me want to buy shoes, but whatever it looks amazing.
You’re going to want to watch this. OK Go have put out a new experimental music video for their new track, All Is Not Lost. You remember that one video with the treadmills? Or with the Rube Goldberg machine? Yeah, this is better than that.
8 bit Invader (maping) from Darkfejzr on Vimeo.
A projection mapping by the Czech designer Pavel Novák turns the façade of a university building into a mash-up of 80’s video games – running the gamut from Pac-Man to Space Invaders. It’s called 8-bit Invader. The initial screening was for the 5th anniversary of Tomas Bata University’s department of visual arts in Zlín, Czech Republic.
You guys remember that VW commercial that ran during the Superbowl with a tiny Darth Vader? Well, Greenpeace does. And they’ve made a spoof follow-up in an effort to call attention to the automaker’s environmental record. Liberal media sentiments aside, it’s cute – click through for a tiny Vader and a Message About The Environment.
Well, I’m told Cars 2 was a little awful, breaking Pixar’s long-running streak of critical acclaim – but I’m willing to write that off as a fluke, because the Brave trailer looks pretty great. Please. Click through. Watch Pixar’s first female protagonist fight a bear at Stone Henge.
So the employees at Legoland California decided to pull a prank on general manager Peter Rochetti, by replacing his Volvo XC60 with a life-sized replica made of these Lego bricks they just had lying around. 201,076 bricks, in fact. It’s hard working at Legoland.
Oh this is just mean. And yes, okay, by mean I probably mean amazing. Prior to the 60th annual Miss USA pageant, held last Sunday in Las Vegas, delegates were asked to field a couple of debate questions – like this one, where they share their views on teaching evolution in schools. Cruel.
Professional Barack Obama impersonator Reggie Brown was invited by the Republican Party to speak at their Leadership Conference in New Orleans over the weekend. Classy birth certificate references and borderline racist jokes ensued, until he was pulled off the stage by a conference official. Come, observe democracy at its high point.
Australian TV presenter, Karl Stefanovich found himself interviewing the Dalai Lama, as one does, and decided that the best thing to do would be to try that “the Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop” joke. Take a look and see how well that worked out for him.
I need a cooler hobby. Over the weekend, Zane Whitmore, a 34-year-old from Seattle, attached himself to a hot air balloon with four piercings across his shoulder blades, and took to the air for a little more than an hour, cruising at just under 3 000 metres. No, I don’t know why either, look at the video.
Perspective-based art is usually a little lame – ‘look, guys, I’m holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa!’ – but this dude pulls it off. Erik Johannson, Stockholm street artist, set up this bottomless pit illusion called ‘Mind Your Step’ in Sergels torg, and let passers-by play around with it. It’s cool.