sundance

5 better ways to express your intimacy

A recent survey by Pew Internet and the American Life Project found that one in three teens had shared a password (email, Facebook, etc.) with a friend or boyfriend or girlfriend. Apparently sharing your password is the new way to express intimacy, to prove to your partner that you have nothing to hide. Um, hello Facebook hacking! (Aside: Did you know that if you work at Facebook HQ and accidentally leave your FB account logged in when you leave your desk, some jokester colleague will update your status to say that you are pooping? Apparently it’s a company tradition.) Anyway. Maybe teens don’t have any credit card digits to lose just yet, but identify theft (or even just unauthorized identity borrowing) can suck in junior high too. We hope we don’t need to explain what a terrible idea this is.

Follow the Sundance Film Festival Awards LIVE!

Still bummed you couldn’t make it out to Park City? Well, Sundance Channel will be at the awards ceremony tonight and we promise to bring you up-to-the-minute reports on the winners, the losers and who is passing out from “altitude sickness”. Make sure you are following @SundanceChannel so you don’t miss a thing. And, if you’re really committed, you can watch a live stream of the whole shebang. The festivities begin tonight at 9 ET/7 MT.

Top 10 dirtier books

A few weeks back we jumped on the Twitter hashtag #lessambitiousbooks bandwagon, with a list of our Top 10 Less Ambitious Sex Books (The Joy of Dry Humping, Slight Hangup About Flying, etc.). This time around we figured we’d create our own damn hashtag — #dirtierbooks — so that nobody could accuse us of being late to the game. The trick with #dirtierbooks is to be clever without sounding like a cheesy porno (The Da Vinci Load, A Tale of Two Titties, et al). Below are our top 10 best attempts. So, er, anyone want to jump on our bandwagon? (That came out dirtier than we meant it.)

GOP candidates summarized in hand signals

BuzzFeed (going increasingly political with their recent hiring of Ben Smith from Politico) has a hilarious photo recap of the recent GOP debates that’s focused on simply their hand gestures. My favorite is the one above of Romney displaying the “He Was THIS Tall” expression.

Green tech finds: the monster trade shows edition

CES and the Detroit Auto Show are going on this week, and we’ve got finds from both!

The tiny electric pick up: Need to haul stuff? You won’t get much into the Smart For-Us, but, as Charis Michelsen at Gas 2.0 points out, it’s awfully cute, and may serve the actual hauling needs of most truck drivers.

Your plants are Tweeting: And they’re thirsty. That’s right: the Botanicalls gadget (not sure what else to call it) sends you a tweet when your plants need watering. Only marginally green, but kind of cool. (via Crisp Green)

Top 10 less ambitious sex books

We’re suckers for a good Twitter hashtag — they can make everyone feel like a stand-up comedian for a few minutes (not to mention giving us all a break from reading what our colleagues ate for breakfast). We particularly loved the #lessambitiousbooks hashtag that was trending this week, and of course we jumped on the bandwagon, finding ourselves hilarious @EMandLO. We were planning on publishing a round-up of our favorite sex- and love-related entries found on Twitter, but as it turned out, we had more fun coming up with our own. So here are our top 10 less ambitious sex (or sexy) books:

GWLBWLB Nashville Premieres TODAY– Only on Twitter

Sundance Channel just can’t wait to share the new season of GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS WHO LIKE BOYS with you. So, we’ve teemed up with Twitter to host the first ever television show premiere via tweet!

Want to watch the first episode TODAY? All you have to do is follow @SundanceChannel on Twitter and stand by for an exclusive link to the first episode! You’re welcome.

Today’s top hashtag: #ThatsWhatHoesDo

The #ThatsWhatHoesDo trend follows the same basic premise of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if…” jokes. In fact, it might as well read, “You might be a hoe if…” Apparently, hoes are quite dexterous where social media is concerned, strategically changing their Twitter location and Facebook relationship status. These are some of the best I found (even Betty White and Harry Potter chimed in), but it got about 100 new tweets per minute (for realz) so if I missed one, add your fave in the comments.

#undatableinlit: Publishers learn how to use the Internet

Would you go for this man of few words?

Now that an increase in book sales has officially been reported (5.6% increase in revenue and 4.1% increase in book sales), we can all stop perpetuating the doomsday message that print is dead. No other phrase is guaranteed to irk me (and my fellow fiction grad students) more. Part of the reason those numbers are on the rise is because the publishing industry has finally become web savvy, or at least savvier, by reaching out to readers through a variety of decidedly un-bookish social media outlets like Twitter. Avid Tweeters are a choosy and demanding bunch, though – there are thousands of 140-character blips to read. Publishers have upped their game accordingly, supplying their followers with more than just book announcements and reading event listings.

How Twitter was almost named Twitch, and other titles that suck

Earlier this week I heard a story on my local NPR affiliate about how Twitter – a word that has transcended the confines of a brand name to become part of our everyday vernacular, even spawning its own verb conjugations of the infinitive to tweet – was almost named Twitch. Co-founder Jack Dorsey explains, “We wanted a name that evoked what we did. We wanted something that was tangible. And we looked at what we were doing and when you received a tweet over SMS, your phone would buzz. It would jitter. It would twitch. And those were the early names, Jitter and Twitch. And neither one of them really inspired the best sort of imagery.”

Comedy gold: tweets in a Peanut universe

Peanutweeter is my current favorite website for chuckles: the site takes tweets from various people offering their insights, observations, and some thoughts better left unsaid and matches it with a frame from a Peanuts comic. For all of us bloggers, this is a great question asked by Lucy.

Twitter invasion

Does the new Tweetseat make a compelling case for connecting digital and physical communities or is this an example of technology and social media gone too far? Designed by Chris McNicoll, the Tweetseat is a park bench at the Botanical Gardens in Dundee, Scotland that takes two pictures each time someone sits on it. The first picture, taken from the bench, captures the point of view of the sitter, and the second is a photo of the person/people sitting on the bench taken from a nearby tree. This set of pictures is then automatically uploaded to the Twitter feed @Tweetingseat.

Tweet Roundup: Joe Zee

@mrjoezee: Snow white, snow bright, will my flight take off tonight? #Goodmorning @mrjoezee: More info! RT @Styleite Introducing the designers on @MrJoeZee‘s new show, “All on the Line.” http://styleite.com/ojncv @mrjoezee: IT’S OFFICIAL: All On The Line will premiere @Sundancechannel on Tues March 29 at 10pm. LIKE this page for updates. http://on.fb.me/gUMgl1 Joe’s packing up his [...]

Cory Booker, hero with a snow shovel and a smartphone

The efforts of Newark Mayor Cory Booker to clean up his city feature prominently in the Peabody-Award-winning Docu-Series BRICK CITY, the second season of which will premiere on Sundance Channel on January 30. Those efforts are also capturing major attention this week, thanks to Booker’s use of Twitter to come to the aid of Newark citizens trapped in the aftermath of the blizzard that brought the Northeast to a standstill.

Twitter’s top 10 most powerful tweets of 2010

Twitter rounded up their list of the top 10 most influential and powerful tweets this year. Although they might not be world leaders, nationally recognized reporters, or celebrities, here is my recommended short list of must-follow people on Twitter due to their excellent linkage or humor (or both!): jennydeluxe (memes, news, and lolz), CardiffGarcia (financial), [...]

Mom mistakes Neil Gaiman for Neil Patrick Harris. Cool conversation ensues.

I enjoyed this back and forth on Twitter recently between famous author Neil Gaiman and self described Midwestern mom of two April Roller who mistook him for the other great Neil: Neil Patrick Harris. This whole conversation acts as an antidote to YouTube comments.

First ever interview with @BPGlobalPR

In the aftermath of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this summer and the subsequent inept response by BP, a Twitter account “@BPGlobalPR” became an overnight retweeted sensation. Parodying a faceless corporate PR spokesperson, this anonymous writer began tweeting on May 19, and Journalists, bloggers, and Tweeters quickly ate them up. Unsurprisingly, it [...]

Green tech finds (9/9/10)

A bee beard for David Cameron, subway energy harvesting, and using search technology to identify endangered species… this week’s green tech finds.

• The Wolverine solar cell: Researchers at MIT actually looked to plants, not the X-Men, when creating a solar cell that “heals” its own UV damage.
  
  
• Tweet for the honey bees: British marketing firm LBi has created a “twittition” (Twitter petition) to support honey bee populations in the UK. Each tweet added to the petition adds a bee to a “bee beard” on a likeness of Prime Minister David Cameron (shown above).
  
  

Green tech finds (8/12/10)

The greenest cell phone companies, solar Marines, and DIY LED Facebook notification… your green tech finds for the week.

• Smart energy cities: The NRDC’s Smarter Cities project has published a list of 22 US cities taking the lead on more sustainable energy use and production. (via GreenTech Pastures)
  
  
• LED Facebook notification: OK, this is only marginally green, but Instructables has a project up for a DIY Facebook notification device that uses LED lights.
  
  

Rainn Wilson tweets for LACMA

In an effort to broaden their reach, LACMA has enlisted the twittering service of Rainn Wilson, whose own Twitter feed is one of the most popular on the site. His campaign is called “I HATE LACMA” and includes tweets like “LACMA isn’t nearly as cool as the African American museum down the street, BLACMA,” and “My new sculpture is displayed in the 2nd floor mens room. It’s made of feces and shaped like a big poo.”

Twitter’s analysis of tweets during the World Cup

By Internet time the World Cup seems like it happened eons ago, but Twitter’s official blog recently posted their analysis of tweets during the World Cup. Their analysis and relevance team compiled results into a cool infographic “charting fans’ use of hashflags (like #esp or #usa) during the tournament with a background of TPS [tweets [...]

Robyn’s Bitch Track

Robyn, the Swedish disco-pop songstress, embarking on a tour with Kelis this summer has released her first of three slated albums this year already. I’ve highlighted the first single, “Dancing On My Own,” here already. The song “Killing Me” is equally as mesmerizing. The video is quite remarkable too. The song sees Robyn, repeatedly, saying [...]

I, a Jew, will miss Helen Thomas

Helen Thomas — You will be missed… If only by me. OOooof… what a week! I got my ass chewed out on Facebook for saying I would miss Helen Thomas… Okay. Half of what she said was pretty indefensible (I am of the mind that Israelis should, indeed, stop building on settlements. However, I do [...]

The Horrible Truth About Celebrity Tweeting

As someone who follows celebrities for a living, I’ve found that they’re fascinating creatures who radiate excitement and sex appeal in everything they do—except tweeting!

I know this because the second I joined Twitter a few months ago, I started “following” any celebrity I could track down there, anxious to eavesdrop on whatever stellar utterances were available to me thanks to this trendy form of techno-networking. But just as quickly, I was bored into submission by the fact that in this context, bold-face luminaries are every bit as trivial and fatuous as you and me!

More White Noise from the Narcissist Generation

Lady Bunny — Photo by Charles Eshelman/Getty Images I spent much of last week in three inches of make-up doing my best Lady Bunny impersonation. No, really. I ended up doing LXTV, Joy Behar, Fox Business, etc. and it’s amazing how much make-up they put on a person just so they are “TV ready.” It’s [...]