Waxy.org
Waxy.org is the sandbox of Andy Baio, a journalist/programmer living in Portland, Oregon. I'm the CTO of Kickstarter, created Upcoming.org, and some other stuff too.

Contact Me: log@waxy.org or waxpancake on AIM

ZombieURL

Posted Apr 18, 2008 (Updated Aug 10, 2009)

For the last few weeks, I've been spending every Friday with a small group of brilliant geeks — Rael Dornfest, Asha Dornfest, Chris Anderson, Greg Borenstein, and Adam Greene — for a weekly one-day hackathon. We call it Bottlecap Labs, a place to bounce around ideas, support each other's work, and occasionally whip up a project.

The first is ZombieURL, a TinyURL-clone with a twist.

Put in a URL, send it to a friend, and enjoy. Keep a camera nearby to capture the fun. (Here's a Zombie-fied version of Waxy, for example.)

(Warning: We're not responsible for emotional scarring, concussions, or heart failure as a result of using ZombieURL.)

17 Comments (Add Yours)

Apr 18, 2008
9:40 PM  
Lilly wrote:

Not as bad as a Rickroll by farrrrr. :)


Apr 19, 2008
3:16 AM  
Infested! wrote:

omg, my heart..

this is evil ^^


Apr 19, 2008
7:05 AM  
Hank wrote:

Ha, nice!

This is kinda like this service - http://tinyurl.com/5rnkto


Apr 19, 2008
11:28 AM  
Anonymous wrote:

Ah, sadly not iPhone compatible. Still, this really brings up a lot of ideas for non-prankish tinyurl value-additions, for lack of a better term.


Apr 19, 2008
5:42 PM  
Philipp Lenssen wrote:

I prefer this to TinyURL actually.

Are you overlaying something on a page wide iframe? What else could be done with this technique?


Apr 19, 2008
6:46 PM  
Andy Baio wrote:

Yep, that's pretty much it. JQuery for the effects, SoundManager for the audio. The source tells it all.

Not sure what else you could do with it... Create a soundtrack for a website that doesn't have one? Mash together two sites? GoatseURL?


Apr 19, 2008
6:51 PM  
Yaanu wrote:

Fucking brilliant.


Apr 19, 2008
7:32 PM  
range wrote:

Pretty cool. I was surprised. I expected the page to have another layout, some graphics and such.


Apr 20, 2008
12:38 AM  
Superdotman wrote:

I'm running Safari 3.1 (5525.13) on OS X 10.5.2, and the sound didn't play the first time I tried the link. All subsequent sounds played, but sometimes a moment after the image appears.
Awesome idea and execution, though!

A word of advice to pranksters: Try to URL-shrink text-only pages, rather than pages with sound (or sound and video).


Apr 20, 2008
5:00 PM  
Matt wrote:

hey, that was pretty awesome. My 4 month old daughter sleeping nearby thought differently, but she'll learn...


Apr 20, 2008
5:40 PM  
Rex Hammock wrote:

This is definitely 'fundable' -- and in your SXSW session. Thanks for the laugh.


Apr 22, 2008
9:13 AM  
Fubiz wrote:

Excellent link!


Apr 22, 2008
1:16 PM  
Jish wrote:

Baaaassssttttaaaarrrrddddd!!!!!!!


Apr 24, 2008
7:14 AM  
Charles Alves wrote:

Pretty cool!


Apr 24, 2008
1:38 PM  
Mr. Grass wrote:

LOL - this is awesome.

I've had a live webcam of my (uhhh) front yard for a couple of years - a surprising number of people surf on by to see the (uhhh) excitement.

Since I'm doing the first lawn mowing of the season this Saturday ... I just added a link to the Zombie'fied version on the main page for those coming by for live coverage of this (uhhh) entertaining activity.

P.S. Tidy says a couple of warnings with your web code/frame wrapper - maybe move the CSS code into the head section (?)


May 3, 2008
7:20 AM  
alesh wrote:

Wow cool.

However, something about the NYTimes defeats it. Try putting in this link.


May 3, 2008
9:45 AM  
Andy Baio wrote:

Yeah, we noticed that early on. The New York Times uses Javascript to break out of any frame. We figured if they were that concerned about people framing their content, we shouldn't try to find a workaround.


 

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Waxy Links
Ads via The Deck
November 6, 2009
Another World level ported to Javascript — in other emulation news, a NES and Gameboy emulator in JS and SNES9x ported to Flash (via)
Blocktronics' ANSI art tribute to RaDMaN — powered by Viewtronics, Peter Nitsch's gorgeous new Flash 10 ANSI viewer (via)
Aaron Straup-Cope leaves Flickr, joins Stamen Design — one of my favorite geeks joins one of my favorite companies
Unreal Engine 3 development kit now free for non-commercial use — huge announcement, along with the recent free release of Unity Indie
The Big Picture's series on Martian landscapes — Kai's Power Tools in real-life (via)
November 5, 2009
Preview of McSweeney's Panorama, their one-shot newspaper — as expected, looks incredibly great (via)
The Grant-Pattishall Award — congrats, Kellan! (via)
Birdhouse for Your Soul — Greg Knauss finds one small piece of the historical web
Google open-sources Closure Tools — JS compiler, along with Google's huge widget library (via)
Video montage of actors speaking the movie's title — great comments with some missed opportunities; "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to The Taxi Driver?"
The Morning News' Cloud of Atlases — impossible to guess, but look at all the pretty colors
American Airlines fires UX designer for explaining why their UX isn't great — a lapse of judgment from both American Airlines and an employee who cared too much
November 4, 2009
Overheating, photo series of gadgets thrown through walls — from issue 6 of Amusement, the incredible French gaming culture magazine (via)
Ricardo Autobahn's The Golden Age of Video — insane pop culture video mashup
November 3, 2009
The Last Days of Gourmet — sad photo series, reminds me of the dot-com carnage photos
Put This On — first episode of Jesse Thorn and Adam Lisagor's Kickstarter-funded video series on clothing
Jono Bacon's The Art of Community released for free download under CC license — looks fantastic and worth buying (via)
Eric Testroete's papercraft portrait Halloween costume — incredibly creepy, like videogames leaking into the real world (via)
November 2, 2009
Mark Pilgrim's history of the IMG element — told through annotated conversations from 1993 (via)
Every vandalism edit to Nickelback's Wikipedia page — I wonder which edits managed to stay in the longest without detection
November 1, 2009
Mike Pusateri's Halloween costume data collection — for the fifth year, he's collected every costume name; this year, "nothing" spiked to #2
XKCD's movie narrative charts — here's a more serious attempt at Primer's timeline
October 30, 2009
GameCity Squared's 15-Pixel Megamix — extremely minimalist interpretations of 12 different games
October 29, 2009
Lauren McCarthy's Happiness Hat — it measures your smile and stabs you if you're not smiling sufficiently (via)
October 28, 2009
Auto Tune de Nieuws — needs an angry Dutch gorilla
Facebook prank memorializes living person — the Facebook team should allow an email veto, or at least require better documentation (via)
2D Boy's pay-what-you-like World of Goo results wrapup — don't miss the breakdown by OS and country (via)
FreeForm's short film on the Open Internet — impressive set of interviewees, directed by Jesse Dylan of Yes We Can fame
Using Flickr as a paintbrush — coloring overhead maps based on the dominant colors of photos taken on the ground (via)
October 27, 2009
Football Hero, three-story-tall Guitar Hero controlled with soccer balls — they used pressure pads with Arduino boards wired up to Frets on Fire (via)

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