Ben Folds is back with a final tribute to Merton. This video was taken from 4 live shows incorporating Mertonian Chatroulette – approximately 12 minutes a night.

Merton returns for part two of his Chatroulette piano playing sensation.

Since then chain letters have evolved and moved from paper mail to e-mails and later to social media networks. However, chain mail nowadays usually contains some clause which pressurizes the recipient into forwarding it to other people.

Here’s an example of a typical chain mail we might receive today:

Forwarded Message:
Subj: Re: (don’t open in front of parents) (sorry guys)
Date: 98-04-25 00:29:48 EDT

<< Five people actually got killed by not sending this piece of mail.

The creator of this mail has a program that will track down everyone who sent this mail and whoever that didn't send it will DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE because this program can actually track down your address.

Send this to 15 people within the next fifteen minutes or you will die die die die die, what do you have to lose? Your life? >>

Of course this is complete nonsense, but many people still believe such threats and send it on ‘just in case’. As a result, the number of recipients grow exponentially and a worthless and pointless piece of text is spread around the internet.

This YouTube video sums up chain mail very well.

#2 – Emo Fail

#5 – Photocopy?

Obama meets Batman

Fake spider joke

In an exclusive interview, Mashable talks to Merton the Chatroulette piano player via Skype to find out more about the man behind the glasses and the hoodie.

Well, there has been much speculation that the mystery man might be Ben Folds due to his uncanny facial and voice resemblance. To clear things up, during one of his concerts in Charlotte, North Carolina, the real Ben Folds flipped open a laptop on the piano and started playing on Chatroulette.

So now we know who the hooded piano player is. Actually, we don’t. “Merton” has since said “Not Ben Folds. Seriously. Ben is a much better pianist, and listen to the voice on the “Man in the Dark” part – totally not his voice at all. Besides, wouldn’t Ben cover more of his face to disguise his identity?”.

My brain is frazzled.

Oh, and here’s the original just in case you haven’t seen it yet.

Link (Thanks Andrew!)

Sympathy Fail

Employee Fail

Afghanistan Fail

American Car Fail

Mom, you’ve got the wrong son

Awkward Shower Likes

Geography Fail

Why do you have to spoil my plans mom?

Unfortunate Assuming

Maybe you shouldn’t follow in her footsteps

“Stupid” Goatee

Age at startup: 15 & 17
Company: My Year Book
Net Worth: $10 million

Bio: Catherine Cook, 15, and her brother David, 17, were looking through their high school year book when they came up with the idea to create a free interactive version online.

Catherine persuaded their older brother, Geoff, who was a budding internet entrepreneur at the time, to invest $250,000 in their idea. The site was launched in April 2005 and 950,000 members joined in the first year.

Fast forward 5 years, and the site has a net worth of around $10 million.

#2 – Ashley Qualls

Age at startup: 14
Company: Whatever Life
Net Worth: $4 million

Bio: In 2004, when Ashley was just 14 years old, borrowed $8 from her mom and started a website called whateverlife.com which provided Myspace layouts and HTML tutorials for people in her age demographic.

Ashley dropped out of high school and in less than two years the site was raking in $70,000 a month purely from advertising revenue. As a result of it’s success, offers started flooding in for the Myspace-help website. Qualls was flattered by an offer of $1.5 million plus a car of her choice, but she turned the offer down. In total, she has earned over $1 million from the site.

#3 – Juliette Brindak

Age at startup: 10
Company: Miss O and Friends
Net Worth: $15 million

Bio: Juliette Brindak came up with the idea for Miss O and Friends when she was just 10 years old. She later put put her idea online.

Miss O is a website by girls, for girls to build self-esteem, positivity and good sense of self. It’s visited by millions of girls each month in the age range 8-12, which Juliette like to call ‘tweens’.

When Juliette was 16 she released her first book in the summer of 2006 which sold over 120,000 copies. Now, her business at 20 years old is worth $15 million.

#4 – Paul Bourque

Age at startup: 18
Company: Affiliate Marketer
Net Worth: $300,000/month

Bio: Paul Bourque was 18 when he started browsing ways to make money on the internet. He stumbled across affiliate marketing, and after profiting in the first month he couldn’t turn away.

His first month’s revenue was around $600, and in less than a year Paul’s earning over $300,000 a month from AzoogleAds.

He currently works full time as an affiliate marketer, but also runs an affiliate marketing blog where he shares tips and tricks.

#5 – Ben Kaufman

Age at startup: 18
Company: Mophie, Kluster and Quirky
Net Worth: $5-10 million/year

Bio: Ben Kaufman founded Mophie, an iPod accessories website, when he was 18 years old. The site sells iPod batteries, cases, cables and more.

He later went on to launch Kluster, ‘a collaborative decision making platform’. At 22, his latest venture is a website called ‘Quirky‘. The site enables anyone with a good idea to get it manufactured – if successful they will earn a royalty percentage.

Eduard Khil, who has become a worldwide superstar overnight for his ‘Trololo’ performance, wants to sing the song again, but this time with lyrics – and he want you to write them.

It was in March 1985 that we first heard of the term “dotcom”, when a Massachusetts-based computer manufacturer called Symbolics added dotcom to it’s name. In the same year, another five companies did the same, but the trend wasn’t really catching on.

Now, 25 years later, there are tens of millions of dotcom domains, Google’s crawler indexed its trillionth page of registered names in 2008 and there are 100,000 new dotcom names registered every day. It makes you wonder what it would be like if internet or dotcom had never boomed.

Want to see 100 oldest still-existing registered dotcom domains? Wikipedia has them listed here.

Eduard Khil, the man who has recently gained worldwide fame from his performance, which quickly became known as “Trololololololololololo”, reacts to parodies on YouTube with the media.

This is what he said to “Life News“:

I haven’t heard anything about it. It’s nice, of course!

Thereby hangs a tale about this song. Lyrics were written for it, but they were poor. I mean, they were good, but one couldn’t publish them at that time. They contained words like these: “I’m riding my stallion, so-and-so mustang, and my beloved Mary is thousand miles away knitting a stocking for me”. Of course, we failed to publish it at that time, and we, Arkady Ostrovsky and I, decided to make it a vocalise. But the essence remained in the title. Yes, it’s a little prankish – it has no lyrics, so we had to make up something for people would listen to it, and so there was an interesting arrangement.

Haven’t seen “Trololololololololololo” yet? Watch it here.

One of the biggest problems though, is a flaw in the most basic of security checks that we all do – password strength.

Security expert, Imperva found that a third of people choose passwords made up of six or fewer characters, while 60% opt for passwords from a limited set of alpha-numeric characters.

Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords such as consecutive digits, or adjacent keyboard keys.

With around 50% of people also using the same (or very similar) password for all the websites they use, there are concerns that they are unwittingly leaving themselves at risk of online fraud.

Here are the top 10 most common online passwords:

• 123456
• 12345
• 123456789
• Password
• iloveyou
• princess
• rockyou
• 1234567
• 12345678
• abc123

Update – Here are the most popular passwords ranked 11th – 20th.

• Nicole
• Daniel
• babygirl
• monkey
• Jessica
• Lovely
• michael
• Ashley
• 654321
• Qwerty

As well as ensuring that you don’t use any of these passwords, Imperva has a lot more detail on how to keep your passwords secure, so you are safe online. Click the link for more info.

Link

This will probably make more sense to those of you who are familiar with British television, when the BBC hands over to Ceefax during the night (when nobody’s watching). For those of you who don’t know much about Ceefax, it’s the BBC’s teletext information service transmitted via the analogue signal, which began in 1974 and is set to run until 2012.

Created by Eddie Robson, from a genius original idea by Mal Franks, this is ‘YouTube closes down for the night’. (View in full screen mode).

Andrew Fischer, from Omaha, Nebraska said: “The winner will be able to send me a tattoo or have me go to a tattoo parlour and get a temporary ink tattoo on my forehead and this will be something they choose, a company name or domain name, perhaps their logo”.

The auction reached $322.

#9 Grandmother – A 10-year-old girl from England tried to sell her Grandmother on eBay. She advertised her as ”annoying” but ”cuddly”. Despite a number of bids being made for Grandma, the listing was taken down soon after. Read more.

#8 Brussels Sprout – In December 2005, a brussels sprout, which had been cooked on Christmas Day was listed by Andrew Henderson from England. It sold for £99.50 with the proceeds going to charity.

#7 Britney Spears Bubble Gum – A woman sold a piece of bubble gum that Britney Spears had chewed and spat out at a concert at Wembley Arena in 2000. The winning bid was $14,000.

#6 A cornflake in the shape of Illinois – Two sisters from Virginia sold a cornflake that resembled the state of Illinois for $1,350 in March 2008.

#5 Virgin Mary Sandwich – In 2004, a partially eaten, 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary sold on eBay for $28,000.

#4 Virginity – An 18-year-old British girl sold her virginity on eBay. It was bought by a businessman who kindly gave her the money she needed for college without taking ‘the service’.

#3 Human Liver – A man from Florida auctioned off his liver on eBay. The bid reached $5.7 million before it was taken down from the site, due to the fact that it’s illegal to sell human organs on eBay.

#2 Ghost In a Jar – A jar that a man believed to contain a ghost was put up for auction on eBay because it was terrorizing the owner. The seller, Teajay101, claimed that he “would not be held responsible” if the “black thing” escaped the jar, and that “all sales are final.” After numerous bids, the auction ended seven days later at a whopping $50,922, but unfortunately the winning bidder did not pay.

#1 A Man’s Whole Life – A Briton living in Australia sold his whole life for £192,000 after splitting up with his wife. The auction included his house and it’s contents, car, job, motorcycle, jet ski and friends, in an effort to make a fresh start.

It is said that the first image ever published on the internet was a promotional photograph of Les Horribles Cernettes – a parody pop group, self-labelled “the one and only High Energy Rock Band”, which was founded by a secretary of the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) when they attracted his attention by stepping on stage during the “CERN Hardronic Festival”, singing “Collider”.

1. I like…

Yeh, me too. Personally, I think it’s the best way to impersonate a dinosaur.

2. What would a…

Forget the chair, why are your knees bending backwards?

3. Is a…

Is a banana a herb? No, it’s a vegetable.

4. Do mid…

Small people having night vision is a very common misconception. Only a tiny percentage actually have that capability.

5. How much wo…

As much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood… apparently.

6. Google will…

What’s Google got against Chuck Norris? Try Yahoo!

7. How come…

Because you type all your problems into Google?

8. Can je…

The most asked question about Jesus… Can he microwave a burrito?

9. Why is there…

I’m not too sure to be honest. Actually, there’s not a dead Pakistani on your couch, it’s just a quote from an episode of Lost.

10. What do I do if…

Never mind red headed bites, why is your iPod frozen?

Know any other good ones? Let us know in the comments below.

Not only does this show that we should never judge a book by it’s cover, it also shows that the coolest guy in the world is a video game developer! Who would have guessed?

In total, 600 unwilling people received his email, which was publicizing open houses in Los Angeles and San Mateo. The reaction from the net community to the email was fiercely negative, but Thuerk’s spam did generate some sales. In fact, Thuerk estimates it led to $12 million in sales.

Since then, spam emails have grown in numbers, with 90% of all e-mails sent today considered as spam. Estimates suggest that as many as 200 billion spam messages are sent daily, and it’s all thanks to Gary Thuerk.