UJade's shared items in Google Reader

China is no copycat 7

2009-10-29T21:06:59Z

Another portions of popular trademarks steal in China. I admit some are quite… creative -Quang-

@ haha.nu

Which Religion Should I Follow?

2009-10-22T02:27:09Z

This flowchart explains all:

Sadly, I’m right where I should be.

Just a few hundred thousand dollars more and I’m outta here.

(via Holy Taco — Thanks to Kaleena for the link!)

CIA invests in firm that monitors social media conversation. Watch what you say.

2009-10-19T17:52:25Z

In-Q-Tel, a little known investment arm of the CIA has invested cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media conversation.

According to Wired, the move is “part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using “open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos, and radio reports generated every day.”

Visible Technologies specialises in tracking and participating in influential social media conversations and crawls over a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and Amazon – except for closed social sites like Facebook.

“Anything that is out in the open is fair game for collection,” Steven Aftergood told Wired, who tracks intelligence issues at the Federation of American Scientists. But “even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations.”

If there was any doubt as to the value in Social Media tracking, these figures should impress. Founded in 2003, Visible Technologies has achieved more than 60 percent year over year revenue growth, earned revenues of $6.6 Million in 2008, signed 24 Fortune 1000 companies to its client roster in Q3 of this year ( including Xerox and Autodesk), and along with $2 million of funding raised today, the company has brought in a total of $23.5 million in funding to date.

Best Typo Ever

2009-10-09T13:32:00Z

(Hat tip: Daily What)

The best flag in the world

2009-10-06T18:49:47Z

That's the flag of the Benin Empire, a pre-colonial African state situated in modern Nigeria that lasted from 1440 until 1897. (via andre)

Tags: flags

I want to be a corrupt official when I grow up!

2009-09-10T17:42:20Z

Danwei.org shares this pretty adorable video from the Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily showing schoolchildren returning to class on the first day of the term. The reporter asks the children what they want to be when they grow up and most give standard answers like fireman or pilot. Around 1:55, though, one little girl goes a little off-script:

“I want to be an official”
?Reporter:] “What kind of official?”
“A corrupt official, because corrupt officials have a lot of things.”

Everybody's got a dream.

ontd_political: Morans with signs of descent

2009-09-29T18:21:49Z

Morans with signs of descent
A collection of true patriots'/tea baggers/birthers/health care town hallers' signs. Mix of new and classics.

What if the world was made of food?

2009-09-14T08:44:48Z

This advertising campaign for the Sydney International Food Festival is pretty cool. It basically makes each country’s flag out of the food that the country is famous for.

Can you guess all the flags? :)

via adland

Darwin Change Poster

2009-09-02T02:44:43Z

From Darwin 2009 on Zazzle.

Photo Essays of Our Time: People of Wal-Mart [Red States Lose]

2009-08-30T19:05:54Z

There's a line in a song: "All the freaky people make the beauty of the world." And then there's this: a blog taking photos of Wal-Mart patrons. Cruel? Yes. Hysterical? Absolutely. But fascinating. And somehow, art.

The site doesn't claim to take any kind of political stance on the globalizing, capitalist behemoth, and Adbusters' nightmare that is Wal-Mart, other than that as purely sociological entertainment. They even say so in their, uh, manifesto:

People of Walmart was founded in August of 2009 by three friends and roommates after an inspirational trip to WalMart. Let's face it; we all have seen the people who obviously don't have mirrors and/or family and friends to lock them in a basement, and they all seem to congregate at Walmart. It's not everywhere that you can shop for milk at 10 a.m. next to a 400lb mother of 6 wearing a pink tube top, leopard tights, and hooker heels.

And again: this is, on a very real level, needlessly mean. Cintra Wilson would approve.

But it's also completely fascinating to see the "all stripes" crowd that comes to Wal-Mart for their psychotically competitive, mom-and-pop murdering prices. The composite picture that's coming together could be one of the great photo essays of our time. I'm gonna go ahead and call this art. It's Andreas Gursky meets the social voyeurism of Party Crash photog Nikola Tamindzic, mixed in with the strange loneliness of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. Here're some of my favorites of what you're going to see. Like I said: art.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

2009-08-30T12:00:04Z

Inflation

2009-08-30T15:24:00Z

How many minutes do people in your city have to work to buy a Big Mac?

2009-08-21T12:51:22Z

From The Economist, a chart showing "how long it takes a worker on the average net wage to earn the price of a Big Mac in 73 cities."

The more important question is how long you have to work to eat something less gross than a Big Mac, of course.

An alternative Big Mac Index (via Digg)

Social media Venn diagram

2009-08-14T08:30:34Z

Get your t-shirt now

Via Doc Searls, who follows with some serious thought about blogging vs. social media.

Finally, something we can agree on

2009-08-13T05:33:30Z

DSC04581, originally uploaded by granitepics.

'That's Gay' Host Goes Undercover To Investigate Gay Characters In TV Ads (VIDEO)

2009-08-10T14:03:10Z

This week on Current TV's "Infomania," Bryan Safi, arbiter of all things gay, took on the advertising world. In an in-depth and surprising piece he showed his viewers first how homosexuality is used as a punchline in ads, next how it's used subtly in mainstream ads to entice gays without freaking out the heteros, and lastly how ads are recut for the straight and gay worlds so as not to offend.

WATCH:

Get HuffPost Comedy On Facebook and Twitter!

I hear people say we’ve become a lazy, enervated society, and you know what I say back?

2009-08-10T03:30:15Z

Colin McEnroe

I say, “Tell that to the guy who smashed 26 peanuts with his forehead in 15 seconds, because that young man had a dream.”

Evolution GIF

2009-08-07T04:47:19Z

The most awesome animated gif I think I have ever found.

And I found it here.

Photo of the Day: Buy More Sh*t

2009-08-06T13:00:05Z

Photo by - Ronski - via the Londonist Flickrpool.

Proof of global warming

2009-08-01T13:30:00Z