Archive for Cats

The Great Catsby: An Internet Musical

The Great Catsby is an internet phenomenon that started with a symphony of cat-shopped covers of Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece and emerged as naturally as cats and musicals often do – with lots of singing. The final cat-daptation deserves some serious accolades. Cats, music, and great literature – how can you go wrong?

 

Photoshop is the queen of memes, but internet artists really impressed me with some original renderings…

 

until the Trailer Cats provided us with a tease hinting at what could be. This was naturally followed by more variations and manipulations of the current musical with Leo (a true feline) and the compulsory cat on Roomba gif.

Just when you didn’t think you could take anymore Catsby without coughing up some hairballs of your own, someone revived the great animated cat musical “The Aristocats” and dubbed in some new audio from Luhrmann’s new soundtrack.  (I think animatter224 said it best: “Starring Leonardo Di-Cat-prio and Carrey Meowigun directed by Baz Purrrman.”) It’s genius because there’s nothing quite like the crooning of Lana Del Ray and kittens falling in love. I admit it nearly brought me to tears.

 

 

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

10 Mom Cats and Their Precious Kitties

Momkittenphotos
Feed-twFeed-fb

This Mother's Day we're celebrating in our favorite way — through the medium of cats. We have found 10 mom 'n kittens pics that will melt even the hardest heart

Get your cute on and take a look through our adorable gallery above. Share your sweetest cat snaps in the comments below.

Homepage image courtesy of Flickr, Abby B. Read more...

More about Gallery, Photography, Features, Animals, and Cats

Why Does the Internet Love Cats So Much? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Felines have a long-standing history as companions to the human race, but why exactly have we all grown to love cats so much? An even better question would be, why have they completely taken over the internet in the past few years? Well, the argument could certainly be made that cats are just so darn cute that conquering the world was inevitable.

Why the Internet Loves Cats [Infographic]

This infographic attempts to explain the greatest mystery of the internet: why are we so obsessed with cats? It traces cat lovers all the way back to ancient Egypt and shows how Grumpy Cat, Lil Bub, and numerous other unwitting pets rose to relative fame.

Is it all a cat conspiracy to control the world or are the little guys really as affectionate as they seem when you’re wearing nice pants and they need a place to sit? Speaking of which, this rainbow cat can ruin all of your pants, no matter what color they are:

Infographic by Best Sociology Programs and NowSourcing

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Top 5 Cat-Themed April Fool’s Pranks

Catpy April Mewls Day! It’s no secret that the Internet loves cats. Some of today’s cleverest pranks involve the furry creatures. Here’s a rundown of a few we thought were the cat’s meow.

5. Vimeo Becomes Vimeow: You’ve got to put those cat videos somewhere, and Vimeo[w] wants to be your host.

4. Hulu is promoting some fake shows from real shows in its carousel today, including Itchy & Scratchy, the cartoon the characters of “The Simpsons” watch.

3. Oberlin becomes Meowberlin: It’s a big edgier for an institution of higher learning to go for a Catpril Fools joke, but Oberlin has pulled it off with aplumb. For users clicking to get more information about the kitteh image featured on the homepage, Oberlin has provided link to a local animal rescue organization, tugging at our bleeding heartstrings.

2. Mobile design optimized for cats: We like this joke because it’s not entirely fake. There is a YouTube channel for cats, and just a couple of weeks ago Friskies hosted a hackathon for mobile apps for cats.

“YouTube has recently been dominated by cats. Even the simplest video of a cat using an iPad app easily gathers millions of viewers. Bowing to this takeover, our clients are increasingly asking us, “How can we improve our site or app for cats?” With their lack of opposable thumbs and ever-shifting focus, cats are certainly a challenging target audience,” said the Nielsen Norman Group.

Early research has found that “Rapid double and triple taps are common among felines, especially kittens.”

1. The army has a sense of humor, but Grumpy Cat is annoyed. She’s annoyed, among other things, by threats to our national security. So the army plans to send her and her feline ilk off fight for our freedom.

The army says cats will make useful additions to their battle regiments.

“For example, dogs can hear five times more acutely than humans, and cats about twice as acutely as dogs. Also, a domestic cat’s sense of smell is about fourteen times as strong as a human’s,” the army said in a press release.

The army has already begun collecting stray cats from Northern Virginia, Alas, some appear to be conscientious objectors and have sent several soldiers to the infirmary with scratches.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Social Media Explained By Adorable Cats [Graphic]

Everybody loves cats and everybody loves social media, so it’s only fitting that Avalaunch Media has created a graphic explaining social media…with cats!  The graphic, “SOCIAL MEowDIA EXPLAINED,” takes a look at all the big social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+ and others, and explains how people use them to tout their feline friends.

Facebook, for example, is the site where people say “I like my cat”; on Twitter, people inform their followers that “I’m playing with my cat”; on YouTube creators ask their subscribers to “Watch this video of my cat”; and on LinkedIn they let potential employers know “I’m very skilled at training cats.”

Check out the full graphic below and let us know what you think!  Meow!

Social Media Explained by cute cats

Megan O’Neill is the resident web video expert here at Social Times.  Megan covers everything from the latest viral videos to online video news and tips, and has a passion for bizarre, original and revolutionary content and ideas.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Catmoji Is Pinterest for Cats

social networks, social media, photo sharing, emoticonsCatmoji, which launched in a sign-up beta today, is Pinterest for cats.

Let’s backtrack a bit. With Pinterest’s sudden and persuasive emergence into success about a year ago, pitches promising startups that are “Pinterest for fill-in-the-blank” are quite the rage.

In most cases it’s a sign of failure. Why be another Pinterest, when Pinterest does it so well?

But here’s Catmoji‘s persuasive pitch: “Because the Internet love cats and we want to make the Internet a better and happier place with cats!”

A Pinterest for cats could be the next big thing, even though Catmoji looks so much like Pinterest that I’m not sure whether the rustling paper sounds I hear are cats or copyright lawyers at play.

But Catmoji has a few original contributions, or at least puns, to offer. Catmunity for one. And cavatars that allow users to tell the world what kind of cat they would be, if they were a cat.

Users can search through Catmoji’s cat photos based on the the mood of the cat, as emoji-tagged by it’s opposable-thumbed photo-uploader.

Catmoji emerged from Start-up Chile but is now based in Malaysia.

To sum up: Cat photos!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Catmoji Is Pinterest for Cats

social networks, social media, photo sharing, emoticonsCatmoji, which launched in a sign-up beta today, is Pinterest for cats.

Let’s backtrack a bit. With Pinterest’s sudden and persuasive emergence into success about a year ago, pitches promising startups that are “Pinterest for fill-in-the-blank” are quite the rage.

In most cases it’s a sign of failure. Why be another Pinterest, when Pinterest does it so well?

But here’s Catmoji‘s persuasive pitch: “Because the Internet love cats and we want to make the Internet a better and happier place with cats!”

A Pinterest for cats could be the next big thing, even though Catmoji looks so much like Pinterest that I’m not sure whether the rustling paper sounds I hear are cats or copyright lawyers at play.

But Catmoji has a few original contributions, or at least puns, to offer. Catmunity for one. And cavatars that allow users to tell the world what kind of cat they would be, if they were a cat.

Users can search through Catmoji’s cat photos based on the the mood of the cat, as emoji-tagged by it’s opposable-thumbed photo-uploader.

Catmoji emerged from Start-up Chile but is now based in Malaysia.

To sum up: Cat photos!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Friday Morning Laughs: Charlie The Unicorn Makes A Comeback

Happy Friday, ladies and gents!  The weekend is just around the bend and, as usual, we’ve compiled a list of some of the week’s funniest videos to put a smile on your face.  This week’s Friday Morning Laughs includes a silly pug, some adorable kittens, a crazy fish and the return of Charlie the Unicorn after three long years.  Enjoy!

Charlie the Unicorn 4

Charlie the Unicorn is one of the web’s most popular viral animations, featuring the lethargic unicorn, Charlie, and a couple of other strange unicorns that always try to bring him down.  This week, a fourth episode of Charlie the Unicorn hit YouTube after a three year hiatus and it does not disappoint!

Magic Pug – The Stairs Are Lava

This 8 second video of a bouncing pug has racked up over 617,000 views this week.  According to the video’s description, this little guy “goes to bed like this every night.”

Double Escape Starring Pumpkin and Squash

Thought the pug video was cute?  Just wait until you see Pumpkin and Squash, two adorable kittens, make a break for it!

True Facts About The Angler Fish

Last month Ze Frank released a bizarre video called ‘True Facts About Baby Echidnas’ that has racked up 1.3 million views so far.  A new video, ‘True Facts About The Anglar Fish’, a followup to the last True Facts video, has surpassed the last, with over 7.3 million views so far.  That’s one ugly fish!

Dance Like Nobody’s Watching: Airport

Angela Trimbur has already gone viral twice for dancing like nobody’s watching in the mall and in the laundromat.  Now she’s dancing like nobody’s watching in the airport, and she’s drawn over 414,000 views so far.

Megan O’Neill is the resident web video expert here at Social Times.  Megan covers everything from the latest viral videos to online video news and tips, and has a passion for bizarre, original and revolutionary content and ideas.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Friskies Awards Names This Year’s Best Cat Video

In October, Friskies opened up submissions for their cat video award show, aptly called ‘The Friskies.’  Over 1,400 cat videos were submitted and, after a vote, a single cat video rose above the rest to win the $15,000 grand prize and the glory of being named the best cat video of 2012!

So who was the winner?  Drumroll please…!  The grand prize winner of The Friskies Awards was none other than Oskar, an adorable little blind cat playing with a green ball.  Oskar the cat has his own Facebook page with nearly 90,000 likes, his own website, and now his owners have $15,000 to spend on toys and catnip for him and his big cat brother Klaus.  Check out the winning video below.

In addition to the grand prize, there were a number of $2,500 awards given out in a variety of categories, including Catness, Cat Comedy, Catventure and Catchall.  Check out the winning videos below.

You can also watch the full awards show, hosted by Michael Buckley and featuring cameos from YouTube celebrities, including Will Braden, the creator of Henri, Le Chat Noir, the existential cat, and Cara Hartmann, the actress behind last year’s viral eHarmony Video Bio.  Check it out below and let us know what you think.  Do you think Oskar’s video deserves the title of best cat video of 2012?

Megan O’Neill is the resident web video expert here at Social Times.  Megan covers everything from the latest viral videos to online video news and tips, and has a passion for bizarre, original and revolutionary content and ideas.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.