Every week, Irish Twitter sensation and internet savant Darragh Doyle pays a visit to Newstalk to clue Sean Moncrieff in on what's trending and mind-bending online right now, from viral videos to apps you've never heard of - but which you'll be hankering to try out.
So what online oddities are tickling Darragh pink this week?
What the focal?
Videos of people who never had to read carefully the instructions and questions of 'Part A' of the Irish listening exam attempting to pronounce Irish names have become a big hit online of late, and this one comes from rising Irish YouTube star Clisare (aka Clare Cullen), with the help of British and Australian friends.
Tinnitus affects approximately 10 percent of the Irish population, a constant ringing or buzzing in their ears that sounds like this.
Tinnitus can be caused in the ear by exposure to loud noise, either on a prolonged basis or in a short burst, ear infections or damage to the eardrum. Its also caused by auditory nerve defects, psychosomatic causes or tumours.
It can be very debilitating and isolating.
Step forward two young Irish women and their company Restored Hearing, who have a product called Sound Relief. Designed to stimulate the inner ear and also to provide a soothing sound on a daily basis, the therapy has been clinically proven to reduce the severity of tinnitus by 15 percent in the first month of treatment.
They offer the sound therapy through their website, so it’s accessible on tablets, phones and computers.
The best way to describe it is as a low hum. It's quite a soothing sound as there are low frequencies involved. It's almost meditative and doesn't drown out so much as in listening to it on a daily basis a person either hears less or none of their tinnitus because of the effects of the sound on the brain.
Sessions are five minutes long and you only need one session a day. What they’ve found is results vary on a case by case basis. Some customers find their tinnitus goes away for a few hours each time they use the therapy and then returns again. Others will notice their tinnitus gradually reduce to a manageable level or so it’s no longer noticeable. Ultimately, results will vary depending on personal circumstances and the period of use.
An information day will be held on Saturday in Dublin at Filmbase, offering free hearing tests and advice to people about the condition and their hearing.
All details are on http://www.worldtinnitusday.com
There is a button on reddit.com
You can only press it once.
It is counting down from 5,000 to 0 in 60 seconds and at any time any of the 730,000 people who are watching this can press the button to reset it back to 5,000
Only people who had Reddit accounts before April 1 are allowed to push the button. Each user only gets to push the button once.
It has never hit 0. Nobody knows what happens when it does.
What started as an April Fool’s experiment 2 weeks ago has now become a massive social commentary.
While more than 720,000 people have clicked the button, it has never dropped below 27 seconds, which it hit on Sunday 12th at 9.48am. Then someone pushed it.
At 8am this morning some 3,100 people were watching the button - there are an average of 5,000 viewers every day at any one time.
See what’s happening over on http://www.reddit.com/r/thebutton
'Fiddle bow' is one of them [Pixabay]
Here’s a timeline of Slang Terms for the Penis is created from Green's Dictionary of Slang, published in 2010 and written by Jonathon Green.
In 1888 it was a tooleywag, while in 1883 it was an Irish Toothache (!).
It’s been called an abraham, a dingus, a master of ceremonies, a live rabbit, a little davey, an Uncle Thomas and so on. Find thousands of words used to describe the male member on this site.
How we read is changing, one word at a time.
Spritzing is reading text with Spritz Inc’s patented technology. When you’re spritzing, you’re reading text one word at a time in what they call a “redicle,” a special visual frame they designed for reading.
Traditional reading involves publishing text in lines and moving your eyes sequentially from word to word. For each word, the eye seeks a certain point within the word, which Spritz call the “Optimal Recognition Point” or ORP.
After your eyes find the ORP, your brain starts to process the meaning of the word that you’re viewing. Once the ORP is found, processing the word for meaning and context occurs and your eyes move to the next word.
When your eyes encounter punctuation within and between sentences, your brain is prompted to assemble all of the words that you have read and processes them into a coherent thought.
Spritzing presents reading content with the ORP located at the specific place where you’re already looking, allowing you to read without having to move your eyes. With this approach, reading becomes more efficient because Spritzing decreases time searching for the next word’s ORP.
Removing eye movement associated with traditional reading methods not only reduces the number of times your eyes move, but also decreases the number of times your eyes pass over words for your brain to understand them. This makes Spritzing extremely efficient, precise, convenient and comfortable.
We could see something like this move to Email, SMS, Messaging like Whatsapp, Viber etc, in closed captioning on television and in Digital Books. Also the chance for it to be used in Smart Watches, Mobile Phones, E-Readers and Mounted Head Displays.
Some people have recorded up to 900 words per minute already.
And finally...
Back again to Clare Cullen, to teach us how to bluff our way through Westeros as gaeilge.
To see what Darragh covered with Seán last week, please click here.
