Why Digg will do nothing about the bury brigade

Digg seems to attempt to avoid all situations that could paint a bad image of them. For a very long time now many people have asked for changes to the system to help with situations such as the bury brigade, but all these calls go unanswered. My belief is that Digg is trying to get into the position to sell out so they don't want any bad publicity. Why would you want to buy a social site that is constantly having to deal with in site riots.

I hope everyone involved with Digg makes tons of money, but I think they have become scared to do anything drastic with the site or address certain problems due to the fact they don't want any more riots.

My First Mac

I have been a Windows user for a very long time now. I have been a Windows system admin for 5 years and was doing Windows desktop support for 3 years prior to that. With the release of Vista from Microsoft I have just felt kind of empty. I remember all the releases since Windows 95, and this one seemed the least exciting to me of all of them. It may be that I am getting older and I am growing tired of Windows, but I'm not sure if that is what it comes down to.

I kind of feel like a adulter growing tired in a long worn out relationship. I'm just not into you anymore PC I'm sorry I can't help these feelings. A while back I found myself (after the switch to Intel) going to the Apple page and just looking. I thought to myself no you are a PC guy, but the more time went on the more I realized I was falling for her (err Mac.)

PC we can still be friends I have to have a job so supporting your users should do fine, but when I leave work I'm sorry it will not be you I long for.

Winner First Tech Spews Giveaway

Parislemon has won the first Tech Spews giveaway. They will be receiving a $15 prepaid ITunes card. The method for selection was complex I cut up the names on small sheets of paper waded them up put them in a box and the first one I drew won.

I might do another contest in the future, and good ways to get extra chances (parislemon had 2 as he was an early member of my mybloglog community.) So if you want to have better chances you should do things like join my community or link the site and describe the giveaways. You will receive more chances for getting in early.

Congratulations Parislemon!

Thank you to everyone else for participating.

CompUSA Service Blunders

I know not all retail stores are the same, but the CompUSA located near me has some really bad customer service. I ran in the store the other day to pick up a small switch that I needed that day. When I attempted to purchase my item at the register the cashier was having problems so he told me to go to the service desk to pay for my items.

I was ok with this went to the register where the lady was helping other customers and was clearly having problems of her own. So I stood behind the guy she was helping when another guy came over to help the people that had just walked up beside me at this point he went over picked up some memory from behind the counter and proceeded to check them out. So I look back at the register and the guy is finishing up with the customer he was having problems with and he takes the next person in line (a line had formed of about 6 people at the register at this point)

No one seemed to care that I was there first and had been waiting quite some time it was as though they didn't care you were there. This is always the case when I go in this particular store.

So I decide to leave the switch go down the road to the Mom and Pop computer store only to buy the same switch for the same price and everyone in the store seemed so much more friendly. I know this is typical of a chain store, but seriously if you have quite a few people in the store put more people on the registers.

I will not be picking up any emergency parts from CompUSA anymore even if it costs more at the local computer store.

You Won The Spanish Lottery

Ok I have often wondered who is falling for these scams, but now I know. This lady (who remained anonymous who could blame her) fell victim to a mail scam claiming she had won the Spanish lottery. I'm not sure how this lady fell victim she sounds like a very intelligent person ""I done learned a big lesson, a big lesson. A $28,000 lesson."

Honestly why would you keep sending them money? Are these scams new to some people? I'm just full of questions of how you could let yourself fall victim to this.

My grandparents are in their 70s and have been married for over 50 years. About a year ago someone contacted them stating they had found my Grandfathers long lost child. He was supposed to call a number and give them information to verify this was his child. The moment I heard about it I told them throw the letter away it had to be a scam. It is just sad that many of these scams target the elderly.

Blue Man Group Huntsville

It was a great show last night in the Von Braun Center. Mike Relm opened the show and was great he mixed hip hop, classical, rock, and classic rock all together and threw in some pop culture. Mike was only the second DJ I have seen open a show Kid Koala being the first when he opened for Radiohead. My favorite part of his performance was mixing the o face guy in Office Space.

The Blue Man Group was a great show. I didn't know what to expect going to the concert only really having seen them in commercials and a documentary on PBS, but they were great performers. They interact great with the crowd coming down and pulling audience members into the show. At one point the band was playing some classic rock songs and someone in the crowd (may have been crew and been planned) shouted play Free Bird (yes the concert was in Huntsville, AL) so the band broke off into Free Bird and this received many cheers and laughter from the crowd.

This is a great show for your entire family. I would have enjoyed this as a child, teenager, and now if you can call me an adult an adult. I will go again if I get the chance.

Get Rich Quick On Digg

Does something about this Bum Rush the Charts not sound right to anyone else? They are planning on making an independent artist number one on ITunes for 1 day by having as many people as possible buy a song (keep in mind the Bum Rush the Charts guys pick the song.)

It appears Diggers may be immune to this type of tactic now after the whole "Get me out of this job!!!" incident and are flaming the idea and have now buried it from the front page. I'm glad to see Diggers may have learned from mistakes made in the past.

Don't Mess With This Lady

There is a small CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) called Deltacom. I was searching for an old article related to the company when I found the Deltacomsucks site. If you go read the site they have a forum setup to allow people rant about the communications company. They apparently had some problems with the service and attempted to disconnect to switch back to their previous carrier, but ran into many problems attempting to disconnect the service.

It now seems as though Deltacom has sent her a cease and desist letter to them. It could become pretty fun to watch this if the lady does what she says she is going to and fight them.

On a side note why would you mess with a lady that runs a store called the Unicorn Shoppe.

Space Pens

The Huntsville Times is running an article about urban legends related to NASA. One of them is that NASA spent $12 billion on a pen. The fact is that NASA did not spend that much money on the pen, and that is was only $956 for 400 pens. The pen was developed by the Fisher Pen company.

You can purchase a Fisher Space Pen at Bookstone for $35. Here is the quote from the product page.

"Originally designed for use on space flights, this pressurized space pen writes in freezing cold (-30°F), boiling heat (+300°F), the gravity-free vacuum of space, underwater, over most grease, and even upside down. NASA, after rigorous testing, selected the Fisher Space Pen for use on all of the Apollo missions. They are still used on all American and Russian manned space flights."

So if you are going to be doing any James Bond type work this might be the pen for you.

Digg Front Page Overrated

I'm pretty new to blogging, but I have learned one thing very quickly. A few months back I had a Digg article go to the front page (I can't find the article on Digg anymore my domain has been redirected since maybe they took it down.) The article generated a much larger than normal amount of page impressions on my blog 8,000. The only problem was there were only 5 adsense clicks.

Saturday almost all of my hits (not very many by the way) were in direct result of Google searches. Many of them were searching for a story that was related to the girl who had the hiccups for 3 weeks that appeared on the today show. That day I received 4 adsense clicks, (1 less than I received after an entire front page article on Digg) but I only had 50 page impressions.

You probably already know the Digg crowd is not into ads, and most of them only hit the one page related to the Digg article. The group of people that were searching for the girl with the hiccups were looking for something so in their search they followed the ads as well, and were probably a less tech savvy crowd.

I do think though that having an article Digg's front page helped move up my blog in the search engine results. So I wouldn't completely write off Digg, but for the people that think they will just make tons of money if they can only get that one front page article I'm sorry.

Blue Man Group

Going to see the Blue Man Group tonight in Huntsville. I saw a piece they did on them on PBS few months back and it looked like it should be pretty interesting.

Shrek The Third New Trailer

I believe Dream Works has a new trailer up for Shrek The Third. I'm pretty excited about it we plan on it being our sons first movie. We will probably be the people in the theater that everyone whispers about.

Digg Button On Blogger

I wanted to add a Digg this button to all of my blogger posts, but I could not find anything about it so I thought I would share with you how I did it.

From the template choose edit html.

Check the expand widget templates box.

Search for this piece of code
<b:includable id='comments' var='post'>

Insert a space below the above and insert this line
<p><script src='http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js' type='text/javascript'/></p>

If anyone knows a better way to do this let me know and I will update it.

Tech Spews Giveaway Update

Right now the odds are pretty good if you join the TechSpews community on Mybloglog. There are 25 entries so not bad odds for getting a free $15 prepaid ITunes card. I also forgot to credit John Chow with the idea of blog giveaways I saw this contest on his site and it gave me the idea.

So be sure to join or just send me a link.

NBC Today Show: Hiccups

Did anyone see The Today Show this morning? I'm never at home to watch it, but this morning I was running a little late and saw a segment on a girl who had the hiccups for three weeks. Are they in that desperate of a need of material?

On the other hand I do have a hiccup remedy one of my 6th grade teachers showed me. Stand directly in front of the person with the hiccups, have them extend their thumbs out, hold their thumbs by the nail and stare them directly in the eye wait about a minute. I have no clue why this worked, but it always seemed to work in class.

Postal Advertising

Just a thought the US Postal Service has been complaining for a long time about competition from email and other carries causing them financial burden. I'm not completely sure about the legalities of this, but in a modern age wouldn't it make sense to somewhat commercialize the postal service?

I know this will generate hate from all you stamp collectors, but in a financial sense this would be great. Could you imagine the amount of advertising you could get from say a Visa stamp? This would be a great source of revenue for them even with their partnership with paypal if they added a line to the bottom of the label "Captial One whats in your wallet?".

Just a thought would love to hear from someone who knew a little more about it why it wouldn't work or why it would. Thoughts?

Microsft Brings Social Media To Belgium

I read an interesting article yesterday by Muhammad Saleem over at Pronet Advertising title "What the Google Decision Means for Social Media". The focus of the article is about the problems social media could face after the ruling against Google by a Belgian court. Now Microsoft will be launching a social news site in Belgium and Norway. Many of the articles on social media sites are direct copies of the article and this is where Google came under fire (even though they linked the source.)

Be sure to keep your eyes on this one and see if anything develops.

Digg Mob Next Target Microsoft

Seems Yahoo isn't the only one using the idea of voting. Microsoft has created in Norway and Belgium a site to submit news headlines and blog postings that other people can vote on. So it turns out Yahoo was just an appetizer to help suppress the mobs hunger for blood. This actually sounds more like a Digg clone than the Yahoo version as people are actually submitting links and voting on stories.

Also MSNBC and Yahoo News have for a very long time used a system to determine popular stories among users with a 5 star system to determine popular stories. Is this not a voting system?

Spotted on [Microsoft creates Digg-like sites in Norway and Belgium]

Digg Mobs

Yahoo has a new suggestions site with Digg style voting. This has caused an uproar in the Digg community and now the mob is thirsty for blood.

Every time these Digg mobs are assembled I am reminded of a scene from Anchorman where everyone is livid about the lady anchor and start yelling at the producer. Then Brick (Steve Carell) states "I don't know what we're yelling about. Loud noises!!!" If you have seen the movie you know the part of Brick and this is how I think of the mob.

Here are some of my favorite comments from It takes two to Tango - Yodel Anecdotal

"WTF??? I cant belive you think you invented this. Kevin Rose did!!!!!"

"How can a company like yahoo go and rip off digg.com? Have you no conscience? I am disgusted!!!"

"oh btw George P. are u retarded? Yes it was an original idea from Kevin - unless you include voting on anything the same thing… show me the site that started something similar to digg (and before digg0 and ill stfu." Kevin Rose apparently invented voting.

"THIS ISNT A BOOK REPORT YOU CANT JUST CITE WHERE YOU GOT IT FROM! YAHOO=THIEVES"

"If there would be fewer morons on here than on digg…I’m all for it."

"Boycotting DIGG! (Because clearly their users (or the ones posting on here at least) have SERIOUS issues)"

"What is your problem? has the net really just come to copying each other because of uncreative people? I spit on the people of Yahoo."

Starting to get a headache at this point I thought there would be a little more originality than this. I think you get the point from there. Someone should create a social mob site so that users can have one place to attack someone or something, or Digg needs a mob section on the site.

Some Google Fun

If you have nothing better to do on Valentines you can look through all these school web cams. Try out this Google search "intitle:axis network camera inurl:edu" I was actually surprised at how many schools use Axis cameras. I can't help but wonder what this one titled dance cam is.

First TechSpews Giveaway

I have acquired one $15 prepaid ITunes card and will be giving it away.

The rules for the contest are as follows:

To be entered you can take two steps: join my Mybloglog community (if you are an existing member you will automatically receive two entries.) The other way is to mention the giveaway on your blog, and link to this article (in a positive manner I reserve the right to deny entry.) For the blog entries I will need you to email me at chris@techspews.com with the subject ITunes Giveaway. If you have any questions feel free to contact me at chris@techspews.com.

To find out if you are the winner check TechSpews on Friday February 23, 2007.

Update:
I had someone ask if you could increase your chances by linking and joining the community. This will be fine you can do both and receive two or if you were existing member receive three entries.

Digg is blocked in school stop the oppression!

Sarcasm! Are these kids serious they want the school to unblock Digg. If I worked in IT security for a school I know for a fact I would block Digg. Many of the articles on Digg are hardly intended for young children even Diggnation is listed as an explicit podcast. Kids you need to realize the people are doing that for a reason they can face harsh penalties such as losing their job if you accidentally were exposed to explicit material. Just take a look at the substitute teacher in Norwich, CN that is facing forty years for exposing children to explicit material that may have been pop ups.

I honestly could care less that you are on Digg at school as long as it doesn't interfere with your school work. The problem comes with many parents will sue the school, IT staff, city/county school system, and anyone else they can get their hands on for exposing you to inappropriate material. So if you think letting you surf Digg while you are at school is a big deal think about how big a deal it is to the others who can lose their job (you know that thing that provides for your family.)

Can Comedy Central Digg This?

Why did Comedy Central not add a Digg this button to their video content? They want to be in control of their videos and appear to want to commercialize them, but why not add one little button. John Stewart and Stephen Colbert videos are very successful on Digg and this does drive quite a bit of traffic so why not?

YouTube Gives Fox User Data

In a not so surprising move YouTube has given Fox the details of a user who uploaded an episode of 24 a week before it aired. YouTube is going through some serious growing pains, and you have to wonder if they will be able to pull through all of them (with so many more to come.)

I hope this doesn't hurt the YouTube community, but it will probably keep more copyrighted material off the site. Spotted on TechCrunch [YouTube Hands Over User’s Info to Fox]

Wrongly Accused

There is a great article up at Security Focus about a substitute teacher from Norwich, Connecticut facing 40 years in prison for a crime she may not have committed. Julie Amero was accused of exposing children to porn on a school computer. The problem it seems is that a proper forensics investigation did not take place.

The local small town paper says that she should be punished, but it seems they do not even know for sure she intentionally did anything wrong.

Looks like someone did all the searching for me for the contacts I urge you to call or send an email letting them know how this whole situation is wrong. The comment posted by voice your concern.

"
Kelly Middle School

I recommend speaking to the principal and IT "department" and ask them have they decided to start legally licensing their equipment and patching their computers.
860-823-4211

David Smith - State Prosecutor
If someone figures out which one, that would be helpful:
SMITH, David (860) 515-5330 david.smith@jud.ct.gov Judicial Branch
SMITH, David (203) 974-8173 david.smith@po.state.ct.us Social Services, Dept Of
SMITH, David A. (203) 238-6135 david.a.smith@jud.state.ct.us Public Defender Services, Division Of
SMITH, David G.E. (860) 566-4284 david.g.smith@jud.state.ct.us Public Defender Services, Division Of
SMITH, David J. (860) 889-5284 david.smith@po.state.ct.us Criminal Justice, Division Of
http://www.phone.state.ct.us/EmpByLastName/n_ls.html

Detective Mark Lounsbury
Norwich Police
Tel: (860) 886-5561 ext 153
Fax: (860) 886-4552

CT State governor M. Jode Rell
800-406-1527
Governor.Rell@po.state.ct.us

Judge Hillary B. Strackbein
Superior Court, G.A. 10
112 Broad Street
New London , CT 06320
P (860) 443-8343
F (860) 437-1168

"

Cat in Fridge

Was getting ready this morning when my 2 year old son came running to me to look in the refrigerator. We went in the kitchen together I was assuming he had put a ball or something in the fridge as usual, but I was shocked when I opened the door. The first thing I heard was meeoww and the cat jumped out. The moral of the story is, heck I don't know just don't let your child put a cat in the refrigerator.

Early Techcrunch

I was looking at Tech Crunch through Archive.org when I saw Michael Arrington's personal blog. It hasn't been updated in a while, but it was pretty cool to look at all the posts with no comments and the first post about Tech Crunch. It is just amazing to see how far the site has come along in less than 2 years. Here is the post announcing that after 1 week they have 63 subscribers the site right now has 191,000 feed burner subscribers.

I just thought this was amazing and can be used as encouragement for others that are just getting started with blogging like myself.

On a side note where did the Mybloglog recent readers go on Tech Crunch?

I Want My MTV

Not really I stopped caring about MTV about the time the first Real World came out, but apparently their is a market for showing spoiled 16 year old girls that remind me of Veruca Salt. MTV will not be partnering with Youtube like they had talked about. I personally do not see this as a big loss compared to the Comedy Central clips, but I am not a teenage girl either. Will it be a big loss if all the media companies distance themselves from Youtube? Time will tell if they will be able to survive on user generated videos. [MTV videos to be available to all Internet users]

Marketing Blogs with Prizes

John Chow at JohnChow.com is onto something very smart. On his site he offered to give a way a 1 gig thumb drive to anyone who joined his Mybloglog community. Although he is well known and probably has no problem getting members to join his community it was enough to get him an extra 200 members in 5 days featuring his blog as one of the hot communities.

I think this is a great idea for people starting or well established blogs to give away some type of prize. Radio has been doing this for a long time giving away prizes at random times throughout the day to keep listeners listening. If you started contests like the first person to comment on a random story or the 100th to comment on a story receives a prize you could generate comments and traffic.

I'm going to experiment with this some soon check back for prizes at a later date. :)

Google Benefited from Piracy

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) is reporting that Google has come under fire from many of the media powerhouses for selling adverting and directing traffic to two piracy sites. You can read more about the accusation at ARS with no subscription required.

ARS states that no legal action against Google is pending. Was this a mistake or did Google know they were advertising for and accepting dirty AdSense money? In any case Google should give the profits from their partnership with the sites to the companies that lost money from the piracy.

IntelliTXT In-Text Advertising

If I was hitting the 500,000 page view mark (I'm a long way away from that unless you count my own page views) I would seriously check into this. [H]ard|OCP is using the in-text advertising if you want to see how it looks. Vibrant Media is providing the in-text advertising, and I love how the ads are placed.

Forensic Notebook Drivedock

In this months issue of Maximum PC they have the ultimate pc trauma kit. I was looking through it and saw the Forensic Notebook DriveDock from WiebeTech. I am thinking about getting one I do a good bit of work for people on the side, and I also could use one at work. People come to me quite often with bad 2.5 drives and this is a great option since it ignores all write request to the drive.

Anyone use one of these?

Clippy Retires

Either Microsoft Clippy has retired or Bill Gates put him in a bag tied it up attached a brick and dropped him in the lake behind his house. [Microsoft Clippy, RIP: 1997 - 2007]

Does anyone know if this stupid dog is back in Vista? He is from the search menu (easy to turn off I just hate seeing him when I hit f3 for the first time.)

Dutch Apple Bear Claw... MMMMM.....

Dutch apple bear claw 440 calories of pure goodness (or something.) Anyone else have any favorite break room snacks?

USC Violate Recruiting Policy?

The LA Times reported that USC may have violated recruiting policy with high school running back Joe McKnight. The allegation at hand is that McKnight participated in a conference call with Pete Carrol and former USC star Reggie Bush. Quoting the times "Former players are regarded by the NCAA as "representatives of athletics interests" and are forbidden from telephoning prospective recruits."

If these allegations turn out to be true do you honestly think the NCAA will do something to USC? It seems as though everything they do is overlooked. I know you have to notice when a relatively poor guy moves his family out to LA and starts driving a new car something has to be up. Sadly you will probably never see anything happen to USC for this. The NCAA needs to stop kissing programs such as USC and Notre Dame's ass.

Viacom: We Don't Need No Stinking Youtube

Viacom is taking as many steps as possible to avoid Youtube. The thing is they actually seem to be doing a good job of it. I was just looking at the Comedy Central site and the video options are great. They are doing all the right things I think allowing users to embed video and providing direct links to the videos is key. Digg alone sends so many users to Daily Show vids on Youtube I can see why Viacom would want the traffic for themselves.

Media Drives Me Crazy

Just watched the Anna Nicole initial police briefing. The reporters on the scene apparently have the attention span of a 3 year old. They kept asking the same questions such as when did she check into the hotel.

The media gets on my nerves pestering asking stupid questions over and over. I loved how the guys in Boston made a mockery of the media.

That is no astronaut!

The astronaut accused of the recent crimes is not really an astronaut. She is the emperor just take a look for your self.

Kevin Rose in Godaddy Commercial

Ok I wasn't crazy that was Kevin Rose in the Godaddy Super Bowl ad. [Digg founder's bit part in Super Bowl ad]

Digg Profile Deactivated

My Digg profile is now officially history. This morning I emailed Digg feedback and asked them to deactivate my profile. I was at the last count number 42 on the site, and out of 349 submitted stories had a 46% front page ratio.

I determined there is not point in these stats, because no one cares what you did for the site. The site has taken a different direction and I feel no need in posting (even though I have felt this way for quite some time and posted much less in recent history.) I think all the popular stories I submitted still exists like Hacked Ad Seen on Myspace Served Spyare to a Million, but other articles I submitted that did not become popular no longer seem to exists.

How Far Will Digg Go?

Was just checking up on the whole top 100 situation and noticed Digg has now removed the user rank from the profiles. It is not hard to figure out how Finke is creating the top 100 list since it was completely based off of one number in your profile. I just wonder if Digg will remove that number from the profile as well. If they do this they might as well remove how many stories you have submitted or heck even remove profile pages (because people just want to Digg cool stories right?)

Digg Problems

In all honesty I believe Digg has many more problems than just the top users page. An article I submitted directly related to a charitable organization that would help needy children receive books was buried. When will Digg realize something has to be done about this? I'm seriously pondering getting my account banned so that all my contributions to the site will be wiped clean and I will be completely disassociated with the site. Does anyone know if you can make Digg remove your content or do you have to get banned?

I'm tired of everyone accusing top users as being the problem on the site when so many other issues are at hand.