Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Chris Hadfield is awesome, space is awesome, and everything he does in space is awesome. Proving once again that even the most mundane tasks are transformed into something incredible when performed in zero gravity, here’s Hadfield wringing out a soaking-wet washcloth aboard the ISS.
Not only is the wringing-out part cool, but so is the whole getting-it-wet-in-the-first-place part.
If this isn’t reason enough to find space programs, I don’t know what is.
One of the latest “At Google Talks” Google has shared on YouTube is actually a musical performance. Heathers, the twin sister duo out of Dublin, performed their song “Forget Me Knots” at Google Ireland. It actually took place bac, in September, but Google has just made the video available.
You can debate a politician’s motives, their efficacy, and their morals – but there’s one thing that you can’t debate: They really, truly suck at rapping. You can thank HuffPo for this wonderful compilation of politicians fumbling awkwardly through rap references.
Check it out below for Joe Lieberman on “Slap a ho,” Orrin Hatch on “Hits from the bong,” Representative Rick Keller on LL Cool J, and much, much more:
[via The Huffington Post]
Kickstarter has just announced a new way to explore projects on the site. It’s called “Video Mode” and it’s a “full-screen presentation where you can watch every single live project video”
Video mode is an interesting new way to jump around to various Kickstarter projects. One you enter, you’ll be shown a fullscreen video from a random project. If the video interest you, and you wish to learn more about the project, just click the green “explore this project” button and you’ll be directed to that project’s main page.
Or, if the particular project bores you are just looks plain stupid, you can move on. At this point, you have three options:
One, you can be taken to a project that’s completely different from the one you’re currently viewing. Or, you can find a similar project video by a) geography (something near Evanston) or b) category (something else in Short Film).
“Since Kickstarter launched in 2009, over 75,000 project videos have been uploaded to Kickstarter. From day one, we’ve been blown away by the amazing videos you’ve created — from the singer Allison Weiss setting the standard early on, to the incredible Wes Anderson spoof the Inman Park Squirrel Census produced, and all of the amazing “Oh hey, I didn’t see you there” videos. For a long time we’ve been wanting to find a good way to show these off, so people could explore projects through the medium of video,” says Kickstarter.
Kickstarter launched its first-ever iOS app back in February, and has since announced a couple of milestones including $100 million total pledges to games through the site.
Teehan+Lax Labs has put together a Google Street View “hyperlapse” video. It’s pretty cool:
Google Street View Hyperlapse from Teehan+Lax Labs on Vimeo.
Luckily there are no dead bodies or people having sex featured (though it does go through the imagery pretty fast, so we might just be overlooking them).
All imagery in the video was captured using hyperlapse.tllabs.io. Source code for this can be found here.
Not only is Alison Brie a great comedic actress (Community) and a great dramatic actress (Mad Men), but it appears that she can also do a really good Grumpy Cat.
Watch Brie imitate more popular internet memes below, and accept the terrible fact that she’ll never be your girlfriend.
What did you and your friends do this weekend? These guys successfully performed a 30-person backflip, on skis.
The world record attempt took place in Quebec, Canada. Check it out below (this was their second attempt):
According to the reddit poster, who says that they’re the second from the right in the video, they plan on getting Guinness involved:
“I wasn’t in charge of the whole thing, but I know that they want to try it again more officially next year. We were a bit last minute this year. But Guinness or not, I’m still pretty stoked about how well it worked!” they say.
World champion and future Olympic participant Mikael Kingsbury was a part of the jump, and tweeted about it:
We bet the world record !! 30 back flip hand in hand! Thanks to Mont St-Sauveur!
— Mikael Kingsbury (@MikaelKingsbury) April 14, 2013
Google uploaded a new video about using Apps Script and Android. Arun Nagarajan from the Apps Script team and Adam Koch from Android discuss:
This new ad from Kmart is guaranteed to give you the giggles. Sure, it’s the 8-year-old kid who just farted in church giggles, but it’s ok to give in to your immaturity once in a while, right?
Kmart is advertising that you can ship things right from the store. That means you can ship your pants. While standing in Kmart. So many people have shipped their pants standing in Kmart, that they all join in to make it known.
YES! I SHIP MY PANTS JUST NOW!
I think you can see where this is going.
Not only did Kmart create one of the best ads of 2013 so far, but they also were able to create a ton of social media buzz with the Twitter hashtag #shipmypants
Well played, Kmart.
Very proud to say I sleep with the man who came up with the idea for this Kmart ad 🙂 #IMarriedAnAdGuy #shipmypants m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=I03U…
— Jen Fernicola Ronay (@FernRonay) April 11, 2013
It seems the animators at The Simpsons can’t wait for the final season of Breaking Bad to begin either. On Sunday’s new episode, the long-running show will run a tribute to the AMC new classic in its opening bit.
Check out Marge cooking up some special blue cupcakes, and a special appearance from the Breaking Bad duo.
Google recently held a Google+ hangout sharing tips for improving the user experience on your site, which it uploaded to its AdSense YouTube channel. This week, Google shared the video on the AdSense blog bringing it to our attention.
The video discusses how to better understand your users, increase engagement, and measure the success of changes you make.
Google recently launched Enhanced Campaigns in AdWords, a controversial move in the advertising world. Controversial as they may be, they’re not going away, and Google is encouraging advertisers to upgrade. Either way, upgrades will start happening automatically on July 22.
So if you haven’t gotten your feet wet yet, you may want to pay attention to the webinars on Enhanced Campaigns that Google has been providing. We recently shared one that focused on Google Shopping and Enhanced Campaigns. A new one that Google has provided deals with Enhanced Campaigns on the Google Display Network:
This week, Google announced ad group mobile bid adjustments for Enhanced Campaigns.
Popular recording artist Brandy recently did an At Google Talk discussing “mapping the past, searching the present, and inventing the future” with Googler Dara Wilson.
The talk was part of the Black Googlers Network’s Black History Month celebration, and took place on February 25th.
If you’re a fan of American Psycho, Huey Lewis and/or Weird Al, than this video is for you. Funny or Die put out this pretty great parody of the film’s iconic Huey Lewis scene, cleverly putting Huey in the Patrick Bateman role, discussing the film’s context and Christian Bale’s performance in the manner that Bale discussed Huey and his work. Weird Al does a fine job in the Paul Allen role as well.
Ronan the sea lion knows how to keep a beat. Just turn on some disco or some late 90s Backstreet Boys, and she’ll nod her head and keep time. Incredible.
Here’s what the University of California Santa Cruz’s Pinniped Lab had to say about Ronan:
One of our resident sea lions, Ronan, is the first non-human mammal shown able to find and keep the beat with musical stimuli. This challenges earlier evidence from humans and parrots suggesting that complex vocal mimicry is a necessary precondition for flexible rhythmic entrainment.
All I know is that she’s a much better dancer than I am.
If you’re like me, you’ll never get tired of idiot criminals doing idiotic things. This bag thief definitely fits the bill, running through a glass door at full speed in his attempt to flee the scene.
According to The Telegraph, what you’re seeing is from Perth, Australia. Our thief was able to make an escape, even after flying through the glass at full speed. According to reports, he had a getaway driver waiting nearby in a stolen car.
Police have apparently released the video in the hopes of identifying the man.
Last month, we told you that YouTube co-founder and former CEO Chad Hurley was cooking up a new video site.
Today, Hurley dropped the first piece of the puzzle in a tweet first spotted by The Verge. The site is called MixBit, and it proclaims that “the future of video is launching soon.”
“YouTube is shutting down. Instead of sitting around, we thought you’d want a new site to not only watch cat videos, but create them…together!” says the site’s landing page. Here, they are referencing today’s YouTube April Fools joke. The prank has Google announcing a shut down of YouTube, so that they can finally select a winner. Yep, that’s all YouTube ever was – one giant contest.
Since @youtube is ending, we’re launching a new video site… Welcome to MixBit.com! @mixbitapp This time it’s not a contest!
— Chad Hurley (@Chad_Hurley) April 1, 2013
That little blip also teases the collaborative focus of MixBit. We don’t know a lot about how the new video site will work, but we do have a general outline thanks to Hurley’s remarks back in March.
He said that MixBit would be ““primarily video-based,” with “flexibility for people to work together and create content.”
Hurley also said that he wasn’t looking to kill YouTube and that “there’s always going to be a place for YouTube.” MixBit will just focus on being a “platform better suited for collaboration.”