the Goody Bag™ Vol. II

Welcome to the Goody Bag, where collective thoughts of online absurdity come to meet each other, have a drink, go home together and then never speak again.

Buy a piece of the moon!

I’ve seen some internet scams in my time, but this is one of the more ingenious ones I’ve come across. Ever feel that terrestrial land prices are too high? Why not consider the Moon? After all, it’s practically inevitable that we’re going to run out of room down here on Earth, so why not be prepared and start developing your Sea of Tranquility-side property now? You’ve probably only got about thirty years until the inevitable gentrification begins and you’ll have to start looking further afield towards Mars or Asteroid 3455 to escape the space-yuppies.

Lunar real-estate agents like Dennis Hope have made a living out of selling randomly allocated lunar acreage. Before you part with your hard earned, please keep in mind the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies which is a really long way of saying you can’t place dibs on the moon or any other planet. Sadly, I get the feeling that the people who sell extraterrestrial lunar estate are probably the same people who ignore internationally recognised treaties. You’re effectively paying $20 for a piece of paper, which probably costs about 0.01c to manufacture, and about a buck to mail. Ahh, the internet: where capitalism and human stupidity are finally brought together to make sweet, passionate love (and large profits).

Google+

There is a lot of hype surrounding the launch of Google’s social networking website. Reports of the site crashing because of popularity seem impressive, but really, surely the creators knew that they were going to go over capacity? I find it hard to believe that Google could run out of server space. It was marketing genius, however, by making the product look so popular that it can’t handle the overhyped demand. People were so keen to get onto the service that inevitably somebody noted that there was a market for it and started selling invites on eBay. For the record, I managed to score an invite, and will be doing a more comprehensive write up in the coming weeks.

Tabbed browsing

Every now and then something is invented which revolutionises behaviour. Fire, the wheel, telephones, aeroplanes, even the internet itself are all examples. But sometimes it's the little inventions that can have profound impacts, like tabbed internet browsing. I'm not really sure where it came from. I'm not quite sure when I started using it. But I'm pretty sure that now I couldn't live without it. Can you imagine having to open a new window every time you see something that catches your eye, or trying to remember all the links that you wanted to click on? As far as I can tell, there is no limit in Chrome as to how many tabs you can have open. You are only limited by the size of the internet itself, and your CPU. With Google Chrome and a powerful enough processor I theoretically would be able to have every single internet page open in a single browser window. I have no idea what sort of useful function this would serve. But its nice to know its possible.

The Father, Son and the Holy Tweet

I was very excited when I heard that the Pope had launched his Twitter account. I was expecting digital salvation to finally become a reality and was somewhat disappointed when I found that the ‘Pope’s account’ was merely a ‘news portal’ for the Vatican, with someone pretending to  be the Holy Father giving an obligatory tweet every month or so. The rest of the posts are just Vatican PR spam.

In a similar vein, following the US Secret Service on Twitter is not as fun as it sounds either. They give no cool insights into how to jump in front of a bullet in slow motion, but rather report on the danger of fraud and identity theft schemes. To top it off, the USSS aren’t even ‘following’ anybody. Way to be a selfish Twitter user. Of course that’s probably a good thing; because when the day comes that I’m ‘followed’ by an international anti-crime organisation I’ll probably transform into a paranoid maniac and try and burn down the Twitter servers. Or the Pentagon.*


And finally...

I could attempt to write thousands of words on how the internet has changed our lives but I think this picture sums it up nicely. A pile of brand new phonebooks sit untouched in the foyer of my apartment building, not even worth the paper they're printed on. 

*If the USSS weren’t following me before, they definitely are now.