New home for 1% at 1over100.com

1% = 0.01 = 1/100.

They all mean the same thing: One out of one hundred things. One one-hundredth. Point zero one. One percent. One over one hundred.

1over100.com is the new home of 1%.

1% (aka 1percent.wordpress.com) is moving (slowly) to 1over100.com to free ourselves from the restrictions of wordpress.com. WordPress.com has been a fantastic home, but the time has come to wrest more control over the design, sidebar widgets, and the advertising. There will be a few quirks and bugs to iron out at first, but at least they will be ours!

All of our special contributors— processedcheese, markthat, ivanretry, dondy, unorg, and myself— are moving with us. We will keep 1percent.wordpress.com ‘turned on’ but will be cloning and redirecting all of our posts, including the RSS feeds.

If you are a current subscriber, your feed will be redirected to the new site automatically. If you would like to subscribe, please visit 1over100.com and sign up for rss or the e-newsletter there.

Thank-you for enjoying 1% and continue to do so at 1/100.

Bad Ass Rubber Band Double-Barrel Automatic Minigun

UPDATE: This article has been moved to 1over100.com

Someone had fun in shop class. This ‘wooden toy’ is a home-made, twin cannon, automatic, revolving barrel, mounted minigun capable of firing 288 rubber bands in 7 seconds (approx 40 rb/s). It is appropriately named the Disintegrator. The only issue: takes a while to find, pick-up, and re-load hundreds of black rubber bands.

HDR Photography Makes Japan Look Like CGI

UPDATE: This article has been moved to 1over100.com

No.6 [Kanagawa prefecture] — Photo: dokool

There is something unreal, or perhaps hyper-real, about HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. It evens out the lighting, makes everything crisp and colourful, and gives it an artificial, if not computer generated, kind of look. Now combine that with Japan’s often surreal urban landscapes and techno-kitch culture and you have a killer combination.

Shibuya Backstreet [Tokyo] — Photo: yongfook

Pink Tentacle has plucked some of the best Fantastic Japanscapes out of the Japan HDR Flickr Photo Pool for your enjoyment. Thanks to Scott Beale at Laughing Squid for the link via Twitter.

Optical Illusion + Breasts = ‘Wonderful’ Fake Wonderbra Ad

An art director from the UK by the name of Luke created this fake viral ad for Wonderbra using a simple optical illusion, a stock photo of some cleavage and a quick upload to YouTube. Using clever tags like boobs, bangers, breasts, tits, tats, bazookas, jubblies and funbags he managed to get over 75,000 hits in 4 days and is quickly climbing the viral video charts. The Brits sure love their slang.

The execution is interesting, and there’s great potential for this technique, but the ad falls flat by saying nothing about the real benefit or value of the product. Oh… sorry, you weren’t even listening to me, were you?

I’m going to use the EXACT SAME tags as Luke for this post and see how long it takes me to get 75,000 hits.

UPDATE: In four days I managed to get a grand total of 66 hits on this sad story. It looks like WordPress readers are a bit more high-brow than the viewers of YouTube.

Bill Gates Is Cooler Than Steve Jobs (for about 5 minutes)

Bill Gates capitalizes on the ongoing writer’s strike by employing the best script writers to actually make himself appear cool. For a few minutes, in a short movie about his Last Day at Microsoft, the ‘Chairman’ is seen at his self-depreciating best. The premiere at CES 2008 features cameos by the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Bono, Hillary Clinton, Guitar Hero, Barack Obama, Steve Balmer, Al Gore, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, and Jay-Z. Gates is typically self-conscious at the end of the short when he states, “I really don’t think it’s an accurate representation of what’s likely to happen [on my last day] but it was fun to put together.” That’s just in case we think the movie is real, right Bill?

Hello Kitty Bling Bike

Wow. How much does it cost to convert an innocent Hello Kitty bike frame into a canvas for 50,000 Swarovski crystals? I don’t think this is going to be used as a training bike any time soon.

(link via Trendhunter)

Super Mario Galaxy Photography IRL

Super Mario Galaxy is filled with tiny planets (or galaxies as they are called in the game) with their own dense gravity.

The spherical panoramas of Alexandre Duret-Lutz (aka gadl) resemble real-life replicas of the popular Wii game. He has even named his flickr set Wee planets, and explains the involved technique on his photo page. Here are a few samples (out of 215!):





(via Wii-volution.com)

DiePod

The Cool Hunter found this Australian print campaign raising awareness of the dangers of crossing the street while listening to your iPod. Death never looked so trendy.

Immersive Branding: Comedian Moves Into IKEA

Who hasn’t thought it would be fun to live in IKEA, the doll house for adults? Well Mark Malkoff managed to convince the IKEA in Paramus, NJ to let him move in for six days while his New York City apartment is fumigated (or so he says). You can watch the sometimes funny, sometimes forced, sometimes awkward videos at Mark Lives In IKEA, where the product placement is the plot.

Burnt Toys Sold As ‘Urban Collectables’

The Chinnychinchin e-shop sells “individually hand burnt… urban collectable cars” for only $49.95 per smoking carcus. How pleasantly creative and dystopian.

Windows, alloy wheels and stereo are not included… Range includes The Joy Ridden 2-Door Hatchback, The Minivan/Insurance Scam and The Petrol Bombed Jeep.