Spring is here and so is “spring cleaning” according to the home improvement folks at Lowe’s. The big box store is sharing DIY tips into 6 seconds videos on Vine, and they are worth watching. Today, I learned you can unscrew a gnarly, stripped screw using a rubber band. There’s also great cost-saving advice. Today’s latest advice-vine shows aluminum foil lined paint trays that will save time and money on tray liners and clean-up.

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We haven’t seen the death of paper books yet, but there’s already a documentary about its impending demise. EBooks are not as tactile, aromatic, or spatial as traditional forms of reading, but they are helping to spread the joys of reading to places where transportation is problematic. The works of philanthropic organizations like Worldreader and The  Information Heritage Initiative would be impossible without digital books.

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Engineers at Fujitso Laboratories have developed motion and graphics sensors that can detect texts and images on paper surfaces with 1 pixel accuracy. The technology means that gesture interface systems can leave your digital tablets for the real world.

Until now, gesturing has often been used to operate PCs and other devices. But with this interface, we’re not operating a PC, but touching actual objects directly, and combining them with ICT equipment.

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Catching a foul ball can be the apex of a fun and exciting softball game… unless you are using your face. That’s nearly what happened to a lucky spectator who was using his iPad to record the game. Being such a good sport, he continued undeterred after a foul ball slammed into his tablet.

We have already shared a story about an iPad surviving hammer blows after lodging itself into the bumper of a car, but this video actually captures the foul ball incident. Tablets are resilient, but don’t try this at home.

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What do you do when you need to create an epic video of 10,000 iPhones falling like dominos? Use Computer generated graphics of course! The video shows an interior of a typical office environment with each iPhone lighting up the nest fallen phone with perfect orchestration and a short elevator ride.

The creative team behind Aatma Studio created this stunning CGI video as an advertisement for the phone’s Near Field Communications Concept Read more

Viewers can now watch select You Tube Videos in all of VHS static glory – unlike its modern HD quality streaming:

Not too long ago, the video tape was the media of choice for living rooms around the world. In celebration of the 57th birthday of the first commercial video cassette recorder, check out a fun VHS mode for the YouTube player to relive the magic feel of vintage video tapes.

Videos with the VHS option will have an extra tape-like button. Just push the button to play the video with grainy, snow filled nostalgia. Google has not indicated that this filter will be available permanently, but with enough traction, we may be seeing a lot more options for augmented clarity. Read more

Founders of the Tribeca Film Festival Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal are bringing the moving pictures experience to digital audiences via video streaming and a huge support for Vines. This year is the first year in which the festival have opened up a public competition in search of the best Vine, and De Niro has some positive words to say on the medium despite not being a regular user:

Six seconds of beginning, middle and end. I was just trying to time on my iPhone six seconds just to get a sense of what that is. It can actually be a long time. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five one-thousand, six one-thousand – you can tell a whole story in six seconds. Read more

Smartphone batteries leave a lot to be desired. If you are running an old iPhone or any old phone with a terrible battery – try and remember these few pointers from the guys at Hack College: reduce brightness, turn off bluetooth, turn off GPS, avoid task apps, and disable junk notifications. Watch their great video to learn more details!

The Videos for Your Cats channel on YouTube has generated plenty of publicity from cat owners, but what about dogs?

Social Times investigated in the video embedded above, filming four dogs watching the YouTube channel intended for cats:

Videos for Your Cats is not for dogs, say four dogs who watched a video on the YouTube channel. Created by Meghan Koley in 2012, the Videos for Your Cats channel shows fish swimming in an aquarium, birds pecking at seeds in a bird feeder, and other visual stimuli that will make your cat go insane. Our dogs Xochi, Loki, Shechi, and Cowboy, were not impressed. Since dogs can’t actually talk, you’ll have to watch this video to see what we mean.

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CollegeHumor has dramatized the social networking site Tumblr with a new video that makes your Tumblr dashboard sing. Yes, they made a rock opera adaptation of Tumblr. We’ve embedded the video above.

Here are the lyrics: “Come one come all /To the greatest of all / Of the internets many diversions / We’ve got pics we’ve got lols / We’ve got GIFs large and small / And even a couple perversions.”

CollegeHumor has made quite a few videos that imagine the Internet in real life, such as this real life Twitter video.