Albino Blacksheep (ABS) is an animation website made by Steven Lerner in

Toronto, Ontario Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

on January 4, 1999. It publishes member submitted digital media made with

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Fla ...

. The website also features image galleries, audio files, and text files. along with a

mobile Mobile may refer to: Places * Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city * Mobile County, Alabama * Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S. * Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Mobile ( ...

section that provided

ring tone A ringtone, ring tone or ring is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming call. Originally referring to and made by the electromechanical striking of bells, the term now refers to any sound on any device alerting of a new incoming ...

screensaver A screensaver (or screen saver) is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the computer has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose of screensavers was to prevent phosphor ...

s, and

wallpaper Wallpaper is a material used in interior decoration to decorate the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" (so ...

for mobile phones.

Etymology

According to the site's creator Steven Lerner, the name is an intentional oxymoron; by definition, a black sheep cannot be an

albino Albinism is the congenital absence of melanin in an animal or plant resulting in white hair, feathers, scales and skin and pink or blue eyes. Individuals with the condition are referred to as albino. Varied use and interpretation of the term ...

because it quite obviously possesses skin pigmentation. He also points out that " black sheep" can also be interpreted as "outcast" and that the site's title could be interpreted to refer to an albino outcast.

History

Albino Blacksheep was founded on January 4, 1999, by Steven Lerner, to promote his band of the same name, which was started in 1996. Very little information on the band Albino Blacksheep exists. In 2000, Steven took a

web design Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code a ...

course and redesigned the website. This new incarnation contained rants, graphical images, and a video stream from Lerner's video camera. Perhaps Lerner's first famous work was in 2003, with his site's Google bomb for French military victories. Between then and 2006, the site had been growing in popularity, receiving about 1.50 million pageviews per day. Albino Blacksheep is also famous for being a major portal for

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid F ...

animation and

animutation Animutation or fanimutation is a form of web-based computer animation, typically created in Adobe Flash and characterized by unpredictable montages of pop-culture images set to music, often in a language foreign to the intended viewers. It is not t ...

(a Flash animation style created by Neil Cicierega in 2001). The popular Web game ''Musical Lantern'' can be found on this site. The website also helped the band

Tally Hall Tally Hall is an American rock band formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in December 2002. The band is known for upbeat melodies and whimsical lyrics. The members originally described their musical style as "wonky rock," later redefining their soun ...

achieve some notability after posting their music video ''Banana Man''. On April 1, 2007, Lerner changed the homepage to a joke homepage, designed to make people think that the site had been bought and turned into "Google Animations". The joke was reinforced by a

fake blog A fake blog (sometimes shortened to flog or referred to as a flack blog) is an electronic communication in the blog format that appears to originate from a credible, non-biased and independent source, but which in fact is created by a company or o ...

stating that ''"Albino Blacksheep has been acquired by Google Inc. for roughly $32 million in stock options. The deal was discussed over a casual breakfast in Mountain View, California between the Canadian-born founder of Albino Blacksheep and the Google co-founders and CEO. Plans are underway for Google Inc. to tie its services and software into the former Albino Blacksheep website which will go by the new nam
Google Animation
"''

Notes and references

{{reflist, 40em

External links

Albino Blacksheep
1999 establishments in Ontario Internet properties established in 1999 Canadian comedy websites Free music download websites