New Website of the Week.

Genious!

"Press one for English." Here's a better idea: use Fonolo. It makes the call to that large, impersonal corporation, presses the right buttons and stays on hold for you until a human comes on the line. Then your phone rings and voilà, you can talk to a live person about your account. Fonolo even gives you the option to record your conversation as an MP3, just in case your chat with customer support becomes an argument. Is this for real? Totally! How does it know what you want it to accomplish? Fonolo shows you a visual map of the phone trees of various big companies and allows you to pick your point of entry. A computer does the rest.

New Website of the Week

Failblog.org.

A Sample:

No. I'm Not Kidding...

PetAirways.

Dogs fly first class. No humans allowed.

If this company lasts 3 months I'll be stunned.

Unreal...

Ghost Towns

My thinking about Dubai made me think about this blog I came across a few months ago. Oddee.com is a collection of strange top-10 lists, its a great time waster and you'll see a lot of cool stuff. I'll probably start linking to them regularly now that I think about it... but I digress...

This post of theirs just shows the top-10 ghost towns. I don't think Dubai will go quite this far, but something like this is bound to happen to them.










I hope I'm wrong.

Feltron Report

(Click image to see larger version)

Imagine if you catalogued your entire year. How many miles you walked, how many texts you sent, how many emails you read, how many songs you listened to, how many hours you spent playing games, every time you ate out, how much you spent on subway fare, etc...

What would that look like?

Something like this.

I Won't Steer You Wrong II

I told you about Andrew's site and what a gold mine I thought it was. It was named best blog of 2008.

One day you people will listen to me...

Passive Agressive Notes

Passiveaggressivenotes.com is my new favorite site. It is just a collection of these notes with the stories behind them by those who submitted them. Some are better than others, but please, do yourself a favor and spend a few minutes there. There are some doosies....

Betsy-China

Sometimes when work gets slow I just surf random blogs (The "next blog" button at the top of this page will take you to some unsuspecting person's blog). I came across this one yesterday and found it interesting. Betsy seems to be on a trip to China to teach English. She posts pictures and captions for each. I've decided that I will copy her model for future trips I take. It seems to be a great way to share your experiences with people.

I've also found some of her observations entertaining.

Betsy on Chinglish:

I’d heard that in the huge effort to prepare beijing for the olympics many of the chinese street and road signs were replaced with bilingual ones, “chinglish” signs would be edited and corrected, taxi drivers were given manuals and encouraged to learn some basic english phrases, olympic volunteers were taught western customs/ ettiquate and a fair amount of english as well.

I’m not trying to make fun of the chinese for not having perfect english on all their signs--English is such a complicated, idiomatic language and i’m sure a lot of chinese people who speak some english also notice the mistakes-- but still it’s pretty entertaining to see the signs and t shirts here. some t-shirts seem like someone randomly opened a book or dictionary and just started copying down the first thing they saw. other t-shirts or signs seem like something just couldn’t be directly translated into english from chinese and come out sounding natural. A few of my favorite signs so far include, (on our block) “The Noble Pet Chamber”, and “Massage of the Blind Man”. i also feel like you just wouldn’t call a sporting store in the U.S., “Hot Wind” or a restaurant “The Glory Hymen Restaurant”. But my favorite has to be “Very Suspicious Supermarket”. Unfortunately that one’s not on our street or i would be a devoted customer.

Isn't the internet wonderful?

Stuff White Peope Like

Stuff White People Like is a site for all my caucasian brothers and sisters, and those of us who like to have a chuckle at their expense. Here is a highlight from the list, #101, Being Offended:

Naturally, white people do not get offended by statements directed at white people. In fact, they don’t even have a problem making offensive statements about other white people (ask a white person about “flyover states”). As a rule, white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people.

It is also valuable to know that white people spend a significant portion of their time preparing for the moment when they will be offended. They read magazines, books, and watch documentaries all in hopes that one day they will encounter a person who will say something offensive. When this happens, they can leap into action with quotes, statistics, and historical examples. Once they have finished lecturing another white person about how it’s wrong to use the term “black” instead of “African-American,” they can sit back and relax in the knowledge that they have made a difference.

PostSecret

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people
mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.

Its a very interesting collection of people's raw, honest thoughts and feelings. Some are funny, some, as you see above, are quite sobering. I find reading them affirms my own humanity.

PostSecret Archive

Andrew Sullivan

I discovered Andrew Sullivan by chance flipping the channels one morning is February/March. He and Christopher Hitchens were on Tim Russart's show (RIP) discussing the election. As you know I turned into quite the election junkie at the turn of the year. I listened to every pundit, read every web-site and followed every election show I could find. In that crowded field of voices I never found one smarter or more impressive than Andrew's.

When the show was over I couldn't remember his name but I did remember he did have a book that they had mentioned on the show, some thing about The Conservative Soul. After a quick web search I found him and his gold mine.

As it turns out, our friend Andrew is one of the world's most well known bloggers (yes, I have patterned my blogging style after his) and has a lot of interesting things to say. I've been reading him daily ever since.

I don't agree with him on everything. But what I respect most is the fashion in which he expresses his thoughts. He is very self aware, which I find very attractive in an author, and he's not afraid to be proven wrong.

The thing that bonded me with him fastest was his prophetic analysis of the election. Not only did he see what was coming way before the rest of us, he knew why and explained it better than anyone I've seen. And I've seen them all.

Money Quote:

"...as a simple observer, I really don't see what's stopping [Obama] from becoming the next president. The overwhelming first impression that you get - from the exhausted but vibrant stump speech, the diverse nature of the crowd, the swell of the various applause lines - is that this is the candidate for real change. He has what Reagan had in 1980 and Clinton had in 1992: the wind at his back. Sometimes, elections really do come down to a simple choice: change or more of the same?

Look at the polls and forget ideology for a moment. What do Americans really want right now? Change. Who best offers them a chance to turn the page cleanly on an era most want to forget? It isn't Clinton, God help us. Edwards is so 2004. McCain is a throwback. Romney makes plastic look real. Rudy does offer something new for Republicans - the abortion-friendly, cross-dressing Jack Bauer. But no one captures the sheer, pent-up desire for a new start more effectively than Obama," Andrew Sullivan, May 24, 2007

New Website of the Week.

Every friday i'll attempt to post a new website that i've discovered that i find interesting. Hopefully you'll find them interesting too. A treat for making it through another week.

our first contestant: www.howcast.com

Ever wanted to know how to make eggnog or or to start a mob, or how to call in sick? They'll show you.

Case in point: