Counting the goddamn days

Kim Kardashian's booty may not have broken the Internet, but Gangnam Style quite literally did. Thanks to a little bit of computer/math magickry, YouTube's view counter can only go up to 2,147,483,647 ... and Psy blew right past that. Incidentally, 2,147,483,647 is a magic number for lots of computery things, so there might be more Internet-breakage where that came from. Alas, it'll lack the sex appeal of Kim K. or K-pop. Onward!

1. An art critic takes on Instagram. Art Instagram is a lil corner of the Internet I'm not much familiar with -- preferring chef Instagram, myself -- but New York's (often salty) Jerry Saltz has written a love letter to it/odd postcard from it, since it's a place you simultaneously observe and inhabit. "Why do I obsess over Instagram? Passive voyeurism, of course. All these pictures are authored, but I know only a tiny handful of who the authors are, so there's that mystery and titillation ... "

2. Inside the quest to make "digital smells." You can send pictures and sounds on the Internet; by some accounts, you can even send feelings. But despite surprising progress in the field, the idea of virtual smells and tastes still seems more sci-fi than reality.

3. A short history of the Web, as seen through its formats. We've had .html, .doc, .psd and a million things in between. But we've rarely stopped to look back on those formats ... or what they could possibly mean.

Counting the goddamn DAYS.
Pocketable: The complete, chaotic history of Reddit, otherwise known as "the Internet's front page." (9,090 words/36 minutes)

Postscripts: India wants its yoga back. Italy wants the Internet, plz. The Google misery index, Me IRL, and further proof that smartphones ruin everything. Where to watch holiday classics online. How to program lights on a White House Christmas tree. 100 years of beauty in one minute and 8 big food trends for 2015. Whatever happened to "Russia's Mark Zuckerberg"? What do the inmates at Guantanamo eat? Caitlin's Christmas wish list, 2014: all of NPR's favorite books and this really zany kitchen thing.

Until tomorrow!
@caitlindewey

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