TECH BUZZ – A fake Twitter competitor dreamed up as a hoax to rile the Twitter-esque Plurk. Posts purporting the company had actually purchased Plurk eventually caused the real founders to speak up.

The Best Links:

1. How the News Spread
2. Lots of Twitter “Thought Leaders” Were in On It Or Fooled by It
3. Mocking What Shouldn’t Exist With What Doesn’t
4. “It’s probably an elaborate inside joke.”
5. Follow Pheltup on Twitter
6. An Easy Joke to Play on Those With “Social Network Exclusion Anxiety”
7. The Flume: an Older Web 2.0 Hoax

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CULTURE BUZZ – Using a briefcase loaded with a GPS gadget and the package-carrier DHL, artist Erik Nordenankar has created a continent-spanning drawing of himself. I was wondering how he had so much footage of the inside of shipping facilities and planes (and why those planes would fly such scribbly routes,) but it turns out that the whole thing is an advertising hoax commissioned by DHL. Yay for artvertising I suppose.

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The Best Links:

1. It Was All a Hoax. No GPS. No DHL.
2. The Project Website
3. The Journey in Video
4. “The best advertising is developed with society.”

SCIENCE BUZZ – No, pig’s bladder powder did not regrow a man’s finger. The Guardian’s Bad Science column debunks the long-circulating story about a man regrowing a finger through the magical use of powdered pig’s bladder: First problem, it was a minor injury, not a missing finger.

The Best Links:

1. Only Trouble: There Was No Missing Finger
2. “It grew back — ‘flesh, blood, vessels and nail’ — in four weeks”
3. Video Slideshow of the Re-growing Digit
4. Breathless Report of Finger Growth!
5. Esquire Reports on the Story in September

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BUSINESS BUZZ – Don’t get all excited, there’s nothing to see here. You may have noticed an ad campaign online over the last month or so for a TV show called Scarlet, starring Natassia Malthe. As it turns out, there is no show, only a new line of LCD HDTVs from LG, as disappointed celebrities like Lindsay Lohan found out at last night’s “premiere.” Ha ha! Hoaxes: The new marketing frontier.

The Best Links:

1. “The nontraditional campaign hasn’t exactly ignited “Scarlet” fever online”
2. No, There’s No Show. Move Along
3. New Fake Show Pushes New Real LCD HDTVs
4. S C A R L E T - The Official Site (For the TVs!)
5. OMFG - They Tricked Lindsay Lohan and People From “The Hills”!!
6. “Things Aren’t What They Seem” Turns Out to Be Boringly True

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