user: iPhone App Is a Remote Control for Web Entertainment

Watch streaming television shows and movies via Hulu or Netflix on the web? Y Combinator startup Teevok has released a doozy of an iPhone app designed for you — it’s a one-touch web watching experience powered by your iPhone.

The Teevox app is a free download that gives users the ability to use their iPhone as a remote control for web content on HuluHulu or Netflix. Select a show or movie from the app and Teevox will instantly start playing your selection in your computer’s browser.

The app is essentially a mobile remote control so you can start, stop and fast-forward through shows, or use the volume controls to manage audio preferences. It’s the ultimate lazy person’s tool for lean-back web entertainment.

Of course, Teevox’s iPhone app is more than just a remote to digital entertainment. You can also use it participate in live show-based chats with other viewers, see what your friends are watching and earn pink stars (part of Teevox’s reward system) for app behaviors that you can exchange for reputation goodies like a new Teevox title.

Try Teevox for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments.

Jobs Purpose:To improve G4tv.com page ranking in search engines for key terms and expand keyword list through onsite optimization and linking strategies. Responsibilities:•Optimize G4tv.com ...

summary: The Teevox app is a free download that gives users the ability to use their iPhone as a remote control for web content on Hulu or Netflix.

Lewis Black: The angry comic

The crowd laughs in double acknowledgment. The Grammy- and Emmy-winning comedian does indeed have millions of devoted fans. But there’s also the Groucho Marxian twist: If Black’s diatribes against this modern world strike such a wide and cathartic chord, what does that say about the state of things today?

On this “In God We Rust” tour two Septembers ago, the dyspeptic comedian rolled out rants against health-care costs, against greed, against poverty. Against leaders who insult our intelligence. From marijuana legalization to Americans’ wired lives, seeds from that tour will bloom in Black’s newest tour, “Running on Empty,” which comes to the Warner (Sept. 27-29) before heading next month to Broadway.

“I’m trying to get the through line,” Black tells me a few weeks ago. “It’s that the century is a disappointment. The baby-boom generation couldn’t fix anything. And we broke most of the toys we were handed.”

Black, born in 1948 and a teenager of the Beatles years, celebrated his own “When I’m Sixty-Four” milestone Aug. 30. It wasn’t until midlife that Black began to find mainstream stand-up success — largely by tapping into that sense of disappointment and disillusionment.

Personally, he says he’s mostly content. But onstage, he spews F-bombs of satiric exasperation. He inhabits a splenetic character who vents with fingers twitching, arms flailing, torso oscillating like a sprinkler head.

“I’m a happy person, but an angry citizen ... ,” Black tells me. “To get angry at the world around us is the most sane reaction you can have.”

But how did Black become a one-man ranting civics lesson? How did he become the comic voice of our national vitriol?

It is a broiling, nearly triple-digit day in Washington. As I slog my way to Hotel Rouge in Northwest, I rethink this whole coat-and-tie thing. I’ve met Black before, after night shows, but our first interview demands sartorial decorum.

I tug hard at my neckwear in the high-noon heat until, arriving, I appear as disheveled as the comedian’s volcanic “Back in Black” character on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” It’s a look Black has perfected for his hot-under-the-collar persona: tie pulled askew, lapels gone wild. Lewis Black the character, losing it on the Titanic of life, is the model of the modern id unleashed.

As I enter the lobby, up strolls Black in jeans and a lightweight blue-striped shirt, looking cool. Calm. Refreshed. We shake, we sit. Then: “What’s with the coat and tie? It’s a hundred degrees out, you f---!”

It’s a welcome sign: Black is cursing with me, not at me. Off come the tie, the coat and the formality. A man drenched in sweat wheels in his bicycle; Black needles him, too. The man introduces himself as John Bowman, Black’s longtime opening act. They trade easy jabs like comics can after sharing tour buses and friendship for decades.

summary: Lewis Black’s twisted road from Silver Spring to stardom.

Neil Armstrong RIP? - quiz on who's alive and who's dead

Although Neil Armstrong died a year ago this month, RIP messages mysteriously went viral on the internet today, many people seemingly unaware that the astronaut's death was not news. Like many well-known figures before him, Armstrong seems to be part of a select group of notable people who have an unclear vital status.

How sure are you of who's still in the land of the living? See how you do in our quiz.

Neil Armstrong RIP. Photograph: Nasa/Sportsphoto Ltd

summary: News of Neil Armstrong's demise has strangely resurfaced on social media. But can you say for certain which of these notable figures are alive and which are dead?

How 'Mad Men' Inspired Current Menswear Fashion

While Mad Men may be over, its effect on menswear will no doubt live on in the U.S. and abroad. The show has long been charged with inspiring a fashion trend for men and women harkening back to the show’s 1960s setting. In a recent article, The Guardian said the Mad Men effect is very real. In fact, when the show began eight years ago, menswear was already seeing a surge in sales. Between 1998 and 2014, for example, suit sales doubles in the U.S.

Quartz, too, reported on the fashion effect inspired by the show. Tailored articles of men’s clothing sells for $4.8 billion each year, Quartz said, citing data from NPD Group. In fact, some of the biggest fashion brands, such as J. Crew, used the show as inspiration for new lines. Per the article:

Mad Men‘s brilliant costume design helped fuel that demand. It bred obsession among menswear publications, such as GQ, and created a crowd of guys wanting to emulate Draper’s dapper look. And then J.Crew stepped in to satisfy it, in the form of its slim-cut Ludlow suit.

The Guardian, meanwhile, characterized the men’s fashion that appears on the show as follows:

For the full list and explanations from the newspaper, see here.

Interestingly, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner explained the premise behind the 1971 Coca-Cola ad that played in the show’s final minutes in a recent interview.

summary:

assistant: For one, suit sales have surged