A little history… and some of the cartoon’s greatest hits

by Rob Cottingham | Sep 23, 2009 | Cartoons, Noise to Signal, Social Media, Social Signal, Technology

If you’re visiting from PC World – or just happened to stumble onto us – we’re glad you could come by. Pull up a chair. Lemonade?

Your timing’s terrific: I was just about to start the slide show. Oh, no, don’t get up – the holiday pictures aren’t until later. No, this is all about Noise to Signal, my cartoon about the intersection of technology, communications and life. Sit back and make yourself comfortable.

Let me just plug the remote… into the projector… dim the lights… and here we go.

Here’s the cartoon that launched Noise to Signal (although I didn’t call it that yet) waaaay back in the spring of 2007. It was a simpler time (at least in the Oval Office, ba-dump-bump!)…

This is a tribute to the famous New Yorker cartoon, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” (I’ve come back to this theme once or twice.)

This one is probably the first one I published under the name “Noise to Signal”.

And now, as measured by raw hits, here are the top 10 Noise to Signal cartoons of all time:

Number 10, sadly a little timelier now than when I drew it:

Number 9, a cartoon the PC World folks (and Amazon customers) will recognize:

Number 8, for everyone who obsesses about their Twitter follower count:

Number 7 is for my fellow gadget freaks out there whose spirituality glands may be underperforming:

Number 6 goes to a pie chart. Somewhere, my grade 6 math teacher’s ears just pricked up.

Coming up to number 5, a reminder that it’s probably a good thing Alex and I didn’t have iPhones yet when we got married:

Number 4 promotes both privacy awareness and good dental hygiene. Hard to do in one cartoon, but we’re committed to value here at Noise to Signal industries:

Third place – bronze! – is the closest I come to a religion: typography.

Number 2 – ooh, so close – makes that case that, while Flooz may have flopped, alternative currencies for the online world are still alive and well:

And the number one Noise to Signal cartoon of all time…

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