Every Tuesday, Darragh Doyle, the duke of all things digital, is live in studio to fill you in on everything that's useful and charmingly usless online right now. Here's what he had to tell guest host Tara Duggan today...
- Mom's Spaghetti
Not only an excellent parody video, but taking advantage of the new website domain extensions you can buy, someone created http://momsspaghetti.science to celebrate Eminem’s obsession with spaghetti…
- Dublin Tweetup #DubTweetUp0705
Would you go and meet people in a (Dublin) pub on the sole basis that they, like you, were on twitter? It’s not a case of “meet the celebrity” or - as The Sun termed them a few years ago “cewebrity” (shudder) - but every so often people get together to have a lemonade or other beverage and a chat and see each other in real life.
A few years ago the thought of meeting anyone from the internet was a scary aspect - now it’s fairly commonplace and a lot of people who communicate online week on week will meet up. The ubiquitous nature of Tinder, Grindr or online dating, to say nothing of community websites like Boards.ie, MeetUp.com or Yelp.ie, means it’s actually quite normal.
These events happen somewhat often in Dublin - sometimes only a few people show up, sometimes the place is jammed. The next one is in the Black Sheep on Capel Street on May 7. There’ll be free food and discount craft beer. Find out more here.
What might surprise you is that most people don’t have their phones out. People aren’t tweeting all night and it’s not even an instagrammers paradise - it’s putting a face to the twitter handle.
As frustrating as it is entertaining and one that went truly viral, here’s a website allowing you to upload a photo to see how old you look.
Sean Moncrieff, who is 54, gets an age of 74 for one photo and 55 for another. Tara Duggan gets 31 and 34. I tried three photos - one taken today says I’m 45. One taken 5 years ago says I’m 45. One taken 9 years ago says I’m 45…
Of course, it’s a viral hit because people are horrified by the wrong answers - in much the same way as we’re bemused by the misspelling of our names in Starbucks. One of the best uses I’ve seen for it was seeing how much American Presidents have aged since they went into office, thanks to TIME Magazine.
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While Barack Obama’s only been in office six years, judging by a photograph from 2009 and 2015, the wizards at Microsoft claim Obama’s looks have aged 13 years
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George W. Bush, according to two images, added nine years to his face during his eight years working in the Oval Office.
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Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush worked in the White House for four years–and his face grew four years older too.
Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan both served for 8 years. Clinton’s features clocked 15 years while Reagan added a mere two years onto his looks during the same stretch.
How much money do you have to go on holidays?
Here’s the website that will help you. Enter how much money you have for accommodation and flights, when you’d like to go and this site will give you options for where you could take an affordable trip to.
You choose the airport, where you’d like to go - or anywhere in your budget - how much money you have, how many of you there are and when you’d like to go. You can also choose a star rating for accommodation and whether you’d be okay with shared accommodation.
For example, for €600 for 2 people, departing 24 May, I could go to a 4 Star Guest House with a superior double room with shared bathroom in the centre of Lisbon with flights included.
If I up the price to €1200 for the same week I have my choice of Cologne, Warsaw, Stockholm, Dubai, Riga and Dubrovnik.
A great little website to help you plan your next trip.
LikeWhere helps you find spots based on what you love in cities you already know. Simply tell it what you like and it helps you find your favourite spots in a city before you arrive.
Say for example I’m going to Berlin, Germany. I pick Dublin as the city I know best and pick the areas that like - say for example Capel Street, Wexford Street, Iveagh Gardens and Portobello. LikeWhere tells me I’d like the Friedrichshain and the Mauerpark. If I was to pick Amsterdam, I’d told Damrak Street, The Jordaan District, Vondelpark and Leidseplein as destinations.
Think of it like Amazon making future recommendations based on your past buying behaviours - LikeWhere takes this concept and applies it to intuitive city discovery.
Very useful if you’ve never been to a city before and don’t really trust what the guide books tell you to go and do.
- And finally...
Viewed more than 6.75m times, this video, a whopping 8 hours 20 minutes long, is now part of now part of medical research used in several London hospitals as part of a clinical trial to help insomnia sufferers.
Visual artist Johnnie Lawson from County Leitrim filmed the footage beneath a wooden footbridge on the River Bonet in the midlands county.
He told BBC News NI: "People who were finding it difficult to sleep began writing to me from all over the world - North Korea, the Central African Republic, Beijing and across the UK.
"They started leaving me messages, saying the recordings were helping to relieve their insomnia," Johnnie said.
Check it out below - though perhaps best observed when lying in bed.
To see what Darragh covered with Seán last week, please click here.
