Digg has turned their popular Digg Labs applications into desktop screensavers. The applications can be downloaded from their respective pages:
The screensavers are available for Mac and Windows users and include Adobe Flash 9 if you don’t have it installed. On the Mac you’ll need at least OSX 10.4 and on Windows you need either Windows XP or Vista. I personally enjoy watching the STACK as it looks like it’s raining Diggs.
Over the last month or so, I have noticed a sharp increase in what has become known as DIGG BEGGING. These are people who post their links on Twitter, forums and wherever else asking sometimes begging people to Digg their article. The question I ask is, WHY? I understand the importance of the Digg front page which sends a torrent of traffic your way if your lucky but why resort to begging or using Digg exchanges? For us common users, Digg used to be a place which was ruled my the majority, also known as the wisdom of crowds. It seems as if the Digg system has finally broke down to the point where there is more trash within the Digg system than there are nuggets of gold.
If your page or content is front page worthiness, I’m sure it would reach the front page without the need of begging or purchasing Diggs. As DigitalSpammer suggests, please make this stop.
Over the last month or so, I have noticed a sharp increase in what has become known as DIGG BEGGING. These are people who post their links on Twitter, forums and wherever else asking sometimes begging people to Digg their article. The question I ask is, WHY? I understand the importance of the Digg front page which sends a torrent of traffic your way if your lucky but why resort to begging or using Digg exchanges? For us common users, Digg used to be a place which was ruled my the majority, also known as the wisdom of crowds. It seems as if the Digg system has finally broke down to the point where there is more trash within the Digg system than there are nuggets of gold.
If your page or content is front page worthiness, I’m sure it would reach the front page without the need of begging or purchasing Diggs. As DigitalSpammer suggests, please make this stop.
According to this NBC report, every 7 and a half seconds, someone in the U.S. turns 50 years old. That is quite a lot of people. These baby boomers are being looked at as seasoned surfers. There are now social networking sites that are catering to this generation such as BOOMJ, BOOMERTOWN, and EONS. Looks like all of this social stuff isn’t just for 20 somethings anymore.
A YouTube music video giving users a brief introduction into web 2.0. The video starts off showing bits and pieces of internet history which have led us to our current usage of the net. I thought the song that went along with the video was so-so but it sounds like one of those songs that would grow on you if you listened to it a few times.
Picnik is an online photo editor that is somewhere in between Photoshop and a bare bones application in terms of features and functionality. Picnik works seamlessly with Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa web album’s giving you the oppurtunity to edit your online photos straight from the Picnik website. Picnik is hastily becoming one of the best online photo editors. Check out the following video demonstration for more information on this web application.
Nowadays, thats typically the response I hear when I ask someone a question. Why is that? Neuroscientist Ian Robertson recently polled 3,000 people and discovered younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal information. 87% of his respondents over age 50 couldn’t recite a relatives birth date, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. When Ian asked those under 30 their own phone number, at least one third of them had to take out their handset to remember.
The moral of the story here is that, humans are reaching a point where they no longer need to remember information but rather, machines are the ones who are storing the information that can be retrieved within a few keystrokes. I know I have asked a number of people some interesting questions and instead of providing what they thought was the answer, they merely tell me to Google it. Does this happen to you as well? Leo Laporte likes to coin this term as (GAM) or Google Assisted Memory. As long as he can remember how to type into Google, he will seemingly never forget anything.
Although typing into Google and receiving those results is a very fast way of obtaining information, sometimes I just want to hear the answer from a human rather than a search engine.
I’d be very interested to hear your feedback regarding this subject as I think it is fascinating. In retrospect, it sounds like the beginning of the cyborg era, wouldn’t you say?
Nowadays, thats typically the response I hear when I ask someone a question. Why is that? Neuroscientist Ian Robertson recently polled 3,000 people and discovered younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal information. 87% of his respondents over age 50 couldn’t recite a relatives birth date, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. When Ian asked those under 30 their own phone number, at least one third of them had to take out their handset to remember.
The moral of the story here is that, humans are reaching a point where they no longer need to remember information but rather, machines are the ones who are storing the information that can be retrieved within a few keystrokes. I know I have asked a number of people some interesting questions and instead of providing what they thought was the answer, they merely tell me to Google it. Does this happen to you as well? Leo Laporte likes to coin this term as (GAM) or Google Assisted Memory. As long as he can remember how to type into Google, he will seemingly never forget anything.
Although typing into Google and receiving those results is a very fast way of obtaining information, sometimes I just want to hear the answer from a human rather than a search engine.
I’d be very interested to hear your feedback regarding this subject as I think it is fascinating. In retrospect, it sounds like the beginning of the cyborg era, wouldn’t you say?
After struggling to move my hosted WordPress installation onto my local pc, I have completed the theme edits that I have been wanting to make for some time now. I have moved the Chatter box from the footer of the site and to the top to see if more people will use it. Having it at the top of the site should make it easier for everyone to see if their are any new messages. This is still an experiment and if I discover it’s of little to no use to this site, I”ll remove it. However, I would really like to have some real-time conversations with you, the readers.
I’ve removed the ARTICLE SUBMISSION link from the top navigation area. Last but not least, I have added the FeedBurner Subscriber chiclet to the footer. Since I now have a somewhat respectable number of subscribers, thanks to you of course, I can now display those numbers prominently on the blog. The reason I waited so long before adding the chiclet revolves around human perception. If I were to display this chiclet while it showed a low number, say below 50, this site would automatically be perceived as a piece of trash. But now that the chiclet shows around 100 subscribers or so, people who notice the chiclet may realize that this site is somewhat interesting or worthy of their time considering 100 of their peers already think so.
Feedback on the changes is always appreciated. I’m open to all suggestions and ideas to improve the readability and functionality of this site.
By the way, would anyone be interested in a tutorial on how to install your web hosted WordPress installation to your local PC in order to change themes or text plugins?
Blogger has developed and released an iGoogle gadget for those that enjoy Blogger Play. Blogger Play is a real-time slideshow of photos Blogger users have recently uploaded to their blogs. Blogger has also added some additional functionality to Blogger Play. The keyboard can now be used to control the flow of images. The space bar plays and pauses while the left and right arrow keys move backwards and forwards.
Just sitting at the Blogger Play page watching all sorts of images go by is yet, another productivity killer to add to my list.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 