Geek culture

I have to confess that I'm not among the nearly 200 million viewers who have indulged in YouTube's most-watched video of 2011: Rebecca Black's "Friday" music video.

Hold on a sec, I'm going to go check it out... OK, I'm back. Someone, please get it out of my head. It hurts.

According to YouTube's list of the most-watched videos of 2011, the runner-up for most-watched vid of belongs to a four-legged creature. "Ultimate Dog Tease" features a talking pooch being teased by an owner listing a variety of tantalizing meats. That one racked up almost 75 million views.… Read more

On the way to our digital world, a strange thing happened--analog became cool again. How else can you explain something like Twitter-by-post?

The idea is simple, the execution not so much. Freelance writer Giles Turnbull decided to take his tweets offline by responding to his Twitter feed using physical postcards. He laid out the mechanics of the experiment--done with the help of about 15 "volunteers" from among his Twitter followers--in The Morning News:… Read more

I'm a little conflicted about the 1960s "Batman" show.

On one hand, it was a campy show that has given us more than 40 years of lame headlines with Biff! Bam! Pow! any time there's a comic-book-related story.

On the other hand, there's Julie Newmar.

Same thing goes for Lego. I love building stuff with them (sometimes I let my kids help me, too), but I'm not so wild about their tendency to turn into caltrops when I'm walking around barefoot.

But if you mix Lego and Batman, it's like alchemy. The Lego Batman video game was a hit at our house, so I have a feeling this video will be, too. Thanks to 15-year-old French-Canadian animator and YouTuber "LGFB," we can enjoy the opening sequence to "Batman" as nature intended: in Lego form. … Read more

Deciding on a tattoo pretty much means you're stuck with an image for life. To combat staleness, Fred Bosch chose a tattoo that will never look the same twice.

Bosch had a QR code inked onto the inside of his forearm. Scanning it is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get.

The code may pop up with a GIF of a couple of headbangers swinging their hair around, or a recent tweet, a phrase, a video, or a weather report. Bosch calls it the first-ever random tattoo.… Read more

Trendsetting fashion site The Sartorialist be damned! Everyone knows the geeky guys featured on Nerd Boyfriend dress much, much classier.

And now it looks like the geeky girls will get their own chance to stumble strut down the virtual runway too.

Hubba hubba: Nerd Girlfriend has arrived!

Debut "cover girl" Gilda Radner is somewhat surprisingly not in Lisa Loopner garb, but then, that's one of the things we've always liked about Nerd Boyfriend: in addition to nailing the thick-rimmed stereotype in spot-on but unexpected ways, NBF is very good at offering up a nerdy revelation or two.

In part that's because the site doesn't limit "nerd" to the tech-, science-, or intellectually oriented. And we agree: a nerd is a nerd--and though we might not always be able to define the term with slide-rule precision, we know one when we see one.… Read more

Welcome to the first of many Yuletide episodes from The 404 Podcast! We''l be publishing these podcasts, videos, and rerun episodes until we begin our block of live shows from CES, starting January 10, 2012.

First up is a recap of the year in television and film, so join us as we wrap up some of the best (and worst) things we saw on-screen in 2011.… Read more

It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.

That's a quote from the movie "This is Spinal Tap," but it could just as well apply to the Sphero, a new high-tech, $130 robotic ball that's well, either pretty stupid or pretty clever, depending on how you look at it. (We first encountered Sphero at CES 2011.)

Let's start with the clever. The concept of wirelessly controlling a ball and steering it around with your smartphone is certainly intriguing, and people's initial reaction to seeing Sphero in action is usually a mix of curiosity and a bit of awe. "Wow, that's cool," is a frequent observation. … Read more

Google has hidden a special holiday "Easter Egg" that turns your screen into a winter wonderland.

Simply search for "let it snow" on Google and prepare yourself for an HTML5 blizzard--actually, it's more like a few flurries. The cool part comes after a few seconds, when your screen "frosts over" and your cursor can be used to trace messages or doodles like a finger against a window on a chilly day.

It might not quite have the wow factor of Google's famous "barrel roll" bonus, but it's bound to … Read more

Plenty of photographers have tapped Google Street View for imagery.

Doug Rickard travels the byways of the U.S. via Street View to find images that, in the words of the Museum of Modern Art, "comment on poverty and racial equity in the United States, the bounty of images on the Web, and issues of personal privacy."

Michael Wolf became a flashpoint for controversy when his project "A Series of Unfortunate Events" received kudos from the World Press Photo competition--could Wolf's Street View-based approach truly be called photojournalism?

And Jon Rafman, discussing his own Street View work, has cited "hard-boiled American street photography," Depression-era Farm Securities Administration photos, and the work of famous "decisive moment" photojournalist Cartier-Bresson, among other things.

Aaron Hobson, however, seems less concerned with the documentary and journalistic potential of Street View images. Hobson doesn't like his Street View images served raw. He likes to cook them a little.… Read more