The Year
In The
Internet
2005
We asked some people what their top ten links of the year were for 2005. This
is what they said.
- Michael Bell-Smith & Cory
Arcangel
(BONUS: If you use del.icio.us, tag
YOUR best of '05 with the tag bestof05
to share your links with the internet).
THE PEOPLE
THE LINKS
- Seven
Minutes in Deadwood - One episode of HBO's Deadwood with all of the clean
words removed.
- She Be She Strike (pt
1) (pt
2) - In northern Canada, the staff of an eskimo radio station goes out
on strike, leaving the station's janitor in charge of the airwaves.
- Van
Morrison's Contractual Obigation Record - In order to fulfill his obligation
to his early solo label Bang Records, Van Morrison sat down in 1967 or so
and cranked out 31 songs on the spot, on topics ranging from ringworm to wanting
a danish, to hating his record label.
- Adventures in the Nurse With Wound List (pt
1) (pt
2) (pt
3) (pt
4) - Years ago, the British band Nurse With Wound established a list of
experimental and obscure music must-haves. WFMU's William Berger tracks down
many of these forgotten gems.
- The
Happy Listener's Guide to Mind Control - An audio collection of religious,
corporate and governmental
propaganda and mind control.
- Secos
& Molhados, Next Big Thing for 1973 - The wild Brazilian band the
provided some fashion sense to KISS.
- The
Secret of Lil Markie Revealed - The background on a sad tale of a certain
helium induced duck-child named Lil' Markie, as he begs his mother not to
abort him. And then some.
- Iggy
Pop Video from 1970 - Live TV footage of Iggy and the Stooges performing
in Cincinatti, include magical moments of peanut butter and crowd surfing.
- The Bait
Car Videos of British Columbia - Canada's Bait Car program catches car
thieves AND collects some highly entertaining videos of the would-be heists
in action, now all in the public domain!
- Cheesy Euro-Disco (example
1) (example
2) (example
3) - 2005 brought the resurgence of a long-forgotten art form, the Cheesy
Euro-Disco video.
- Help redraws the map of the US at Common Census. Vote, then check out at the wonderful
& developing maps of urban 'spheres of influence.' The
side project mapping sports fan is just as good or better (via Andy F).
- chicago tapes project Not just
in Chicago, and not just tapes. Hide your audio in a crack in a wall, mark
it with the stencil on the site. A more organic and creative approach to
filesharing and "spatial annotation."
- angermann2 is a blog with simple
but apposite snippets on mobile technology and urban space, maps and design. You'll
love the giant red type, anyway.
- The best use of flickr is the guess where NYC group. People post enigmatic shots taken in NYC,
others guess where it was taken. The NYC game is the best-established, but
there are a couple dozen others (e.g. Chicago,
London). Regular
play will open your eyes to a finer grain of urban detail.
- Radical Cartography has lots
of creative and insightful maps.
- epram is peripatetic mapping and ramblings.
Published a free magazine designed to look like the Berlin tram informational
leaflets. The kind owners will mail you a copy if you ask.
- There are essays (mostly in French) and Mark-Lomarbi-esque maps/ graphs
(some in English) on technology, power and art at Université Tangente. Judging
by their counters, you are needlessly sleeping on this site.
- The CVS camcorder hack: The only thing better than a $30 disposable video
camera that's smaller than a paperback book is spending $10 in parts so that
it's not disposable. Several
how-tos collected here.
- BLDG BLOG brings you wild
conjecture & speculation on architecture and the landscape (via Leah B.).
- The Harvard Linguistics department did a dialect survey
of the US a few years ago. The results provide
maps for the answers to 122 questions about vocab and pronunciation (thanks
to Kio for bringing back to my attention).
Tom Moody's
2005 Internet Top Ten: Special Blogosphere Edition.
- SCREENFULL. This blog
is now an archived project but what a great run it had. Audiovisual graffiti,
deconstruction as Xtreme Sports, internet addiction as a generative principle.
- RIP del.ico.us? 2005 saw this link community's
rapid rise to stardom and immediate fall into the sweaty embrace of Yahoo!
Will the art/geek spirit survive?
- Represent or die. Lots of
great quirky and f-ed up videos: the flagship del.icio.us channel (for DTV)
hopefully will not be turned by Yahoo! into internet MTV, with Quicktime clips
of reality shows and beach contests.
- Paper Rad Info. Their blog.
Prediction: because it's very easy to update it could eclipse their main page.
Mine sort of did.
- jenghizkhan (John Parker) live
at The Front Room. Not a blog; just wanted to mention it. Sub-Troggs,
Sub-Stooges fuzzbox-grungy Monomachine and circuit-bent Casio performance
clocks in at 33 minutes; chatty audience tries to see if it can make more
noise.
- Steve Gilliard: the most
razor-tongued sunny optimist on the Net. Indispensable political commentary.
- WFMU's Beware of the Blog. NY area cult
radio station's in-depth music (and everything else) coverage thrives in blog
form. One of my favorite past FMU djs returns with a fine conversational blog
style: Rise, William
Berger, rise.
- Rhizome.org. Another welcome addition
to the (re)blog world--hopefully they'll start archiving front page content
and add comments in the new year.
- Flag on the Moon. Blog
of Jack Masters, of castlezzt fame. Be sure to check out the post "1/30th
of my pictures directory, in chronological order."
- Other great blogs that have launched or gone into high gear in the last
year: Cory Arcangel, Paul
Slocum, Michael Bell-Smith
- January 2005: Ping
Pong Kombat [More info here
- ping pong & auto-raising net & k in kombat = teh win!]
- February 2005: 'Singin
In The Rain' UK VW ad [Made me want to watch the original movie, which
is impressive.]
- March 2005: Breast-enhancing
ringtones [Tomabechi 'claims to have developed a tune for ring tones that
promises to increase the breast measurements of those who listen to it.']
- April 2005: Neo
Geo cart dog urn [Made it to Maxim, so that must mean it's breaking news.]
- May 2005: Rival
bar arcade games tussel over drunken punters ["Bar and tavern patrons,
often in dimly lit spaces, typically approach and play these video games while
consuming alcohol; they are not consumers using high degrees of care in selecting,
identifying, or differentiating the Golden Tee and PGA Tour games]
- June 2005: XOC's 'SMW'
album [As I said at the time: "this is the 'Pet Sounds' of Mario covers,
featuring instruments from a bike horn to a coconut thumb piano."]
- July 2005: 'Everybody
Loves Eric Raymond' webcomic [Ultigeek alert!]
- August 2005: 'Most
Excellent Comic Psychonauts' fan-comic [Far too good to be fanfic!]
- September 2005: Cosplaylab's
'Feel The Magic' cosplay [Please, more of this, and less of the Final
Fantasy characterkwak.]
- October 2005: Nintendogging
[Inspired riff on the already fake 'toothing' - the UK Resistance guys strike
again.]
- November 2005: PR:
'Judge M Responds To The 50 Cent Video Game Controversy'
[White rapper/coder 'professionally betrayed' by not being lead programmer
on 50 Cent game.]
- December 2005: The
story behind "Jew Jersey," 2005's Correction of the Year [I feel their
pain.]
Marisa
Olson's TEN FAVE NET THINGS in 2005:
- Lee Walton vs. Shaquille
O'Neal Free Throw Contest I probably visited this site more than any,
this year, and I was seriously bummed when Lee lost to Shaq by just a few
points...
- umeancompetitor My new
favorite net artist whose 'giffords' truly blow my mind... and eyes...
- Screenfull
vs Eyebeam Reblog Abe Linkoln & Jimpunk took things to a whole new punkypunk
level when they were guest rebloggers on the eye to tha beam.
- MTAA's 1 year performance
video (aka samHsiehUpdate) One of the smartest, most interesting, art
historically important works of internet art ever. Honestly.
- THIS IS FUN TO MAKE
A BLOG ON THE COMPUTER WEBSITE An ever-engaging saga written by someone
with serious language skillz.
- bushchapichapo I posted
pix of Bush's Beijing press conference escape attempt on my blog, saying I
wish I had time to make a video with them, and this showed up in comments
very shortly thereafter. I was the 2nd counted vistor and I've gone back many,
many times. The song is also on my top ten hitlist for tunez in 05...
- Depressing Classic
Rock MIDI Everybody Hurts is my fave, cuz nothing says universal sorrow
like REM in computer-synthesized keyboard drones...
- Stuff On My Cat Call it cheesy,
call it trendy.... NOTHING made me laugh in the depressing daze of 05 like
this FUNNYHAHA website....
- knitpro Smart, well-organized,
meaningful, and fashionable.
- http in tha house
What can I say, this totally appeals to the nerd in me who likes seeing her
name in http lights and who wasted many nights ignoring junior high homework
assignments to write rap songs for the next morning's cafeteria slams...
Michael Bell-Smith's
year in internet things that make you go hmm:
