MailChimp Blog

Contest: Living With Monkeys

An anonymous user sent me this article about a "Big Brother" style contest in China, where participants have to live with monkeys for 6 days to win about $1500. I'd actually watch that.

This looks promising:

"Any Chinese from 18 to 60 years old, in good psychological condition with wild animal protection and survival knowledge may participate."

Robot Chimpanzee Heads!

It's really nice when a MailChimp customer stops by with free gifts. Especially when that free gift is a radio-controlled, animatronic robo-chimpanzee head with advanced artificial intelligence (that means it screams at you when you walk past it). If you call up tech support, and you hear screaming in the background, that's the chimp-head. Here's more information, in case you want one too. Thanks to Jared from IceDesignGroup!

Kangaroos and Chimps!

We recently celebrated MailChimp's 5th birthday, and the launch of our new agency time-tracking product, PunchyTime. The folks at Blade Creative Branding sent us this nice birthday e-card with chimps, kangaroos, beer, and boxing gloves. I like how one of the chimps is blinking, too. Thanks guys! You're the first, so look for a kooky monkey-related gift in the mail real soon.

India tries to chase monkeys from trains

New Delhi has a monkey problem. They've got too many monkeys on their subway trains. I know what you're thinking. "Wha?!? You can never have too many monkeys!" But the New Delhi subway system thinks they've got too many,  so they've employed a Langur monkey to scare them all away ("We shall fight monkeys with monkeys!").

Apparently, the average monkey is extremely scared of Langur monkeys. Why, we have no idea. Their nickname is the "leaf monkey." They're not even carnivorous. That's like humans being scared of "tree huggers" or "vegetarians."

Take a look at the Langur (from Animal Planet). They're not scary at all! However, according to Animal Planet, they "appear to have pointed hairdos and beer-bellies." Maybe the other monkeys aren't running away in fear. Maybe they're just moving to a better neighborhood?

Scientists Claim New Monkey Species Found

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/18/ap/tech/mainD8HMGK301.shtml

"As soon as I saw the monkey with its golden-yellow hair and the white tiara on its head, I knew it was a new species," Pontes said.

Baby Golden Monkey

Time for a break from all the email marketing, email server, technical gobbledy-gook.

Here's a picture of a Golden Monkey with a strawberry in her mouth, holding her 1-month old baby Aaawww.

Update on Whiplash The cowboy monkey

Great Googley Moogley! Just found out that Whiplash the Cowboy monkey (that adorable little Capuchin monkey that rides on Ben, the border collie) not only performs in rodeos, but is also a spokesmonkey for Taco Johns. Be sure to click the "Whiplash Runs!" graphic. The best scene is at the very end (in front of the sunset).

CareerBuilder's Monk-e-mail

Great idea for a monkey-viral campaign: Our good friend Lance sent us a link to CareerBuilder's monk-e-mail page. It's the best thing ever created for the Internet. Ever.

You get to choose a chimp, dress him up, pick a voice, then make him say anything you want. Then, you can email it to your friends. See that picture to the right? That's MailChimp on a Friday night. Check out the bling, and the robocop glasses. That's what he buys with the money he makes sending HTML email (and he's proud of it). FemailChimps love that stuff. Click here, and he'll talk to you...

Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey

We've all wanted to dress a monkey up in a cowboy suit, and make him ride on a dog's back. But so few of us ever get to do it. Plus, those little cowboy hats are so hard to find.  Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey is what happens when you follow your dreams, people.

Monkeys Smarter than Children

NYT essay on a scientific experiment pitting kids against chimps. Yep, you know the chimps won. Thanks to Steve for sending it along.

Monkey Ninja Technique (for marketers only!)

I've blogged in the past about how the programmers here are always threatening to round-house kick me in the face if I "talk too much" (something I call "marketing") about our upcoming features.

So my good friend Josh sent me this super deadly ninja move to defend myself: Monkey Steals Peach.

If you know any other marketers out there who are constantly opressed by their technology team, tell them to practice the art of "chi-kung" which directs energy up the "ch'ueng mo" (via Tiger Claw) to bring any geek to his knees in pain. You will have your programmers coding interactive banner ads and landing pages for you all day.

CodeMonkey Website

Our good friend Neil (who's working on some kind of top secret travel RSS thingamajig, by the way) sends us this link to Download.com's Code Monkey. Looks like a fairly new "tips, tricks, and reviews" kind of blog, for beginning web designers. If you're a small biz "design-it-yourselfer," you might keep an eye on it. We bet it'll grow into something useful real soon (hey, c'mon folks, they've got a monkey! There's always potential when there are monkeys involved!). Hmm, on the topic of monkeys, you can never forget the Webmonkey guys, and their "Monkey Bites" blog. And one of our new favorites is Tip Monkies.

Trunk Monkey

Thanks to Matt for sending us this hilarious link to the Trunk Monkey. The concept of an "on-demand chimpanzee assistant" is actually how we thought up MailChimp, over 4 years ago. Except MailChimp's ferocious about sending email, not cracking skulls with a crowbar. Our favorite video is "Bridge." Enjoy!

Everyone Loves Monkeys

Our good friend Matt tells us that ever since he stuck one of our MailChimp business cards on his fridge, his twin boys point and yell out, "It's Maaaaailchiiiiiimp!!!" whenever they walk into the kitchen.

"Too adorable to be true" we told him, so he sent us this movie as proof (350k with sound). 

That completes Phase 1 of our master plan. Phase 2: Hypnotize all the children in the world to chant, "Buuuy mooore Maaaiiilchiiimp credits..."

Karate Chimp

What better way to showcase your streaming video technology than posting a clip of a karate chimp doing jump spinning hook kicks? Nice viral marketing attempt by the folks at ClipStream. Go ahead---you know you want to send that to a friend. Monkeys are always funny.

Here's the link.

Chimp Art at London Auction House

A London Auction House is selling artwork by Congo the chimpanzee, who created around 400 drawings during his career as an artist. Picasso reportedly owns some of his work. Thanks to our friend Steve at Code18 for sending us this great link.

Monkey SWAT Teams

Police in Arizona are looking to add a Capuchin Monkey (see photo) to their SWAT team. They applied for a $100,000 grant for it, but according to Slate, the monkey itself would only cost about $15,000 while the rest would be for training. We think it would be cool if they gave him a tiny little Kevlar vest, and instead of holsters with guns, he could have little bananas in them.

Here's the link: http://slate.msn.com/id/2117021/

Mrs. MailChimp?

My sister went on vacation to Thailand (thankfully, she avoided the Tsunami) and took this picture at a local zoo.

This has got to be the funniest monkey picture I've ever seen. Click for larger view---it's worth it. If you've got any funny monkey pictures of your own, please share. I gotta admit though, I know monkeys---and it'll be hard to top this one. Send them to us at info at mailchimp dot com.

Monkey game

Found this clever little monkey game online, built by CleverMonkey Studios. It's one of those simple puzzle games you load up at work, when you're taking a break from coding (or in my case, taking a break from drawing monkeys). You move crates of bananas around inside a maze, in order to complete each level. Beware---it's extremely addictive. Starts off easy, but gets a little challenging after a few levels. Hey, it's a monkey---who can resist?

Game download page...

World's Smallest Primate

The Philippine Tarsier, about 4 inches, is believed to be the world's smallest primate.

He probably wouldn't make a very good MailChimp, but he eats insects, and would be a cool sidekick.

Click here for the full size photo and story

(AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Where does a 900lb gorilla sit?

I've got a "My Yahoo" page configured, and one of the things on my home page is their "Most popular photos" shared on Yahoo. This gorilla's been on there for about 2 weeks now (and I love it). There is almost always some kind of monkey in that slot, which just proves our theory here at MailChimp: "monkeys are always funny". Got an ad campaign or creative presentation coming up, and short on ideas? Add a monkey. Client will be there in an hour, and you've got nothing to show him? Add a monkey. Your TV commercial gets its point across in 5 seconds, and now you've got 25 seconds to burn? Add a monkey.