Top 5 Scary Web Series You Need To See Before Halloween

 You Need To See Before Halloween

Late night YouTube trolling can result in all the lights being turned on in the house, random calls to a best friend to calm nerves, and flashlight location memorization. Of course we're talking the videos you stumble around the internet watching late at night for some reason while alone despite your crippling fear of everything even a little out of the ordinary. Everyone does it.

And everyone's doing it now, seeing as Halloween is right around the corner. But you don't have to sift through the scraps of YouTube for screamer videos or poorly shot "paranormal" footage. May we suggest a litany of awesome for your viewing orbs with a sampling of horrific web series that will send chills down your spine without insulting your intelligence or forcing you to visit the land of YouTube commenters? Shudder. Here are five spooky series to get you started.

WATCHING  Marble Hornets

you know you were way into the Blair Witch saga when it hit theaters way back when. The whole "found footage"/documentary trend has all but exploded since then, but nothing has been able to match the excitement the film culminated in exactly, though few have tried. Marble Hornets is an admirable project that follows in the same footsteps of the greats before it with creepy footage and bizarre goings-on, most of which should be more than enough nightmare fuel for skittish viewers.

A fictional movie was suddenly and mysteriously dropped from production due to some weird circumstances. The series of videos chronicle the raw footage a friend of the movie's creator was able to procure, and the disturbing events surrounding it. The project extends to video footage and unsettling tweets, and there's more here to get engaged if you're looking for a new ARG to get into. If creepypasta and related scares are your thing, Marble Hornets should be on your to-watch list.

WATCHING  31

You're probably familiar with the Hostel series and torture porn as a whole, right? At first glance, that's what the serial 31 seems to mimic, but it's actually a quite novel twist on the supernatural thriller. It's too good to lump in with Saw and the like. The miniseries unfolds across 31 episodes, each spanning 31 seconds -- great for those of us with a short attention span. The story starts with a young woman awaking in complete darkness, with no idea of where she is or how she got there. Escaping her dark prison is the only thing on her mind, and you're in for some shockers along the way. Give it a watch if your busy life only allows for 30 seconds' worth of entertainment here and there.

WATCHING  Camera Obscura 

The 17-episode web series explores the plight of a young woman (Clara) who comes into possession of a camera that has the power to trap demons within. It's a tale you've probably heard before, especially within the Fatal Frame series, but it's a novel take on the famed "spooky every day gadget" trope that features a strong female lead and genuinely creepy demon designs -- think Guillermo del Toro crossed with monsters straight out of the depths of your overactive imagination. Fans of Supernatural and other demon-hunting series can find plenty to get excited about here, plus it was directed, written and produced by friend-of-G4 Drew Daywalt.

Speaking of Supernatural, a good portion of the production cast from the popular TV show are involved with the ambitious project Divine, which aims to captivate audiences with production values as impressive as those seen in big-budget releases and Hollywood blockbusters. A young priest is beginning to question his faith after witnessing the resurrection of the immortal Divine, a creature destined to guide lost souls with a specific message -- destiny is not fixed or unable to be changed, and it's up to the individual to choose their own path. It's a riveting effort from experienced filmmakers that seems to be picking up steam. Faith and disturbing imagery are strong platforms with which to build a horror story, and Divine does a great job of it.

WATCHING  Divine: The Series

Are you a glutton for punishment when it comes to scaring yourself silly? Mr. Creepypasta's Story Time has combined terrifying sets of illustrated and audio accompaniments for some of the most terrifying creepypasta stories on the internet. Basically, it's a way to enjoy some of the scariest stories on the internet without actually having to read them. If you spend most of your time in Reddit's NoSleep subreddit or scouring the internet for creepy tales and urban legends, then this is the web series for you. Just don't come running to us when you're too scared to walk down a dark hallway to your own bedroom.

We've named our choices -- are there any deliciously creepy serials you've enjoyed in the past to get keyed up for Halloween? Let us know some of your favorites and be sure to pack plenty of clean underwear when viewing ours.

WATCHING   Mr. Creepypasta's Story Time

Google installing hundreds of internet-enabled balloons in Indonesia

Working with three local internet providers, Google is trying to expand in Indonesia by installing helium-filled balloons in the stratosphere

 Only 29% of Indonesia’s 255 million people currently have internet access, described by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, right, as a disadvantage for both information and communication. Photograph: PR

How do you connect a country made up of 17,000 islands to the internet? That’s the huge infrastructure challenge faced by Indonesia, and one that Google hopes to address using its high altitude ‘Project Loon’ balloons.

The Silicon Valley giant has partnered with three Indonesian internet service providers – Telkomsel, Axiata and Inmost – to deliver LTE connectivity to remote areas via clusters of giant helium balloons to places where fixed-line service aren’t available. It’s part of the the company’s plan to help connect some of the billions of people around the world who remain offline.

“Indonesia is the perfect fit for Project Loon,” said Mike Cassidy, project leader for Loon, speaking at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View in front of a fully inflated balloon.

“Occasionally getting out of communications range is healthy for all of us,” addedGoogle co-founder Sergey Brin, “but if it’s part of your daily life and you don’t have access to the information and the ability to communicate with people important to you that’s a real disadvantage.”

According to eMarketer, only 29% of Indonesians have access to the internet and connection speeds are slow, largely thanks to challenging geography and a thinly spread population of around 255 million people, which makes it expensive to build a network using underwater cables. Until now, satellite-delivered internet access has been the only option for many – although the satellite dish installation and data costs can be prohibitively expensive for poorer communities.

To use Google’s balloon-based offering, people on the ground only need a mobile device to get online with speeds of up to 10 megabits per second. While Indonesia has close to 100% mobile penetration, only 23%, are smartphones, which means that even if the coverage is there, consumers may not have the devices to access the network.

Google will spend 12 months testing the technology with its three partners before rolling out a commercial product. Tariffs have yet to be established. The mobile operators handle the customer relationship and billing, while Google is simply building the cell ‘towers’ – balloons 20,000 metres in the air. “We’ll need many hundreds of balloons to cover Indonesia,” added Cassidy.

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Project Loon was first incubated by the experimental Google X division in 2011, but was officially announced in June 2013 with a remit to help bring the internet to the two thirds of the world’s population who still don’t have access. It started with a trial involving 30 balloons over New Zealand. Since then, Google has partnered with companies in Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka and now Indonesia to deliver balloon-powered internet access.

Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo had due to attend the event but later withdrew.

The 12-metre tall helium-filled balloons fly in the stratosphere at altitudes of between 18km and 25km - twice as high as aeroplanes. Each balloon can provide connectivity to an area of around 40km in diameter using LTE wireless communications. People on the ground can connect to the wireless network using their mobile devices and the balloons will relay the traffic from those devices between each other and eventually back to the global internet using high-speed links.

The hundreds of balloons needed to provide coverage for each area are coordinated and tracked via mission control to optimally position the fleet to provide the best coverage. Steering is made possible by moving the balloons to different altitudes - where stratospheric winds travel in different directions.

“To provide a continuous internet service you’re talking about a complex choreography where thousands of balloons are steered and programmed in an automated fashion,” said Cassidy, adding that the system makes sure another balloon comes into range as soon as another has left.

Not everyone is happy with Loon’s arrival in Indonesia. The country’s largest telecommunication company, Telekomunikasi, rejected Google’s plan, arguing that it would undermine its own investment in fibre-optic infrastructure.“Clearly the project would harm not only Telkom, but also other telecommunication companies. That means Google would bypass us,” Indra Utoyo, director of innovation and strategic portfolio, told Jakarta Globe.

Speaking at Google HQ, Telkomsei’s CEO Ririek Adriansyah was eager to point out that Loon won’t mean a reduction in its own cell tower infrastructure.

“Loon is focusing on hard-to-reach areas, not those we can reach using traditional methods. Without Loon these areas would probably never be covered by us as they are either too difficult or too costly,” he said.

Google isn’t the only company using experimental technologies to bring remote parts of the world online. Facebook has has plans for solar-powered drones capable of flying for three months at a time without landing, although so far the company only has only unveiled one full-sized aircraft.

Google Looks to Inflate Balloon Internet in India

Visitors stood next to a high altitude WiFi internet hub, a Google Project Loon balloon, on display at the Airforce Museum in Christchurch on June 16, 2013.

 

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Google’s Wi-Fi enabling balloons may soon dot Indian skies.

The California-based Internet giant is in talks with telecommunications companies across the world, including in India, to partner in providing balloon-based Internet to rural and developing areas that don’t have access to the web.

The company Google X research lab has been working on a project called Loon that aims to deliver Internet to Earth’s remote areas through fleets of balloons that act as inflatable routers.

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“There are about 4.5 billion people that don’t have constant access to the Internet today and this problem is a huge problem,” Mohammad Gawdat, vice president for business innovation at Google X research lab, said at an event organised by India’s main software tradebody, the National Association of Software and Services Companies, last week.

The balloons float at about 60,000 feet in a layer of Earth’s atmosphere not affected by weather patterns and can stay up for as long as 100 days, providing wireless Internet using the same technology used by cellular devices.

In the stratosphere, winds push the balloons east to west or west to east, depending on altitude. In theory, this will allow Google to create a continuous, globe-spanning belt of Internet-delivering balloons at any latitude, though it will require thousands of balloons.

Mr. Gawdat said the company is on course to deliver superfast broadband to hard-to-reach communities from the sky by next year.

“We believe that by 2016 we can start to launch in a commercial format something that allows us to have coverage on every square-inch of planet Earth,” he said.

Mr. Gawdat said this is one of the most-affordable ways to connect the masses to the power of Internet.

The conventional way requires billions of dollars in investment to create the telecommunications tower infrastructure.

In India alone, more than 200,000 towers are required to create such as massive network for the 1.2 billion people in the world’s second most populous country, Mr. Gawdat said. Internet penetration in the world’s second-most populous country is currently around 25%.

But this infrastructure is vulnerable to natural calamities and that was what forced Google to look for a radical solution, he said.

Last year, Google said Project Loon should have a semi-permanent ring of balloons floating across the southern hemisphere in a year or so and that the balloons have logged more than two million kilometers in testing.

The other major projects that Google X is working on include Google Glass, the Internet connected eyewear and Iris, the smart contact lens as well as self-driving car