1. Art & Copy. This 2009 PBS documentary about advertising popped up in my Netflix recommendations. An oddly out-of-place parallel story about a man who hangs billboards, peppered with the type of statistics and classic ad examples (Daisy, 1984, Lemon) you’d expect to be bombarded with in a Mass Comm 101 class, this honestly isn’t the most exciting 88 minutes you could spend in front of a screen. But the main feature — the one-on-ones with a handful of ad legends — is worth the time if you’re into that sort of thing.
2. Shit That Siri Says has officially jumped the shark, like a month ago. Most single-serving Tumblr’s seem to fade away after only a few days, but I’ve actually had to take the unusual step of clicking unfollow on this one to save myself from the waterfall of unfunny screenshots. And does the superfluous that in the site title piss off anyone else?
3. Stamped is a very simple iPhone app that lets you give recommendations on just about anything. No five-stars or bullshit 50-100 Robert Parker scale, just an easy pick-your-own-color stamp of approval. It’s a similar concept but different execution to Oink. I’m not sure where these apps go from here, but I’ve been surprised to actually see a handful of Twitter friends sign up for Stamped in the past week.
4. TechCrunch takes a weirdly academic (or is it pseudoscientific?) look at Pinterest’s rapid growth and predicts the service will inspire hundreds of copycats and be a great success. Fine, but where is Pinterest for Men?
5. iMeme is a handy OS X app for making memes without opening Photoshop. Pick from 50+ built-in templates such as the Pickup Line Panda or import your own image. There’s even a button to send your creation to Reddit. (I guess 4chan integration is forthcoming?)

The Atlantic has an ongoing feature where they ask media-famous people what they read, or more accurately what their media diets are.

The latest piece is by Aaron Sorkin and is mostly unremarkable aside from this gem:

The homepage on my web browser is Yahoo, which I’m told it shouldn’t be, but I’ve just been too lazy to change it. From time to time I’ll read some of the comments under stories on it to get a sense of what it must be like at a Klan meeting.

If you’re only going to read one piece in the series, make it Shirky’s, though it is a year old and a lot could possibly have changed since he wrote it.

There was a low-grade war in the slums of Rio de Janeiro a couple weeks back. The Big Picture has the photo set that should be fascinating to any Brazilophile.

The photographers who shot these photos, just like those who shoot photos in Afghanistan and other dangerous zones throughout the world everyday, risk their lives. I call that journalism. Compare that to WikiLeaks, which cowardly risks other people’s lives.