*blush* I’m so honored to make Violet’s Top 10 Sexiest Geeks of 2005 list. Now if only I can parlay that love into dates in 2006, I’ll be all set. And Violet, it’s only awkward because I didn’t have an acceptance speech ready. Thanks for the props. Nod to BoingBoing for the amplification.
People power is finally organizing on the Internet in interesting ways. Digg.com, a site I discovered barely a month ago, has quickly become a favorite place to kill time. Digg is essentially a place to find interesting links to news stories, blog entries or anything of interest on the world wide Internet. It’s mostly tech oriented right now, but that’s about to blow wide open real soon. What makes digg different than most other link aggregators is that editorial control is done by you, me and anyone else who cares to jump in. Anyone can submit a link they think is cool or interesting, but it’s gonna take a small community of people to agree with you for a much larger community of eyeballs to see it.
The way it works is pretty simple. You peruse digg.com for something interesting in the “digg for stories” queue, the place where all new submissions get tossed. When you find something you like, you click the “digg” button next to a link’s title and it is “dugg”. This increments a number next to the submission and adds the link to a personal bookmarks collection. Kind of like del.icio.us, which anyone else can see. When an article or link gets enough diggs, the article is “promoted” to the home page. This boosts the visibility of the article enormously and many more people get a chance to find it and hopefully also digg it.
What’s really amazing about digg and why I think it’s future is really bright is that it empowers the reader of content to decide what is interesting. Contrast this with the current model of the media in which you have a cadre of editors who decide what stories they think are going to gain the biggest audience or sell the most papers. We’ve all seen plenty of bad TV and read really crappy articles. What digg does is it flips the control of interestingness from the editorial ivory tower to the unwashed masses who ultimately consume the stuff. digg isn’t a media desitnation itself, merely a smart pointer to intersting stories and links that others create. Digg CEO Jay Adelson describes the symbiotic relationship he sees with the mainstream media in a recent interview with Mad Penguin.
I believe that the role of the New York Times, just to use them as an example, will be to go out and find the news and to interpret the news. We are going to bringing people to the New York Times IF they make the right choices. I believe that it is a very symbiotic relationship. Perhaps what we will provide organizations like newspapers is some insight into what the mass audience really wants to read about today, at least the on-line Internet audience.
Digg isn’t perfect. Yet. Some popular articles get repeated, some lame stuff bubbles up and it remains to be seen how the digg’s current audience will receive or adapt to non-tech categories. These are all relatively small issues that will evolve solutions. The decentralized editorial approach is amazingly powerful and the mainstream press are waking up to it as they see spikes of traffic from digg.
I recently had a chance to meet Kevin Rose, founder of digg, at a geek party. Very cool dude. He agreed to do a GETV interview, posted yesterday. If you like it, be sure to digg the interview and embrace your new found editorial power. It can be addicting.
Tomorrow/Saturday is the day for remixing brains over geek and non-geek stuff at Chris Heure’s BrainJams event. It’s a collaborative, relatively freeform shindig that revolves around the nebulous concept of “knowledge sharing”. The gist is you spill your passion or project to fellow ‘Jammers and grow from there. Nate and Chris‘ posts explain this much better than I currently understand, but it seems much like the Advocacy Dev shindigs I’ve participated in in the past. Check out the wiki for more deets and register. Oh yeah, it’s in Shallow Alto, but don’t let that freak you out. Added bonus: GETV will be there to cover the fun.
Coming to a big box retailer near you, it’s the Wal-Mart Dance Party, flash mob style. Kind of.
We weren’t terribly organized on our first attempt. One of our friends brought an ipod w/ an iRok transmitter and a forward guard had tuned all the boom boxes to the same transmitter station. In the mean time, there was a gang of at least 25 punks, sceneagers and freaks hanging around the electronics section trying to figure out how to not look suspicious. Once all the boom boxes got tuned and we got “Safety Dance” going. they just came and shut off the power to the entire section.
Lesson 1: Don’t malinger beforehand unless you wear white trash disguises. There’s something not-so-terribly-believable about a large gathering of disheveled sceneagers and anarchists in black with mohawks, nose rings and tats on a group shopping trip in the Wal-Mart music section.
We had better luck at Target on our second stop. Amazingly, they didn’t have a section where you could listen to the boom boxes, so everyone pretty much just scattered around the electronics section, making the employees nervous. Finally, Big Balls just plugged a boom box in and wired the speakers. Unfortunately, the kid with the iPod didn’t make it, so we just put a CD in and turned it up. The party lasted longer at Target — about 2 minutes — before a lackey came and shut it down.
Good times. Be sure you check out the videos.
Screw that Black Friday crap. You really don’t want to be among the sheep. Celebrate Buy Nothing Day instead.
Instructions for hacking a couple of $11 Dakota digital cameras into a stereo digital camera rig. You’ll need a couple of Dakotas, two male USB ports (salvaged from mice) and some Lego. Apparently you can get these “disposable” cameras from Wolf and Ritz Camera stores, though I haven’t tried.
This site will be handy for figuring out the USB pinouts.
There’s been a lot of talk about whether there is another tech or Internet bubble on the inflate. Yes, there have a been a bunch of launch parties as of late. Yes, more companies are getting funded. It’s giving the blogosphere much to ponder,. But one only has to look at the latest issue of Wired magazine to find the answer. It’s fat again! Yes, it’s a heavy ass slab this month. Compare it to say 2 or 3 years ago, during Wired’s anorexic years. I can’t remember it being this obese in years.
Of course, this is fantastic news for the budding young media empire known as Geek Entertainment Televison. There’s endless material to draw from, and draw from is what we must do. The greater the exhuberance, the more irrational we must be. Bring on the bubble! Give us the fuel we need to snark this thing. We’re up to 7 episodes now, with new ones every couple of days. Take a gander if you haven’t yet, and then subscribe to the GETV feed so you don’t have to remember to keep checking back.
UPDATE: We’ve been BoingBoing’d and LaughingSquid’d. I guess this thing is catching on.
Last night was the anniversary party to end all anniversary parties. Laughing Squid celebrated 10 young years of bringing forth San Francisco’s most freakiest. I bring you this short video that captures a few of the highlights.
Why not, I was bored. Geek Entertainment Television comes alive with these two videos.
Everyone’s heard of Netflix, they’ve got over 3 million subscribers. You are probably one of them. Did you know that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings donated 3/4 of a MILLION DOLLARS to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s very “special election” campaign? $730,000 to be exact, mostly going to Proposition 77, the redistricting “reform” measure that gives the power of redistricting to a group of old crusty white men. On the face, Prop 77 has good intentions, but is a crappily crafted piece of legislation that is part of Arnie’s power grab agenda. Reed says, “Win or lose this cycle, I’ll continue to invest both philanthropically and politically, I don’t feel any donor fatigue, because improving California” is “a multi-decade effort, not a one-shot fix.” If by “improve” he means “owned by big business and conservative interests” then brace yourself California! It’s a bit curious as Hastings has traditionally given to Democrats, though a only a drop in the bucket comapred to the amounts he’s doling out to Arnie this year.
There is an alternative. GreenCine, pronounced GREEN-SEEN. It’s just like Netflix but without the evil. GreenCine, based in San Francisco, is owned by a couple of independent cinema nuts. Their focus is more on independent films, documentaries and anime while still harboring the full array of Hollywood blockbusters. They have a thriving online commununity and make daily recommendations. They don’t donate a million dollars to a bad washed up actor turned bad washed up politician. They DO donate a portion of their profits to local non-profit film arts organizations. GreenCine likes to support organizations that make better films.
On this election day, how are your dollars voting?
[thanks to George for the source photo]
