Offbeat posts

Pinterest has grown tremendously. In December of 2011 it had 7 million users. Just a year later, there are over 20 million monthly active users. It is the third most popular social network following Facebook and Twitter. Even more interesting, it refers more traffic than Google +, LinkedIn, Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube.  Get the most out of your Pinterest today!   Is your Pinterest optimized? Use top Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keywords in your “About” section. Search engines index this page. You have 200 characters to communicate who you are and what you can do for your audience….

“No. I am your father.” Audiences across the world collectively gasped when Darth Vader revealed to his nemesis Jedi in training Luke Skywalker that he was, at one point, Anakin Skywalker, his father. George Lucas went to great measures to make sure that the reveal was one of the best ones in history, even having the voice of Darth Vader, James Earl Jones, record a secondary red herring voice-over saying, “Obi Wan was your father.” If it weren’t for the blaster fire and lightsaber battles, one might look at the backwards family history of the Skywalker clan as a soap opera. Heros kissing, only to find…

On earth, we have struggled for centuries to understand the dynamics of life and how everything relates with everything else. For those who have had the pleasure of going into space and experiencing life away from earth, there’s a phenomenon called The Overview Effect that has many astronauts asking the same basic questions from a different perspective. A recent short documentary by the Planetary Collective shows several astronauts discussing their experiences, telling of some of the conclusions they came to as a result, and expanding on the questions that came to mind due to the perspective-bending…

Have you ever wondered about where the internet is? Yes, we know that it’s everywhere, that websites sit on servers which transmit their data through a series of interpretation protocols that eventually puts Amazon on our iPad screen. That part is easy to grasp. The sheer size of the servers necessary to run the internet combined with the energy required to sustain the internet – now we’re getting into some pretty massive visualizations. That’s the key to the infographic below by Misdegree. Google, for example, has somewhere between 900 thousand to 1.8 million servers, depending on which estimate…

It was once a quaint music festival. Today, it’s arguably the most important tech, music, and film gathering in existence. It’s a big party. It’s a place where movers and shakers move and shake. It’s SXSW and it’s going to be huge once again. If you’re going to SXSWi, we want to hear from you. Sure, the music and film parts are important, too, but it’s the interactive portion of SXSW that truly interests us. This is where the likes of Google and Facebook engage with their users. It’s the venue where politicians can share a stage with startup giants. Something big has been coming out of SXSW every year for…

It’s easy for bloggers to take shots at people who are much more successful than the blogger ever will be whenever the subject of their wrath makes mistakes that bite them later. This is one of those cases. Andrew Mason should have sold Groupon to Google when they offered $6 billion for the daily deals community. Today, they relieved him of his responsibilities as CEO of the company that he’s been building for nearly five years. He’s taking it as well as one would expect from a clever man who just got ousted from his own company: After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided…

There are hundreds of UFO sightings uploaded to YouTube every week. Most are pretty easy to see as either a hoax or an explainable phenomenon. The video of the UFO at Popocatépetl Volcano in Mexico on February 21st is brief, but it’s one that should be noted. It’s not the most stunning UFO video out there, but it’s proximity to the volcano is interesting. There have been other sitings of cigar-shaped UFOs at volcanoes around the world and this one gives us a straight line shot of one as it crosses over. What do you think? Real, hoax, or explainable? * * * Via: WordlessTech  …

When will corporate America learn that censorship attempts never end well for a company, particularly on social media? The insane crash at Saturday’s DRIVE4COPD 300 NASCAR race resulted in numerous injuries and some pretty amazing videos. One such video was flagged by NASCAR on YouTube and a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) takedown request was sent out. YouTube initially complied, then put the video back up after manual review showed that copyright was not infringed. Now, the video is only going to get bigger than it already was. Thanks to a poor decision, NASCAR is going to shine a…

There are shows that have more viewers and shows that have more buzz, but few shows demand the absolute loyalty of its fans the way that Game of Thrones commands. As we approach season 3, the first 1-minute trailer for the upcoming season is loaded with enough cool-sounding statements that even someone like myself who has never watched it is intrigued. Here’s a breakdown of the one-liners that fill the trailer followed by the epic trailer itself. “It’s been a long time, my old friend.” – Not a big deal, but since it’s uttered while Peter Hayden Dinklage first enters a scene, it’s worth noting. “Death…

They say you learn something new every day. I learned something about Pinterest the other day that blew my mind a little. Users like links. This might seem like a no-brainer to some, but it goes against what I’ve learned in my years on the various social networks. On most networks, there are images and there are links. Images normally perform the best across the board. Links, on the other hand, do not. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ all prefer images over links. It isn’t just the algorithms on Facebook and Google+, it’s also the overall community sentiment on all three, including Twitter. Pinterest…