world wide web circa 1995

google is the word of the decade

& 'unfriend' is the word of the year
& 'tweet' is the word of the day
& why does this need to be made official?

inappropro wifi names

everytime i turn on my computer, i am invited to join the following networks:

 

some neighbors i've got here on redfield. as i walk down the street on my way to class, my iphone picks up wifi's such as the dyke palace, doo doo butter, and ape tits. i wish i was kidding. want more? keep scrolling!

cheesy but good visuals

violence gone viral: on the field

it seems as if these have been popping up a lot lately: violent athletes caught on tape.
a few weeks back, a close up caught Brandon Spikes, Florida linebacker, gauging out the eye of an opponent through his helmet (gross, right?!). unfortunately, the video was taken down after the viral nature of it caught wind. but the aggression doesn't stop here.

earlier this week, Elizabeth Lambert, a New Mexico soccer player, was caught on tape taking an opponent to the ground by her hair. catfight?! the video has reached over 10 million impressions with 24,000 comments. numbers say it is on the rise to reach the viral successes of balloon boy and the jk wedding dance. why the sudden success? see for youself, and pray to whomever you deem holy that you never play on the opposing team of this girl.

the ghost of social media

after just a few years, we have all had the opportunity to see the strength and influence social media has had on the world. we have all been exposed to things we would not normally see, experience things we never knew existed, but most importantly reconnect with old friends. how funny is it when someone from your kindergarten class facebooks you or when the boy you used to have a crush on @replies you?! but how about never being able to see updates from that friend again; never being able to see what they are doing, how they are feeling, or who they are with. how do we treat the online profiles of the deceased?

a bunch of us lost a good friend this past summer in Afghanistan. Lance Corporal James Argentine was a U.S. Marine killed in a roadside bomb on August 6, 2009. needless to say, this news broke fast and hard. in fact, many of us heard about it through the social web (status updates, mass messages, etc). how could this happen? why did it have to happen to James? the kid whose religious views on facebook quote "Wu-Tang Financial" (I'm not kidding, see below)

 
seeing friends from high school gather in his memory brought more laughs than sobs as we recollected the jokes he would always pull on those around him.

as time passed, the news of his death became more and more believable as the idea of him not being here settled within all of us. however, just 2 months after his untimely death something reminded us that he is not entirely gone. there is still a presence of James that allows us to communicate with him and let him know what we are doing, how we are feeling, and who we are with: facebook.

for all of James' facebook friends, the social networking site reminded us that it has indeed been a while since we've talked. a new addition to the right side bar upon login let us all know that James is indeed still among us. and while no one necessarily expected a response, a flood of wall posts to James kept popping up on my feed.

the death of another close friend within the same group 2 months later reminded me how fragile life is, but how endless it can be if you have an online presence. how odd and unreal it can be, that someone is present in a virtual aspect of life but not a physical. through memorial groups, wall posts, notes and even twitter lists the spirit and memory of those lost can live on. while some may argue that this is insensitive i would respectfully disagree. because of this, we can relive what their last thoughts were, how they were feeling, and who meant something to them.

James and Berger, we miss you dearly but thank you for everything you've done for us during your short time here on Earth. in just over two decades, you managed to make a difference in many lives, which is something not many can accomplish. only God knows what you could have done with some more time with us. May you two rest peacefully, and please check your facebook often. everyone has some good things to say, including a few wall posts that might make you laugh up there in heaven

Also, I can't write about James and not include this video, definitely brings on the LULZ:

three rowlf moon

only because its the muppets birthday.
and sesame street defines much of who i am today.
and jim henson was a god among mortals.
and i want to buy the 3 wolf moon shirt.
enjoy!

z0mG twitter lists!!!11!!!1!

dear diary, today i made and followed my first twitter list.
for those who know me, you would be able to categorize me as one who is often conservative in most areas. however, once i make a change that i find useful, i often embrace it with vigor. such was the case with recent twitter lists.


@mashable provided the web with an excellent review of how to use it and how one can benefit from it. i, however, am a textual learner and prefer to learn from practice. so far i only made 1 list of all the girls in my sorority who are in the twitterverse for us all to get a thread going. i made it private so no creepos can look in on it and spam my sisters, and i also got a few to follow it as well. operation: success!

although i am still new to it, im excited to learn more of what this new app has to offer and blog my adventures. man, i love twitter 8-)

peace, love, @nicole_hering

y0 dawg, i herd u lyk batman

yo dawg i herd you like batman so i put some jet blasters in yo trunk so you can drive fast while you speed. ok that wasnt funny but this is: some dude (we'll call him wolfgang15 for now) is selling a batmobile on ebay from marietta georgia. surprisingly, it didnt sell for as much as i would have guessed, but its not exactly movie quality. everyone knows the real batman drives a Lamborghini, a Maserati, and a Jeep for off-roading during his leisure hours. the gotham public would not settle for their volunteer police force driving anything of this nature, but i'm sure the full time cops could deal. gotham will be up in flames by midnight with this citizen-created vehicle.





 OK JUST ONE, PLZ?!

OK 1 MOR I SWRZ IT!

google this...

type in 'find chuck norris'
hit the 'i'm feeling lucky button'
or, if you're too lazy to do that, scroll down

holy hashtags: RIP Geocities

raise your hand if you were ever intrigued by having your own homepage in 1999

::admittedly raises hand::

always a fan of the blogosphere, i remember making a customizable 'homepage' via my AOL profile, a blog through xanga, but most ashamedly a site via geocities. i'm not quite sure what it was about, probably good charlotte and how to burn CD's [so badass] but i digress. for hundreds of thousands of us, a piece of our web history died today as yahoo pulled the plug on geocities, one of the first free web hosting services [sadface]

while i spent most of my time creating cartoon dolls for myself and all my friends [dont see right] , i dont think my geocities made much of an impression on the web. tosh.0 posted a loltastic list of things that didnt make much of an impact either, enjoy xx

Goodbye GeoCities: 7 Retro Things We'll Miss Forever

Posted by: Chris Lesinski
 
Months after the initial announcement, today, it becomes official: Yahoo has shut down GeoCities — one of the original kings of free web hosting services.
Now, all of those GeoCities websites (excuse me, "Web Sites") are coming down. It's got me more tear-jerkingly nostalgic than Where The Wild Things Are.
No doubt, GeoCities started a revolution, but many of its ways have gone by the wayside. While Yahoo deploys the virtual demolition crews, let's make one last toast to a few of the relics they'll leave in the rubble.


1) Under Construction GIFs
It's absurd to think that putting up an “under construction” sign on a web page was at one point an idea that was (pardon the pun) “ground breaking.”
Why did people make such a big deal out of being “under construction” in the 90s? It's not necessarily something you want to attract attention to. “Hey! See this fancy animated GIF? That’s just a preview of how impressive my site will be when it’s done.”
Sadly, putting up 37 under construction animations is definitely as impressive as your Family Matters fan page ever got. (Except for when you added the auto-playing MIDI version of the intro song. That was awesome.)
And why the civil engineering motif? Are you trying to tell me that a self-taught HTML geek is like a construction worker? I hope not. Making a website is about the furthest you can get from hard manual labor.
See the other six retro things we'll miss after the jump…
 


2) HTML
The fall of GeoCities certainly won’t be the end of HTML, but those homespun sites definitely hearken back to when HTML was the
hottest sh*t around!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What you are seeing above is the "marquee tag" in action. Yes, there are actually specific tags in HTML for a scrolling marquee or blinking text. For those unfamiliar with basic computer programming, let me explain that: HTML makes it harder to add a hyperlink than to make text scroll horizontally across the page. That’s where priorities were in the Netscape days.


3) Guestbooks
Ah, the guestbook. It was basically the first incarnation of “comments” –- a place to put your name down and provide some feedback. Only, back then, people hadn't quite perfected the espousing of snark and unbridled-racism that make comments so exciting today.
Here is an actual guestbook entry I came across, typical of most guestbook entries: “Very good webpage you have here, and best greetings to all your visitors. You are welcome to visit my webpage.”
Could they be less constructive? Even a “first” or an ASCII middle finger is better.
C’mon! This is the internet. If you want to communicate with random people in other countries just for the sake of it, stick to HAM radio.
(Click here to sign this post’s guestbook!)


4) FAQs
FAQ stands for “frequently asked questions” but it usually turns into “questions I've obviously made up myself to give me an opportunity to provide information about things no one would actually ever ask questions about.”
Let’s say there’s a site about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The first FAQ would inevitably be “What is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?”
Who would ever ask that? And if they were asking that, how did they end up on the FAQ page?  If you run a site about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and users have to go to your FAQ page to figure out what the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are, you're probably not running a very good Royal Canadian Mounted Police website.


5) Webmasters
“Click here to email the Webmaster.”
Okay, but only after you quit pretending your webmaster is a different person than you.
Who came up with the name “webmaster”? It probably went out of style because, for your average computer programmer, it brought back some sour memories from their old Dungeons and Dragons days.
Need more proof it's a silly title?  Try putting it in a modern context.  Can you image someone calling Mark Zuckerberg the webmaster of Facebook or Kevin Rose the webmaster of Digg?


6) Take me to the top
On GeoCities, websites were often just one long single page of unedited drivel and found GIFs. Websites just kept going. Who needs more than one page when the web has infinitely long pages?
So, every three paragraphs, a little hyperlink would offer to take you back to the top. Why? I’ve only made it 20% of the way down your site and you want me to go back to the top to read that same 20% again? I'm not trying to memorize every single track on every Limp Bizkit album: I'm just looking for that one specific song title to include in my death threat to Fred Durst.
By the way, the "take me to the top" section of this post is self-reflexive!  Here's to you, "take me to the top!"


7) Visitor counters
Visitor counters were the most important part of any GeoCities page. In fact, I believe it was an unspoken rule that you could not remove your "Under Construction" banner until you had added a hit counter, thus making your GeoCities page "complete."
Before handling web analytics became a full-time job, the best option to determine your web-traffic was to put a counter right on the page.  These counters had the added bonus of embarrassing your visitors when they would realize how few people had been to your site before them.
But, back then, it didn’t matter that nobody was visiting your site — you could always stuff the ballot by manually changing the number in the settings. If your friend's counter said “114” you could be pretty sure that meant “14.”  Why won't Google AdSense let me do this?
Luckily, even without GeoCites, the visitor counter industry will stay in business thanks, entirely, to eBay.

We’re going to miss GeoCities…
We’ll miss the impossible to remember URLs. We’re going to miss hand-coding our pages in Notepad. We’ll even miss the ridiculously invasive ads. So pour one out for the hosting platform that took “bright lights, big city” way too literally.
GeoCities –- farewell.


via @comedycentral

i cant tell if this is serious, or another 3 wolf moon

speaking of 3 wolf moon, lets revisit the greatness that is the amazon phenomenon...all 1,525 comments of it :) to be quite honest, i've thought of buying the shirt just to write a review except there are some pretty tough ones to top. enjoy!

some of the best 404 pages out there

here are some funny 404 pages template monster blog posted today, these are my favorites

  

anddddd my personal fave:

 

all my base are belong to you <3

because its my dads birthday today, i decided to post some cakes that really tickled my html and fangirl fancy. theyre part of holy taco's 25 hilarious cakes, the other ones really brought on the lulz.

also, just for old times sake:

no intro necessary

and i'd like to take a minute and just sit right there and tell you how i took off in a balloon filled with hot air

this is too good not to post, the prince himself would be proud.



















thanks to @mashable for the pictorial