Link About It: This Week’s Picks
Six Point Resin, Dollar Shave Club, Literary Book Madness and more in our look at the web this week
1. History of the GIF
This mini documentary about the love-it-or-hate-it GIF file format surveys everything from the early years of video games to the file’s recent revival in internet memes.
2. Six Point Resin
With the latest addition to their tasty line of delicious brews Sixpoint gives a nod to the heady beer community in a big way. Resin, a year-round offering, contains 9.1% alcohol and promises to deliver huge flavor to beer aficionados.
3. A Conversation With Barry McGee
FriendsWithYou’s Samuel Borkson talks shop with San Francisco-based artist Barry McGee, discussing his OCD and ADD tendencies, his thoughts on contemporary art and his love of surfing.
4. Engelbart Mural
This info-graphic mural tracks the life of systems from the perspective of technological inventor Douglas C. Engelbart. The massive 4′ x 27′ illustration begins with Engelbart’s birth in 1925 and ends with an open template for the coming decades, covering hundreds of moments in between.
5. Wes Anderson from Above. Quentin Tarantino From Below.
A YouTube subscriber called Kogonada created this interesting perspective on the cinematic stylings of contemporary filmmakers Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino. Pitting the two against each other, Kogonada’s mashup shows their respective penchants for shooting from overhead and underfoot.
6. Diet Coke by Jean Paul Gaultier
In this gleeful and perhaps a wee bit creepy promotional video, the fashion designer injects some zing into the dance routine of a starlet named Irene (and a paparazzi camera done over in his signature blue and white stripes). He dresses the doe-eyed marionette in what we presume to be custom miniature JPG duds, feeds her some Diet Coke and takes her game to the next level—because, says Irene, “with Jean Paul, it’s all sex, glam and rock ‘n’ roll!”
7. Dollar Shave Club
Michael Dubin and Mark Levine launched the money-saving mail-order service in April 2011, shipping quality razors for a mere $3. Smart enough, but it was the promotional video that put them on the map. Originally created as a pitch to investors, the hilarious skit—among its declarations: “Your handsome-ass grandfather only had one blade…and polio!”—also won over everyone with an Internet connection this week.
8. iPad Style Apps for Photoshop
With a new app just released by PSKiss you can bring iPad/iPhone style functionality to your favorite photo editor. Photogram is a Photoshop extension that functions like your favorite retro camera apps from your Apple device. Use it to mess with your pictures and get the perfect faux classic look.
9. Book Madness
With college basketball poised to take over the month, those into quieter pursuits can delight in Out of Print’s literary riff on the NCAA tournament bracket. Bookworms can fill out their entire bracket with their favorite titles, then submit before the deadline on 12 March. Fan voting then opens, and the most accurate brackets win up to $500 for Out of Print book-themed clothing and accessories.
10. Forget Your Past
In this fantastic photo series, photographer Timothy Allen documents the current state of what was once one of the world’s largest monuments to Communism. Buzludha was built in Bulgaria as a celebration of the nation’s ideology under Communist rule. After the revolution in 1989 the epic structure slipped into ruin and Allen’s series documents its current state in what feels like an impenetrable alien wasteland.
11. Street Seats
Developed by Bade Stageberg Cox for the Pier 94 Coffee Bar at The Armory Show this weekend, Street Seats is an assortment of 50 chairs collected from the streets of New York. Painted taxi cab yellow, each one is stamped with the date and location of where it was found.
12. Invisible Mercedes-Benz
Demonstrating the invisible carbon footprint of Mercedes’ F-CELL hydrogen fuel cell technology, the car maker sought to render one of their autos truly invisible. A side-mounted 5D Mark II recorded video was projected onto a panel of LEDs on the opposing side, giving the car the appearance of transparency.
