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YOURTag: Offbeat
Planning a trip can be both fun and, at times, something of a hassle. But there are some new travel startup websites that make planning your next vacation a whole lot less time-consuming and, in some cases, a lot more affordable.
Generally speaking, there are very few things that can do the trick better than a piece of chocolate. Candy distributors have created so many chocolate/peanut butter/caramel/nougat/fruit-filled/toffee combinations that only a true chocolate fiend could want for more, and now there’s a website to answer your cocoa-calling. Chocri.com allows people to actually create their own candy bar from scratch. And yes, it’s as amazing as it sounds.
There’s a new website out there for photo-fanatics (or the easily distracted), that allows anyone with a camera phone and mobile internet service to anonymously upload pictures to their page. Yeah Yeah Yeah is a little bit like a slideshow meets a Facebook newsfeed, in that the site is nothing more than pictures to scroll through, and as new pictures get submitted, older ones get bumped down (and the oldest one disappears into cyberspace).
offbeat, photography //
7:17 AM June 19, 2010
In "And Now There's This," Bill Wasik examines herd mentality and the dissemination of information in the digital age.
“Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi” is a brilliant satire vacillating between ancient and modern worlds and tribulations.
Twitter can be used for fun. For art. For everything. That was demonstrated at the second annual Shorty Awards, an award for innovation with Twitter. Newark Mayor Cory Booker won in the government category; he used his account to help residents learn about snow removal (and lots more).
The idea is a simple one: Grab an old photograph of yourself, and take a new one in the exact same pose. Then submit them for online viewing by people around the world. This idea, billed as Young Me, Now Me, is an unexpectedly moving testament to the power of photography. Many of the images are genuinely emotional, as you see the similarities in people's visages, even if they're many years older, wrinkled, and no longer an innocent kid.
offbeat, photography //
3:09 PM March 3, 2010
Very weird. Genetically modified axolotls (a type of salamander) glow green under a blue light. Beautiful. Mysterious. Strange.
One million: There's something magical and mysterious about the number.
You hear it all the time, but what is it? Can you imagine one million? Can you see one million of anything?
Get ready for a nostalgia-fest, as Anna Jane Grossman's fun and thought-provoking book, "Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By," delivers a series of mini-essays about a wonderfully disparate assortment of ideas, concepts, and products that have gone from being omnipresent to being obsolete (or close to it).
