Finally, a use for Chatroulette that isn’t creepy. Group DoneRight Jr performs what is essentially a live music video to the gal on the other end of their Chatroulette session. Cue all the jokes about how long they waited and how many naked fellas they saw before they found the lucky Diana. Head on past the break to be charmed with a larger, prettier video.

(via The Next Web)

Skyward Sword getting “finishing touches” before release (Destructoid)

Welcome to ChatotRoulette! (Dueling Analogs)

Gene Roddenberry’s original pitch for Star Trek (PDF) (Lee Thomson)

Rock Band can actually teach you how to play actual drums (Destructoid)

The Japanese Spider-Man is exactly as intense as you’d expect (YouTube)

How to make 6 different Rube Goldberg machines (Geeks Are Sexy)

Muppets made out of balloons! (Black Cat Balloon Company on Flickr)

(Pic via Cake Wrecks)

“Still, [Chatroulette founder Andrey Ternovskiy] said, ‘How can you be dead when your revenue has doubled?’

The answer was lazy, simple, and ingenious—in other words, pure Ternovskiy. He started redirecting pantless visitors to Hustler’s Web site, and their computers would forever be blocked from Chatroulette. At first, Ternovskiy and his colleagues were banning a hundred thousand users a day, but now, he says, the flasher rate is down to one in two hundred—and Hustler pays for the referrals, giving Ternovskiy’s company, at least for the time being, a healthy revenue stream.”

–Some have claimed that Chatroulette is dead, but it may have just discovered how to save journalism.

(via The New Yorker’s piece on the future of Chatroulette)

Well, that didn’t take very long: Just hours after Apple announced that its videochat service FaceTime was expanding from the iPhone 4 and 4th-gen iPod Touch to Mac OS X computers, someone — namely, programmer Zach Holman — has created an Chatroulette-like service that connects FaceTime users with random other FaceTime users. Dubbed Facelette, Holman promises that it will “[make] the internet way more stupid”:

Here’s the thing about viral marketing; sure it raises awareness but, for some reason, the good examples always make me respect the marketing team more than the product they’re shilling. So, while this video of a bunch of horny guys getting the crap scared out of them by a hot girl/CG monster on Chatroulette may be the funniest thing I’ve seen all week, it’s still not gonna get me to see another flick about Satan making young girls’ necks move weird.

Radio is not the youngest of mediums, and in a time when everyone is trying to stay relevant in this lightning fast era of electronic mail, Dot Coms, and Virus Videos it can be difficult to keep on top of things.

The following video show some of NPR’s efforts to tap into the mysterious ever changing now.

The Andrey Ternovskiy infatuation tour continues: Since the creator of Chatroulette unmasked himself as a 17-year-old high school student from Moscow, he’s drawn considerable attention from the likes of The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and even venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who’s expressed interest in investing in Chatroulette.

Now, Ternovskiy is the subject of one of The New Yorker‘s trademark 4,000-word profiles. There aren’t any massive new revelations here — though 4chan types may find some glee in learning that Ternovskiy first cut his teeth on DDoS attacks when he was 11 — but it’s a fascinating read about a fascinating figure.

Andrey Ternovskiy, the 17-year-old Russian high school student responsible for Chatroulette, is kind of a big deal. He was last sighted at the Palo Alto Apple Store at 4 AM last Saturday, waiting in line for, of course, the iPad, flanked by a few investors and writing code for the site that so famously has scared reporters with happily flaunted male genitalia. Geek rock star at work.

After a rapid and unlikely ascent to fame since his first Chatroulette video opus, punctuated by a Ben Folds homage and a vicious YouTube takedown, Merton is back with a new dose of Chatroulette Piano Improv, helpfully titled “Chat Roulette Funny Piano Improv #2.“

(Before we dig too far into this, you may want to visit the 56k Modem Emulator, to establish the proper sonic mood. Ah, that beloved squeal.)

A colleague (who is handsome and wise) recently discovered an old Media Metrix report delineating “World Wide Web Audience Ratings” for December 1998. It’s a remarkable study, categorizing thousands of sites and conglomerated web companies.

This thing is like finding election results from 1880; like coming across the original Billboard music chart. It looks familiar, like you should know all of the component elements, but it’s unrecognizable. As though they’re all brands made up for movies.

The Rankings
Home and Work, Combined
We’ll start where the report starts – at those sites most popular when combining home and work visits. (Please see above diagram for clarification.) Before I list them, I want you to try and think up what the top fifty websites were in 1998. Got it?

Yeah, you’re wrong: