Nice post from my fave The Datablog:

If you believed everything we published on April 1, you'd think that there really was an island called San Serriffe, we were printing a rival to Hello (called Ciao!) and that we were going to publish exclusively on Twitter. See what we've made up
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From television revealing that spaghetti grows in trees to pictures of the Loch Ness monster, the tradition of April Fool's' Day stories in the media has a long and bizarre history.

Newspaper hoaxes first began to appear in the early 19th century, mainly in America. One of the very first was a series of New York Sun articles in 1835 about life on the moon, supposedly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Another involved the Boston Post announcing that at a cavern of gold and jewels had been found on Boston common, leading to hundreds of readers setting out in the rain in search of the treasure.

British publications were rather less inclined towards to such frolics but after the BBC's spaghetti harvest hoax of 1957, Fleet Street began to lighten up and carry more daring jokes.

The spoof though, by which all others are measured is the Guardian's 1977 San Serriffe travel guide in, a seven-page travel supplement to a non-existent island which was described throughout using an obscure vocabulary composed entirely of printing terms. The success of this hoax is widely credited with inspiring the British media's enthusiasm for April the first jokes in subsequent years.

The Guardian has revisited the island at least twice since 1977, as well as carrying spoofs ranging from a Men's page to the news of Prince Charles becoming countryside tsar. There was also 1990's Guardian for Sunday. Published on 31 March 1990, with the giveaway dateline Sunday 1 April 1990, the 36-page newsprint tabloid came two months after the launch of the Independent on Sunday. As Ian Mayes, former readers' editor of the Guardian and currently writing the third volume of the official history of the paper explains:

On the front page of the Guardian for Sunday, there was an exclusive story revealing that Mrs Thatcher was putting her family home in Dulwich on the market since she had decided to reside permanently in Downing Street, not an unimaginable event in 1990. 'Number Ten and Chequers are all the homes we have need of,' she was quoted as saying. Another feature was Salman Rushdie on 'A room of my own' – taking its name from a series in the Observer, which the Guardian did not yet own. Rushdie, who had been in hiding for just over a year, since the fatwa of February 1989, described a room in a clapperboard [sic, there was no corrections column then] building in the Falklands Islands, somewhere in the area of Goose Green. The photograph showed an orange 'neighbourhood watch' sticker in the window.
The books pages reflected the not uncommon view that such pages were customarily in the hands of a small elite. Martin Amis reviewed Margaret Drabble; Margaret Drabble reviewed Blake Morrison; Blake Morrison reviewed Julian Barnes; Julian Barnes reviewed Martin Amis … and so on. The impending publication of the Guardian for Sunday had been reported po-faced as a real event in the trade press, and champagne now had to be dispatched to all the trade reporters who had been taken in. As a tour de force it ranked with the invention of the island of San Serriffe whose discovery was announced in the Guardian on 1 April 1977

We've compiled a list of Guardian and Observer April Fools stories going back to 1974. However, we're missing a few so please let us know if you can remember others.

For more April foolery see Martin Wainwright's The Guardian Book of April Fool's Day. See also the GNM education centre's site.

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When a mommy unicorn and a daddy dragon love each other very much…

-awkwardturtle26

Great research article for my SXSW talk on social tv: 

Lost Remote post: This year’s Academy Awards on ABC was infused with social media and second-screen experiences, top to bottom. So much so, we were juggling apps and devices — three different hosted live streams during the red carpet show — which was a bit out of control. While the show didn’t offer many (if any) smashing viral moments, there were some terrific second-screen developments and a few memorable social media tidbits:

Best on-screen Twitter integration goes to…

Last year, it was news when the #Oscars hashtag appeared on the screen. This year, that’s par for the course, but a red carpet Twitter integration caught our eye. Users were asked to tweet with #bestdressed and the name of the celebrity to vote for their favorites. Every 30 minutes or so, the red carpet hosts announced the top three, in a simple bottom-third graphic (below). It was easy, clean and consistent with the show. There have been hashtag votes in other shows before, but I think this illustrates how you don’t always need a big trending dashboard thing to make Twitter a valuable interactive element of a show.

Biggest Oscars publicity stunt…

“Part of me thought he’d be up to something,” Ryan Seacrist said live on E! after Sasha Baron Cohen, dressed as “The Dictator,” dumped fake ashes on him. “When someone asks what you’re wearing, you’ll tell them Kim Jong Il!” Cohen yelled. Other than the fashions, this stunt was the subject of many red carpet tweets.

Oscars moment that turned into a Twitter account…

There are two, actually…

Less yelling, please. RT @PatSandora: CAN WE PLEASE FIX THE TINNY AUDIO, OSCARS?!

— Oscars Audio Guy (@OscarsAudioGuy) February 27, 2012

Look at the leg!

— Angelina Jolie’s Leg (@AngiesRightLeg) February 27, 2012

Biggest social media disappointment…

Billy Crystal didn’t tweet during the show. And for some, Billy Crystal was the disappointment.

#oscars: enjoy the show, will tweet after. Thanks for your good thoughts. Billy

— Billy Crystal (@BillyCrystal) February 26, 2012

The best second-screen experience goes to…

There are a few winners here. During pre-show, we liked the IntoNow experience (below) that gave users the ability to “like” or “dislike” fashions by displaying photos (with about a 5-10 minute delay) from the red carpet. After you voted, you could see how others reacted.

During the show itself, the Oscars app provided multiple backstage live streams and a hosted experience, too. We found it distracting during the show — unless there was a particular winner we wanted to track backstage (after all, producers cut off people after about 30 seconds at the microphone.) For example, when the emotional Octavia Spencer left the stage, we watched as she made her way backstage, could barely talk into the “thank you” camera, then went to the press room for more. You could watch in a six-screen split (our favorite) or watch the ticker to see what was happening on various cameras. Very well done.

Also during the show, Viggle surprised us the most. The TV rewards app provided a slick real-time poll (below) that’s one of the best second-screen experiences we’ve seen. Perfectly in time with the broadcast, Viggle asked for predictions the moment a presenter approached the stage. It locked the votes seconds before they were read. Then it displayed the winner (awarding points accordingly) moments after it was announced. In each case, it prompted the user with a sound effect — the sound of a projector — which could be disabled easily. During other moments, it served up trivia questions (and you could get hints via Bing searches — yep, it was sponsored Bing.) All in all, the points all added up to real rewards.

On the conversation front, Twitter wins again. Twitter’s owned apps and Twitter.com may not be perfect, but they’re still better than other second-screen apps with Twitter clients for posting tweets. And definitely better than other second-screen apps running on their own discussion platform that have yet to gain any scale — those apps weren’t empty rooms this time, but the quality of discussion was dramatically lacking. This time, Twitter even pulled together its own list of live-tweeters for the show — probably not the last time we’ll see Twitter organizing content production (instead of just platform technology) around live events.

The best new second-screen feature is…

Umami rolled out a feature before the Oscars that’s one of the best we’ve seen on the second screen: a simple way to “screen grab” an image of what you’re watching on TV and sharing it with your friends (below). Umami lets you sync with the broadcast, then click “freeze frame” to choose from several images snapped from the broadcast over the last 30 seconds or so. Pick one, then share it out with your friends. Snazzy.

Weirdest second-screen moment is…

At one moment during the red carpet pre-show, I was watching three live streams at the same time — all hosted by different people — on TV, online and the Oscars app. And at one point, Milla Jovovich was “live” on two separate streams at once. Hmmm.

The worst Tweeting award goes to…

SPOILER ALERT: Tina Fey is about to appear on the #Oscars!

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 27, 2012

During the show, the official account @theAcademy tweeted gems like this one. Over and over again. (Spoiler alert? Now if it tweeted who won several minutes in advance, THAT would be a spoiler.) Not to mention, the upcoming presenter was already teased minutes before on TV, and in this case, Tina Fey had already been on the air for several minutes by the time it appeared in my tweet stream.

Any others you’d like to add?

Datablog post: What have we learnt from 70 years of Desert Island Discs? See who's been in and what they chose

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As Radio 4's Desert Island Discs enters its 70th year, our Scraperwiki spreadsheet reveals a number of themes running through castaways' choices over the past seven decades.

With the entire Desert Island Discs archive now available on the BBC Radio 4 website, guests' selections of books and luxuries are comprehensively revealed in all their profound, surprising - and occasionally downright odd - glory.

Since the programme began in 1942, a total of 43 guests, including Terry Wogan and George Clooney, elected to while away the hours with Tolstoy's War and Peace, according to the BBC archive.

Camila Batmanghelidjh and Raymond Tallis chose the existentialist writings of Sartre and Heidegger to aid the solitude, but Proust was the philosopher of choice, featuring in at least 50 episodes.

Unsurprisingly, booze featured heavily on the imaginary island, with politicians particularly keen on a tipple. David Cameron was one of dozens of guests who wanted whisky, while David Davis requested "a magic wine cellar which never runs out".

Lord Brian Rix's choice of a "proper orthopaedic cushion" epitomised the trend towards home comforts: Christabel Bielenberg chose a "comfortable chair"; Daniel Baremboin a piano with a mattress.

The musical instrument was a winner, with 183 guests, including Sir Ian McKellen, opting for a piano - perhaps unsurprisingly given 1212 of the show's 2892 guests have been from stage, screen and radio, and 635 from music backgrounds.

Guitars were next, with 57 appearances in the archive. Five castaways chose the trombone and 12 chose the saxophone. One: James Mason in 1961, wanted bagpipes, to the undoubted consternation of island wildlife.

Ever resourceful, guests have increasingly chosen to harness solar power in their attempts to stay sane on the island. Thirty-six chose solar-powered items, the most eye opening of which being the solar-powered vibrator chosen by Cornelia Parker.

Some more facts from the archives:

1. 25 guests wanted pillows
2. 41 guests chose the Encyclopaedia Britannica
3. 149 chose paper
4. 47 guests wanted a television
5. 136 requested paint

No doubt the ingeniously simple and effective Desert Island Discs format will continue to provide interesting data for years to come.

What do you think of the castaways' choices? And how different will they look in another 70 years' time?

The 70th anniversary edition of Desert Island Discs, featuring Sir David Attenborough in his fourth appearance on the show, will be broadcast on Sunday 29 January

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Daily Infographic Blog Post: First things first, I want to state how grateful I am to live in this century. Movies of the 80′s have been more than intriguing over the course of the past few months, but times were obviously hard back then. Cellphones weren’t nearly as mobile as they are now, cassette players reigned supreme, and I could talk until I’m blue in the face about the hair. Walkman’s and cellular phones with their twenty inch antennas set the pace for this ease of access society we live in. Price tags and all.

Paying for convience was quite a task just a few decades ago, as a cellphone was $4000+, an Atari was the same price as a Wii, and an Apple 2 ran you close to $3,000.

I’m still keeping in mind that these products were quite the advancement in their day and age, but footing the bill is not something I’d be interested in. [Via]

© Delano Taylor for Daily Infographic, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1983, 2011, apple 2, Atari, dot matrix, iphone, technology, wii, xbox 360

Sent from my iPad

From Anytime Fitness has released the Weight of the Union 2.0 infographic to coincide with the U.S. State of the Union Address this week.

Last night, the President gave his State of the Union address to members of Congress and the general citizenry to report that our nation is moving in the right direction. But today we want to address what the President didn’t mention in his speech to the union. We want to discuss our nation’s biggest health concern: obesity. We are offering its own barometer for measuring progress — the second annual report called the “Weight of the Union.”

There’s a lot of data shown in this design, and a good blend of different data visualizations, illustrations and text descriptions. 

My biggest complaint is that many of the data points are just listed in text, and they could have been visualized.  For example, the dollar values showing that “Being Fat is Expensive”, should have been scaled so they could be easily compared to each other or some outside comparative spending values.

The other major issue I have is the shading of the silhouette as a stacked bar chart doesn’t work accurately.  Readers see the “AREA” of the colored sections as being representative of the values.  Because of the odd shape, you can’t just color by height.  The boots are showing the biggest value “Sleep”, but because that part of the silhouette is narrow, “Work” actually visualizes as a much bigger portion of the whole than the data really shows.

I like the inclusion of the QR Code at the bottom as a promotion tool for Anytime Fitness.

Thanks to Amanda for sending in the link!

Graffiti artists aren’t particularly known for their bookishness. After all, when you spend your nights out on the street as a graphic art vigilante, you’re missing important time that could be spent snuggled up in bed with a book. So after we saw this spectacular Isaac Asimov portrait, we decided to go hunting for graffiti with a distinct literary bent — and in fact, the world abounds with bookish street art, from portraits of favorite authors to stenciled and scribbled quotes to representations of beloved characters. Click through to see thirty of our favorite finds, from the reverent to the blatantly mocking, and let us know which author’s likeness you’d most like to stencil onto the walls of your city in the comments — or get out there and contribute to our collection.

Isaac Asimov, Rome [via]