Here’s a simple way to tell whether the star you’re following is the real thing. Are the alleged celebrity’s tweets funny and entertaining, with a palpable sense of self-awareness and wit? Full on fake then, and by default, well worth following. Oh, and Twitter, if you’re still confused, the fake celebs are the ones who cannot afford a publicist to announce that the @fakeAccount everyone’s following isn’t really them.

via On Twitter, you’re nobody unless you’re fake – Technotica- msnbc.com.

This pic elicited gasps, then indignation.

iphone, fake, picture, waiting, anticipation

A recent comment here reminded me to check in on our options for flying cars, now at least seven years overdue.

It turns out that Moller International, the folks developing the M400 Skycar aerodyne, are accepting deposits:

As a result of the recent successful hovering flights of the M400 Skycar, Moller International is accepting deposits to secure delivery positions for our M400 Skycar until after the Skycar has flown from hover to full aerodynamic flight and returned (transitioning flight). A limited number of delivery positions are available.

List prices go from $500,000 to $1,000,000, depending on what delivery position you’re hoping for, with initial deposits scaled to match.

Problem is, Moller might not be entirely on the up and up. Downside lists the company in its scams section, saying:

For over forty years, Paul Moller, of Davis, California, has been trying to build a flying car. Over the years, he’s been extracting money from investors. Moller has been in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission for making “false and misleading statements about the company’s imminent listing on the NYSE and the Nasdaq Stock Market, the projected value of company shares after such listing, and the prospect for Skycar sales and revenue.” He raised $5.1 million by illegally selling unregistered stock to the public over the Internet, according to the SEC complaint.

Forty years? Yeah, turns out they’ve been around a while, though they used to be called “Discojet Corporation.” The 2003 SEC complaint continues:

As of late 2002, MI’s approximately 40 years’ of development has resulted in a prototype Skycar capable of hovering about fifteen feet above the ground.

Fraud or not, they look cool, especially the early disc-shaped ones. And if all Moller did was design them for movies (one did appear in the 1978 film, The Force Beyond), it’d probably be okay. But then, all these flying discs look cool.

Discojet, Discojet Corporation, Moller, Moller International, Moller Skycar, Skycar, aerodyne, fake, flying car, flying disc, fraud, scam

I just got a heads up on an Advertising Age story that Wal-Mart is trying to be MySpace (and, yeah, I aped their headline, too).

Here’s the lead:

It’s a quasi-social-networking site for teens designed to allow them to “express their individuality,” yet it screens all content, tells parents their kids have joined and forbids users to e-mail one another. Oh, and it calls users “hubsters” — a twist on hipsters that proves just how painfully uncool it is to try to be cool.

Sure, nobody went broke underestimating American taste, but underestimating our children’s ability to spot a fake?

update: here’s some sharp criticism. I like it.

AdAge, fake, Hubsters, knock-off, MySpace, MySpace.com, The Hub, Wal-Mart

Memepool.com points out that the folks at Supermasterpiece are claiming priority over Britney Spears’ Oops ! I Did It Again. Their story is:

“Oops ! I Did It Again” was recorded in April, 1932 in a Chicago studio, most likely Nearlie’s or West and Fourth. Cut for the Decca label by Louis Armstrong and elemends of Zilner Randolph’s touring group, “Oops!” failed to make the chart impact of “All of Me,” another side recorded in the same session, and soon fell out of print.

The song remained all-but-forgotten until sixty years later when a young Britney Spears sent her interpretation of the Armstrong tune all the way to the top of the charts.

Whether you believe Supermasterpiece’s history or not, they’ve got an MP3 available. And, because I love bad knockoffs of bad pop, I like it.

My wife, on the other hand, is haunted by choruses of bad songs and has difficulty getting them out of her head. It doesn’t help that I watch, and when it appears she might have shaken it off, I whisper in her ear:

Oops!…I did it again?I played with your heart, got lost in the game?Oh baby, baby?Oops!…You think I’m in love?That I’m sent from above?I’m not that innocent

britney spears, cover, cover track, fake, louis armstrong, memepool, music, oops i did it again, oops! i did it again, original, pop culture, satire, song, supermasterpiece

Steffan O’Sullivan writes:

“This is from a 1954 edition of Modern Mechanics Magazine, predicting what the home computer will look like in 2004. I think I worked on that printer once…

How can I get a steering wheel like that on my office computer here?”

The caption reads:

“Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a ‘home computer’ could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.”

More photos from MaisonBisson

[update]: Jess’s comment below gives the provenance of the photo as being from a Fark.com forum thread titled: “photoshop this mock-up of a submarine’s maneuvering Room.” Indeed, Snopes.com has it:

Although the photograph displayed could represent what some people in the early 1950s contemplated a “home computer” might look like (based on the technology of the day), it isn’t, as the accompanying text claims, a RAND Corporation illustration from 1954 of a prototype “home computer.” The picture is actually an entry submitted to an image modification competition, taken from an original photo of a submarine maneuvering room console found on U.S. Navy web site, converted to grayscale, and modified to replace a modern display panel and TV screen with pictures of a decades-old teletype/printer and television (as well as to add the gray-suited man to the left-hand side of the photo)

I’d like to say I knew this all along, but I got burned too. What really eats me is that I noticed (but didn’t comment on) the bad grammar and awkward construction in the caption that seemed unfitting for any publication. Oh well, thank you ‘Jess.’

RAND, 1954, scientists from the rand corporation, computer, home computer, 1954 2004 computer, computer steering wheel, fark computer photoshop, modern mechanics, 1950s computer prediction, fake