Dating Online Christmas Ornament

Successful online dating requires a few things.

The least of which is an adequate photo of yourself to apply to your online dating profile.

There are some RIGHT WAYS TO SELECT A PHOTO FOR YOUR ONLINE DATING PROFILE, and some wrong ways. 

One of the things to avoid in your photo are other people.  Especially if they look like your ex; even more so if you can still see them in the picture.  Cutting them out, pasting graphics on top of the other faces — all of that will make you look creepy.  You’ve got to have a picture of just your head lying around your computer somewhere, right?  Why not use that one?

Next, be sure that the photo really reflects who you are.  Don’t be seen posing with fancy cars, electronics, people, or stripper poles unless you really do hang out with fancy cars, electronics, people, or stripper poles. 

While you’re at it, take a look at the surroundings in the photo.  Do you want to be known as the person who can only take a picture in the bathroom?  Is the background a messy clutter-zone?  Do you see a naked guy in a teapot? 

And even if you don’t see a naked guy in the photo, posting a half-naked photo of yourself is not really necessary either.  Unless you’re also on a horse, in which case it’s perfectly okay.

Don’t show a picture of you with a baby if you don’t actually have a baby of your own.  Same goes for pictures of you with a dog or other pet that isn’t yours.

So what types of photos work?  Clear, focused, well-lit recent photos of you smiling in a natural setting.  Try for both a headshot and one that shows off a bit more physique (for better or worse), just in case you need it.

If you do have a pet, a photo of you with your pet is always a winner.  And if you have any interesting hobbies that showcase you well, try incorporating those into the photo too.  The whole point is to show off how well-rounded and interesting you are, that you are not singularly focused in any one area… and that other people like you, and like hanging out with you.

Related posts:

1. How To Write the Perfect Online Dating Message
2. Not succeeding at online dating? Maybe you’re doing it wrong…
3. More of the Most Common Facebook Photos and Poses
4. Top 100 Things Teens Search for Online
5. Awkward Family Photos
6. How to Opt-Out of Online People Search Databases

Online Porn: How pervasive is it?

TIME magazine once asked about how pervasive online porn was?

Other than “a lot”, it seems that we now have a more definitive answer to the question.  According to a study by an online security firm, OVER ONE-THIRD OF THE INTERNET IS DEVOTED TO PORN.

The study found that 37% of the total number of web pages out there were devoted to pornography.  It’s possible that the sample size used to come up with this figure skewed the results – the study only looked at around 4,000,000 pages and we’re fairly confident that the Internet comprises many, many more pages than that.

Still, the survey did a similar study in 2009 – and when comparing the numbers between 1Q2010-2Q2010 vs 1Q2009-2Q2009, they saw that the number of “illegal content”-oriented sites increased 17% in 1Q2010 versus what was seen in 2009.  So even if the small sample size skews data one way or the other, if there is consistency in the sampling then we can conclude that online porn is growing year over year.

For a comparison, online game related websites (such as World of Warcraft) grew more than 212% in 1Q2010.  In the same time period, websites that contain violence grew 10.8%, terrorism 8.5%, and illegal drugs 6.8%.  If it matters, online shopping sites increased 9%, travel and tourism increased 5.7%, and computer science and sports increased 4.2%.

Related posts:

1. What the Internet Knows About You
2. Extending Invisibles into Porn and Internet Memes
3. Rules of the Internet
4. Are You An Extreme Techie? Here’s Proof…
5. 50 Things that the Internet Has Made Obsolete
6. Top 100 Things Teens Search for Online

Windows Hourglass

Do you suffer from “Hourglass Syndrome“?

That’s what computer chip manufacturer Intel has called the stress that waiting on slow computers to do their work causes.  Sure, it seems to be entirely a marketing gimmick, as Intel is focused on upselling to newer and faster computer chips -- but there does appear to be some basis in fact as a general observation.  Who could blame Intel for taking advantage of the situation for their own profit and gain?

Intel surveyed over 1000 high school and college students on their level of anxiety as they waited on computer processes.

• 55% of the high-school students said they were stressed while waiting, and the number increased to more than 60% of college students.

In a different study of over 2000 participants, 41 percent of adults said they were stressed by waiting for the computer to catch up.

Some of the other findings include:

• 80% of US adults experience frustration in general while waiting for technology to process
• 51% admit to becoming frustrated and lashing out at their slow-poke tech.  Of those, 62% have yelled or cursed out loud at their computers; 29% have hit their computer mouse, and 24% have attacked their screen or keyboard
• 35% of adults say that they’ve missed out on some activity due to slow technology.  For example, 13% were unable to participate in an online sale.

Web Watch thinks that while the frustrations with slow computers are certainly real, as Intel and other manufacturers make faster and smaller chips to meet our needs -- people will still not be satisfied.  No matter how fast our computers become, we have become an “instant gratification” world, and as long as their is any type of lag in processing -- Hourglass Syndrome (whether a real condition or not) will still exist in some form or other.

Here’s an Intel-produced PSA describing the problem:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQGtdRBYFEs

Related posts:

1. Fixing Computers in Exchange for Sex
2. Coed dorms lead to sex and drinking? Thank you, Captain Obvious!
3. “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price” from NYTimes is #oldnews
4. Today’s lesson: Writing jokes isn’t easy. Computers that write jokes aren’t funny.
5. Want Good Grades? Try Breastfeeding…
6. Giving up Facebook for Lent

Computer Smurf

With all the hype surrounding using social websites like Facebook or Twitter, and traditional websites trying to become more timely by jumping onto the social bandwagon, it appears that this may be one of those times when people are going social for the wrong reasons.

According to the 2010 AMERICAN CUSTOMER SATISFACTION INDEX (done by ACSI with ForeSee Results), consumers ranked social networking website FACEBOOK as being worse than the IRS.   When ranked on a 100-point scale, Facebook was ranked at a 64. 

64.  Where Web Watch went to school, this would be a D… if we were lucky.  Some teachers would have given that score an F.

How bad is a 64 ranking?  It’s in the bottom 5% of all measured private sector companies, and is in the usual company of airlines and cable companies.  In other words, Facebook is living in the land of companies with poor customer satisfaction.

And yet Facebook is running as the most popular website on the Internet right now.  Apparently, no matter how dissatisfied users are with using the site, they just don’t care.

To be clear, MySpace doesn’t escape scrutiny here, either.  MySpace ranked at 63.  Also not good.

For comparison, Google clocked in with a solid 80 on the Customer Satisfaction Index.

Here is how the websites that were evaluated ranked for the year (higher numbers are better):

• FOXNews.com: 82
• Google: 80
• Bing.com: 77
• USATODAY.com: 77
• Wikipedia.com: 77
• NYTimes.com: 76
• Yahoo!: 76
• ABCNEWS.com: 75
• MSN: 75
• MSNBC.com: 74
• AOL: 74
• CNN.com: 73
• Ask.com: 73
• YouTube.com: 73
• Facebook.com: 64
• MySpace.com: 63

The bigger question, then, is how do the Social Media industry satisfaction numbers rank against other industries when looked at as an aggregate?  Again, the higher number is better.

• Personal care and cleaning products: 85
• Soft drinks: 85
• Automobiles and light vehicles: 84
• Breweries: 84
• Credit unions: 84
• Pet food: 84
• Electronics (TV, VCR, DVD, etc): 83
• Express shipping: 83
• Food manufacturing: 83
• Internet retail: 83
• Apparel: 82
• Full service restaurants: 81
• Major appliances: 81
• Sneakers: 80
• Insurance: 80
• Social media: 70
• Airlines: 66
• Cable TV: 66

Related posts:

1. 10 Ways to Be a Facebook Offender
2. The 12 Most Annoying Facebook Users
3. Most Visited Websites and Social Networks for July 2009
4. Giving up Facebook for Lent
5. The 20 Male Poses of Facebook Photos
6. List of Facebook Statistics

Sex, Lies, and Online Dating

Since WEB WATCH WROTE ABOUT WRITING THE PERFECT ONLINE DATING MESSAGE, Web Watch has spoken with many people who have tried the online dating game.

Some we have spoken with are quite pleased with the results, having married their online hookup just like they show you in those advertisements and infomercials.

Others use online matchmaking services as a supplemental pool to their traditional dating environs.  Their philosophy is that they will have a better chance of finding a compatible mate if they cast their dating net out far and wide and utilize all potential avenues.  Sure, there have been plenty of misses along the way in their online dating experiences, but there have been some good times as well.

And there’s the third group that hasn’t had much luck with their online dating experience for whatever reason.  

(An amusing side note:  one friend of Web Watch who had registered for an online dating service in the past continues to receive emails from that service, encouraging them to sign back up for another go-around.  One recent email happend to contain the dating profile of another one of Web Watch’s friends.  This seems like the perfect time to remind our Web Watch readers to always remember to check your dating profile privacy settings if you don’t want your profile emailed out to strangers that aren’t officially signed up to receive your profile from the service.)

If you fall into that last group of unsuccessful online daters, perhaps this is a case of “it’s not me, it’s you”, and you should take the time to REVIEW YOUR ONLINE DATING PROFILE FOR THESE “DON’T DO THIS” ONLINE DATING TIPS:

• The screen name or profile has “princess” in it.  Really, this is email and profile name 101, and applies to online dating sites just like it does to the email address you put on your resume for that dream job you’ve always wanted.  
• My favorite book is “insert weird or offensive choice here”.  You can never go wrong with pop culture-favorite titles by John Grisham or Michael Crichton. Heck, even a.a.milne or J.K. Rowling would work here.  Freakonomics or other mainstream non-fiction is good, too.  Just don’t go off the deep-end with your profile information.  And no, the “Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition” is not considered a “book”.
• Listing that you drink “daily” or do drugs “daily”.  Really.  If you feel the need to list “drugs” or “alcohol” as an activity, the “daily” is pretty much implied.
• Putting that you “definitely” want kids.  It’s always a good idea to be upfront with a potential partner as to where you stand on children.  Heck, they may have some of their own that they haven’t mentioned yet.  But “definitely” is a bit of a buzzkill.  No need to emphasize it if you don’t have to.
• It says on your profile that you created your own religion.  ’nuff said.
• I’m 21 years old and I have 3 kids.  Hear that sound of tires squealing away from you?  That’s a hint.
• Listing watching porn as a hobby.  Just like in the good porn, the use of euphemisms is encouraged.  Try saying that your hobbies include “surfing the Internet”, “online art critic”, or “Google SafeSearch Moderator”.  Try not to be too obvious until you know the potential daters a bit more.

But online dating profiles isn’t all that bad.  When done right, you can really go far in making a great first impression.

Here are some of the things that you should do to really MAKE YOUR ONLINE DATING PROFILE STAND OUT:

• Use lots of pictures.  Good ones, with you smiling and having fun.  These will show off that you know how to have a good time.
• Be funny.  Funny always works.  But don’t overdo the funny – too much funny won’t be able to carry throughout the entire first date, and you don’t want to scare them off by turning into That Guy (or Gal) Who Can’t Shut Up.
• Spellcheck your damn profile.  You don’t want it to look like it was written by your third grade cousin

Related posts:

1. How to pick the best photos for your online dating profile
2. How To Write the Perfect Online Dating Message
3. Top 100 Things Teens Search for Online
4. A Sign She Wants to Be More than Just Friends: sometimes “hanging out” is “dating”
5. More than one-third of the Internet contains adult content
6. How to Opt-Out of Online People Search Databases

How to Write Linkbait

10 Epic Pop Culture Fails is an example of a linkbait headline.

LINK BAIT IS A TERM USED BY INTERNET MARKETERS to indicate a type of writing that is used to generate interest in your subject matter.  Basically, anything that you write that can get people blogging about what you’ve written, discussing it on forums, watching it on TV, buying your magazine, posting on social websites like del.icio.us — all can be categorized as “link bait”.

Tabloid newspapers and local TV news programs during sweeps week use link bait all the time with their sensational headlines and feature story teases — anything to keep the reader or news viewer to stay plugged in to catch the story is what they’re after… even if the final story really has nothing to do with what the tease headline originally was.

But writing creative and interesting story headlines can be difficult at times.

That’s where the LINK BAIT GENERATOR comes in to help out.  If you’re looking for a sensational headline to tease an upcoming story, the Link Bait Generator can help you out.  As an example, here are 10 free feature story ideas that Web Watch obtained from the Link Bait Generator:

• 15 must-see websites about healthcare reform
• Is online privacy treated unfairly in the USA?
• 7 ways Batman could cure cancer
• 5 amazing things you probably didn’t know about Google
• How to sound like Justin Bieber
• Religion and the occult
• 10 reasons why Miley Cyrus is a genius
• 5 life lessons learned from killer robots
• 8 ways heroin could help you survive a zombie attack
• 9 reasons why Ron Paul resembles a crazy roman emperor

You see, it’s all about mixing and matching popular search phrases (like “ninjas”) with an assortment of adjectives and nouns.  It’s your basic grammar and vocabulary 101 course.

So if you use the generator to create a catchy title for you, be sure to post what it is (and where you used it) in the comments below…

Related posts:

1. November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, for short)
2. Today’s lesson: Writing jokes isn’t easy. Computers that write jokes aren’t funny.
3. One Red Paperclip
4. We write like Stephen King. Who do you write like?
5. What the Internet Knows About You
6. Your Password Sucks

Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack, with Steve Martin as “The Dentist”

One thing about YouTube that bothers Web Watch is the number of videos that parents film over their shoulder while driving their car down the road.  Especially now as MORE AND MORE STATES — up to 29 as of this writing — ARE PASSING BANS ON TEXTING WHILE DRIVING more and more states are passing bans on texting while driving.  For those Web Watch readers who were wondering, based on that link it looks like Ohio and Hawaii are the only two states with absolutely no laws on their books relating to driving while using a cell phone or texting. 

It’s only a matter of time before DWV (driving while videoing) joins DWI and DWT as acronyms to avoid getting a ticket for.

But the threat of receiving a DWV violation may not deter enterprising, money-hungry folks from filming everything that happens to them and posting it on YouTube in the hopes that their video goes viral.

Today’s example is DAVID AFTER DENTIST.

David’s dad, David DeVore, did not plan on becoming an Internet sensation when he filmed his son’s loopy return from the dentist.  He only meant to share the video privately with a select group of family and friends.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=txqiwrbYGrs

But because YouTube limits the number of users who can view a privately-flagged video, Mr. DeVore decided to make the video publically-viewable so more family and friends could view and laugh along.  Public videos on YouTube get passed around a bit, and once it was public, so they say, the rest was history.

The DAVID AFTER DENTIST video has racked up over 62,000,000 views as of this writing, qualifying it for “gone viral” status a while ago.  One issue that some users have had with uploading videos to YouTube is that they never felt like they (the content producers) ever received compensation for their viral work — the only beneficiary was YouTube.   But that changed in August 2009 when YOUTUBE ANNOUNCED PROFIT SHARING WITH VIRAL VIDEO PRODUCERS, splitting all ad revenue money with the account that had uploaded videos that became popular.

Mr DeVore and his son David, with their 62,000,000 views, are a beneficiary of YouTube’s policy change, with DAVID AFTER DENTIST EARNING OVER $150,000 in the 18 months that its been posted.  And since popular YouTube videos have a tendency to stay popular for years, the DeVore’s should be seeing residuals come in for years to come.

HOW MUCH MONEY CAN A VIRAL VIDEO EARN?  If the profit-sharing program is similar to the YouTube partner program, the following estimates have been made:

• $2.50 to $5 per 1000 video views
• If you have a YouTube channel for your video, you may receive $.05 per subscriber
• The YouTube channel can make $.01 per channel view.  (1 million views = $10,000)

Whether these figures hold for viral videos vs official YouTube partners is unclear.

But we can draw some conclusions based on what Mr DeVore has said about how much DAVID AFTER DENTIST has earned.  In November 2009, just a few months after YouTube created their viral video profit sharing policy, DAVID AFTER DENTIST HAD EARNED $40,000 in advertising and merchandising sales.  And if the DeVores have made another $100,000 in the past six months, they must be doing something right -- the video is only gaining in popularity compared to its first 6 months of existence.

The DeVores are not waiting for their 15 minutes of fame to be over, lest they be surpassed by some other dentist-related video.   They received $8,000 to appear in a 2010 Super Bowl advertisement, they’ve signed a licensing deal for dentist-related medical scrubs, and are looking for other dentist-related opportunities as well.  Mr. DeVore has focused so much effort into monetizing David’s video that he quit his real estate job -- for now, that seems to be paying off for them.

So what do you need to do to make a video go viral?  Well, you CAN FOLLOW THESE TEN TIPS FOR MAKING A VIRAL VIDEO:

1. Get an average looking star or animal
2. Use a catchy title in your post
3. Look and talk directly into the camera
4. Originality is for losers
5. Use an eye-catching still in your video preview
6. Use jumpcuts for editing
7. Be sure to score the video with original audio
8. Keep it short.  Less than 2 minutes is ideal
9. Ad lib, live is good.  Don’t plan it.
10. Wrap it up

Or, if you want to try something a bit more serious, here are 7 TIPS FOR VIRAL VIDEO SUCCESS:

1. Not all viral videos are what they seem.  Many are professional produced and promoted specifically to be made viral through blogger, Facebook, and forum postings.  The whole idea is that it is very difficult for a video to go viral by itself -- it needs to be coaxed into virality
2. Watch your content:  keep it short, keep it simple enough to be reused by others, don’t make it an obvious ad, give people a reason to keep viewing AND pass it along to others, etc
3. Give it a good, interesting title.
4. Use an interesting video thumbnail, and change the thumbnail on occasion
5. Use more than one YouTube account (or friends’ accounts) to post comments.  Good conversation can encourage more views
6. Have more than one video in your account, as more videos will increase views over all of them
7. Use meaningful tags, preferably unique ones that no other YouTube video is using

Related posts:

1. The Top Viral Videos of All Time…so far
2. How To Make a Photomosaic from a YouTube Video
3. How many of these most awesome video clips have YOU seen this year?
4. Video Fun: “We Didn’t Start the Fire” Song Parodies
5. Video Fun: Love is a Battlefield, the literal music video version
6. Lip Dubs on YouTube are the new MTV (until the lawsuits come)

Time Magazine: Wired Kids

This week, the NEW YORK TIMES finally wrote an article about a study that WEB WATCH wrote about in a September 2009 piece entitled “MULTITASKING SUCKS”.  Glad to see that the NY Times is on top of today’s news…

In the NYTimes article called “Your Brain on Computers – Attached to Technology and Paying a Price” (or, depending on which version you’re reading, also titled as “Your Brain on Computers – Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price”, take your pick), the NYTimes examines the impact that computers and portable gadgets have on people today, and whether being so surrounded by information and multitasking our way through the Internet marsh is worth it.

Going back about 50 years to compare 1960 to 2008 statistics, studies show that people are surrounded by three times more daily information over that period of time.  One can only imagine what the shift has been between 2008 and 2010, with Facebook and Twitter becoming more important communication tools in people’s lives.

And we see these people every day – walking around the office or around town, with their heads held in a continual slouch as they continually peer at their iPhones, Blackberrys, and Android devices – oblivious to everything in the world around them. Proverbially looking like they are constantly contemplating their own belly buttons. 

What could be so important that they have to stay in touch that constantly?  Humanity got along just fine for hundreds of years without instant contact – and now that we have it, that same connectivity may be our downfall.  Musician Tom Lehrer may have been ahead of his time when he wrote SO LONG MOM, with the lyric about Mom watching World War III live on her TV, and:

I’ll look for you
when the war is over…
an hour and a half from now

These were new ideas to the general public when that song came out.  Newspapers were still the primary way that people got their news, along with the 30-minute nightly newscast with Huntley, Reasoner, Chancellor, or Brinkley.

And it’s not as if the iPhone and its ilk have made us more productive.  Quite the contrary – we only appear to be more productive, with our constant typing and texting and answering to every electronic chirp like Pavlov.  Looks can be deceiving, especially when typing a work email can be easily disguised as Farmville to anyone not looking directly over your shoulder at your phone.

A study at the University of California Irvine looked at HOW PEOPLE WERE AFFECTED BY MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF EMAIL and it concurs with the study about how multitasking is becoming worse due to electronic interruptions. 

What the study found was that people like to organize work around specific themes or goals, and that people averaged about three minutes per task before moving on to the next one on their list — and if they were using an electronic tool, that time was shortened to two minutes per task before moving on.

Some would say that is because the technology makes us one minute more efficient; others would say that the person was interrupted and distracted away from the task at hand with one minute left to go.   It it helps, when tasks are organized into complete working spheres of activity, people would spend about 12 minutes on that sphere before moving on to another.  Organization is key for productivity, and being interrupted by something as miniscule as an email during a time of proper concentration on the task at hand can actually lead to increased stress levels.

That study is in line with what Carl Honore said in 2005, that the typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by phone calls, emails, and co-workers — yet it takes eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to focus and be most productive. 

2005 must have been a good year for email-related studies.  Did you see the study that said that EMAIL LOWERS IQ?

• Almost 2/3 of respondents checked their email when out of the office or on vacation
• 50% of all workers respond to an email within 60 minutes of receiving it
• 90% of respondents thought that texting during in-person meetings was rude

But here’s the ringer: the study also found that the IQ of those who tried to multitask between messaging and work fell by 10 points.  That’s the same drop in IQ as missing one whole night’s sleep, and 2.5 times the IQ drop seen from smoking pot.

Web Watch has seen this IQ drop in action.

Web Watch was sitting in the waiting room of an office the other day, where a father and his 10 -year-old son were also.  The son was happily playing on his Nintendo DS when he jumped up and eagerly asked his dad if the office had free Wi-Fi.  Dad told his son that he didn’t know, but why not try?   The son fired up the Internet connection on his toy, and to his delight declared that he could connect!  No joke – he did a little dance in the corner of the office while he proclaimed his love for sending and receiving email.  Web Watch could almost see the IQ points escaping out of the boy’s head, trying to find a more suitable brain to take up residence.

But he didn’t want to send an email to just anyone.

No. He then yelled across the waiting room, “Dad, what’s your email address?”   

That’s right – the kid was excited just to be able to send an email to the person sitting two sofas away from him. 

He continued, “What should I say?”

Emailing just for the sake of emailing.  If that’s not an indication that today’s kids are too plugged in for their own good, then we don’t know what is.

Related posts:

1. Do you suffer from “Hourglass Syndrome” when using computers? You’re not alone…
2. Are You An Extreme Techie? Here’s Proof…
3. 10 Things That Are Different Between Men’s and Women’s Brains
4. Ugly Babies and the Parents Who Love Them…or not
5. Mastering One’s Domain, so to speak
6. We all know men think about sex every 7 seconds. Here are 10 other facts about men’s brains

The Elements of Style

Proper spelling and pronounciation is a long-standing debate amongst techno-nerds.  For example, is a GIF image pronounced “JIF” (like the peanut butter) or “GIF” (rhymes with “gift”)?   We usually settle it by saying it both ways in the course of a graphic-related conversation so that nobody feels superior to another.

Spelling, however, can be dictated by a central authority.  Most of us are familiar with Merriam Webster, or at least the Scrabble Players Dictionary (where you may not get the definition you’re looking for, but at least you’ll have the word spelled correctly for that triple-word score).

So when the new AP STYLEGUIDE was announced with new words and spellings, you can imagine how excited wordsmiths must feel, as if they received a new toy at Christmastime.Among the new words that the AP has released for usage in proper press writings were some newly (and not-so-newly) coined Internet-related phrases that you may have struggled with in the past as to whether you were using the properly spelled verion of the term or not. 

Here are some of the updated entries in the latest edition, in no particular order.  Note the use of capitalization or hyphens along the way:

• A-list
• Alcoholics Anonymous
• app
• blogs
• Bluetooth
• Blu-ray
• bondholder
• Breathalyzer
• click-throughs
• e-mail
• e-book
• e-reader
• flu-like
• the verbs “friend” and “unfriend”
• GED
• The Great Recession, referring to the 2007-2008 economic downturn
• hard line
• high-five
• International Space Station
• metadata
• “mic” is now allowed as the shortened form of “microphone”
• RSS
• search engine optimization
• smart phone
• Taser
• tea party, referring to the political movement
• thumbs-up
• trending
• Ultimate Fighting
• There is a difference between “Wal-Mart Stores Inc” (the corporate name) and “Walmart” (the stores themselves).  Web Watch still prefers “WallyWorld”, which still has not made it into the AP Stylebook.
• The term “web site” has been changed to “website”.
• “Web” is a capitalized proper noun when used to refer to the World Wide Web
• widget
• wiki

Related posts:

1. The 50 Most Looked-Up Words on the New York Times Website
2. All the good book ideas are taken: F* This Website
3. Why You Hate That Website
4. November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, for short)
5. The Best Way to Mail a Love Letter
6. What were the Top Words of the Decade? (You might want to Google it)

This is what happens when you take creative people and ask them to create a short video piece based on some other person’s recent Twitter posting.

Presenting: TWITTER: THE CRITERION COLLECTION

Related posts:

1. Twitter Users are a Bunch of Quitters… and other Twitter Usage Statistics
2. Celebrities’ Narcisstic Twitter Obsession
3. Introducing Woofer – the Anti-Twitter
4. Twecipes – Chefs Cook Up Recipes with Twitter
5. How much money can a Youtube video earn when it goes viral? Let’s start at $150,000
6. Twitter Memes: #Honk if you #FollowFriday

How could we not include THIS TRIBUTE TO WEB COMIC xkcd featuring online favs like Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton, which was based on THIS xkcd cartoon, based on the Discovery Channel commercial (shown below).  Whew!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQAk_T9SBbw

Related posts:

1. Video Fun: Parodies of Discovery Channel’s “The World is Just Awesome” video (boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da)
2. TiVo Alert: PITCHMEN on Discovery
3. A Product Ahead Of Its Time: The Comfort Wipe
4. How to Mow The Lawn
5. How much money can a Youtube video earn when it goes viral? Let’s start at $150,000
6. Video Fun: Star Trek overdub parodies

Remember back when Web Watch told you about how THERE SHE GOES by SIXPENCE NONE THE RICHER was called THE MOST PERFECT SONG EVER RECORDED?  It was called that, in part due to its ideal song length, and for other reasons as well.

While it may not be a way to tell if what you’re listening to is THE perfect song or not, if you’re a LAST.FM user than we can at least identify if the key of your favorite songs all fall into the same ballpark or not.

In other words, do you favor listening to songs that are in the same key or not?

There’s no need to sign into your Last.FM account (and Web Watch wouldn’t encourage handing out your passwords to any of these types of services anyway) — all you have to do is click over to HacKEY and type in your Last.FM username.  Since all Last.FM playlists are public, HacKEY can then scan the top 50 listened-to songs in your playlist and pull additional metadata from the Last.FM database about each song.    In this case, the song keys.

Web Watch ran HacKEY on our own Last.FM playlist, and here are the results:

• 25% of all our favorite songs were in F major
• 15% were C major
• 10% of our songs were either B-flat major, G Major, or E minor
• Rounding out at 5% were B-flat minor, G-flat minor, A major, and E major.
• The remainders were lumped together as “others”

Web Watch had thought that we preferred minor keyed songs, but with our Last.FM playlist showing us preferring majors over minors with a 75% vs 25% margin, we may need to rethink our music tastes.

As for what key THERE SHE GOES is written in?  Sounds like B-flat to us.

Related posts:

1. Video Fun: “TWITTER, The Criterion Collection” asks users to recreate their favorite tweets, visually
2. How To Find Your Favorite NFL Team on TV
3. Game: Guess the Mix
4. Lip Dubs on YouTube are the new MTV (until the lawsuits come)
5. You only need to learn four chords to write The Perfect Pop Song
6. The Evolution of Dance, Part 2

Can you name the MOST PLAYED VIDEO GAME OF ALL TIME?

It’s not MS PAC MAN.

It’s not TETRIS.

It’s not even Microsoft Windows’ SOLITAIRE card game (although that one should qualify as the most played video game in the office environment).

It’s “SNAKE“.

You know the one – you control a hungry snake as it moves across the screen.  Every time you eat an apple (or cherry, or other unnamed fruit), you grow a few extra segments.  Soon, your snake body is so long that it gets in the way of your movement around the screen. 

Then you die.  Only to press the reset button and try again.

So how did SNAKE get to be the most played video game ever?  You can thank NOKIA cell phones for this, as they included SNAKE as one of the default games on their phones.  It was easy to play and manuever using the numeric phone pad, and it is estimated that it’s been played by over 1 billion people since it was released – making it the most played video game, according to the Guinness Book of World Records 2010 edition.

Related posts:

1. Flash Fun: This Is The Only Level Too – sequel to Achievement Unlocked
2. The World’s Fastest Game of Monopoly: 21 seconds
3. How Many Classic Arcade Games Can You Name? (It’s the arcade version of Where’s Waldo?)
4. Flash Fun: Want to play some hoops? Try this world-wide multiplayer basketball game
5. Flash Fun: Minions on Ice (from the creators of the *new* Desktop Tower Defense)
6. Need a retro videogame fix? The Atari arcade is now online!

A recent study has been released that took a look at over 32 million passwords that were published onto the Internet after a hacker broke into the ROCKYOU.COM website.

This is the first time that a password study of this magnitude was able to be performed, but it did confirm a few things about users and the passwords they choose:  PEOPLE ARE NOT PICKING SECURE PASSWORDS FOR THEIR ONLINE ACCOUNTS.

The most common password found online is typically 12345, although the ROCKYOU data had the most common password being 123456, with nearly 1 percent of the ROCKYOU users being that uncreative.  Go figure – that extra digit made it that much harder to hack into the critical ROCKYOU website. 

The top passwords used by those 32 million ROCKYOU users were:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123
11. nicole
12. daniel
13. babygirl
14. monkey
15. jessica
16. lovely
17. michael
18. ashley
19. 654321
20. qwerty
21. iloveu
22. michelle
23. 111111
24. 0
25. tigger
26. password1
27. sunshine
28. chocolate
29. anthony
30. angel
31. FRIENDS
32. soccer

Further analysis of the password data showed that 20 percent of the ROCKYOU users used a total of 5,000 different passwords.   Aside from proving that ROCKYOU users really aren’t that creative or unique, it also shows that anybody who really wanted to hack into the ROCKYOU (or any system, it seems) really doesn’t need a large set of possible passwords to work from in order to break in somewhere.

(That “tigger” is on the list of most commonly used passwords should make Disney think about how little they’ve been promoting Tigger in their merchandise lines.  But that is a different post for a different day.)

So what should you do to protect your accounts?  The obvious answer is to stay away from any of those most common passwords.

Security experts recommend using a password that is at least 12 characters long, and is a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, and includes at least one number and one non-alphanumeric character.  Anything that can’t be found in a dictionary is best.

Some users find that taking a favorite quote or sentence from a book can help, using just the first character from each word as your password.  So using Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be, that is the question” as your source, your password would become tbontbtitq. 

Throw in some numbers or punctuation (becoming 2bon2bt!tq, for example), and you’ll have a strong password that could withstand an initial hacking attempt and not be found in any common password listings.

Related posts:

1. Your Password Sucks
2. Improving Disney Shopping, Part 5: Tigger Watch 2011 revisited
3. Twitter Users are a Bunch of Quitters… and other Twitter Usage Statistics
4. Which profession cheats on their spouses most? Teachers and doctors
5. Improving Disney Shopping, Part 4: Tigger Watch 2011
6. Winnie The Pooh gets the ALIEN treatment, and Tigger finds out what Tiggers do best

A friend of ours is a comedy writer.

He always says that writing jokes isn’t easy.  We keep telling him that he would have more free time if scientists would invent a robot that could write jokes.

He insisted that there was no way a machine could write something that was as funny as what a person could write.  Web Watch tried not to point out how horrible some so-called sitcoms are, or how repetitive certain late-night talk show host monologues have become.

And then along comes the JOKE WRITING COMPUTER.  

Scientists have created a joke-writing computer program.  They broked the basics of most jokes down to a very simple equation, and the computer program will select the appropriate words and phrases from its vast dictionary of funny-sounding words to make up jokes on the fly.

Granted, 99% of the jokes aren’t very funny – but there is potential.

The process is simple:

• Select a type of joke, and choose appropriate words for that joke type
• Phrase the joke in the form of a question, supply the appropriate answer

HERE ARE SOME OF THE JOKING COMPUTER’S BETTER JOKES:

• What kind of tree is nauseated?  A sick-amore
• What do you get when you cross a frog with a road?  A main toad.
• What do you call a washing machine with a september?  An autumn-atic washer

Hey, Web Watch didn’t say these were good jokes.  Just that these were the better ones the computer came up with on its own.

Related posts:

1. November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, for short)
2. We write like Stephen King. Who do you write like?
3. Introducing “My New Pink Button” (sometimes the jokes write themselves)
4. How To Write the Perfect Online Dating Message
5. 10 Epic Pop Culture Fails
6. Do you suffer from “Hourglass Syndrome” when using computers? You’re not alone…

Bloggers, being the new century journalists that they are (yes, we’re thinking of you Perez!), have to walk a fine line between the low-cost of entry to the world of online publishing and the low-cost return on investment they get on what they’re writing about.

This does explain the current glut of blog-as-book deals that Web Watch has shown you over the past few months, because mama bloggers gotta eat, and blogging by itself just isn’t enough to pay the bills.

How does Web Watch know this?  Only because someone has already done the analysis and run the math for us and CALCULATED HOW MUCH MONEY A FREELANCE BLOGGER SHOULD MAKE.

Obviously some bloggers make more money than others, as they should.  But generally speaking, a regular blogger-for-hire should expect to be paid about $10 per 250-word blog post.

Which, after you take out the 4% Paypal service charge (because who pays by check anymore?) and determine exactly how long it took you to write, proofread, and tag the post with the correct information — which, on average, is about an hour — you’ll find yourself left with making about $7.50 an hour.

Some quick math shows that at that rate you would have to write about 133,334 blog posts to earn your first million dollars just by blogging.  And if it takes about an hour to write each post, then you’re looking at a little more than 15 years of continual blog posts to do this.

Selling out and doing that blog-to-book thing doesn’t look like too bad a deal now, does it?

Related posts:

1. How much money can a Youtube video earn when it goes viral? Let’s start at $150,000
2. How much money do competitive eaters make? On a per-calorie basis, not a whole lot of dough
3. 10 Epic Pop Culture Fails
4. I Wear Your Shirt
5. 10 Ways to Be a Facebook Offender
6. How Much Money is in Viagra Spam? Try $4000 a Day!

Sometimes, all you want to do is climb into a heavy-duty tank and blow up someone else up in a massive game of capture-the-flag.

That’s just what you do in MINIONS ON ICE, one of the many games from David Scott and the CREATIVE COLLECTIVE, the creators of DESKTOP TOWER DEFENSE.  

Yeah, that’s right.  David Scott is one of the masterminds behind Creative Collective, and he’s the guy who practically invented the Tower Defense genre that has killed so much of our free time with games such as Flash Element TD or variations from other developers like GEMCRAFT Chapter Zero.  

What we’re trying to say here is that this is the gaming site behind one of the forces behind the casual gaming movement.  Web Watch wouldn’t steer you wrong on this.  Trust us – this stuff is good.

(Which reminds Web Watch – there’s a new version of DESKTOP TOWER DEFENSE available for Facebook users, with weekly updated maps.  Thought you’d want to know.)

So what is MINIONS ON ICE?  It’s the sequel to the original capture-the-flag-with-robot multiplayer game MINIONS, which places your high-powered battlebot onto an ice-covered arena filled with other robots who are all trying to kill you at the same time you’re trying to kill them.  It’s a friction-less battle to be the last robot surviving.  And the longer you survive (and the more kills you get), the more points you score.  The more points you score, the better your robot avatar will be and the more fun you can have blowing up other robots.  It’s a great 3-minutes-at-a-time timewaster, perfect for your lunchtime play break.

“But…”, we hear you cry.  “What were you saying about the new DESKTOP TOWER DEFENSE?  And other games, too?”

Ah, yes.  Creative Collective is an entire arena filled with fun games and diversions.  Here are some of Web Watch’s other favorites:

• DESKTOP ARMADA:  This one-on-one game is a combination of checkers and Battleship, all you have to do is build new ships, then manuever them across the water so you can destroy your enemy’s command center.  You have a limited amount of resources – do you devote them to building many smaller ships with low firepower but lots of speed, or do you build one giant battlecruiser that moves slowly but can do a lot of damage?
• MINIONS: The original capture-the-flag game, with two teams of competing robots trying to destroy the enemy base first.  With a number of different robot types, each with their pros and cons, and up to 6 users on each side, there’s always some crazy action going on the scrolling battlefield.
• SPLITTER 2: Just slice the wood, string, and other materials away in this physics game, and try to get the happy ball to fall into its hole.  But be careful, you only have a limited number of cuts available, so choose where and what to cut wisely.
• And what game site wouldn’t be awesome if it didn’t have a Tower Defense Game.  Creative Collective has TWO:  DESKTOP TD PRO where you buy your towers and build your own maze for the creeps to crawl through, and FLASH ELEMENT TOWER DEFENSE 2.

Yeah, Web Watch has wasted many, many hours on this site.  We love us some Minions action.  See you on the battlefield!

Related posts:

1. Flash Fun: “Cursed Treasure – Don’t Touch My Gems” tower defense
2. Flash Fun: Gemcraft Chapter Zero
3. Flash Fun: Castlewars and Castlewars 2
4. How Many Classic Arcade Games Can You Name? (It’s the arcade version of Where’s Waldo?)
5. Play MONOPOLY Against The World
6. Flash Fun: an Alice in Wonderland-based audio/mouse-control game

Every year for the past 20 years, the AMERICAN DIALECT SOCIETY has gotten together to analyze and review word usage for the previous 12 months.  The beginning of 2010 is no exception, as Allan Metcalf and Grant Barrett (from MacMurray College and the online dictionary Wordnik.com, respectively) have released this year’s WORD OF THE YEAR and WORD OF THE DECADE.

The word of the year?   “tweet”, as either a description of the act of using Twitter, or the Twitter message itself.

The word of the decade?  “google”, used as a generic verb to search the Internet.

The criteria to be selected as a word of the year or word of the decade is quite elaborate, but requires the word to not just be a newly-minted or used word, but one that transcends into notability over the course of the year.

Other WORDS THAT WERE SELECTED IN OTHER “WORD OF THE YEAR” CATEGORIES include:

• MOST USEFUL:  fail.  Such as seen on failblog
• MOST CREATIVE:  Dracula sneeze.  When you sneeze into your elbow, so you look like Dracula
• MOST UNNECESSARY: sea kittens.  From a PETA campaign
• MOST EUPHEMISTIC: hike the Appalachian trail.  A reference to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford
• MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: twenty-ten

Previously selected WORDS OF THE YEAR include:

• 2008:  bailout
• 2007: subprime
• 2006: to be plutoed
• 2005:  truthiness
• 2004:  red/blue/purple states
• 2003: metrosexual
• 2002: weapons of mass destruction
• 2001: 9/11
• 2000: chad 
• 1999: Y2K
• 1998: the prefix “e-”, as in “e-mail”
• 1997: millennium bug
• 1996: soccer mom
• 1995 (tie): World Wide Web,  newt
• 1994: cyber
• 1993: information superhighway
• 1992: NOT!
• 1991: mother of all….
• 1990: bushlips

Also selected in 2000 was the word of the previous decade: “web”, and the word of the 20th century: “jazz”

Related posts:

1. “2010″ is pronounced “twenty ten”. And it’s not the first year of the next decade.
2. The 50 Most Looked-Up Words on the New York Times Website
3. You’re kidding – How can the top gadget of this decade NOT be TiVo?
4. Book Review: Family Words, the Secret Language of Families
5. Google has some tough interview questions (“you have eight balls the same size…”)
6. Things Google Knows About You: Everything

Because nothing says “this is the most impersonal thing ever” than an emailed greeting card, we present SOME E CARDS, ONLINE GREETING CARDS that are actually worthwhile and funny – mainly because they say what we really want to say instead of some politically-correct BS that some repressed architect working as a hack at a greeting card company wrote under pressure while sitting at his desk pining away for some girl who dumped him because she didn’t know what she wanted in life.

Some of SOME E CARDS for the holidays include these gems:

• My only professional ambition is to get a desk where no one can see my computer monitor other than me.
• I’m worried that my latest Salvation Army donation will result in homeless people looking like sluts from the 90s.
• Taping your balls between your legs does not count as a Halloween costume.
• Lets hope that the next big internet fad doesn’t involve getting to know our friends better

They also do electronic invites for events that aren’t covered by that other online invite website, or you can get your favorite card immortalized on a shirt.  Better than duct tape, we say.

Related posts:

1. How To Lose Your Guy Card: Does a Double-Standard Exist vs Chick Cards?
2. Want to make a difference? Try giving panhandlers a Visa or Amex gift card
3. Top 100 Things Teens Search for Online
4. How To Write the Perfect Online Dating Message
5. Need a retro videogame fix? The Atari arcade is now online!
6. How to pick the best photos for your online dating profile

So why not put the two together into a LIP DUB?  It’s a better group activity than Rock Band or Guitar Hero, and can even result in some kids getting grades if they do this as a special project in the classroom (as seen in the amazing backwards video below).

What is a Lip Dub?  It’s a homemade music video done as a single tracking shot through a school, office, mall, or other environment.  All the participants are dancing around the camera into and out of the shot, and the main person on screen is lip-syncing the song.  There are no rules -- more than one person can sing any part of the song, and random costumes are encouraged.  The term “Lip Dub” itself is traced to Jakob Lodwick, founder of the Vimeo video service.

If you get your office together to create a lip dub, you can even submit your production to OFFICE LIP DUB.

We won’t get into the details surrounding the hows and whys behind some of these lip dub videos, but you can click through to the stories behind the stories for full details.  Let’s just say that some of these folks may have too much time on their hands, but they’re making stuff that’s wildly creative and entertaining.

• Shorewood One-Ups Rival with Backwards Music Video
• Rival Shoreline Schools in YouTube Music Battle
• Shorewood Responds to Challenge, Makes Own Video

The bigger question for these students is going to be whether making lip dubs and posting them to YouTube and other video sharing services is legal or not.

Jakob Lodwick’s Vimeo openly solicits for lip dubs to follow their original creation of Flagpole Sitta.  Now, Vimeo is being sued by the record labels for encouraging these flagrantly illegal lip dub videos to be made in the first place.  One side says that the homemade videos’ use of songs qualify under fair use; the labels say that doesn’t count since the entire songs are usually used.

Watch these videos, and decide for yourself if the music labels have a point:

HEY YA! by Outkast

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPTd8MgAeqI

You Make My Dreams Come True by Hall & Oates (filmed backwards!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7TI-AJi2O8

Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger

The obligatory “Making of…” video

I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zcOFN_VBVo

Nine in the Afternoon by Panic at the Disco (starring Jessica Alba?!?!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2ie3B1a-To

Barbie Girl by Aqua

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqf4-4AdYsE

I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xc8_Br9VaQ

I Want You Back / ABC by Michael Jackson

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw6I51UE1W8

Related posts:

1. How To Make a Photomosaic from a YouTube Video
2. This Decade’s Best Music Video is by the White Stripes (duh!)
3. How much money can a Youtube video earn when it goes viral? Let’s start at $150,000
4. Video Fun: Phenomenal International Music Videos
5. Literal Music Videos
6. LEGO Rock Band Announced, and 10 Lego Music Videos

Jason has inspired Love Harnell with his tale of how to be a successful Internet entrepreneur, so Love sat down to figure out what HE could charge up to $365 per day to do.

And since Love Harnell has an unusual hobby, he decided to make that his Internet business.

LOVE HARNELL IS WRITING CUSTOM JINGLES, and then publicizing your newly-written and purchased jingle in various social media venues.

Jingle pricing is the same as Jason Sadler’s shirt pricing:  $1 on January 1st, $2 on January 2nd, $3 on January 3rd, and so on through the rest of the year, with December 31st being worth $365 ($366 during a leap year).  January and February 2010 are pretty much booked, but if you want to get in at the cheap end of the pricing scale, you better act fast before March and April fill up.

Here’s an example of a Love Jingle, this one written for the Olsen Twins.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUH34anidX8

Related posts:

1. I Wear Your Shirt
2. Finally! A Reason to Buy a GPS – Custom Voices!
3. I Just Made Love…but where? (insert Bob Eubanks joke here)
4. This is news? Couple tries to make love 30 days in a row… and fails
5. What would you do for $5? Better still, what would you pay $5 for?
6. January 23rd (National Pie Day) vs March 13th (National Pi Day)

GAWKER has assembled a 3-MINUTE CLIP OF THE TOP 100 MUST-SEE VIDEOS OF 2009.   The good part is that they’re numbered on-screen and show you the best parts of each clip.  The bonus is that each clip is linked to separately on the page so you can see the whole thing.

Want to see a man dodge death – not once, but twice?  It’s in there.

A wrecking ball take out a minivan?  We’ve got it.

A return to the Fat Kid singing about being fat?  Already covered in Web Watch when it first hit the ‘net… and still funny today.

Of course, these videos are not to be confused with the TOP 100 VIRAL VIDEOS OF ALL TIME, which includes the infamous “Dramatic Chipmunk” and “Falling Grape Stomp Lady” clips.  No, those you’ve seen a million times already (and let’s face it, once the Falling Grape Stomp Lady was immortalized on both Family Guy and Saturday Night Live, you know that it has pretty much jumped the shark.

Related posts:

1. How much money can a Youtube video earn when it goes viral? Let’s start at $150,000
2. Video Fun: Parodies of Discovery Channel’s “The World is Just Awesome” video (boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da)
3. Video Fun: Hit In The Nuts
4. Music Video: It Ain’t Easy
5. Seen Lady Gaga’s TELEPHONE video yet? Here’s a list of 25 things you may have missed
6. The Top Viral Videos of All Time…so far

That’s where LAMEBOOK comes in, to help guide us away from the really spectacularly awful stuff that people are posting to their Facebook pages.

It really leads you to wonder WTF when you read these posts:

• “I got my period!  Thank god!”
• A photo of a guy with a dog in his lap.  (Who thought adding the dog was a good idea?)
• A photo taken at the grandmother’s funeral
• Awkward (and NSFW) profile pictures
• And from the “sharing way too much” department, the series of home birthing photos

So the next time you feel like making a Facebook post that says exactly what you’re doing right now, take a moment to think about whether the world really needs to know every little detail.  You wouldn’t want to be caught with a LAME Facebook post on this site, would you?

Related posts:

1. More of the Most Common Facebook Photos and Poses
2. 10 Ways to Be a Facebook Offender
3. The 20 Male Poses of Facebook Photos
4. How to take a photograph of a popular location without any people in it
5. List of Facebook Statistics
6. The 12 Most Annoying Facebook Users

If you use Google to search the web, then Google knows what you are looking for.

If you use Google’s GMAIL service, then Google knows who your circle of friends and family are, and the types of things that you email about (based on the Ad Words displayed alongside your messages).

Google owns Doubleclick, a leader in online advertising, so Google knows some of the sites that you are visiting (unless you opt-out of the Doubleclick tracking cookie, of course).

If you are using their new open DNS server 8.8.8.8, then Google can even track where you go on the web, whether you use their search engine or not.  (An aside:  Web Watch strongly encourages that you do have a secondary DNS server available to you in case your primary DNS server goes down, whether it be Google’s DNS server or someone else’s open DNS.)And these things are just the tip of the iceberg.  As you can see, there are plenty of ways that Google has to track who you are and what you do.

So how can you find out what Google knows about you?  Google makes that easy, too.

Just log onto the GOOGLE DASHBOARD and see the types of things that Google is tracking.  When you do log in and view the complete list, you shouldn’t be surprised – especially if you use a lot of Google products.  Some of the information you can purge, other pieces stay there forever.

On the bright side, Google also indicates what information is publically accessible and what information is not.  So hopefully they will continue to abide by their “Do no evil” credo with all this information.

Related posts:

1. How Much Energy Does Google Use?
2. Google has some tough interview questions (“you have eight balls the same size…”)
3. What were the Top Words of the Decade? (You might want to Google it)
4. How to Opt-Out of Online People Search Databases
5. Top Three Stickiest Websites
6. Top 100 Things Teens Search for Online

But as we’ve gotten older, we’ve lost the power cords and couldn’t find the replacement Atari 2600 joysticks that we had set aside in case of emergencies such as this.

This is why Web Watch is thrilled that Atari has taken it upon themselves to open their free online ATARI ARCADE website, featuring the best of their original games just for you.

The games that they’ve recreated for us include the original Atari 2600 ADVENTURE game (with the bat, the crazy yellow dragon, and the annoying blue maze), ASTEROIDS, BATTLEZONE, LUNAR LANDER, and YAR’S REVENGE.

It’s a great way to kill a few lunchtime minutes as you relive your youth and remember how many quarters you wasted on the home or arcade versions of these games.   

And if you’ve completely forgotten how to play ADVENTURE to find the hidden dot to access the first video game easter egg, you might want to read the ATARI ADVENTURE FAQ WALKTHROUGH.

Related posts:

1. How Many Classic Arcade Games Can You Name? (It’s the arcade version of Where’s Waldo?)
2. Flash Fun: Minions on Ice (from the creators of the *new* Desktop Tower Defense)
3. Top 100 Things Teens Search for Online
4. Betcha can’t name the Most Played Video Game of All Time
5. Flash Fun: Want to play some hoops? Try this world-wide multiplayer basketball game
6. Online Greeting Cards: when you don’t really care about what the recipients think