Categories
Internet History

Selfies in the 2000’s: Remembering Daily Mugshot 2009-2012

video via Daily Mugshot YouTube, video made by Mary Miracle using Daily Mugshot

Do you remember dailymugshot.com? It did what apps on our phones can do now. You would use your webcam to take one still photo a day, or less frequently.

Forgotten pieces of the internet like this can show us how our lives have changed but stayed the same.

According to founder Keith Gould’s about.me page, Daily Mugshot was created in 2009. Gould’s LinkedIn describes Daily Mugshot as “a free service which helps you chronicle daily images of yourself and share them as an animated sequence”. This website featured over 1000 mugshots per day and over 600 result pages. This was a lot in 2009.

According to the now-defunct Daily Mugshot About page, Keith Gould was inspired to create the site because “The Daily Mug shot began when I came across a dude who took a picture of himself every day and turned it into a video. He had taken pictures of himself every day for years, and the video was amazing. I thought: I want to do that too! Then I began thinking about what sort of system would make the entire process as easy as possible, and furthermore, what would be the most fun and easy way to show these videos to friends on the net.” 

In 2010, Gould told the Tampa Bay Times that “People are so much more attuned to adjusting how they look in front of a camera,” and that “Now they make precise decisions about every part of their face and angle of their head.” when referring to the use of Daily Mugshot.

In 2009, users could use Daily Mugshot or Daily Booth to perform this service. In addition to taking and posting a photo of yourself, you could add comments to your pictures or share them with others. Functionality was fairly limited. This CNET article makes light of this by comparing the two sites to Twitpic, “Twitpic they ain’t, but they are fun”.

As of 2017, Twitpic is another now-defunct site. Twitpic was used to upload photos that were then shared on Twitter because at that time it was not possible to upload photos directly to Twitter. Twitter took over the domain and archive in 2014. DailyBooth.com shut down in 2012.

While the URL for Daily Mugshot still exists, it is now bizarrely closer to an actual mugshot website. It says that it can be used to locate mugshots, perform inmate searches, and locate court records. This seems to be for a very limited number of areas and does not seem to be very functional. I recommend sticking with government websites for those types of searches.

The above video is a collection of my webcam selfies taken and then uploaded to Daily Mugshot from July 1, 2009, to January 6, 2012. Yes, between working on this website and ChaCha, I was online a lot during that time.

What are my personal thoughts on my selfies from then? That’s a lot of hats and hairdos. So, it was pretty accurate.

Reminiscing on these sites is nostalgic, but not sad as we now have cameras on smartphones in our pockets and numerous social media apps to share them with each other. However, there was something about the simplicity of sharing a photo just because, not to make a social media website money off our “content”.

How often do you take photos of your everyday life in 2022? Is it daily? What is the purpose? How often do you get them developed into physical photos?

Categories
Conventions Film/TV

An Interview with Huff’s Elina Madison

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to attend the Philadelphia Wizard World Comic Con as press along with my sister and fellow writer, Donna Allis. While there we had so much fun and were able to learn more about our favorite films as well as be introduced to new films, such as Huff. 

Huff is an independent horror movie that offers a new take on the old tale of The Three Little Pigs. It’s about a cash-strapped, abusive stepfather played by Charlie O’Connell with three teen daughters. When he gets involved with a drug deal things go from bad to worse. Unfortunately, we were unable to catch the screening of the film that was held at the con because we were in Atlantic City that night but I’m looking forward to viewing it when it’s released. According to the official Huff Facebook page, the current estimated release date is April 5, 2013. 

Mary Miracle and Charlie O’Connell by Donna Allis
Donna Allis and Charlie O’Connell by Mary Miracle
Mary Miracle and Huff producer Terry James

At Wizard World, the team involved in the filming of the flick was on hand to give everyone a scoop on the picture. Charlie O’Connell (Sliders, Dude, Where’s My Car?) was even posing for photos and signing autographs for free. 

We were fortunate enough to meet Charlie as well as producer Terry James, in addition to interviewing Elina Madison (1000 Ways to Die). Elina Madison plays Lorelei in Huff. Please enjoy the following interview with her.

Elina Madison by Mary Miracle

Elina Madison will next be seen in Creep Creepersin’s Dracula. Charlie O’Connell will next be seen on the new TV series Zombie Family. Terry James’ next endeavors are as a stunt coordinator for The Last Duane and a stunt driver in Feed the Dog.

Press Passes to the convention were provided to us gratis from the awesome PR team at Wizard World.