Month: February 2005

I was reading a Wired News article about The Wall Street Journal becoming irrelevant because of it’s online presence or rather lack thereof. The thesis of the article was that in order for the WSJ to keep in touch with bloggers and the online community in general they need to open the doors to bloggers by allowing them to link to specific stories and remove their invasive mandatory registration requirements.

What I found particularly interesting was that Forbes.com “got rid of registration requirements when it discovered they drove away traffic.” I can’t say exactly how many times I have decided not to use a particular news source because of it’s stupid required registration but I can say that it has been less of a problem for me ever since I downloaded the Bugmenot extension for Firefox. Now I just right click on the registration pages and Firefox and BugMeNot take care of the dirty work.

So, what’s my point? Well it made me wonder if BugMeNot is actually doing a disservice to the fight against mandatory registration because it’s quite possible that sites that have them (like the New York Times and the Washington Post) have NO IDEA how many people aren’t logging with their own information like the good electronic sheep they imagine us to be. These news outlets make linking to them inconvenient, invade our privacy, and all the while they aren’t even collecting good data – they need to rethink their strategy. I’m happily surprised that Forbes has figured it out; I hope that the others clue in, making life better for everyone concerned.

For those with a lot of time on their hands or in my case a lot of homework that needs to be procrastinated then you must read this epic tale of friendship, betrayal, corruption, and deceit. This is the story of one man setting out to pull off the biggest scam MMORPG history. Or at least in Eve history. Or at least in his history. It is also quite humorous.

This is amazing! A natural nuclear reactor has been discovered in the African country of Gabon in 1972. It has only recently been determined how it worked.

From the article:

“[R]iver water trickling into uranium-rich bedrock acted like the control rods in a modern reactor, increasing the efficiency of fission and causing the uranium to produce a chain reaction. The reaction released heat that boiled the water. Once all the water was gone, the fission fizzled out, preventing a meltdown. Gradually, more water trickled in and the process started anew.”

Sony has built in a pizza-order function into ‘Everquest II’ because you know… sometimes it’s just too hard to get up and order it over the phone.

Instead users can click on the online pizza ordering option that’s available from within the game, and get a Pizza Hut pizza delivered to their mom’s basem… er… I mean, to their apartment.

(via DavidFlores QL)

I love flickr.com! It’s a fancy photo sharing thing. Here are my RSS 2.0 and Atom Photostreams.

If you stick a barbell through the bridge of your nose and screw prescription lenses to it you should probably expect some criticism.

A news article about the pierced glasses:

To make pierced glasses, James Sooy first got a bridge piercing and allowed it to heal completely. Then he got prescription lenses – also about $75 – and enlisted help to attach them to the piercing with special screws. The total cost was about $160.

What is with Skype.com? Everyone is talking about it and I’m thinking it could possibly be the end of my horrible long distance nightmares. I’m told that it costs approximately $16 Canadian for 10 hours anywhere in North America and most of Europe. Nice. Not that I have anyone in Europe to call.

Justice League meets Office Space mashup.

(via Waxy)

It’s a how-to guide for adding the famous Star Wars Light Saber effect into your own footage. Very cool effect and maybe something I’ll use this summer if I get the New Media Movie Making Camp job again.

(via BoingBoing)