Jay’s Brainfart

I thought this was great… this was done to promote the Simpsons Movie, coming out later this month:

Thats ace…. anyone fancy a game of ring toss? ><

Thanks to Ricey for the animated pic

Have a read of the story here.

As you can see from one of my earlier blog posts, I’ve become pissed off with Digg lately (well, digg users… not the site as such) and have been shopping around for alternatives.

Surprisingly there are a fair few contenders… Thoof, Streamy (which I’m awaiting a beta invite for, and actually pretty excited about after watching this)… and coRank.

Thoof isn’t really my thing, as its all about submitting, and/or updating existing stories… plus it seems to be filled with porn spam, which is annoying to say the least (even though it can be disabled).

This leaves me with coRank… but to be fair, I’m pretty impressed with it so far. Think Digg, but you only see stories from people with similar interests.

Basically you create your account, and you can invite people to start your “network”… or alternatively you can browse stories and befriend likeminded people that way. Then basically when you, or anyone in your network submits a story, it gets on your network page… that way you only see what you’re interested in.

Its a pretty good concept - almost like creating your own little personalised Digg social network.

Anyway take a look, see what you think… and if you’re into movies, rock music, gaming, weird stuff etc…. then add me as a source. ;)

Digg - the staple diet of any net nerd, geek, techie, gamer, web designer or news addict on the web. The site is one of the most visited pages on the web, and with good reason - its by far the best place to read any kind of online news if you want to stay in the know.

Recently though, Digg has been leaving a bad taste in my mouth. My problem is not with the site itself… as its simply genius… My problem is with the site’s users, and what they’ve effectively turned the site into.

Digg users (the majority anyway… there will always be exceptions) are elitist net whores that treat everything as a popularity contest - they will digg their friend’s stories, and digg down anyone else’s… they’ll blatantly ignore the fact that a story has already been submitted… and instead submit their own story, knowing full well it will get more support, despite being a dupe.

Its started to frankly piss me off… so I’ve decided I’m going to do a study… then submit it to Digg and see how it does (If anything for pure irony’s sake).

Basically I’m going to check Digg every night at 7pm, and make a tally of all the users that have stories on the front page - I’ll do this for a calendar month, starting tonight (I’ve already collated today’s data)… then I’ll present the data, and do a little more investigating.

Then I’ll present my findings in as many clear-cut ways as possible. The aim of the study - to prove that its not necessarily the content of the story, or when you submit it that gets you Dugg… its the users you know, and have on your friends list.

This is going to take a lot of work… so the first month collecting the data is the easy part. The investigation afterwards is going to be the most time consuming, but the most interesting part.

I’ll let you know more in a month… in the meantime… I’ll blog in my usual manner.

Watch this space…

Pownce is a new project from the guys at Digg, and is described as a way of sending stuff to your friends… that stuff being links, photos, music, events and more. “Pownce is brought to you by a bunch of geeks who were frustrated trying to send stuff from one cube to another.”

Think Twitter, but with the ability to send a single link, photo or file to everyone at once. You can even categorise your friends, and post to only that group. Its a great way to send stuff around the office.

If you’re on Pownce already, add me at http://pownce.com/Baku/

If you’re not on Pownce… I have 3 remaining beta invites, so stick a comment on here with your email address and I’ll sort you out.