In case you have never typed "kittens" into YouTube (and you know you have!), there are thousands of cute kitten videos on the site. In fact, they could start calling it KittenTube. Or some smart trendy person could create a website that is all about cute kitten videos. Well, guess what? There is a site out there just like that and it's draining the nation's productivity by the cute kitten minute.
It's called KittehRoulette, which is catchy but a bit of a misnomer. It's not ChatRoulette for cats. I know all you cat owners out there think your cat is a genius but it's not like there are a bunch of fat cats from Russia sitting in front of their owners' MacBook "nexting" some rangy looking kittys from Malaysia. Basically, this site is a collection of all those YouTube cat videos, one right after another. Though it uses the spelling popularized by the LOLCats phenomenon, it is somehow not part of that burgeoning cuteness empire. The Kittehs stand alone....for now.
So if you're having a bad day or just need a break from the tedium of work, you now have an oasis of cuteness. Meow.
An artist has been surfing the global chat wave and creating instant online portraits of those he encounters. His name is Paz Bernstein and he's located in Israel. It's definitely the most creative use of ChatRoulette I've seen. Stay tuned for his last portrait at the end.....a sleeping beauty. The perfect subject.
Well...it didn't take long for someone to do a parody song of ChatRoulette, the face-to-face networking site that has been taking the Internet by storm over the past few months. This spot-on take on the ChatRoulette phenomenon comes from Hank Green, the brother of fellow teen author John Green and the co-creator the their site nerdfighters.com. So enjoy this comical musical interlude....and beware the pantless. Next!
There's an interesting piece in NY Magazine about ChatRoulette, a relatively new Internet...experience. If you have a computer, a cam and a streak of daring, you can log on to ChatRoulette and instantly be connected with thousands of users around the world for instant chats. If you're want, you can then have an online "conversation" or you can just click the "next" button and you will be connected with another random stranger.
The NY mag writer, Sam Anderson, draws some conclusions from his visits; the average age of people rouletting is 20, it's a 2 to 1 ratio of men to women, and, this being the Internet and all, a great deal of them are looking for some sort of sexual play. But a lot of them are just chatting, or even dancing to Michael Jackson with strangers half-way around the world. Anderson found his first solo experience on the site a little crazy, as he found himself "nexted" by heavily made up teenage girls and male masturbators. But when he logged on with a friend, he found the experience much more entertaining and fun as well.
Anderson writes that, in a way, this site harkens back to the more Wild West days of the Internet when the web was inherently messy and random. In the early days, there was no searching or categorizing what you wanted/needed. There's something bracing about that in an age where the net has become such a controlled experience, via megasites like Facebook. Regardless of whether or not you are bold enough to turn your cam on (I haven't...so far), the article is a fascinating look at the instant connectivity of the web...as well as it's dangers.
