ThingsAmongMany

Seems the changes in our economy will leave an indelible mark after all. There’s been countless posts, articles, etc. about the changes that we’re going through. I recently stumbled across a new site dedicated to just this mentality. Title Wantist, the site ascribes itself to the notion that we all have things we want, but these days it seems more responsible to be pickier about what we actually choose to buy. Sometimes that means selecting something cheaper so as not to be wasteful. Sometimes it means we splurge on something a little more costly with the intent that it will last longer (and therefore be cheaper in the long run). And, sometimes, we have to simple opt not to purchase at all, despite our underlying desires.

Get the description straight from the horse’s mouth here, or just wander over to take a peek at what they’ve got up so far. I particularly love the simplicity of the site design.

Learning new vocabulary terms is important for all of us. I mean, how else could we possibly maintain an eloquent repertoire of colloquialisms to share with our brethren during times of conversational bonding? But - as we all recall from out S.A.T. days, learning new vocabulary terms is also one of the more boring things we can dedicate our time to. Or at least it was until now. There’s a new site in town that’s aiming to change that: TheFuckingWordOfTheDay.com.

They take the same lofty words that you’d want to learn elsewhere, and put them in a context that will stick with the perverted, raunchy sense of humor that we’ve all grown accustomed to maintaining these days (after all, is “fuck” really that offensive anymore?). Here’s a perfect example in their own words:

Let’s say you’re trying to learn the word assiduous.

Here’s the example sentence that dictionary.com gives:

But he was a man who by assiduous reading, through his devotion to literature, had become the quintessential successful gentleman, a man who could hold his own with the most cultivated companions.

and here’s The Fucking Word of the Day’s:

He was crippled by her assiduous dedication to the blow-job she was performing on him.

Now, which one do you think you’ll remember in ten minutes?

Sitting somewhere between tongue-in-cheek and overtly serious is newcomer to the social web, Be Fucking Awesome. Enter every awesome thing that you do and everyone else in the system can vote on it, creating your “Awesome Quotient”. You have 150 characters to enter each deed (no idea why they opted to make it 150 instead of 140 for easy Twitter integration, but I digress). You can then sort your own (and everyone else’s) deeds by “most recent” or “most awesome” and sort by everyone, or just your friends.

Useful? Eh, maybe not. Fucking awesome? Yeah, gettin’ pretty close.

We all know and love Craigslist by now (especially here in NYC where it trumps even eBay for finding…anything). And, of course, one of the more humorous aspects of the old Cl is the Missed Connections section. Unfortunately, if you want anything further than a humorous respite from your day, you’re probably relatively SOL on Missed Connections. It’s a jumble of difficult to navigate listings that are poorly described and lack much chance of making any real connection.

That’s what newcomer Blinka.me aims to fix. While they try to bill it as a bit more, Binka.me seems to be - at its heart - a more robust version of Craigslist’s Missed Connections:

blinka.me helps you meet people you’d like to meet again. By sharing your moments on blinka.me you get a second chance to connect.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If Missed Connections had a better shot at working, it’d actually be a pretty cool savior for all of those moments when we can’t stomach up the gumption to speak to the person we’ve been eyeing for the last fifteen minutes of our commute.

The site seems to be in its infancy and is still collecting “moments” from around the world - for example, I was surprised to find that there’s nothing in NYC. But as it grows, it certainly has the potential to start connecting people in ways that only dumb luck might have managed before. It would be nice to see them integrate data from Craigslist as well since (despite its humorous nature) it’s still the de facto dumping ground for these moments. Between it’s own robust system and everything being sucked in from Craiglist, they might well have a winner on their hands.

Seems photo projects are the theme around here for the moment. The newest one that I’ve stumbled across is called Before I die, I want to…. Artistic duo Nicole Kenney and ks rives each carry a Polaroid camera with them at all times, stopping to snap a shot of the interesting people they come across. And, for every shot they take, they ask the person what dream they’d like to accomplish during their lifetime. All of the photos (and dreams) are collected on their site http://beforeidieiwantto.org for the world to see.

Their hope is to reconnect with all of their subjects in a few (read 10 or 20?) years to see how they’re coming with their dreams.

Seeing online that other people are fulfilling their desires will motivate participants to complete their task and write a story of their own.

They’ve also taken this hobby/project on the road. The two recently spent three months traveling through India, Polaroids close at hand, asking the locals the very same question. Those dreams are also collected on a separate section of the site.

If you want to share with Nicole and ks your personal dream, they’re taking submissions from around the world as well. Just follow the directions here to share with them.

Well, it is exactly what it sounds like. All said, however, it’s a pretty interesting project being conducted by photographer Jacob Pritchard. Pritchard helps his subjects get all set for portraits in in their own bed, then lets them have at it with the remote for a few takes to see what comes out of it. And the results are pretty compelling.

For the moment, it seems, Pictures in Bed lives on its own Tumblr account. I’d presume it was left off his portfolio site for ease of updating. Regardless, there’s something intriguing about delving into people homes/lives to see how they sleep/hang out in bed. It has a voyeuristic quality that’s paid off safely. And apparently the participants are having fun too:

I felt like a cross between a professional model, a porn star, and an artist—it was titillating. -Kelly

For me, my bed is a magical place I dream about when I’m drunk, exhausted and somewhere far, far away—like the East Village. -Tanveer

If you want to participate, you can drop Jacob a line. His info is here. Have fun, and let me know if your shot turns up there!

Maybe it’s just my demented sense of humor. Or just the fact that it’s a Monday. But this is funny. And no, it’s not a euphemism for anything.

There seems to be an onslaught of vaguely meaningless yet inevitably funny websites cropping up. Call it a “trend” or something. I mean, we’ve all seen AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com by now, right? And, of course, Look at This Fucking Hipster (latfh.com) made the rounds recently.

Well, here’s the next one: Skinny Girls Big Sandwiches (.com).

You can submit your own contributions to: mike@skinnygirlsbigsandwiches.com. Thanks to @conradlisco for the find.

“Inspiration sites” are a dime a dozen these days. Despite the onslaught, however, GOOD inspiration sites are hard to find. I wrote about Singlefunction.com the other day - a great site with a mix of sites designed to do just one thing. But where do you go when you want to be inspired to build a site that has a little more to it?

siteInspire.net is a good place to start. Currently featuring 353 different websites, siteInspire breaks them all down into digestible categories like “big type”, “flash based”, and “horizontal scrolling”. Some are a little better than others, but for the most part, they’re all pretty stylishly designed. And the siteInspire showcase makes it easy to sift through them to find the perfect site to rip off inspire you when you’re looking to design something new.

Amidst our continually connected lives, there’s been a new trend springing up lately across the internet. The idea of simplicity is re-emerging in the form of the single-function website. What is that? Well, as the description implies, it’s a website designed to do one simple function - and do it WELL. You might remember UPL8.tv and KideoPlayer, both of which have been discussed here on ThingsAmongMany in the past. Those are great examples of single-function sites.

So how do you find others that do their jobs well? It can be tough, but there’s now a new site dedicated to showcasing the best-of when it comes to these minimal interaction websites. Aptly titled, Singlefunction.com collects and curates - based on user suggestion - the best of the single-function websites out there. Their list is somewhere around the 300 mark right now and seems to be climbing steadily. Functionality of their included sites ranges from URL shorteners to a Twitter-based lottery system to…whatever. You can also follow them on Twitter to get an update when they add new sites.