Do you love browsing the Internet, but feel like the experience would be a whole lot better if your browser consistently made fart noises? Lucky for you, The Onion has made a foray into the programming sector with the release of a Javascript extension that will fart at you every time you scroll down the page. Read More
New York City tweens who can’t stand the thought of having their gross gym teacher stand in the front of the classroom and explain to them that if they have sex they’ll get AIDS and die may breathe a sigh of relief: today the city health department announced the first-ever digital sex ed class packaged into a neat little smartphone app. Read More
When you poop, does it sounds like a cavalcade of shrieking, wet elephants stampeding out of your butt? Good news! There’s finally a solution to silence those embarrassing noises. Introducing Ataku, an app that masks gross bathroom sounds by broadcasting noises of a running shower or sink.
The app’s developer claims his invention is for the greater good of the environment. Instead of actually running the shower or sink, thus slowly depleting our precious earth of its most sacred asset, you’re just wasting your battery instead. At least that’s a replenishing resource. Read More
It’s surprisingly difficult to stand on a street corner and use your smartphone to find a restaurant you’ll actually like. Yelp, for example, just serves up a long list of other people’s favorites. But a new-and-improved version of the recommendations app Ness, released late last night, hopes to remedy that.
Open Ness 2.0, CEO Corey Reese told Betabeat, and “it provides instant recommendations without a person having to take any interaction at all.” Read More
Don’t you just hate it when you’re at a party and start making out with a cute guy or girl, only to later discover at a family picnic that they’re actually your cousin? As it turns out, accidentally hooking up with a relative happens so frequently in Iceland that there is an official database, called Íslendingabók or “The Book of Icelanders,” that traces the family lineage of 720,000 Icelandic citizens. Read More
Developer Matt Henderson was confused. Why was his new English-language app called Rego, which lets users bookmark locations, blowing up in Brazil? There had to be some kind of reasonable explanation as to why 25 percent of downloads were originating from the South American country.
So, he did something he probably should’ve done earlier in the creative process: he searched the term Rego. Turns out the word translates to a slang term for “butt crack” in Portuguese, according to a story he Read More
If you’ve ever seen a child use an iPad, it’s actually kind of terrifying. The ease with which they learn the swipe gesture; the comfort they clearly take from sinking into a Winnie the Pooh puzzle game. There is no adoption curve whatsoever: place a tablet in a child’s hand and watch as they effortlessly cue up apps you didn’t even know you’d downloaded. Read More
So you’re an insurance company, and you’ve got a snazzy new smartphone app that does things like helps your customers call for a tow truck when their car breaks down. Also, you have a reputation for memorable TV pitchmen (cavemen, lizards, etc.). Then before you know it, you shoot a 30-second spot for your app in which a comely dame propositions a talking pig and you’ve got a bunch of pissed off Christian ladies on your hands. Read More
The Centers for Disease Control (A-town, represent) has just released a new iPad app, meant to educate the public on how its “disease detectives,” a.k.a. epidemiologists, a.k.a Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak, fight epidemics. It is called “Solve the Outbreak,” and the announcement makes it sound like it is basically “Contagion: The Game!” The description: Read More
Last week, Betabeat highlighted the work of a Canadian doctor who developed a smartphone app to predict the size of a man’s member. Enter a dude’s height, shoe size, “butt size,” age and finger length, and Dr. Chris Culligan’s app—called the Predicktor—will predict his penis size. Read More
