now listening
shared items
...more shared items
archives

11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003

12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004

01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004

02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004

03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004

04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004

05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004

06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004

07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004

08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004

09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004

10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004

11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004

12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005

01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005

02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005

03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005

04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005

05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005

06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005

07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005

08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005

09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005

10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005

11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005

12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006

01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006

02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006

03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006

04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006

05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006

06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006

07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006

08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006

09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006

10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006

11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006

12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007

01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007

02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007

03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007

04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007

05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007

06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007

07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007

08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007

09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007

10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007

11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007

12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008

01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008

02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008

03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008

04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008

05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008

06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008

07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008

08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008

09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008

10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008

11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008

12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009

01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009

02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009

03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009

04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009

05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009

06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009

07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009

08/01/2009 - 09/01/2009

09/01/2009 - 10/01/2009

10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009

11/01/2009 - 12/01/2009

12/01/2009 - 01/01/2010

01/01/2010 - 02/01/2010

02/01/2010 - 03/01/2010

03/01/2010 - 04/01/2010


Tuesday, September 13, 2005 
dictionaraoke is forever
things can move pretty fast on the net. the latest internet fad can spread all over the web in a few days... hours in extreme cases. similarly, thanks to the blogosphere, news stories (as well as lies, rumors, and deliberate misinformation) can spread rapidly and rabidly if they happen to get front-paged by the right site—even if they have been completely ignored by the mainstream media. we've seen this enough times that i shouldn't even have to cite examples (though really i'm just lazy and don't want to take the time to think of any).

but on the internet, objects tend to stay in motion and at rest at the same time. fads circulate quickly, but most of that old content is still out there. yes, sites sometimes die and disappear forever, creating more wasted information for us to mourn. but other sites stick around long after you've forgotten them.

such is the way with all those clearly false, long-ago-debunked urban legends that people forward you or post online sometimes. just yesterday someone on one board i frequent posted that old "target is french and hates veterans" chestnut, which was absurdly unbelievable and obviously false even three years ago when it was first written and disproved (in case you don't feel like clicking, target does support veterans, and is american-owned... as if it would really matter if they were french). a quick trip to snopes will instantly defuse 90% of more of these discussions, but occasionally you run across the extremely stubborn who refuse to acknowledge snopes's authority... that's a good sign that you should get out of the conversation.

but a lot of those old fads are still around too, and continue to get traffic. case in point: the resurgence of dictionaraoke.

dictionaraoke is the phenomenon of online dictionaries singing popular music. it originated long ago on the snuggles list, and a bunch of us eagerly put together more than 100 songs, all available for free download. we did so by finding instrumental and/or midi versions of popular songs, downloading the spoken word samples from dictionary sites like merriam-webster and put them together with often hilarious results.

dictionaraoke is old. older than this blog, and maybe older than animalswithinanimals.com altogether. old enough that the snuggles list had long ago moved on to other things. my two contributions are both under the "animals within animals" name because at the time, i was still trying to do all my collage-based stuff under that name: i hadn't yet done any collage under the stAllio! name... it's that old. but suddenly it's making the rounds again.

a few months ago, someone at lucasarts found the site and circulated the link to her co-workers.

last week, it was posted on metafilter (for at least the second time). if you look through the comments, you'll see several raves about my contributions (closer and nuthin but a g thang) as well as the girl from ipanema, which was done by the lovely virago (under the name mittelschmerz).

then later that day (perhaps coincidentally, though i doubt it), it was posted as entertainment weekly's site of the day (which, as james allensbach pointed out on snuggles, is only three years after the site was mentioned in the actual EW magazine).

and now, jima and d^2 have been interviewed for an article by canwest, canada's largest wire service. so canadians aplenty will be reading about dictionaraoke soon if they haven't already. it's a good article; d^2 posted it to snuggles so i've read it, but i haven't found a linkable online version yet (no hits on google news, for example), but when i find one, i'll post it.


2 comments:
i'm actually the one who made up the word "dictionaraoke".

it's weird seeing something i made up on the spot (when we were throwing around names for it) become plastered all over the internet. ¶

Yeah, tell me about it. ¶


Powered by Blogger hosted by Sensory Research