The stories covered on the show are incredibly diverse and include science, pop culture, comedy, and technology to name a few. Occasionally viewers may also get to hear some breaking news and rumors from the Internet and technology sector from Kevin depending on how much they’ve drank. They’ve also done a number of live shows and on-location shoots from places like the Michelob brewery, the Las Vegas strip, and from inside of a Jet Blue plane. Each show is rounded out by a fan email which is usually either a hot girl or someone seeking relationship advice.

Diggnation can be found in iTunes here and the official site is here.

This post is devoted to a letter I wrote to the hosts of Diggnation, Mr. Kevin Rose and Mr. Alex Albrecht.  To those of you who do not know, Kevin Rose runs Digg.com and is kind of a millionaire! Just the money's not actually real.  I don't get it either, it's some kind of tech thing to be loaded but have the money be make beleive.  Alex Albrecht was Kevin's buddy ages ago when they were both hosts on TechTv and is now pimping Dell HDTVs with his sweet sweet ass and cranking stuff out for Revision3.  Together they host Diggnation! a show where they get drunk on a couch with some laptops and read stuff from their website.

Basically, these are the luckiest men alive.  They're running a contest at the moment where if you register a domain name with their sponsor, you get the chance to have an episode of diggnation shot on YOUR couch.  This is, admittedly, rather pimp.  The contest is closed to Canadians, though, and as a proud resident of Canadia, I saw an opportunity to be a smartass.

Sept. 20th, 2008

Hello gentlemen!

I'm Dave, and I live in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. I've been listening to diggnation for a not inconsiderable amount of time and love nothing more than settling down of an evening with a 2-4 of Molson to watch the hosts discuss the hottest user-submitted stories from Digg.com.  So, as you can imagine, I was so very excited to hear about diggnation on your couch that I immediately registered "fuckehn-eh.ca" and put on my caribou skin jacket and my finest mukluks and harnessed the Super friends (my Dog team) and went about in the frozen wastes with my rifle to procure the necessary animal parts and snow cubes to build a couch worthy of welcoming Kevin and Alex.  I brought down a caribou, from which I fashioned armrests and bludgeoned several polar bears for major upholstery. After only a few days toil was happy to find myself with a charming loveseat next to the blubber-fuelled generator and birch bark Broadband modem I put together in '05, so that you fine gentlemen could sit comfortably and power your laptop computers while visiting me.  (Notice I used no seals in my couch production out of respect for Glen, who'se hippidom is well known)  Imagine my surprise, then,  when I discovered that the contest was closed to Canadians!  My hopes were dashed, and even the caribou-bear sausages I am enjoying as I write this are not able to curb my disappointment.

It is truly unfortunate that I, along with my countrymen, are unable to play host to our southern podcasting kin.  I understand contest regulations and, perhaps, fear of flying in rickety bush planes and renting snowmobiles to reach a shooting location restrict you from crossing the border (where, as you know, a twelve foot wall of snow impedes even the hardiest traveller).  However, I hold out hope that someday Diggnation will visit Canada, and on that day, I will be found trekking across the tundra to witness your fine, fine show and bring you some of this truly delicious sausage to sample.  I'll try to give you the links with only a little buckshot in them.

From Canada, the true home of smartassery,

Dave Atkinson

No reply.  They're very busy.  Lucky fucks.

Kevin rose throws up on Alex couch

70 inch siemens monitor

Alex Albrecht (Diggnation, Totally Rad Show, Project Lore)

Barrett Garese (UTA Online)

Rudy Jahchan (Galacticast, A Comicbook Orange)

Casey McKinnon (Galacticast, A Comicbook Orange, Kitkast)

Mike Outmesguine (WiFi-Toys.com)

George Ruiz (International Creative Management)

Dan Tischler (BBC America)

A number of you have said you'll try to drop by. Great! If you plan on attending, send me an email (georgehruiz at me dot com) with a quick summary of your martial arts background. See you Sunday.

The shows are about an hour long but manage to move along at a pretty good pace and remain entertaining the whole time. The dialog is natural and witty and each host is both insightful and knowledgeable about what they review. I recently loaded up my iPod with about 7 or so new episodes and it definitely came in handy during a few long waits for the first train out of Tokyo.

The Totally Rad Show’s website is here, the iTunes link is here, and they even have a guild in World Of Warcraft on the Executus server.

First Monday Podcast, September 2008

Oh, and visit the First Monday Podcast site for a free, limited-edition sampler of Bloodshot Records artists!  You probably don't even know how much you like insurgent country music!  Support local music!  Support indie labels!  Wooo!

Einstein ounce said something to the effect of "Sunday Newspapers have replaced sermons," according to David Crowely of History of Communications. This is to say that communication with our neighbors and commmunity members used to be neccassary and the effect of that was the bonding of communities. Now in a digital age where people commute to work, shop and larger corporate owned faceless stores, there is a void in the individual that is being filled. Somewhere in these reading it said that the new media is merely finding a different avenue to fullfill the needs that the previous media was fulfilling. I think that this is illustrated by the social networking site like facebook, myspace, and twitter. Not only those but through instant messengers and other sites, we are all looking for connections.

Instead of being a Mass Audience we seem to be more individualized. The former mass media is having trouble tailoring it's programming to giant monolithic demographic blocks. Hence the rise of Niche-Casting, web casting/Podcasting. We are witnessing a revolution in niche targeted programming, coupled with the drop in price to produce/host such content and the accessibility factor, old media is being forced to rethink it's delivery system. The early adopters have shifted and now the masses are beginning to become engaged in cyber space. Be it youtube and consumer based content or Hulu.com which is forced to provide add supported "free" content. The web has democratized media in a way previously unthinkable. The rush to monotize this is well underway with newly found Goliath's like Apple's iTunes online store that is the biggest Music seller in the world.

I think that the world is essentially the same on the web as in real life. Though people may behave differently there are still authentic people as well as trolls. I don't believe the net offers a utopia but it does democratize our media in a new way. Do you think it offers a Utopian underpinning to our lives? Also do you feel that the internet has made information more accessible to people? If so how do you think it will change society?

I think it does offer a bit of a level playing field. Things like the Guttenberg press online and Google books allow for all people, no matter their country or language, to access materials from the finest libraries of our world. It will continue to hasten globalization and allow intense competition.

Click here for a look at the effects of the New Medium.

-Ryan Ramtin

Check out my blog for the Digital Media Lab Here

The sponsorship deal was reached after a year of conversation with Michelob's parent company, Anheuser-Busch (s bud), according to Brad Murphy, VP of ad sales for Revision3, which produces Diggnation. It includes a brewery tour by Diggnation's Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht that will be hosted on Michelob's site, as well as primo product placement: Rose and Albrecht -- who normally drink beer when they film the show and have said tipsy relaxation is one of the most important factors in its success -- will be drinking every type of beers in Michelob's Craft sampler pack each week for the duration of the deal.

Diggnation receives about 200,000 viewers per episode, a number that has stayed consistent in recent years, but according to Murphy, actually reflects a combination of growth and more stringent measurement. He declined to disclose the amount of the Michelob sponsorship but said it was on par with other Diggnation deals.

Revision3 limits sponsorship to a few companies per episode of its 19 different series. While it works to make relevant deals on a show-by-show basis, at times it has also sold its entire network as a package. "We don't want it to get like Nascar," Murphy said.

Anheuser-Busch is also cutting deals with its other brands and other Revision3 shows. Becks will be sponsoring Tekzilla and Internet Superstar, among others.

Disclosure: Revision3 produces The GigaOM Show (which is on hiatus).

Unfortunately, Project Lore disabled embedding of videos for some reason so I'm unable to post any here. One would think that tech-savvy people such as themselves wouldn't do such a thing...go figure.

It has been an eventful week with new work to do, but some more friends that have left the company. Though I met with a former VP today and he is doing well. He is doing some consulting while he looks for something a little more stable. I am sure he will be fine.

Weirdly enough, I have not spoken to anyone who is REALLY upset about being let go. They seem to be taking it in stride and reveling in the freedom. I can certainly understand where they are coming from. With all the day to day stress taken away, I would imagine they are taking a bit of time for it all to sink in and be happy that they don't have to be tied to their Blackberry all day and night. AND, all the long term pressures from work are gone. In a way, I envy them. Though, I would rather have the certainty of a job right now and continue to see what opportunities there are before I finally decide to stay with the company or not. Change is a great thing after all. :-)

I hope you are all happy with your jobs. If not, start looking. You should be happy in a place where you will spend a lot of your time.

Stay interested and interesting!

PS: New Diggnation this evening on Revision3.com

John

The lower section of the theatre was a little less than half filled, which was great because we got seats in the sixth row. The show was so awesome, and it was cool to see it live because it's much more personal. Kevin and Alex interacted with the crowd a lot, and often got easily distracted... meaning the actual show didn't start right away. They would start talking about something then say "Okay, we need to start the show!!" then they would just get sidetracked again.

The show was very funny, and a few of this weeks stories included "15 Pictures That Look Photoshopped, But Aren't", something about Jerry Seinfeld agreeing to star in commercials for Microsoft, and an 85 year old woman pulling a gun on a 17 year old guy, and demanding that he call 911 on himself. 

Here's a video of Kevin and Alex discussing the Seinfeld/Microsoft story... and someone suggests that Kevin be the next Microsoft spokesperson, when he replies "I wouldn't do it."

They also threw a bunch of shirts into the crowd but sadly, only two Diggnation shirts. The rest were nvision 08 shirts since the live Diggnation show was a part of the convention. I caught one, although it's a size XL so I won't be wearing it except maybe to sleep in. I also got a few stickers they were handing out.

You can see the rest of the pictures I took from the show at my Flickr account.

I can't wait to see the show this weekend and see what they kept/edited out. They shot lots of video of the crowd, I wonder how much will be in the actual show. 

Find out more about Diggnation by going to Diggnation.com, Digg.com, or Revision3.com.
If you ever get the chance to see a live episode of Diggnation definitely go and check it out. It's a lot of fun.

Kevin has been known to make a some bold statements in the past regarding Apple related updates, being a Mac user himself and having some inside sources with the company. Recently on his blog, he released some intriguing information regarding the rumored September iPod updates. Below is a video he has posted incorporated the knowledge he has gained regarding the impending iPod Nano and Touch revisions as well as a photo of the new iPod Nano he mentions.

So, the big question here is do I believe these rumors to be true? Well, this shouldn't really be a question of Kevin Rose's credibility as he has been accurate in the past. I think the better question is can I see Apple making these changes to their iPod line? My answer is yes. Apple has begun to make the move to a black and aluminum style, somewhat abandoning their white polycarbonate roots. The photo above could very easily be accurate, as it incorporates the newer style and could match similarly styled products such as the MacBook Air and aluminum iMac.

In terms of the price reduction, I've been expecting this ever since Apple dramatically cut the price of the iPhone. I'll be the first to fully agree that the iPhone's enticing new price is making customers wonder why they would ever spend $299 and $399 for 8GB and 16GB iPod Touch model when you can get each model of the iPhone at $100 less with more functionality (a phone included). Though AT&T plan prices make up for the lower price in the end, the initial purchase is what I'm referring to here. Psychologically speaking, people are looking at that first.

I'm curious as to whether or not the "small cosmetic changes" Kevin refers to in his video for the iPod Touch could mean the introduction of the white and black plastic backing to the Touch that the iPhone already sports. I think this would be a beautiful design upgrade for the iPod Touch, however, it may cause some confusion in public as to whether or not a product is an iPod Touch or an iPhone. Even when the iPhone used aluminum backing, there was a camera on the back of the iPhone and the iPod Touch had the WiFi antenna in the upper left hand corner of back of the device. I'd be content with the iPod Touch remaining with the metallic backing as that is a signature iPod look. Plus, it can be changed with the secret to making your iPod Touch look like an iPhone 3G, which I blogged about a few days ago. I would like to see at least a small change, however, as Kevin predicts. The iPod Touch design is beautiful, but it's becoming a little old.

What do you think of Kevin Rose's iPod rumors? Are they accurate or could they be a flop? What would you like to see from the iPod revisions predicted to come in September? Please share in the comments. I'm eager to hear your responses.

Props to: http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/old90/18951.html for coming up with them...

The following are strange error messages you can get Unix to generate.

They were culled during the summer of 1988 from rec.humor. As
we all know, real error messages have two parts: a message code, and a
return code. Ideally, the message code is hexadecimal, the return code
is octal, and the manual explaining the error messages uses decimal.
But Unix (tm), in keeping with its characteristic lexical confusion,
produces error messages which, although designed to make the system
appear sentient, and conversational, ultimately make the system seem as
stupid as it is. Note that the '%' prompt indicates that the command
should be issued from the C shell, and the '$' prompt indicates the
Bourne shell. Enjoy.

The following are strange error messages you can get Unix to generate.

They were culled during the summer of 1988 from rec.humor. As we all know, real error messages have two parts: a message code, and a return code. Ideally, the message code is hexadecimal, the return code is octal, and the manual explaining the error messages uses decimal. But Unix (tm), in keeping with its characteristic lexical confusion, produces error messages which, although designed to make the system appear sentient, and conversational, ultimately make the system seem as stupid as it is. Note that the '%' prompt indicates that the command should be issued from the C shell, and the '$' prompt indicates the Bourne shell. Enjoy.

% rm meese-ethics rm: meese-ethics nonexistent

% ar m God ar: God does not exist

% "How would you rate Reagan's incompetence? Unmatched ."

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa? Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change^ operation go? Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ Reagan spent, what would I have? Too many ('s.

% make love Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me bad character

% got a light? No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce? man: : Too many arguments.

% ^What is saccharine? Bad substitute.

% man woman No manual entry for woman.

% %blow %blow: No such job.

% (- (-: Command not found.

% sh $ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense no sense in pretending!

$ drink <bottle; opener bottle: cannot open opener: not found

$ mkdir matter; cat >matter matter: cannot create

Also I might add my blog to Digg soon so be looking out for that, also once again if you have Stumble Upon and you like my blog be sure to press the I Like It! tab on its toolbar THANKS!

Is this actually Kevin Rose? Looks like him.

Turns out I was actually a little late catching this, as the issue of Captain America I'm referring was actually released in January. As it turns out Ron Richards of Revision 3 also noticed this cover and went in to further detail about it.

Here is the full image by Mitch Breitweiser.

· There isn't a month that goes by where I don't read or hear a news story about a new search engine, bigger and better than the last, aiming to do wonders. Much like browsers, there's so much people expect from them, and even if they do tick every boxes, critics still pick faults, and lament about how it could, or should, be better.

Speaking of critics, Even I picked up a dirty habit early on in writing this blog by picking search engines apart, listing all their faults, and eventually, summarising by saying it was like comparing Slough to Sydney, that everything that isn't Google just isn't that good. Back in week 5 it was Ask.com, and then in week 20 it was Yahoo Search, even when I tried to go 2 days without Google, I struggled along with a few search engines with left a lot to be desired. It begs the question; who is brave enough to stand in front of Google's headlights?

That particular rabbit is called Cuil (pronounced 'cool'). It went live on the 28th of July, and has adopted a selling point of indexing roughly 120 billion web pages, more than any other search engine. Behind the Cuil team are some familiar faces to searching the web: Anna Patterson, Louis Monier and Russell Power are all ex-Google employees, and it seems they're not afraid to list them as rivals at such an early age. From their about page, they introduce themselves with a bold and brash front:

"The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft."

So quick to strike the first blow, I thought Cuil would relish the challenge to face off against some older, more established names on the block, and, as I've pitted Ask against Google, and then 15 weeks later Yahoo against Ask, it's only fair that Yahoo are first in line against the fresh faced challengers. I've already wheeled out the dusty TWiL search engine, so lets begin:

Basic Information Searching
So, the Olympics are just around the corner. What if I decided at the last minute I wanted to visit for a week or so? Unlikely as it sounds, and as unlikely as I am to get anything decent on such short notice, I'm prepared to log onto the Internet and see if I can find any hotels within a decent walking distance of the action.

The search will be done on 'Hotels in the Chaoyang District of Beijing': this particular area being home to the Workers Stadium, so I can catch the football and other sports being held there. The stadiums been standing since 1959, so I expect it to be reasonably popular, and hotels within the area should be advertised accordingly.
Newbies first, and what's noticeable straight away is the all black layout with the blue/grey logo- Minimalistic, simple, yet maybe a little too unimaginative. Once you type in what you're looking for, and click to search, it moves from a tidy, easy-on-the-eye setup to what can only be described as a grid-like results page, squeezing every possible space on the screen full of results. Take nothing away from the quality of results it returned however, as its offered me a few pages of information, prices and pictures, but I'm slightly weary about the lack of well known branded Travel Agents filling up the first page - some of the first few links look about as trustworthy as a stranger holding sweets by a school gate. Speed isn't much of an issue - I hear that the initial response from critics after day one was that everything was "dial-up slow", but this seems to have improved.
Despite it looking sleek and respectable, and day I say, 2.0ish, I still seem to prefer the Yahoo! layout. No thrills, no pretentiousness, just type and search, simple. The quality of results appears to match Cuils efforts, leaving me thinking that tourism in Beijing isn't as cornered towards a western market as you'd think. Despite this, Yahoo gets the nod just above
Cuil, as 985,000 returned results seems to overpower a meagre 166. For a company branding itself on how many pages it returns, that's not a good start. More on that later though.

Advanced Picture Searching

This is the test where I take a well-established album from an established artist, and test how well the search engines brings back the artwork. Radioheads ‘OK Computer’ and Mogwai's 'Fear Satan' were the first tested, as they were both celebrating their 10th birthdays at the time, so instead lets go 10 years earlier than that and pick an album soon to be 20 years old - Metallica's '...And Justice for All'. Tricky one this, because its the last four words of the United States Pledge of Allegiance,  and also a classic film starring Al Pacino.
First up is Yahoo, who much like Google's search page, have a tab specifically for images, and the album artwork arrives 2nd on the list - shame there are a lot of other random images Yahoo deemed worthy enough to be returned as well, give or take a few referencing the film, its not a bad effort considering.
Cuil on the other hand, disappoint. As far as I can see, there's no tab, or area, or page for images. Cuils results just seem to be based on text results. The 'explore' box on the right hand side gives the first mention of Metallica, but simply confuses the search by duplicating the text I'm already searching on, whereas all the other pages returned mention things from Gay rights to pro-abortion websites. Not one mention of the oath, the film or the album, let alone the artwork. Poor.

News Articles
Currently fronting the BBC Sport news page is cricket related: Kevin Pietersen has become the new England captain, taking over from Michael Vaughan. Time to find out which one of the search engines can bring me a worthy page giving me this headline first.
Cuil, much like with its images, doesn't have a news search tab, or page. Typing "Kevin Pietersen" "England captain" into its text bar returned a decent number of results, none of which were helpful, relevant, or in fact, interesting.
It's a different story from Yahoo, whose results for exactly the same string of text returned a much better set of results, but first and foremost asked me if I'd prefer to go to the 'news' section to find out more - it's clever enough to realise how many news stories have appeared over the last 12 hours on this, and has won my vote on this round, when really, Cuil didn't really put up much of a fight.

The Lump Popularity Test
Time for a little bit of ego rubbing, as I see if either search engine has this site well listed under the searches "thelump" and "this week in lumps".
Last time I attempted this test with Yahoo, it faired well, and this time both results better than before. Either search brings back a decent amount of pages which one way or another will guide the user to this blog directly. The search on 'thelump' even returned my feed link, and with 2 clicks could find itself on your RSS feed. The latter search did return one or two obscure websites unrelated to either myself or the blog, but are easily avoided if you know what you're looking for in the first place.
A shame then, that Cuil once again has fallen flat on its face; searching 'thelump' brings back one too many irrelevant sites for my liking, whereas 'this week in lumps' is even worse- only one link that could constitute a direct link, and even that was vague and obscure.

I don't really think a summary is needed, but needs must when the devil drives. Cuil is really weak, and that's putting it nicely. Yes, it does have its good features- it never stores personally identifiable information or search histories, but it doesn't need to, since nobody will be using it. It's already stumbled to a halt on this weeks Diggnation, as Kevin and Alex point out, much like I've done here, just how weak the returned results are. Which begs the question; why would a company saying that it can "return 3x more pages than Google" rely on that as a marketing pitch when they know full well just how poor the results are? Surely someone in the company would have noticed during testing? In fact, when they pitched this idea to potential stakeholders, did not one of them point out that, yes, Google returns a hefty amount of pages, but what's great about this is not quantity, but quality. A quick look at the facts show why people prefer this: Google performed 82% of searches in the UK last month according to Nielsen Online, compared with 5% for Yahoo!, 4% for Microsoft's Windows Live Search, and 3% for Ask.com. From this test, and previous ones I've done, it goes to show that anything that starts parading around declaring itself a "Google killer" is doomed from the start.

Time.com weren't impressed either, saying:

"Cuil has a distinctive, if old-fashioned, approach to indexing websites. Instead of ranking them based on popularity, as Google does, it focuses on the content of each page. That may make sense in theory — after all, the most popular restaurants, for example, rarely serve the best food — but it is precisely the model that Google broke away from in order to give users more relevant results."

In what started off as a review about Cuil, it soon turned into an entry about how well Yahoo search has improved since I last used it. Maybe, though, that's not the case at all, maybe Cuil was so bad it's done a good job of making a search engine I once described as "a big pain in the rear" look competent. I may suggest they use that as their marketing slogan until they pull themselves together.

~

· No real introduction needed for this next topic, and definitely a lump that will be repeated again in the future, as I'm adding new stuff every week almost. Here are 6 fantastic RSS feeds which I enjoy reading in my Google Reader when I get the chance. A list of great websites, hilarious comics, and great sources of information and nonsense, starting with:

The Art of Manliness - "a blog dedicated to uncovering the lost art of being a man." Including topics like How to correctly fold a pocket square, and how to give the best best mans speech. Perfect blog for those gentlemen who spend anything over an hour getting ready for a night out.

Savage Chickens - A daily cartoon starring chickens drawn onto a post-it note. Enough said.

Overheard... - The Overheard blog series are very popular, and the one that started it all off- Overheard in New York has given birth to many spin-offs, including ...at the Beach, in the Office, and ...Everywhere. It's so popular because it does exactly what it says on the tin - people who have overheard random, bemusing conversations send them in for everyone else to laugh at, although they tend to be conversations which aren't too dissimilar from our own, especially those you'd rather other people hadn't heard anyway.

Totally Looks Like - Everyone and their mum has heard about Lolcats, and the blog version icanhascheezburger is stupidly popular, however, the team behind icanhas... have a few other blogs which luckily aren't as talked about, one of them being Totally Looks Like, a simply idea done fantastically well- Take celebrities, and find their look-a-likes, and post them for the world to see. You'd expect a few awful ones, but I've been subscribed for a fortnight now, and they're very well done indeed.

Garfield Minus Garfield - 2008's biggest internet hit, and surprisingly a hit from Ireland - Garfield minus Garfield is an Internet comic, where each strip consists of an episode from the comic strip Garfield, from which all characters except Garfield's owner, Jon Arbuckle, have been removed through image editing. What remains is a fascinating yet bleak look into the 'Jon' character, where he comes across as a depressed, lonely, cold, psycotic man, who talks to himself and spends a lot of the time complaining about how bad his life is. Inspired.

Worst Email Ever - Similar to Overheard..., but in email form. Been quiet for a few months, hopefully nothing terminal has occured. Includes some emails from those who should have thought about what they were typing before actually sending it. Even a spelling and grammar check wouldn't hurt now and then.

Another 6 will appear sometime in the next month or so.

~

· A quick, final lump for you all, regarding Net Neutrality. For those of you who may not know what that is, I'll use savetheinternet.com to assist you:

"When we log onto the Internet, we take a lot for granted. We assume we'll be able to access any Web site we want, whenever we want, at the fastest speed, whether it's a corporate or mom-and-pop site. We assume that we can use any service we like -- watching online video, listening to podcasts, sending instant messages -- anytime we choose.

What makes all these assumptions possible is Network Neutrality."

An interesting read if you have the time, and although the "historic" Comcast decision only affects the States, this kind of deal has its shockwaves that will put off any European company from trying the same thing. To avoid a tiered structure from being put in place, I urge everyone to watch this video for a better understanding, and support Net Neutrality before it's too late.

~~~

That was the week in lumps, a week in which: O2 may soon lose the exclusive iPhone contract, although since it burns legs, they may not mind, the oldest joke in the world is about farting, Scrabulous died, but was soon reborn as Wordscraper, whilst the new Scrabble facebook app was on the receiving end of some hacking, here's ten things you might be interested in reading about regarding t'internet, and silence please, for the funniest picture I have ever seen, ever.

and without linking to a blog full of lies, lets clear this up - Johnny Depp will not be playing the Riddler in the next Batman film, nor will Philip Seymour Hoffman play the Penguin, the same as Gloria Hunniford wont be playing the Black mask, nor will Frank Carson be cast as Catwoman. Rediculous lies, and proof that some blogs exist just to get a few extra hits a month to try and boost adsense income. You wont find that kind of nonsense here.

ttfn
x

But they have polished there web show and are quite entertaining in a geeky way. It is still 2 guys on a couch a la Wayne's World with laptops drinking beverages and cracking jokes. Like a Kramer it is hard to look away. If you don't have time to surf around the net and check out the less standard techy news, this show is good "cheat sheet" to the web-happenings.

In there last podcast they mentioned this interesting new rival to Google.

Former Google employees started this new search engine. I sorta like the simplicity it is "Mac-Like" but I think I am so use to Google that there column view is odd, but it might grow on me eventually.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Digg.com is a website created by entrepreneur Kevin Rose (who also founded Pownce and Revision3, which hosts popular shows like Diggnation, Tekzilla, etc.). It's a news website where users vote (or "Digg") on user submitted news stories, interesting articles, videos, and photos to decide which stories make it to the front page. Digg's raised $11.3 million in venture capital. It's current CEO is Jay Adelson.

NOTE: I'm on Digg, if you guys want to see what I'm doing: http://digg.com/users/alex66nintendo

Google.com is the search engine everybody knows and loves. In addition to search, Google has a growing online ad business, and a growing list of multiple tools and services (Gmail, Google News, YouTube, Google Maps, etc.). It's current CEO is Eric Schmidt.