Word: balloon
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...mysterious metallic balloon thought to be carrying a Colorado boy had scarcely returned to Earth last week when a new website launched, its domain name asking the question that much of the nation was wondering: WhereIsBalloonBoy.com. Inspired by the disappearance of 6-year-old Falcon Heene - which authorities now believe was a hoax - the playful site featured question marks next to a picture of a bird (a falcon, naturally) and was updated twice more as the story developed. It later depicted a falcon poking out from a cardboard box, where the boy was found hiding in the Heenes' attic. Within...
...point of the site? To have a laugh, says its creator, Jonathan Percy, an online-advertising producer in San Francisco. Like many others, Percy was transfixed by the bizarre drama and bought the domain name for $9.95 within minutes of the balloon's landing. "There's something kind of funny about a website that just has one single little purpose like that," he says. "I always laugh when I see those." (Read "A Brief History of Do-It-Yourself Ballooning...
Simple, tongue-in-cheek websites date to the early days of the Internet - Purple.com has depicted a plain purple screen since 1994. In fact, emulating the clunky look of early websites is part of the fun, says Percy. "The way I built [the Balloon Boy site] is exactly how I would have done it in 1996. There's a lot of nostalgia involved." Tech blogger Jason Kottke coined the "single-serving" moniker and listed some favorites in a 2008 blog post - a move that prompted a rush of new entries, Greenberg says. Around the same time, writer Mathew Honan created...
...Thursday afternoon, when anyone watching TV news had to stop whatever they were doing and shudder. The giant, silver, Jiffy Pop balloon was climbing higher over Larimer County, Colorado, and on the ground a 10-year-old boy named Bradford Heene had told the sheriff that his little brother Falcon was inside. Falcon? Was some Greek narrative poet scripting this tragedy? Their father Richard longed to live large, a scientist, storm chaser, wife swapper, aspiring reality-TV star. He had built the vessel in the backyard; they called it his "flying saucer...
...their part, the Heene family had a keen interest in meteorology and looking for extra terrestrials, which might explain the unique, saucer-shaped design of the family's makeshift craft. Still, the balloon was reportedly never designed to have passengers aboard, a fact that was clear to anyone who watched it careen erratically across the Colorado skies. After almost two hours of nearly continuous coverage of the balloon's flight, it appears the incident will result in little more than an afternoon of media frenzy. The Heene family may share a hobbyist's appreciation of ballooning, but surely they...