Portraits & Programmers & Writers, AI!

Beyond Social Media Show, Episode 277

BL and David discuss the hacked presidential seal satirizing 45 as a Russian puppet during a recent speech; a brilliantly creative LinkedIn post that illustrates the power of breaking expectations; OpenAI’s technology that is too dangerous to release; the Washington Post’s securing and publishing of the DEA database that tracks prescription opioid shipments; an AI app that turns your photo into a Renaissance portrait; the emerging career of audio book narration; MailChimp and Vice teaming up on Second Acts; illustrations imagining high tech brands as retro technology; House Wine and Cheez-Its in a box; Influencer scamming; Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s Google Gimmick; and much, much more.

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Audio version of the Beyond Social Media Show podcast, Episode 277

Best Digital Cases

Trump Hacked

The Washington Post solved a mystery that went viral after the president made a speech in front of a doctored presidential seal that made fun of him.

trump was mocked with a fake presidential seal while onstage at a conference.

Insanely Creative LinkedIn Post

Break the expected experience to capture attention.

Insanely Creative LinkedIn Post

AI Too Dangerous to Release

The Elon Musk-backed nonprofit company OpenAI declines to release research publicly for fear of malicious misuse.

The Opiod Prescription Database

The Washington Post obtained the database of opiod prescriptions and has made it available to the public so you can look up prescription data in your county.

Screenshot: Carver County, Minnesota opiod prescription data

AI Turns Selfies Into Classical Portraits

Selfies transformed into Renaissance art with AI

The Audio Book Narrators

Susan Ericksen and David Colacci have voiced hundreds of familiar characters from their closet-sized recording booth in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

MailChimp’s Second Act

MailChimp’s new entertainment division has teamed up with Vice for a five-part series that will follow five people who’ve quit their day job to start their own businesses.

https://youtu.be/7zouRB7y0Fk

Tech Brands Reimagined As Vintage Technology

Artist Sheng Lam is behind the satisfyingly old-school designs.

Tweeter illustration
Twitter reimagined as a morse code machine

Brilliant Brand Partnership

Box containing House Wine + CheezIt sold out in an instant

Boxes of House Wine + CheezIt sold out in an instant

Worst Digital Cases

Influencers Are Scamming Brands

The Cheq and University of Baltimore also found that fake influencers with bot followers will cost advertisers $1.3 billion this year.

Russia’s Favorite Democrat Cries Foul On Google

Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s presidential campaign sued Google after the company suspended the candidate’s Google Ads account following last month’s Democratic presidential debate.

Shiny New Stuff

App Turns Plants Into Pets

Thanks to a clever app, you can transform your favorite houseplant into a virtual pet with the ability to communicate its needs.

 App transforms plants into virtual pets.

AI Autocomplete Coding Tool

Machine Learning is being applied to the world of programming with a new program called Deep TabNine.

Deep TabNine

Politics

RadicalTube

Good read to understand YouTube’s recommendation algorithm as well as to understand how vulnerable people can get sucked in and radicalized by white nationalist videos.

The Daily Numbers

Chart: TikTok Demographics

Beyond Social Media Hosts

Beyond Social Media Show