Tag Archives: The Simpsons

Simpsons Couch Gag Contest Sounds Kind of Awesome

This is a picture of The Nerdery’s Springfield conference room.

It’s also the main reason for pointing out The Simpsons Couch Gag contest. That’s right, if you can explain an awesome couch gag in a 100 words or less, you could find your idea animated and featured on The Simpsons. No need to expand on that awesomeness of that prospect, right? I didn’t think so.

Also, for a little refresher. There’s this.

The Origin of D’oh

Or, as the writers of The Simpsons call it “annoyed grunt.”

Friday Links: A celebration of The Simspons’ 500th episode

• In honor of The Simpsons’ 500th episode, all of Bart’s chalkboard sentences.
• Super Mario villan recruitment posters.
• The periodic table of cupcakes. That’s right.
• This is pretty fabulous: Animal sculptures made of CD fragments.
• Looking to hire great innovators? Focus on the 3 Rs.
• Designer myopia: how to stop designing for ourselves.
• 6 pop culture mysteries solved by fans.
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball reviews Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography.
• Can a font help a city make a comeback? Chattanooga hopes so.

Friday Links: Whiskey advertisers knew the future?

• Men who plan beyond tomorrow: How 1940s whiskey ads predicted the cell phone, the 3D movie, videoconferencing, and sports bars…and a bunch of stuff that hasn’t happened yet.
• 13 Simpsons’ jokes that actually came true.
• 10 New Year’s resolutions for designers.
• Why marketers love QR codes and consumers do not. They forgot to mention that perhaps we consumers don’t want to be marketed to every waking moment of our entire lives.
• “Inspired” by Apple, a tumblr blog.
• Read the 1958 memo Leo Burnett sent to his agency. In case you need a refresher, Burnett is the man who, “had a hand in creating, amongst many other things, the Jolly Green Giant, Tony the Tiger, and Marlboro Man.”
• Batman meets Dr. Seuss.
• Remember Douchey Account Guy? Well now there’s a response: F—ing Creatives. (If you find the f— word offensive and/or distasteful, you might not want to visit that link. If you find it hilarious, visit away).
• How one startup got 100,000 users in two days.

Friday Links: More nerd revenge, amazing coincidences, and that Simpsons’ opening

• In Finance & Commerce: Revenge of the Nerdery: 50 openings in 2010. You oughta hop on over to the Jobs section of this here website and take a look.
• The five most mind-blowing coincidences of all time. The Abraham Lincoln one was especially odd.
• A white iPhone has been spotted. Maybe they will exist?
• Al Jean, an executive producer of The Simpsons, explains that Banksy opening from last week.
• A Twitteriffic developer makes a case for how much it costs to make a good iPhone App
• Over on Lifehacker, a developer shares lessons he learned when his laptop was stolen.
• The last link about Gapgate (I swear): Where Gap went wrong over on Logo Design Love
• McDonald’s menu items from around the world is oddly mesmerizing.

Friday Links: Chess, Legos, action figures, what more could you want?

• Survey says: Business picking up for big agencies.
• How good are you at finding the center, noticing if things aren’t quite in balance? Test your skills with the eyeballing game.
• Clock calculates wassted time at meetings.
• 11 biggest nerd heroes who’ve appeared on The Simpsons.
• Give your Macbook a Lego keyboard.
• Lost tops social media interaction charts.
• The lost etymology of ‘fanboy.’
• The worlds tiniest open-source violin, xkcd on the Facebook panic.
• The Periodic Table of Superpowers.
• Action figures of modern artists.
• Hot nerds reading comics.
• Sort of awesome, a typographic chessboard.

Also, as a follow-up to Conan Cubed, I present Conan 2.0 weighing at 169 Rubix cubes.

Friday Links: Communication Arts’ best interactive (and some other stuff)

Before we get to the links, we just have to mention that Communication Arts has released its list of the best interactive projects of the year. We’re pretty happy to see two projects we got to work on made the list. Fallon’s Skimmer and Colle + McVoy’s Take Me Fishing. Pretty rad way to end the week, isn’t it?

• In honor of the Oscars on Sunday, AdFreak has complied the 66 best movie taglines of the past 20 years. It’s a fun list.
• If you missed Funny or Die’s Presidential Reunion, you should probably watch it. It’s pretty good.
• IE6 Funeral.
• Make does a nice little Q&A with the makers of that fabulous Ok Go video that took the Internet by storm this week.
• Homer’s iPhone.
• Lego games, four kinds of awesome.
• John Lennon’s Citroën ad fairly indefensible
• For The Nerdery’s bikers: 10 amazing bikes of the future.
• Darth Vader disco ball.
• Infographic of the week: What people are really buying onlive vs. offline.

Friday Links: All about the scrollbars

• Must click of the week, Scroll Clock. Really, you have to see this.
• On Google Wave’s scrollbars. They are kind of funky.
• Clients from hell.
• 80% of US Consumers won’t pay for online content.
• The Lazy Designer’s Guide to Success
• A real-life replica of The Simpson’s house
• How to talk like a 1950s hipster
• NerdCart: A mobile workstation and media center
• 8 product categories that were fun to advertise while they lasted: typerwriters, seatbelts, and taperecorders are amongst the list.

Profiles in Nerdery: Mike Woods, seriously.

• Astrological Sign: Cancer: shy, assertive, and loyal.
• Time at the Nerdery: ~1 year.
• Area of expertise: Getting it done.
• When people ask you what you do, how do you respond: I shrug.
• Favorite kinds of projects to work on: All of them.
• What one thing about The Nerdery surprises people the most when you tell them about it: That we have this annoying blogger who bugs me to do things that I really don’t want to do.
• Seven dream Jeopardy Categories: 1.) Twitter(@woods); 2.) Bug or Feature; 3.) Conversations you should never have over IM; 4.) Things that won’t work in IE6; 5.) @wiley_the_dog twitter status; 6.) Seriously you want to work on my team. Seriously.; and 7.) Apple.
• Favorite Fictional Nerd: Lisa Simpson.
• According to the Wikipedia entry on Nerd, some nerds show a pronounced interest in subjects which others tend to find dull or complex and difficult to comprehend, or overly mature for their age, especially topics related to science, disambiguation, mathematics and technology. Do you know what disambiguation is: Of course I do.

Profiles in Nerdery: Dan Shugarts, doesn’t work in an ivory tower (or a cage, really)

• Astrological Sign: That is a ridiculous question.
• Time at the Nerdery: Almost eight months.
• Area of expertise: NSFW.
• When people ask you what you do, how do you respond: I’m training to become a cage fighter.
• Favorite kinds of projects to work on: What’s the client’s budget.
• What one thing about The Nerdery surprises people the most when you tell them about it: Our building really isn’t an ivory tower.
• Seven dream Jeopardy Categories: 1) Americans in the NHL; 2) Name that Shakespeare; 3) Boy Bands of the late 90s; 4) The GOP: Coincidence. . .or Voldemort?; 5) Qualities of a Hipster; 6) My Stylish Wardrobe; 7) The Charlestown Chiefs.
• Favorite Fictional Nerd: The Comic Book Guy.
• According to the Wikipedia entry on Nerd, some nerds show a pronounced interest in subjects which others tend to find dull or complex and difficult to comprehend, or overly mature for their age, especially topics related to science, disambiguation, mathematics and technology. Do you know what disambiguation is: Of course I do.