Plime: a truly user controlled social media experience
September 30, 2007
Plime is a pliable tree of interesting links, cultivated and pruned by everyone. It relies on the power of online community participation to control it’s structure and editorial content. It’s also a great place to meet others with similar interests. That is how Plime describes describes itself.
After reading that you might think that Plime is just another social bookmarking site such as Digg, Propeller or Reddit. You might also think that you can just sign up and start submitting stories and voting on stories. If you took that path you would be in for a very large shock.
Plime takes the social side of it’s site very seriously. So seriously in fact that if a member turns out to be a spammer (as determined by the other members) they will quickly find themselves unable to post and comment on site. On Plime the power of moderation is clearly in the hands of the members.
Unlike the sites that most social media users are used to Plime works in a wiki format. On the left side you will see a collapsable list of categories. Selecting these categories works much as you will expect. Once inside a category you will find three tabs; popular, all links and deleted.
- Popular - This is the default category view. Only stories that have gained enough support to become popular show up here.
- All links - This tab contains all of the links in the category that have been promoted to popular status as well as those that are still working their way up. The only links that do not show up are the deleted ones.
- Deleted - This tab contains all of the stories that have been deemed unworthy by the membership and contains the following warning: This page contains posts the community has voted down. There may be links to objectionable and stupid material here. Posts can be restored through voting the articles back up.
Sandbox
Because Plime is a true community driven site they had to devise a method to keep the spammers and other undesirables out of their system. To do this they created the new user sandbox area.
The Plime Sandbox is a place where new members can post links and try out the system. Old members will vote on good content to help promote them up to level 2, so they can participate fully on Plime.com.
In order to post content onto the main Plime site you have to acquire a bit of Karma, enough to make you reach level 2. You gain this karma by having existing members vote up your submissions.
Karma
Each member on Plime has a certain amount of power, or karma. When people vote up (or down) your submissions and comments you will gain (or lose) a certain amount of power in return. A user with a high karma has much more weight in determining what (and who) gains (or loses) popularity on site. If someone with a level of 20 votes up your submission you will find yourself 20 points closer to your next level. Yes, the reverse also holds true.
User level = (Karma/10)^(1/3)
Some people might look at this system and think that it is a ceiling that they can never pass above but this is not true. If you become an active member of the Plime community other members will vote up your good stuff and vote down your bad stuff. After a while you will begin to learn what the community likes and dislikes. That is not to say that you must become a conformist to succeed it because I have seen many users vote up a comment they disagreed with because it was well written and the writer raised a fair point.
The Look
Plime is very unique in that it allows you to change the colors used when logged in. Unlike other social media sites that force you to use their color scheme you can choose to view Plime in hot pink or any other color combination.
Moderation
Because Plime is member driven and member moderated it is good to know that their are certain rules in place to keep the site from becoming a total free-for-all.
When it comes to moderating there are a few simple rules as to who can moderate what:
- Level required for moderation
- Edit posts (must be a higher level than the persons post you are editing)
- Create/edit categories/sub-categories (5)
- Edit Category color schemes (5)
- Change User access levels (25)
Anyone of a higher level than that of the submitter is allowed to edit their submission. You can also edit your own submission. What is most interesting here is that ALL edits stay on site and are visible to everyone. Even if someone edits your link your original link will be there and everyone will know who changed the link and why. Not only that but all users can up or down vote the edit!
Even though a high level user can cause some havoc on site they will quickly be clubbed down by even higher level users if they feel the edits should not be made in the first place.
Site Mail
Plime has a built-in site mail feature that allows you to message other members.
Forums
As if the comment system were not enough Plime even has a full fledged forum system for discussing items that might not fit as a news article. These forums are broken down by categories and can be searched.
Just like the main areas of the site forum comments can be voted up and down.
Submissions
If the users are the heart and soul of a social media site than the content is the physical body. On Plime all users are encouraged to submit content that they think the other members will find interesting. Becuase of the sandbox feature mentioned before it is relatively rare for spam to make it onto Plime. If spam does make it the members will vote it down and the submitter will (possibly) lose a level.
Sometimes a dupe gets through and the members are usually far more forgiving in this regard. I have seen members down vote the dupe but up vote the members comment in the same story to offset the hit. in this case members are not seeking to punish the member too harshly but they do want the dupe removed.
When submitting content you need to have a link, title and synopsis ready. Submissions go into a specific category and can be given tags. What makes Plime better than so many other social media sites is that you also get to attach a small thumbnail picture to your post.
This image can either come from the Plime gallery or you can upload your own.
Conclusion
Plime is an excellent social media site that has not gotten a lot of attention in the past. Because they are so heavily driven by the membership (more than any other social media site I know) they have been seen by some as a bit of an acquired taste.
If you care about social media and want to become a part of a close-knit online social news community than you should take a look at Plime. If you just want to spam social media in an attempt to get hits on your personal blog site than you should not visit Plime.
- Good
- Clean wiki-style interface
- Collapsable category listing on the left side
- Up voting is transparent
- All submissions can have an image associated with them
- You can customize your color scheme
- No advertising
- Bad
- Incomplete FAQ on site
- Same content you will find on Netscape/Reddit/Digg
- Will not appeal to users who like to submit their own content… wait, that’s a good thing!
Nintendo, it’s not just for gamerz
September 28, 2007
On Friday, Sept. 28, 2007 Nintendo visited The Carter Burden Center for the Aging in New York to show off video games that appeal to adults.
What’s that, you’ve never seen your grandmother play video games? Ever wonder why that might be?
Even though the Nintendo Wii is no where near as powerful as the Xbox360 or the PS3 it has a special kind of power that neither of those two consoles can compete with; the power of fun.
There, I said it. The reason Nintendo is dominating the video game world right now is because they took the bold step of creating games for non-gamerz. What many in the video game industry considered a very risky move with no chance of success, Nintendo managed to pull off. Yes, Nintendo managed to build and sell game systems to non-gamerz.
I have heard some people say that the Wii is riding solely on the popularity of Wii Sports and you know what? Does it really matter? The gamerz of the world will buy a Wii no matter what (if they can find one) but how many grandparents are going to purchase an Xbox360 or a PS3?
You’ll have to excuse me now. I’m headed down to the geriatric ward at the nursing home. I have a date to go do some bowling with some venerable old folks who can’t lift a bowling ball but sure can swing a Wii-Remote!
Adding a referer specific redirect to your .htaccess file
September 28, 2007
Have you ever had one of those days when you receive so much traffic from a particular site that you need to redirect that traffic to a cached copy of your content? If you can gain access to your .htaccess file than you can implement this very quick bit of code
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (example.com) [NC]
RewriteRule myarticle.html http://www.cacheserver.com/myarticle.html [R,L,NC]
</IfModule>
The above short code snippet will allow you to send all traffic that comes from example.com looking for myarticle.html to the alternate location of cacheserver.com/myarticle.html. This little bit of code can come in very handy when a particular social media site is sending a ton of traffic to your MySQL/PHP site causing it to crash.
You do not even need to send it to another server. If you simply create a static page on your existing server (I like to use a cache directory) you can send the traffic there. In all honesty it is far better to serve the cached copy from your own server than to send it elsewhere.
Is Social Media being used to spread misinformation?
September 28, 2007
On September 26th 2007 Rush Limbaugh had a conversation with a caller about “phony” soldiers. This call was referencing an earlier discussion about a specific “phony” soldier who was found to have forged his military records. This soldier claimed to be an Army Ranger who had served in Iraq and witnessed atrocities.
CALLER 2: No, it’s not, and what’s really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.
LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they’re willing to sacrifice for their country.
The phony soldier is none other than Jesse Macbeth, a darling of the anti-war movement.
Looking on Wikipedia (take it with a grain of salt) I found an interesting entry on the life and times of this particular phony soldier: Jesse Macbeth.
Jesse Adam Macbeth (b. Jesse Adam Al-Zaid,[1] in 1984) falsely claimed to be an Army Ranger and veteran of the Iraq War. He lied in alternative media interviews that he and his unit routinely committed war crimes in Iraq.[2][3] Macbeth began to attract significant attention after the release of a video containing his allegations;[4] transcripts of the video were made in English and Arabic.[5] According to the U.S. Army, there is no record of Macbeth being a Ranger,[6][7] or serving in a combat unit: he was discharged from the service after having been declared unfit or unsuitable for the Army, or both,[8] before he could complete basic training.[9]
Many anti-war websites immediately jumped on what Rush said and published his words out of context, making it appear that Rush was calling all soldiers who oppose the war phony soldiers. The reality is that Rush was only talking about one specific person who is indeed a phony soldier.
Media Matters published a story on this and it was quickly picked up and submitted to social media sites Digg and Propeller.
After reading some of the comments on both of these sites it has become apparent to me that many of the members of these sites (that leave comments) are letting themselves be swayed by careful editing and propaganda. There were some comments in Rush’s defense but most were quick to label Rush as a racist or propaganda man for the Bush administration.
I’ve been waiting for this gutless windbag to just say it in plain english…neocons don’t love the military and dont love America.I hope this video reaches the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan…maybe Rush wants to start a civil war within the military to rid itself of the “phony soldiers”.
“Phony soldiers”? Limbaugh go screw yourself. Those who only do the talking and not fighting are more likely the ones to be “phony soldiers”. Limbaugh I don’t see you drag your ***** ass out there. I bet you too the soldiers know a lot more than you do, asshole. It’s these stupid comments that just drives me crazy
I also saw one great comment on Digg from a user who not only gets it but tried to educate the diggers about the propaganda taking place:
I know it’s a waste of time to try and speak the inconvenient truths to the rabidly partisan and disinterested in contrary reality Diggers, but perhaps a few still capable of independent thought will take a moment to see how Media Matters is lying to them and how easy the Truth is to find if you’re willing to take two minutes to look for it.
Note that the MM piece cobbles together their claims by quoting a few of Limbaugh’s words at a time and gluing them together with THEIR interpolating phrases to give the appearance he is smearing the troops. At the bottom of the article, they quote a huge chunk of Limbaugh’s broadcast, BUT they don’t provide the link to the page where people could go and read THE WHOLE THING WHICH HAS SIX MORE PARAGRAPHS of exchanges, including these two:
=================
Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth. Now, he was a “corporal.” I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse Macbeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn’t his Purple Heart; it wasn’t his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse Macbeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth describes the horrors this way: “We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque.”
Now, recently, Jesse Macbeth, poster boy for the anti-war left, had his day in court. And you know what? He was sentenced to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and his Army discharge record. He was in the Army. Jesse Macbeth was in the Army, folks, briefly. Forty-four days before he washed out of boot camp. Jesse Macbeth isn’t an Army Ranger, never was. He isn’t a corporal, never was. He never won the Purple Heart, and he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. You probably haven’t even heard about this. And, if you have, you haven’t heard much about it. This doesn’t fit the narrative and the template in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party as to who is a genuine war hero. Don’t look for any retractions, by the way. Not from the anti-war left, the anti-military Drive-By Media, or the Arabic websites that spread Jesse Macbeth’s lies about our troops, because the truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose. They have to lie about such atrocities because they can’t find any that fit the template of the way they see the US military. In other words, for the American anti-war left, the greatest inconvenience they face is the truth.
===================
As you can NOW see, Limbaugh was referring to a genuinely fake soldier and provides the links to the stories backing his point. There have been several of these fake soldiers getting fawning coverage in the Treason Media, only to have to be disowned, but to Media Matters (But Truth Doesn’t), Limbaugh is just making stuff up and the rabid unhinged herds of Diggers who vomit canned anti-war, anti-Fox News, anti-Rush, anti-O’Reilly, anti-anything that’s not Ron Paul, Can’tMoveOn.Argh talking points or propaganda from the usual handful of George Soros-funded sites don’t care because facts don’t matter to them, just Digging their ignorant prejudices.
What’s most pitiful is that Diggers are constantly posting hyperbolic stories that claim to prove that there is a cover-up of the Truth, but their “proof” of the cover-ups is almost always based on lies and fantasies that are easily debunked by the REAL TRUTH. Ever notice how smart these useful idiots are? I mean, they can’t STFU for a moment about how on top of things they are when sensible, sane and actually-interested-in-Truth folks know they’re hopelessly ignorant and duped.
As of this posting the anti-Rush comments have far more Diggs than the ones that are trying to reveal the truth.
The heart of this story is the fact that Media Matters decided to take Rush’s words out of context and make it appear as if he were disparaging real soldiers when he was in fact exposing the anti-war movement’s use of phony soldiers to further their cause. Much like John Kerry’s famous speech before the US Senate on atrocities he claimed to have seen but did not, the anti-war movement is trying very hard to show a side of the war that is not real and has no qualms about using liars and “phony” soldiers to do so.
They are looking back at their victory during the days of the Vietnam War and they are trying to duplicate it. The problem they have is that the truth is out there and is exposing them for what they really are. Because they can not fight the facts they are doing everything they can to malign the truth speakers. Because they know a large number of impressionable youths use social media sites they are using these sites to spread their propaganda.
Will it work? So far it is working. Even scarier is that when some Democrats on Capital Hill were asked about Rush calling (all) anti-war soldiers “phony soldiers” they did not even question the validity of the statement but instead pounced on the man taking the claim as fact:
It minimizes the sacrifice our troops in Iraq and their families are making and has no place in the public discourse. Rush Limbaugh owes our military and their families an apology for his hurtful comments that minimize their service to our country.
- Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democrats’ campaigns for Congress
Someone should tell chicken-hawk Rush Limbaugh that the only phonies are those who choose not to serve and then criticize those who do. I served proudly, so did two of my fellow paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne who spoke out and died just weeks ago. Generations of American veterans have worn the uniform with pride and we know it is no contradiction to serve your country and still disagree with the Bush-civilian leadership that mismanaged this war.
- Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA)
See, it is not just the social media users who are being fooled here. Elected members of the US government are also believing what the anti-war movement is telling them without a hint of fact checking.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
If you use social media (or are a member of Congress) it is imperative that you not fall for the propaganda put forth online and pushed on social media sites. Instead you should do your own fact checking and think for yourself. Just think, if Dan Rather had done some fact checking rather than believe the story he was handed he would still have a job and not be suing his former bosses for millions of dollars.
Editor’s note: The original publication of this article had an improperly placed ending blockquote tag that gave the appearance of the caller naming Jesse Macbeth directly. We apologize for the error and it has been fixed
The Digg Facelift - 1 week later
September 27, 2007
Back on September 19, 2007 the Digg blog posted an article by Kevin Rose in which he told the Digg community that some changes were coming. These changes were going to be in the area of Digg profiles.
Later that same evening Digg went down for maintenance and when the site came back up more than just profiles were updated. So much more that many in the land of Digg cried out in anger and frustration.
Why were so many people upset over the changes at Digg? Let’s take moment to read what was posted on the Digg blog prior to the upgrade:
We’ve completely revamped our profiles from the ground up - making it easy for you to share your favorite stories and discover new interesting content by seeing what your friends are digging. It’s also even easier to find and add friends on Digg.
All of these will make it a lot easier to discover great content and share it with others. As part of this release, we have updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which we encourage you to also check out later tonight when the new features go live.
They did indeed upgrade the profile section. As for making it easier to game share your favorite stories, well let’s just say that it is partially true.
Easier to find and add friends? Certainly! Digg finally removed the long-loathed “four at a time” rule on adding friends. Before the upgrade you could only add friends in groups of four two times an hour. This made it incredibly hard to add friends. With the new system in place you can add friends all you want, there is no restriction in place in regards to adding friends.
They also updated their TOS (Terms of Service) and some diggers cried out in alarm over that.
At the very end Kevin Rose wrote briefly about future things:
- Digg Images: A dedicated images section (with thumbnails). Still on track to launch in late October.
- Revamped Comments: No more ajax loads, new clean and lightweight design (similar to the old comment system).
- Digg Alerts: Alerts will give you the ability to create customized email alerts - when a story becomes popular, summaries of popular stories on specific topics, and when your friends recommend stories.
- Story Suggest: Dozens of servers crunch the math to provide you with real-time recommendations (stories and friends) based on what you’ve dugg in the past.
Of the coming attractions listed above Digg Images has been on the most requested list for as long as I have been a member of Digg. A new comment system would be nice, perhaps one that allowed me not to show comments at all to speed up load times? Digg Alerts and Story Suggest sound to be very similar. Digg Alerts is already partially in place in that you can have Digg email you when a variety of things happen (you get a shout, someone adds you as a friend, your submission becomes popular).
After these changes went into effect a number of “Top Diggers” and others began to opine on what they thought of the changes:
- Opinions on the changes at Digg
- Why the new Digg sucks - Techipedia
- Digg Launches Features that Netsape had in Spring 2007 (who is the clone?) - Propeller Blades
- The new Digg just may work - The Home Of ob81
- Digg Goes Deeper with Social Networking - Bussiness Week
Putting the Social back in social news
A common thread emerging is that Digg is turning into Facebook or MySpace (Of the two I would vote for MySpace, just read the Digg comments sometime). Some see this as good and some see it as bad. I see it as being part of the original vision of Digg.
Some people seem to forget that Digg started out as a Social Bookmarking site with a singular focus on tech and things that tech people like. Back in those days the comments were mostly good and you could get into a spirited debate with someone and shake hands afterwards. A lot of things changed when they added new categories.
Because of Digg’s roots in the social side of things I see Digg’s move towards becoming more of a social site as a good thing. Once the things promised come to pass we will all look back at this bumpy period and laugh. That’s all this is right now, a bumpy patch in the road.
What have you done with my friends?
One of the big changes, that annoys the most heavy users of Digg, has to be the reworking of the friend’s activity areas of the site. In the past you could go to a page that would list all of the recent activities of your friends. You could see what stories they submitted, dugg and commented on. This was great and extremely useful but it also lead to the gaming of Digg. All you had to do was look at all the submissions of your friends and digg all of their stories in a matter of minutes. Some think the changes in the system were implemented to combat this while some others think it is just an attempt on Digg’s part to inflate their page view metric.
The new system still shows you a list of all of your friend’s activities broken down in the same formats as before but now Digg has removed the ability to digg a story from that grouped view. Not only that but they have also removed the URL information and story synopsis from the friends area. This forces you to “click through” to each story’s own Digg page in order to find out the synopsis and URL of the story. Only once you click through to the story page can you digg the article. This is why some people think this is an attempt to inflate Digg’s page view metric as it forces Digg’s most active users to view more pages than they ever had to do before.
Old way: Digg up to ten stories from a single page.
New way: View up to two pages to digg a single story.
I have to admit this change also makes blind digging more difficult to do but there are ways around it. What makes one wonder if this change is being targeted at the most active users is the fact that the general “upcoming” news pages still show all of the information that the friend’s activity page used to show. It is not that hard to use the upcoming pages to do the same sort of blind digging due to the fact that friend stories will have the green sash on the Digg button. The other option is to bookmark a friend’s submission RSS feed and have it open up all entries in their own tab. This is a very slow process and even on my machine with 2GB of RAM Firefox slows down to a crawl for three minutes while loading all those tabs. After loading you will have every story in their feed open on your browser.
Can you hear me now?
Another much talked about addition to Digg is the site-wide IM or message system. This has caused some controversy because one of the founders of Pownce complained when Digg used her list of genders on the new Digg profile page. Why do I bring up Pownce? I bring it up for the same reason TechCrunch brought it up. Both Digg and Pownce are Kevin Rose projects and it looks like Digg is sucking the soul out of Pownce and grafting it into Digg.
This messaging system is referred to as Shouts and you shout messages back and forth across Digg. For those worried about users being spammed their is an option in your user profile to turn off shouts or at least limit them to people you are friends with.
Psst. Hey buddy can you spare a digg?
Along with shouting comes sharing. Sharing is a form of shout where you attach a Digg story and beg ask for a digg. Some people thought this might be abused by folks with a lot of friends but it can’t be abused because it does not work if you have friends!
Granted I have about 200 friends on Digg and I am in the Top 200 of diggers (stories promoted list) but how many friends is too many friends? I have received some of these friend shouts and promptly deleted them and removed the friending if the shared article was junk.
As an aside. For those who worry about being profiled as a spammer or getting on an auto-bury list I’d like to remind you of something. Kevin Rose has long been talking of the day when Digg’s association engine is complete and Digg will be able to suggest stories that Digg thinks you might like based on your previous digging history. Don’t be surprised if Digg suggest spammy articles to you if you have been digging spam all along! It’s not like you have not been warned, ya’ know?
I think I have gone on long enough. It’s time for me to give you the short and sweet of things.
- Good
- Friend activity page changes will curtail gaming
- Shouts are long overdue and can be useful in moderation
- Profile changes emphasize the Social side of Digg
- No more rule of four on adding friends
- Bad
- Removal of synopsis and URL from friend’s activity page is a pain
- Many default privacy settings are set to public rather than not private
- Pictures section STILL not here
Brain Age goes on tour, visits unlikely places
September 27, 2007
Nintendo’s popular Brain Age game is popping up in some very unlikely places. Hair salons, RV shows and shopping malls may not be places where you would expect to find gamers kicking back with a DS in hand. You might instead expect to find the non-gamers of the world such as moms and grandparents in these places. Well the times they are a changing and Nintendo’s new Brain Age™ 2: More Training in Minutes a Day game for the DS™ is proving the point.
“Many different people are sampling and playing Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day, including some people you might not expect to be trying video games,” says George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. “The title draws people in with its engaging game play, so this summer we’re giving all kinds of people a chance to energize and sharpen their brains while demonstrating that everyone’s a gamer.”
Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day contains a collection of 15 fun, challenging exercises to get users’ brains pumping. Tasks in memory, math, reading and even music challenge users to complete them as quickly – and as accurately – as possible. Combined, global sales of Brain Age™: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day and Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day already have topped 14 million and still are increasing. Between now and January, Nintendo will showcase Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day in a variety of expected – and some unexpected – locations:
- A 50-City Mall Experience: Between now and Jan. 8, Brain Age 2 will be part of a 50-city nationwide mall game-play experience. Visitors can train their brains and check out all the latest Nintendo games. To find a location near you, visit the Nintendo Mall Tour website.
- Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk Events: As part of this nationwide event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer’s care, support and research, Nintendo is sponsoring booths at Memory Walk events in Chicago, Austin, New York, Washington and Los Angeles. Participants and visitors can sample Brain Age 2 and learn how to keep their minds active.
- A Hair Salon (yes, a hair salon): In honor of National Self-Improvement Month, Nintendo has sent Nintendo DS systems and copies of Brain Age 2 to the new Nelson J Salon in Beverly Hills, Calif. During September, visitors to the salon will have the chance to freshen up the insides of their heads while stylists coif their tresses.
- Nintendo Street Team Appearances: Members of the Nintendo Street Team will fan out across the country to show off Brain Age 2 at a variety of major landmarks and expanded-audience events like home shows and fitness expos, including the Atlanta Home Show (Sept. 28-30) and the Long Island Fall Home Show (Sept. 28-30).
Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day is rated E for Everyone. For more information about Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day, visit BrainAge dot com.
You have to admit that it seems kind of funny to see a bunch of older folks sitting around playing games on a DS. Most gamers are assumed to be kids and young males in college. All that is changing. If Nintendo has proved one thing it is that gamers come in all shapes, sizes and ages. Unlike the “traditional” view of making your games for the hardcore gamer Nintendo has broken out of the box and instead follows the, “if you make it they will come” mantra.
Nintendo stock is doing super well right now and the Wii and DS are outselling all the other consoles on the market. Think about that for a minute. The DS, which has been out for several years, is still a top seller in the video game market! Add in the Wii that is still sold out in most sotres and it is clear that Nintendo knows what it is doing.
Metroid Prime 3 modded Wii on eBay
September 26, 2007
The professional modders over at Morpheon Mods have done it again. This time they have created the ultimate fusion of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and the Wii. They have even modded a Wii-Remote and Nunchuk to enhance your experience.
Not only is this case mod amazing but the guys at Morpheon Mods are also 15% of the sale price to the non profit organization Child’s Play. Child’s Play enables the gamer community to make a positive difference in the lives of children and young adults, primarily through donations of toys and games to childrens’ hospitals around the world as well as funding pediatric health research.
So not only can you get an amazing custom Wii for yourself but you will also be helping out a good cause.
The Wii stand has a concealed battery changer for recharging after a long day of Metroid! Two rechargeable AA’s are included. The opposite side holsters the Wii Remote to carry on the overall look of Samus’s Varia suit.
From the auction:
This has the most elaborate electrical mods of any I have done so far. Specific yellow-green LEDs were installed in the faceplate and base to closely match the color and look of her illuminated visor and shoulder lights. Each LED was sanded, shaped and placed to carefully maintain a dramatic yet subtle look. The Metroid logo is backlit by an array of six ice white LEDs embedded in a sanded acrylic disk. This disperses the light evenly to give the entire logo a halo of emanating white light.. The Wii Remote was modified with a custom internal controller board and a plasma orange LED. This controller board slowly fades the LED in and out much like the lighted effects on her canon. Finally, the four player indicator lights at the bottom of the Wii Remote were also changed from blue to green. In total 15 LED’s were used and, as always, since these are “always-on” LED’s the voltage was calibrated so as not to be either overbearing
or too dim.
You can check out the Metroid Prime 3 modded Wii auction on eBay.
New WordPress Upgrade (2.3) Does not play nice with Google Sitemaps
September 24, 2007
One of the most popular blogging platforms on the Internet has to be WordPress. This easy to use (and free) software makes it very easy for the masses to create their own blog and post their thoughts all over the Internet.
Though it may not look like it even TechVat dot com runs on WordPress.
WordPress dot org just released a new version of WordPress with many excellent new features. Several of these features are truly great and you can see them highlighted below.
1.Native tagging support allows you to use tags in addition to categories on your posts, if you so choose. We’ve included importers for the Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins so if you’ve already been using a tagging plugin you can bring your data into the new system. The tagging system is also wicked-fast, so your host won’t mind.
2. Our new update notification lets you know when there is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an update available. It works by sending your blog URL, plugins, and version information to our new api.wordpress.org service which then compares it to the plugin database and tells you whats the latest and greatest you can use.
3. We’ve cleaned up URLs a bunch in a feature we call canonical URLs which does things like enforce your no-www preference, redirect posts with changed slugs so a link never goes bad, redirect URLs that get cut off in emails on similar to the correct post, and much more. This helps your users, and it also helps your search engine optimization, as search engines like for each page to be available in one canonical location. More info here.
4. Our new pending review feature will be great for multi-author blogs. It allows authors to submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before they would just have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.
5. There is new advanced WYSIWYG functionality (we call it the kitchen sink button) that allows you to access some features of TinyMCE that were previously hidden.
These are all great features but I have encountered a problem.
I use the Google Sitemap generator plugin to keep my sitemap up to date. This plugin no longer works and instead throws a database error.
This is the error I get here:
WordPress database error: [Table 'tv_news.wp_post2cat' doesn't exist]
SELECT cat_ID AS ID, MAX(post_modified) AS last_mod FROM `wp_posts` p LEFT JOIN `wp_post2cat` pc ON p.ID = pc.post_id LEFT JOIN `wp_categories` c ON pc.category_id = c.cat_ID WHERE post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY cat_ID
I get a similar error message on all of my blogs that run WordPress and the Google Sitemap plugin.
If you use the google Sitemap plugin I suggest you wait before upgrading your WordPress installation.
Update
The fine folks who created the original Google Sitemaps plugin for WordPress have released a new version that works with wordPress version 2.3. The plugin has been renamed to Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for wordPress. After installing this new version of the plugin the sitemap was created without errors.
Truemors - Rumors, News, Gossip and more
September 24, 2007
Recently Guy Kawasaki revealed a new idea in social news, Truemors. A site designed to share rumors, news and gossip.
Some on the web scoffed at this idea while others just scratched their heads. The idea of giving away gossip and rumors for free does not sound like the web 2.0 way to me. What possible reason could someone have for breaking a story on Truemors as oppossed to their own site? Breaking news on your own site allows you to profit off of that rumor. What does Truemors give you?
Interestingly enough, Truemors does give you something. It gives you exposure and link juice.
What? How does this work?
- It’s realy quite simple as there are multiple ways to get your gossip/rumor/news on Truemors:
- Call 1-650-329-2020 and leave a voicemail. SpinVox will translate your voicemail to text and send it to our server. Incidentally, you can speak in English, German, Spanish, and French. Your message, however, will remain in the language you spoke.
- Text “2020 <whatever you want to post>” to 55022.
- Enter your message in this online form
- Send an email to post@truemors.com. FYI, this is a SpamArrest-protected email address, so you’ll have to confirm your address.
Now that we know how easy it is to post on Truemors can you give me a reason why I would use the service?
As even the worst of spammers know, getting people to come to your site is the first hurdle. In fact, spammers attacked Truemors in full force as soon as it went live! A good amount of moderating set everything in order and the spam is now removed in a timely manner.
Truemors also follows in the steps of Twitter in that the posts are not very long. The posts are just long enough to post a rumor and a link.
Think about that. A rumor and a link.
Do you see where I am going with this? Look at all of the big social news sites as they are right now. There’s nothing more than a link, a headline, a summary and a discussion. Well, Truemors took the headline, link and summary and merged them all together. Discussion is also there but I have not yet seen any comments left.
How does this help you? If all of the good things a blogger needs for social bookmarking are there and no one uses the comments section (I hear so many bloggers complain that social news sites get all the comments) you have the ultimate traffic source!
Let’s look at what Truemors offers you again:
- A link back
- Traffic if your rumor/gossip is good
- A site that will not steal your comments
Will the next “Watergate” break on Truemors? Not likely. Will the next “Watergate” be linked to from Truemors? Yes, very likely!
Also, Truemors uses an IP logging system to track voting. This is good and bad. It is good in that the casual user can not simply clear their cookies and vote again but it is bad because if you are behind a corporate firewall then you probably share the same IP as all of your co-workers!
The average spammer could quickly change their dynamic IP and vote up a rumor while a corporation would be unable to vote down a rumor due to their static IP. It is a minor issue but it does need to be pointed out. With so many people using home networking where one IP address is shared among many PCs I can see some folks wondering why the site tells them they already voted even when they have not.
