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Know Your Meme - The Pulse of Internet Culture

Know Your Meme – When I come across an interesting, funny or compelling video on the web, I never keep it to myself. Like everyone else, I share it around with friends and family. The billions of Internet users these days (you and me included) navigate and interact on the net on a daily basis. The inevitable result is the unintentional establishment of Internet or Cyber Culture, constructed and reconstructed by the transference of memes. What are memes anyway? According to Wikipedia, Internet meme is a phrase used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet.

Know Your Meme tries to keep up with the dynamic world of memes and viral trends on the Web by “documenting Internet phenomena: viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, web celebs and more… [It is] a web series and online database dedicated to documenting Internet culture, one scientismic investigation at a time.” In practical terms, when you click on a meme, you’ll see a profile-like page listing the meme’s origin, the meme itself (photo or video), a graph of ‘Interest over Time’ and comments submitted by users. It’s a great tracking tool for all the viral info circulating the web. To see some examples of Know Your Meme, click on the video and pictures below – my personal favorites.

StillTasty - Keep It or Toss It?

StillTasty – My mother is a postharvest researcher of fruit and vegetables, and as far as I’m concerned, this makes her the superior authority on all things produce.  Whenever I would take out something from the fridge with a day or two past the Use Before date, I’d ask her for the final verdict on whether it was OK to eat it or not. As a child it always seemed odd to me that the printed date on products are rather inaccurate, but I never questioned my mom because you know as well as I do that mother knows best…

StillTasty eliminates any uncertainty regarding the freshness bar of all produce products; type in any food item or beverage and get solid answers on how long you can keep it in the fridge or freezer before it gets spoiled. The results are remarkable – I was surprised to see how these concurred on my mom’s estimations. I checked for example milk, cheese, chicken and Coca-Cola, and was shocked to see that in many of the cases I can keep these quite longer than their respective expiration date. While exploring StillTasty I also found these two interesting articles which I strongly recommend that you read: 3 Ways to Defrost Food Safely and Expiration Dates: Should You Pay Attention?

Ikea Hacker - Screwing the Swedish Giant (with hammers and screwdrivers)

Ikea Hacker – Ikea has many advantages; it is affordable, doesn’t require a moving company as most products and assembly kits fit into a medium sized family car. In addition, the assembly itself is rather simple and often is also fun. It’s kind of like Lego for grownups. On the other hand, there is a big disadvantage to Ikea:  what you see is what you get. You can’t request a different color, different size or different design.

Ikea Hacker refuses to come to terms with these restrictions and displays many examples of how people have modified what they bought from Ikea into something else that’s more creative and rewarding. Some of these DIY projects seem bizarre, I’ll admit, but for the most part, they are practical and inspiring. Below are before and after pictures of the hack that impressed me the most. For more hacks check out Ikea Hacker’s top picks for 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Design By Humans - Dress Code of the Creative Community

Design By Humans – Cool T-shirts are everywhere; online, in stores, you name it. One can never be tired of this ever-changing apparel field, which has ceased being restricted to men. In fact, most T-shirt sellers these days have both genders listed in their websites, and rightly so. But how come we’re featuring a T-shirt e-commerce site here on the Weekly Faves and blog? One word: excellence.

Design By Humans is a creative community offering contest-based, custom designs of T-shirts, submitted by users everywhere and designed by artists all over the globe. With their main offices located in Irvine, CA, Design By Humans constitutes a top notch, not to mention extremely appealing online T-shirts store. Add the fabulous design and interface into the mix and you find yourself in apparel heaven. Below are some of my top pick designs.

YesButNoButYes - Perhaps the Greatest Pop Culture Blog

YesButNoButYes – From the YesButNoButYes twitter page I learned that it’s “the greatest pop culture blog on the planet. Or maybe not.” I like these kinds of definitions. My interpretation is this: they honestly believe they offer the best in pop culture, but that’s obviously open to interpretation. In order to make my own decision on the matter I first searched Wikipedia for the pop culture concept. With that little research under my belt, what’s my conclusion on the ‘greatness’ of YesButNoButYes? I’d say they aim to be the greatest but my acid test proved this to be merely an aspiration. What I can say with certainty however is that I enjoyed many of the posts of this blog, and to show my support I even joined their facebook fanpage. Two posts I especially enjoyed were A Tight Fit and Sarah Silverman Had a Dream, Too.

From the Basement - Artists in their True Element

From the Basement – Nigel Godrich is a rather mysterious individual who is serious about great performances of talented musicians and not too keen on external diversions. The creator of From the Basement blessed us with this terrific project – 100% pure music performances. But what makes From the Basement so unique is its underlining principle: capturing artists “in a way that lets their talents speak without the interference of presenters, or audiences.”

All videos are HD, and Nigel handles the audio as well, which makes you feel like you’re right there, behind the speakers. Nigel believes that once TV and broadcast pressures are taken out of the performance equation, musicians can do what they do best, only better… In this one of a kind Basement you’ll find Grade-A artists such as Radiohead, Beck and Jose Gonzales, just to name a few (look for the video list on the right). Dive into the majestic project called From the Basement. It’s an experience you’ll find nowhere else online.

Vintage Ad Browser - Commercials have Oldies, Too

Vintage Ad Browser – I love all things vintage. They’re so cool. The word itself makes me feel like I’m in an old classic movie. Having established this love of mine, it is no surprise that I totally fell for Vintage Ad Browser, which “aims to collect vintage ads from a variety of sources, including comic books, CD-Roms, websites, APIs, your submissions, book, magazine & comic book scans, and more.” As of today, the site lists 123,311 ads in various categories such as Drinks, Toys, Electronics and even Got Milk (isn’t really vintage but includes cool ads from the 90s). Below is a glimpse of the ones I especially enjoyed. Help yourself.

Wedinator - The (not so) Perfect Wedding

Wedinator – Every bride wants her special day to be just perfect. She wants the dress to wow everyone, the wedding cake to be absolutely stunning and layered, and the first dance to be romantic and unforgettable. Wedinator assumes all of the above, and delivers a funny antithesis to the ‘perfect wedding.’ Meaning, the website offers hilarious photos of good wedding moments gone bad, both intentionally and unintentionally. What do I mean? See this photo, submitted by users anonymously or not, like most of the pics on Wedinator. Want more? Check out the photos below.

Everyday the Same Dream - Kafka-ish and Sublime

Everyday the Same Dream – Who isn’t afraid of the mundane, 9 to 5 cubicle job? Exactly. To take the edge off the Matrix feel of your day job, tap into this great game, Everyday the Same Dream, brought to us by Molleindustria. I won’t spell the beans too much, I’ll just give you a heads up: there are five stages to this beautiful and slightly stoic game, and the ending is a good one, in a way… Confused? Simply start playing and enjoy the wonderful music by Jesse Stiles.

Sand Castle - Defend your Fort

Sand Castle – Sand Castle is a mix of strategy and shooting in this medieval defense game. Defend your city from the invading ships. Use different types of cannons and ammo to sink them! When I first saw the logo of this game I thought I was going to build a sand castle. Apparently names can be deceiving. At any rate you can be sure that our Weekly Games will never pull your leg. Every Wednesday we offer amazing new games, so stay tuned each week.

Weekend Games

Welcome to the Weekly Games post! If you`re into kicking off the weekend with some great games, here is the lineup of the best games this week, updated every Thursday.
Join us on the All My Faves Games fan page on Facebook to get instant games updates as they are published and stay ahead of the flash game curve!

Helicops – Take to the air in the meanest Helicopter brawl around. Deliver your own patented brand of Justice to the criminals who have invaded the skies of your fair city. Well. Not on your watch. You are the best of the best, the bravest of the brave, you are a HeliCop. DO YOUR DUTY.

Escape: The Dungeon – A simple little point and click adventure. Enjoy, and watch out for the sequel!

Tuper Tario Tros. – It seems Mario needs to think out of the brick now that Tetris pieces are falling from the sky. This experiment is the first one in a series that we will try to bring to you, sailors

Blast Master – Find out if you are the master baster in the chain reaction puzzle game Blast Master! Place various elements wisely and then blow up the entire screen!

Nom Nom Adventures – Nom Nom is a cute platform flash game featuring a squirrel called Nom Nom on his quest to get back his stolen nuts. Nom Nom features 30 levels, intense boss battles, power ups, and much more!

Huje Adventure – Having used their special building abilities the Hujos have now climbed all the way up onto an asteroid. It’s your job to explore the unknown asteroid. Make use of the Huje creatures’ special abilities to complete all 25 levels.

Grayscale - Move your ball along the lines as you turn gears and whiles to make yourself a path to the exit.

Lab Rat: The Quest for Cheese – Help the rat find all forty two cheeses from around the world in this jazzy maze game.

Gravit-Eye – Soar through 40 unique levels. Shift the direction of the gravity and guide the eye through all mazes by jumping from platform to platform.

Way Of an Idea – Your objective is to draw chalk-lines on the board to guide the apple (the idea) on its way to Einstein’s head.

Clinton Bush Haiti Fund (CBHF) - Cash Before Haiti Falls

Clinton Bush Haiti Fund – The title of this post is provocative for a reason. We’ve all been hearing, seeing and talking about the devastating earthquake that hit the Haitian coast. Since this Caribbean country is the poorest in the Western hemisphere with about 80% of the population living below poverty line (CIA Factbook), Haiti needs money, and it needs it fast. In addition to the many organizations and funds you may use to make contributions (see our Support Haiti mini faves), there’s also the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund (CBHF).

According to their About section, CBHF was founded as a result of President Obama’s request from former Presidents Clinton and W. Bush to help raise funds for this noble cause. The Fund’s aim is “to respond to unmet needs in the country, foster economic opportunity, improve the quality of life over the long term for those affected, and assist the people of Haiti as they rebuild their lives and "build back better." That’s all there is to it. We all simply need to join in and help rebuild Haiti and support its population. Doing good will make you feel even better.