London based comedy sketch group Idiots of Ants imagines what Facebook would be like in real life on an episode of the BBC series The Wall.

via The Underwire

Jason Scott gave one of the best talks at ROFLCon last weekend, “Before the LOL”, where guided us on a historical journey of pre-1995 internet culture and memes.

Rocketboom has posted a great summary of Jason’s talk.

Along with being an internet historian, Jason is also a documentary filmmaker. In 2005 he released “BBS: The Documentary” and is currently working on “Get Lamp”, a documentary about text adventures.

Jason is also a master of the art of goatse’ing people, distributing 703,899 in 2007.

UPDATE: Here’s Jason’s write-up on ROFLCon.

photo by Scott Beale

Grab your best pair of underwear, because this Friday, May 2nd is No Pants Day.

toonlet is a cool service that provides tools that allow you to create web comics with custom characters in a matter of minutes, regardless of artistic ability. The comics can then be shared with others or embed in blogs or websites. Check out the toonlet tour to see how it’s done.

The guys from toonlet will have a table at this weekend’s Maker Faire Bay Area 2008 and in honor of the event, Craig from toonlet has created this comic that pays tribute to the wonderful Life Size Mousetrap.

Albert Hofmann has died at age 102. He was the Swiss chemist who first synthesized Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel back in 1938. Five years later he accidently dosed himself, which resulted in the first ever Acid Trip.

My friend David Normal paid tribute to Albert Hofmann in 2006 on his 100th birthday by creating the wonderful animated short “The Bicycle Ride”.

UPDATE: Here’s more on the death of Albert Hofmann from the New York Times and The Associated Press.

via Boing Boing & SLOG

photo via Getty Images

As one of the media sponsors of Maker Faire Bay Area 2008, I have a some extra tickets for this weekend’s event, so we’re going to give away a few pairs of tickets via Twitter. I’ll be announcing the ticket giveaway on our Laughing Squid Twitter account, so you’ll need to subscribe to it in order to see the announcements.

If you were one of the winners, please email us your mailing address so we can mail out your tickets. Due to the last minute nature of this, we are only giving away tickets to people who live in the Bay Area. We will need your mailing address by 1pm PDT on Wednesday, April 30th in order to send you your tickets.

If you weren’t a recipient of one of the free tickets, you can always buy your tickets in advance online, which can then be picked up at the Maker Faire Will Call.

Maker Faire Bay Area 2008 takes place this Saturday, May 3rd and Sunday, May 4th at the San Mateo Expo Center. See my previous post for more info.

Round #1: The current time is 6:25pm PDT on Tuesday, April 29th. I’m going to give a pair of one-day Maker Faire tickets to next three people who leave comments on this post. I’ll contact the winners for their mailing address so I can send the tickets via US Mail. Again, please remember that I’m only giving away tickets to people who live in the Bay Area.

** Ok, we have our three winners for Round #1 **

Round #2: The current time is 6:25pm PDT on Wednesday, April 30th. I’m going to give a pair of one-day Maker Faire tickets to next next person who leaves a comment on this post. I’ll contact the winner for their mailing address so I can send the tickets via US Mail. Again, please remember that I’m only giving away tickets to people who live in the Bay Area.

** Ok, we have our winner for Round #2 **

UPDATE: Thanks for playing everyone, all Maker Faire tickets have been given away.

photo by Scott Beale

Felted Wool Squid USB Flash Drive by Nifer Fahrion (NifNaks)

Pop art prankster Ron English sent us a photo of his hilarious John McCain “I Wanna Be Erected” Pfizer billboard modification in Los Angeles. Hi Fructose has more coverage of Ron’s recent billboard “improvements”.

Ron English also just announced the release of his new “Bunnny Rabbbit” vinyl figure. There will be a release and signing event at the brand new Kidrobot Pirate Store in New York on May 15th from 6-8pm.

Speaking of the new Kidrobot store in New York, I recently shot a photo of their old location while walking through SOHO. They will be having the grand opening at their new location this Thursday, May 1st from 6-8pm.

photos via Ron English (photographer unknown)

Matt Jones recently posted some video he shot of a AEG billboard that measures the decibel level of street noise on Old Street in Shoreditch, London.

The “AEG Noise Awareness” campaign is a clever way to promote AGE’s silent laundry appliances. See the AEG Noise Awareness Blog for more coverage.

photo via AEG Noise Awareness Blog

The latest episode on Current TV’s SuperNews features tragic story of one man’s battle for survival in the never ending “Social Networking Wars”.

SanFran MusicTech Summit 2, a follow-up to February’s conference on the convergence of music, business and technology, takes place Thursday, May 8th at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco. The conference is offering Laughing Squid readers a 10% discount, just use the discount code “laughingsquid” when you register.

The SanFran MusicTech Summit will bring together the best and brightest developers in the Music/Technology Space, along with the musicians, entrepreneurial business people, and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We will meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment.

The SanFran MusicTech Summit will bring together digital thought leaders from the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as from all around the country to the region which currently leads the way in innovating (both socially, and technologically) new ways of interacting with both music, and musicians. We will be working long term to help enable a sustainable, ongoing, Northern California based music and related technology market.

Maker Faire Bay Area returns for the third straight year May 3rd and 4th at the San Mateo Expo Center. See the Maker Faire website for more info and advance tickets are now on sale. Here are my photos from Maker Faire 2006 and Maker Faire 2007.

Maker Faire returns! Booming DIY fest expects record crowd - May 3rd & 4th 2008! Last year, over 45,000 people from all across the country (and beyond) came to the Bay Area to celebrate the world’s premier event for DIY (Do It Yourself) creativity–Maker Faire! This year, May 3rd and 4th, the event returns to the San Mateo Fairgrounds once again, for what will be the biggest and wildest Maker Faire yet! Put together by Make Magazine and Craft Magazine, Maker Faire celebrates things people create themselves–from electronic gizmos that would make James Bond jealous, to “slow made” foods and homemade clothes that would make Martha Stewart swoon. The event is a non-stop “wow-fest” where surprises and inspiration are as ubiquitous as the festival air.

This year Maker Faire has added a special Maker Faire Education Day on Friday, May 2nd, inviting schools to bring their students out for a special preview of Maker Faire where they can get a behind-the-scenes look at the event. Here’s the application for teachers.

On the latest episode of GETV, Irina Slutsky interviews legendary nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot. A documentary on MC Frontalot, “Nerdcore Rising” by Negin Farsad, premiered this year SXSW Film and is currently making the festival rounds.

Last weekend at ROFLCon in Cambridge I had a chance to catch up with MC Frontalot after all of these years (I knew him back when he lived in San Francisco). I also discovered that he’s quite the black jack dealer.

Recently I’ve been encouraging him to join Twitter, which he just did tonight. You can now follow the adventures of MC Frontalot here: @mc_frontalot

Let Dale teach you how to “Master The Internet”, including the secrets of A/S/L/#/Z.

SwashBot 1 and Swashbot 2, the latest project by Crab Fu, are a couple of wonderful 3 legged robots created using remote control helicopters.

photo via Crab Fu

twistori is a social experiment by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs that is a really cool first person visualization of Twitter using data from Summize.