The German tradition of beer coasters is as well respected as the country's beer purity laws. A tipple just wouldn't be same without a coaster resting beneath it. While one traditional function is to advertise a particular brand of ale, these days they serve a more useful function: to write down your phone number when you pick someone up at a bar. Today, our tip of the hat goes to Boing Boing , who have pointed us to a wonderful Flickr gallery of 1970s beer coasters .

Sing It Yourself 'Sound of Music'

Yodeling fans, amateurs, potential professionals and wannabes can now get their fill on a Web site called YodelCourse . Not only does the site propose ten yodeling lessons in six languages -- it offers a diploma (Certificate of Yodelology) for those brave enough to complete the courses. Also featured on the site are a fan section dedicated to yodel master Franzl Lang, and a yodeling "hot spots" column where practitioners post photos and descriptions their favorite mountainous singing points. But beware, the site's creator says in a disclaimer on the opening page: he takes no responsibility for the social consequences of yodeling in public.

The Color of Language

One would suppose that if an artist set out to point a full-color portrait of the English language, that said artist would go mad rather quickly. The phenomenonal complexity which language evokes and the intricate and convoluted connections which words employ, can often seem beyond the capacity of the human mind to imagine.

But now, using a baffling set of algorithms and coding, Jonathan Feinberg and Martin Wattenberg have created a visual map of the English language . Together they have created a means by which words can be assigned their own color and then be depicted in a portrait. Sound confusing? Well, 33,000 color-coded nouns make up their finished artwork, each in minute detail. Each noun is linked to a Yahoo image search, which comes up with an aggregate color for the word. Words are then grouped by association. You can delve down into the map, to see how words are linked, and which words share a common color association. It's almost impossible to describe, but fascinating to use and explore.