The Best of Slap Chop: You are going to love my nuts

I am so late on Slap Chop but this very annoying infomercial got what it deserved, it got slapped and chopped. Even massacred. The Slap Chop wave of remixes, edits and spoofs has amassed millions of combined views and this would definitely be my favourite (please hang in there till about 1:15).

Having just seen ABC’s Laurence Leung meet and greet his teen hero ‘Shabba-Doo‘ from Breakin (and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo) made the Slap Chop Mashup even better. But if you are more the wordy type, don’t miss the dub by Jabo0odyDubs

And if yo gringos want to hear The Vince himself slaughter (or better slap chop) the Spanish language, por favor:

Underworld: Dubnobasswithmyheadman as a Pelican book

Underworld: Dubnobasswithmyheadman

Originally uploaded by Littlepixel™

Fantastic idea by Little Pixel (found via UBERSELEKTOR) to create fictional book sleeves out of (now classic) electronic music records. Yes, most of them were still coming out as pre-retro-cool vinyl and I remember being transfixed by the eye-popping colorfulness of the Screamadelica album as well as the experimental Tomato-ness of this Underworld gem.

I know, animating album cover art in iTunes offers new opportunities, but holding big chunky sleeves in your hands is still a different beast. Check the more in depth feature on the transformation of cover art here.

Omegle: A chat is a chat is a chat

Omegle promises the unthinkable for netizens: “Talk to strangers!” Notice the exclamation mark!!! To top this, it even promises to be “a brand-new service for meeting new friends.” I mean, yes, social networking leads to lots of contacts with friends, even new ones. But it is not like I haven’t entered a chat with a stranger before. And I am sure a MOO or MUD player from the good ol’ days of TelNet will frown upon the proclaimed freshness of this service.

Nevertheless, I felt a slight tingle as I entered the chat window. I don’t really know what I expected, maybe some sort of post-modern text performance. Two savvy players of the game, juggling with conventions and the etiquette of the social web.  And I thought it started rather well.

A chat is a chat is a chat

But alas, the age-old question ‘where are you from?’ threw us both back to the times of CompuServe and AOL.  I quickly hit ‘disconnect’ before he could ask me what I am wearing. Gee, we could have become real friends.

Addition:
Through other blogs I have learnt that Omegle seems to be the brainchild of teenager Leif K-Brooks (what’s with the K- business here?). It would explain the perceived novelty of a chat! with strangers!!
And you can find some mildly amusing examples of other Omegle chats here.

ModelFeed: Peek into the Lives of the Beautiful and the Thin

Some interesting sites have launched in Australia that use and intertwine with content sharing spaces (such as flickr and Youtube).BannerBlog covered HOST’s “Home Sweet As”, Soap’s Activision work and our own “content hub” for Queensland’s Finest XXXX. The latest addition is ModelFeed which promises to be a content haven for luxury, fashion and lifestyle brand adorers…oh, and for the tiny minority of people who like to look at the “regular lives” of beautiful models.

ModelFeed at http://www.modelfeed.com

Created by Ex-Saatchi duo Tim Brown and Pete Buckley Disciple and Dave King from The Royals, it aggregates from tagged Vimeo videos, has a stark art direction (with some contrast kinks…my eyes are too old for this shit) and some cute glimpses into the lives of some of Australia’s top models like Pania, Sarah and Catherine of Victoria Secret’s fame. Hey, I already sound like I hang out with them (which I do of course). More infos on the fashionista involved on Frockwriter (ignore the Dave King mix up).

It is interesting to see that an Australian endeavour is countering Ford Model’s savvy online marketing with activities such as FordModels.TV.

As Dave puts it it is  “recent-times luxury brands getting in front of an aspirational audience (girls 13-28), a platform for the promotion of models that helps them have conversations with their loyal followers. And yes, it is a source of hot new talent as well as existing talent on the rise.” 

Modelfeed presenting advertorials or having some sort of product placement wouldn’t be too far down the line I’d say. Now, who’s your favourite feed?

April Fool’s Rockstars: Slideshare taps into our Twitter Vanity

Last night, I was quite surprised to receive a message from Slideshare , informing me that one of my uploaded presentations had racked up more than 100,000 views. As much as I want to believe my professional musings and slides rock the world of advertising, I instantly felt something was fishy but couldn’t resist clicking on the link.

The original email read:

Hi tbuesing,
We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right.
Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.
Congratulations,
-SlideShare Team

Slideshare RockStar, Twitter God, Social Media Buddha (image by Zen)

Sure enough, anyone can be a Rockstar of Powerpoint on April Fool’s Day.  The #bestofslideshare search on Twitter revealed that many had taken enough time to  “get it” (the joke).  Some others stepped straight into the vanity trap and blasted their unexpected fame into the Twittersphere (and still do as I write this). It is a bit like watching people slip on a banana,  me, snickering at poor dudes trying to act modest, yet beaming with pride that their “recent trip to Serbia and Montenegro” or “Home Networking 101″ had received this gigantic audience boost. But it reveals two basic truths we all know about our social publishing habits.

1. we do all of this mostly to get attention and kudos, we want to be “Social RockStars” (in our niches)
   
2. our cycle of receiving, processing and publishing information has increased to such a pace where some people skip the processing part and just publish

Slideshare has by now received a lot of negative feedback,  Jonathan Boutelle, one of the founders of Slideshare felt obliged to do a Kowtow on his Twitter stream, reading:

“#bestofslideshare Big “sorry, I f*d up” to our wonderful SlideShare community! We love you guys, and we weren’t trying to embarrass anyone.”

In my opinion, the criticism comes from people who have lost their sense of humour somewhere along the race for becoming the umpteenth “social media evangelist”.  What’s your verdict?