omegle - really random chat

3 Wild Web Apps

(originally posted at taylorholmes.com)

Ok, so in the last several days I have realized there seems to be a proliferation of wild web apps sprouting up everywhere.  Maybe I’ll post about all of them that I’ve noticed but right now I am going to bring to your attention 3 specifically interesting sites:

Britewiremedia.com

 

britewire - ideas for hire

Britewiremedia is offering you$200 for your website ideas.  Seriously.  Right now… head over to brightwiremedia.com and walk through the half page form and voila – if they accept your idea $200 will be on its way to you.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have several incubating website ideas.  Several of them are a couple years old and I have been holding them close to my vest so they don’t trip out into the marketplace accidentally.  I’ve even gone so far as to consult with financing gurus and investment bankers on one of them and the thought of giving someone my idea for $200 seems like a serious marketing mistake.  And yet, there is a part of me that would just like to see the idea created and take wing.  (There is also an entirely different part of me that’d like the $200.  But that is a different discussion for a different day.)

If you’ve read my Guerilla Labs post you’ll know that this idea-culling model would fit perfectly into this G-Labs concept.  Pull in 20 ideas and let the members of the team vet them for you and start developing tomorrow.  To be 100% honest, 200 bux for an idea is bargain basement cheap.  Makes me salivate just thinking about it.  A pile of cool web ideas and 4 or 5 talented folks ready to go out and make piles of money without a hope of seeing a cent?  Gorgeous.  I can’t think of a better way to raise money for the Kingdom to be honest.

Omegle – Random Chat

omegle - really random chat
omegle – really random chat

Omegle is a instant messaging client with a really wild hook.  It will only let you talk to random strangers.  Seriously.  So I tried it out the other day and was baffled that this thing really is working.  I had three seperate chats.  One really dumb one that didn’t really do anything.  Another that was offensive in the extreme.  And the final chat was rally fascinating.

Basically it turns out that the ‘stranger’ was a Canadian that was aspiring to becoming a mortician… right.  A mortician with an interest in embalming.  Seriously.  I didn’t even know embalming still happened these days.  They walked me through what it takes to embalm someone and how it works.  I definitely learned something new that is for sure.   That the Egyptians started a fad that has continued long into the third millennium!  Wow.  Who knew?

Outside of random factoids and irrelevant trivia about people in many different countries – I’m not thinking the site is much more than a curiosity.  Its difficult to start a conversation… and its odd throughout.  So, hello – stranger.  Why are we here?  Remind me?  Yeah, odd.

Generatus.com

generatus - random status generator
generatus – random status generator

And finally Generatus.com.  It does one thing and one thing only.   Sign up and it will automatically update your status with random, pithy, heady, trivia-filled updates.

Now, I ‘ve heard of writer’s block – but status update writer’s block?  That’s an entirely new low.  No?  I mean, isn’t the point of a status update to let your friends know what you are up to or what you are thinking about?  Maybe it is this last bit that is stumping people?  We don’t spend enough time being to know what we are thinking – so we have to go to a status generator to develop a witty response.  Enthralling really.  I’m thinking there may be a doctoral discertation in here somewhere.  We are such an inauthentic bunch that we go so far as to steal other’s thoughts and ideas in order to pawn them off on our own status updates in an already inauthentic community medium?  The sheer quantity of psychological and social implications here are almost baffling really.

Regardless, here are a couple of examples:

Taylor wonders whose cruel idea was it for the word “Lisp” to have an “S” in it?

Or this:

Taylor would have no energy at all if it wasn’t for stress

And better yet, this:

Taylor likes fruit baskets because it gives you the ability to mail someone a piece of fruit without appearing insane.  Like, if someone just mailed you an apple you’d be like Huh?  What is this?  But if its in a fruit basket you’re like “This is nice”!

Ok, so they are pretty clever really.  And they go so far as to tell you where you are ultimately stealing from.  (Who knew Winston Churchill would be such a widely usable status update muse?)