Denuo - denuology.com

Most of the time we tend to focus on the more serious side of digital culture or, at least, we look at more serious reasons why people are sharing. But we all know that most of the internet is just plain silly. It’s about time for us to give it it’s proper due. Therefore, in this issue you will get to learn about four amazingly ridiculous items:

• 600 points, no deaths is a video of one player beating the original Super Mario Bros with the (almost) lowest score possible. There was one accidental goomba squish in there. Why would anyone do that? And why is it so impressive?

• Hipster or Jesus is a photo blog that takes photos of hipsters that “look like” Jesus and asks if we think it’s actually him or just some weird hipster. The copy is what really makes this site amazing.

• Best Backyard Battle Ever is an over-the-top, unbelievably awesome and bizarre video of a father and son’s backyard battle with little green soldiers and various other toys. It’s completely ridiculous and everyone of us wished our dad had played like this.

• Darth Malkoff vs The Apple Store is Mark Malkoff’s attempt to see just what will get you kicked out of an Apple store. He couldn’t figure it out, but the video of his tests is great. It’s also a wonderful example of what happens when a brand embraces being a playground for its users.

Finally, this issue highlights the newest asset in the Reflecteur arsenal: DigitalCultureExplained.com. This site will feature all of the publication articles as well as original content. You can RSS the site as well as follow us on Twitter(@DigiCultEx) or fan us on Facebook. We hope you all take a moment to check out the new site.

Download Issue 89 of Reflecteur here.

“Every year since 2005, Lollapalooza (a three day music festival) has taken place in Grant Park here in Chicago (Denuo’s base of operations). Every year since 2005, I’ve gone to Grant Park to listen to bands, eat rib sandwiches, and spend more time outside than anyone with Irish ancestry should. Every year since 2005, I’ve written a recap of the bands I saw and the overall experience. The first couple years I would just e-mail the reviews and anecdotes of 20 hours worth of music to some friends, none of which are music fans. Last year, on an old blog, I took my reviews public.”

That’s the intro I wrote for my Lollapalooza 2009 recap.  It’s as true today as it was back then.  What happened to my 2010 recap?  I missed Lolla to go get married. Priorities.

Does that mean I spent my 1 year anniversary at a music festival?  You know it! (puts up hand for high five)

Join me now as I take a timeout from writing about sports to write about another one of my loves; music (and rib sandwiches).

Music and social media were surely destined to be together. Music is just way more fun when it’s shared. The perfect summary of this is the single best scene in the film High Fidelity. We love digging the same stuff, arguing over tastes, showing off just how musically savvy we are. Turntable is the first music site that gets this right and does High Fidelity one better: it kicks out that smug asshole behind the counter and puts the record decks in the hands of everyone. Play with Turntable a bit and you’ll soon realize this is a quantum leap forward in the quest to capture the real essence of being a music fan online.

It’s a quest that has been afoot since the web got 2.0’d and, in my opinion, can be split into 3 waves. Fan sites and MySpace helped change the game of music online in the first wave of social music sites. Suddenly there was a chance to comment on your favorite music with fellow fans, reach artists more directly and possibly even help shape who makes it big. Internet radio was just coming on the scene and you could easily hear programmers with much broader tastes than the evil overlords at Clear Channel Corp Inc. Radio looked like it was in trouble.

On page one of this issue we look at two examples of interesting photographs:

• Dear Photograph: Reminiscent of Issue 79’s ‘Looking into the Past Images’ this site allows users to also include a short note addressed to the image. These one or two lines do an amazing job of expressing all of the emotions the individuals feels when he or she looks at that picture.

• 100 Views from Planes: Like its name implies, this is a list of 100 photos taken from airplanes. And they are amazing. Few of us have the chance to see many of these locations from 30,000 feet and of the few that do, even fewer could take such great pictures of them.

Page two is a bit more silly.

• Laser-cut zoetropes: A great example of a theme we’ve seen a lot of recently, these zoetropes take animated gifs and make them analog. Ironically, few of us will ever see these in their analog form, instead experiencing them digitally view videos and blog posts such as the one we included in the article.

• Hardly Work.in: A pretty much useless but hilarious way to hide the fact that you aren’t working, this site turns your Facebook wall into a spreadsheet. Is there any other program that is more antithetical to Facebook?

Download Issue 88 of Reflecteur here.

Twitter and pro sports have had a tumultuous love affair.  On one hand, leagues have benefitted from players and fans connecting directly.  On the other hand, Larry Johnson.

At one point in 2009, it looked like Twitter and professional sports would never get along.  Teams and media properties were heavily regulating content of tweets or banning it altogether.

Thankfully, we’re to a point now where enough people in decision-making positions understand how Twitter works.  Teams are able to give players social media training.  They have gone from blanket banning to friendly warning if a player gets a little liberal with their tweets.  The change has been great for fans as we can get news and insider views like no other generation of sports fan before us.

Tonight will hopefully be the next step in the evolution of how we view sports.