Re-GIF: Double Whammy

From the aptly titled Tumblr blog Animals Being Dicks

How To Get Hit On by a Cleverbot

Yesterday Rathauser Scott Starrett sent me an email urging me to try a website called Cleverbot.

“This thing gets smarter as people use it. although it’s not very smart right now. but you can hold a conversation with it. it draws from past conversations.”

In other words when the user enters text, the Cleverbot’s algorithm selects previously entered phrases from its database of 20 million conversations. It has been claimed that “talking to Cleverbot is a little like talking with the collective community of the internet.”

So I decided to chat up the mentally challenged AI web application to see how the collective internet would respond. The results are included in the screenshot below, and needless to say despite my sarcasm Cleverbot took the conversation to a surprising place.

Website Shout Out: Jerry Seinfeld Personal Archives

What.. is…the deal, with comedians on the internet? We’ll let Mr. Seinfeld explain:

When I was ten years old, I started watchingstand up comedians on TV. I fell in love with them and I’m just as fascinated with stand up comedy today.

When I started doing TV, I saved every appearance on every show I did. I thought it might be fun to go through all of it and pick out three bits each day that still amuse me for some reason or another. I’ve also included stuff I’m doing now, and I’ll be adding new stuff as I go.

Somewhere out there are ten year olds just waiting to get hooked on this strange pursuit. This is for them. I’m just hoping somehow it will keep this silliness going.

Check out the site here

Website Shout Out: RSA Animate

Via RSA:

For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress.  Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.

We encourage public discourse and critical debate by providing platforms for leading experts to share new ideas on contemporary issues, through our public events programme, RSA Journal and RSA Comment.

RSA Animate is like an British version of Ted Talks with helpful animations. To get you started we’ve posted two of our favorite videos from the series. One tackles the importance of building an empathic civilization and the second deals with changing education paradigms. They’re also up for a Webby Award in the Animation Category so vote for them if you like what you see and hear.

Website Shout Out: DatPiff

DatPiff is a website that calls itself “The Authority in Free Mixtapes” – and they’re not lying.  I first stumbled onto this little gem of a site looking for Yelawolf’s “Trunk Muzik” mixtape, and it’s become a frequent online music stop ever since.  They’ve got everything from that new hot mixtape folks are chatting about like Pusha T’s “Fear Of God” to my cousin Mike Schpitz’s “Mike Murder” release.

The site is easy to use, just register and you get five free mixtape downloads a day. If you don’t feel like registering, or if you want to give something a listen, you can stream the mixtapes instead of downloading. There are also “sponsored” releases, which basically means they can be downloaded by folks who have not registered, and don’t count toward your five album per day download limit. The designated “Official” mixtapes are releases straight from the artist and/or their record companies, but there are people out there remixing and mixing stuff up all over the place as well.  The site has a fairly handy search system that will get you the specific artist you want. And you can also search by words, for instance my search for “Club Bangers” brought up around 20 different albums, all of them free. Sure, there’s some crap on here, but they’ve got a pretty handy rating and comments system, so you don’t get bad stuff unless you want it – and admit it, sometimes you want it – Gucci Mane chopped and screwed anyone?!