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Weird Wide Web: Smartphone lanes, cat music remixes and robot snake arms

All of your essential tech and social media news for the week in one byte-sized portion.

WELCOME TO THE Weird Wide Web – where we take a look at the week’s best offerings in tech and social media news.

Irish launch of the week

The world’s most popular crowdfunding site launched in Ireland on Monday, allowing Irish innovators to set up their projects and ask for the public’s help to get them off the ground.

Those interested have five weeks to put their projects together for the official launch on 21 October.

Kickstarter Kickstarter Kickstarter

Tech addict facilitation of the week

This Chinese city has installed a special lane on a path for people whose are glued to their phone screens, Engadget reported.

Exclusive social media site of the week

Do you have €7,000 lying around that you just don’t know what to do with. If you answered yes, (a) you’re probably rich and (b) it will allow you to join a new social network called Netropolitan.

The service describes itself as “an online country club for people with more money than time” which probably tells you everything you need to know about it.

Netropolitan_Composite_2 Netropolitan Netropolitan

Cat sounds remix of the week

Kickstarter throws up some weird projects, but this one will certainly appeal to those who think the music world needs more cat sounds. Two rap artists El-P and Killer Mike joked that they would release a remix of their album Run the Jewels 2, featuring cat sounds if someone paid them $40,000.

One fan has made a Kickstarter to help reach this target, although El-P has come out to say he’ll donate the money to charity if it reaches its target.

catgif8 Inquisitr Inquisitr

Selfie game of the week

You may know Rovio as the makers of Angry Birds, but the company has created a game where your selfie photos is used to create a weird avatar.

Creatively named Selfie Slam, the game lets you play a number of bizarre games like football, king of the hill and vollyball among other things. It’s only been released in Finland, Sweden and Canada, but an international release is expected soon.

RovioMobile / YouTube

Robot arm development of the week

When we think of robots, we think rigid moving machines that try to mimic human action, but researchers in MIT have developed a robot arm that moves like a snake.

The arm is designed to fit into tight or awkward spaces while the next version will include a finger-gripper which the team will use to pick up and place objects.

soft Robot arm gif MITCSAIL / YouTube MITCSAIL / YouTube / YouTube

Read previous Weird Wide Webs>

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Michelle Hennessy
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