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One giant collaborative diatribe

Archive for January, 2006

Heard it through the Newsvine

January 30th, 2006

The latest addition to the Web 2.0 landscape is a new site called Newsvine. Newsvine is a new web service that is available to Beta testers and the twenty people they choose to invite into the system.

Here’s the gist. It’s basically a news site, like CNN, NYTimes or MSNBC — with a twist. There are three types of stories: Your run of the mill wire stories, user-written content/stories, and seeded stories. All stories, regardless of which of these three it is, have the ability to have comments and “rank.” If your find the story interesting, you can give it a +1 and it will increase the rank by one. Stories with the most rank and the most comments bubble up to the front page of their particular section.

The first two content-types are fairly straightforward. The third, however, is a link to an article living on an external site that they think is interesting. You can then give your summary and comments when you post. This is taking the Digg Model and including all sorts of news.
» Read more: Heard it through the Newsvine

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Posted in Internet

Exercising in Schools

January 29th, 2006

According to a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, West Virginia Public Schools are bringing Dance Dance Revolution to the classroom. They’re planning on bringing these games to 765 schools across the state.

If you’ve never seen Dance Dance Revolution, you’re certainly not missing anything. It looks something like this and it’s insane how good some kids are. You basically try to follow the pattern of lefts, rights, ups and downs that fall down the screen to make a rhythm. Some kids are so insanely good, however, that they stomp their feet to and fro and it’s “amazing” to watch. But to bring these games to schools — to try to reduce obesity? Wow. That’s a stretch.

1 comment »

Posted in Bizarre, Life

No Love for Cool Jesus

January 26th, 2006

You might remember my musings about annoying co-worker WWIII. She’s the one who calls herself “The Source” and nearly did the happy dance when I told her I was eating Chinese food. Her office is on the floor above mine and just minutes ago, she came downstairs to chat with her buddy Big Pappy (also of Diatribe infamy) and ask if Big Pappy wanted a coffee from Starbucks. Big Pappy declined and WWIII moved on to Hardy Train in the cube next to me. Hardy Train likewise declined and, since my cube is closest to the door, I braced myself for her intrusion into my cube to ask me if I was interested in a coffee. I braced, but there was no intrusion. She just kept on walking right through the door and to the parking lot. Hardy Train immediately emailed me to confirm I had been dissed. That’s fine. It stung for a moment, but I’m over it. I didn’t want a Starbucks coffee, but it’s always nice to be asked. Unfortunately for WWIII, she is now dead to me. Unless she does something extraordinarily generous, like buy me the Ice Man comic book series (only 4 issues, but the Holy Grail for Cool Jesus) for my birthday, then I will treat her like the ghost she now is. That’s how I roll.

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Posted in Occupational Hazards

No love for the Diatribe

January 23rd, 2006

Well, I’m sad to announce that The Diatribe did not get nominated in the 2006 Bloggies awards. Not that I really expected to be nominated, I mean considering how many sites are out there, and how The Diatribe is still an undiscovered Diamond in the Rough, and all.

But in case you’re interested, check out this year’s nominees — as it’s a great place to find some very humorous and popular Web Logs (they are deemed the Best of the Best for 2006, remember).

2 comments »

Posted in House Keeping, Internet

In need of assistance

January 21st, 2006

Ok, so.. I take it that nobody really digs my new icon.. well, then.. let’s try this..

I’ll give you guys the opportunity to find something better. I agree, I think my new one is a little intimidating, so I open it up to the public. Post a comment with a link to your suggested icon, and if it works — then I’ll swap it out.

5 comments »

Posted in House Keeping

Baby, it’s warm outside

January 21st, 2006

Not that I’m particularly complaining — but what the heck is going on with the weather? It’s just about 60 degrees outside, and has been for the past week or so. Everyone told us that when we moved here it was warmer than Boston, although this is ridiculous.

Take last weekend for instance. It was about 50 degrees Saturday afternoon. By the time evening rolled around however, it was snowing and in the 30’s.

What a crazy winter.

1 comment »

Posted in Life

Matthew’s Advertising

January 20th, 2006

If you walk the streets of Hoboken as much as I do, there’s no doubt that you’ve seen the ads for Matthew’s services on every pole across the one-mile town. At first it started out with the Dog walking and Cat Sitting ads. But then Matthew decided to take it one step further. He felt his skills of self-promotion were so world-class that he started his own ad agency of sorts.

What I find so incredibly entertaining is here is this guy has a flyer that says “Own your own business, I’ll advertise for you: -Poles, -Bullboards, -Stores, -Last Minute Advertising” — but do you really want someone to do your advertising that doesn’t even know how to proof-read their own signs? C’mon man, get a clue.