Internet picks of the week ~ Technology Update

Friday, September 2, 2011

Internet picks of the week

4:10 PM latest techno report No comments

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The Internet Movie Cars Database

Offering the same service as that other famous internet movie database (imdb.com), except for vehicles instead of actors and directors, here you'll find various makes and models listed alongside the films they have appeared in, even if it's just as an extra far off in the background. Users of the site enjoy a bit of detective work and are rarely fooled. Indeed, it's interesting how common it is for period films to use cars and vans manufactured long after the time they're set in. Naturally, entries for car movies such as Fast & Furious feature dozens of screen grabs, but even films without chases are pored over. Great fun for discovering what movies your car has been in, settling arguments, and creating accurate re-enactments of Bullitt.

Shady Characters

Keith Houston is a software engineer, bassist and cyclist, but his website is a pursuit of his other hobby, "the secret life of punctuation". The history of question marks and their ilk turns out to be epic, particularly in the case of the ampersand, whose evolution takes in everything from Julius Caesar to a 17th-century typesetter called Amper (who didn't actually exist) and even Nazi Germany. There is also a deep look at the @ symbol's new-found stardom, the octothorpe (enjoying a new lease of life renamed as the "hashtag" in Twitter parlance), and the secretive pilcrow. Houston also highlights one punctuation mark that never quite made it, apart from on one model of typewriter: the interrobang, a mash-up of the exclamation and question mark, which has now become a bit of a cult.