I'll give it my full 28 percent
Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2008 1:20 PM by Will Femia
Filed Under:
Games
"On the average Web page, users have time to read
at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." I'm not sure what kind of game they're trying to play with that "have time to read" phrase. More like "make time to read" or "bother to read" - not that I'm bitter. The question I have is whether visitors would read 100% of the page if I wrote 72% less or if that 28% is a standard "skim comprehension" number that is the bare minimum to understand the content on a given page. It looks like the report has the answer to my question but I'm sorry I just hit my 28%. Moving on!
Speaking of not reading, here's my latest bunch of Twitter related links you may click if you're interested or you may print out, chew into a wad and spit on your computer screen while cursing my name for foisting this trendy juvenile crap on you all the time.
- Tweet Wheel - "Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other"
- Twitter fone - Send messages to Twitter using voice
- Who should I follow? Enter your name and it recommends people to follow (maybe based on what's in your own stream?)
The beautiful game is a really well designed foosball table.
The Nissan Xterra that Dwight Schrute tried to flip on last week's episode of The Office is for sale on EBay from the real life owner. (Looks like the bidding ended early. I'd be interested to know the back story on how they ended up using a real car and not a studio prop car.)
I think this really is the
MySpace page of Tom Hanks. He hasn't blogged since last year but there's a new video on there of his endorsing Obama. I can imagine him calling his people and saying, "I want to endorse Obama, do I have a Web site or something?" And they say, "Well, you have that old MySpace page, wanna use that?"
Play Chronotron - Remember that game a while ago where you see previous turns you played so you end up having to help yourself get through the game? This is the same idea; you play into the level and then go back in time and see your own earlier moves.
WARNING NOTE: This has that freaking terrible idea from Facebook that automatically announces to your Facebook stream that you're playing this game. It does give you a "no thanks" option but by then you'll likely already have suffered shock and horror at being so invaded and how close you got to informing everyone on your Facebook list, including coworkers that you're playing a game in the middle of the day.
Make sure you're logged out of Facebook before you play.
The subprime primer - It's a pretty long but easy to read stick-figure slide show of what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis.
Super slow-mo video of the
Mentos/Diet Coke reaction.
Turn your point-and-shoot into a Supercamera - "The Canon Hacker's Development Kit, aka CHDK, is a firmware enhancement that supports an impressive array of Canon digital cameras." So basically there are hackers out there who are writing programs that tell your camera hardware what to do beyond what the factory has already told it to do.
Essential skills all men should have. Extra credit to Esquire for keeping the whole list on one page instead of going for the cheap page views.
I happened to see the "Yo Momma" headline on
the Newsweek story over someone's shoulder coming into the cube farm this morning. It's about
Postcards From Yo Momma, a site where people share cringe-worthy e-mails from their mothers.
Speaking of communal submissions here's
How I spent my stimulus. (Is this real or propaganda? Regardless, seems like a good idea if you can keep the haters out.)
Morning music: Following the link in the Newsweek item to see what's new on Jezebel I took
the recommendation to compare
Lindsay Lohan's "Bossy" with
the Kelis song.
NOTE: I only played that YouTube clip minimized while sorting through e-mail but looks like there's some bathing suit strutting and probably some booty shaking of some sort. Potentially unsafe.
"This collection contains television news programs recorded
live from around September 11, 2001 by the non-profit Television Archive to help patrons research this important part of United States history." No MSNBC but there is NBC. One of these days I'm going to go to the tape library here and look up my call-in on 9/11.
Random story: Sometimes people who read
my 9/11 essay want to know what happened before or after (or even around) the parts I described. Part of the reason I left some stuff out is that I was trying to write about fear, but also it's a little embarrassing. In fact, I was in the shower when the first plane hit and my wife called to ask if it was true that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. I leaned out the window to look and said, yup, completely clueless as to the severity of what was happening. Later as the morning progressed, I was on the phone with the newsroom when Tower 2 collapsed. I freaked out a little (see fear essay above) and the producer on the other end said, "Will, we're putting you through to the TV." I ended up live on the air with Lester Holt on the other end of the phone. I don't remember much of what he said, but I think it was something like "tell us where you were when the first plane hit." True to my long-winded form, I started my story with being in the shower - not at all what the TV folks were looking for in the midst of their coverage of this huge breaking news event. I reckon I was shuffled off the air quickly. So one day I'll look it up in the archive to see how my role in the history of that day has been recorded. But not today.
If you caught Colbert last night, this is the guy who is
performing surveillance on himself to (sarcastically) assist the government's anti-terror efforts.
The walking bike would have been cooler if they didn't show the video of how lousy it is to ride.
The latest free album download:
Nine Inch Nails, The Slip. You need a working e-mail address to click a verifying link. From there you need to know what format you want. I'm taking the mp3 version now and it's taking a long time but they've got a flac version by torrent if you prefer. Your download window lasts an hour. I don't know if you can resubmit the same e-mail address so best to try it when you have time to do the download.
In time for Mother's Day, next week is the
5th annual mom blog Mommyfest.
From the mailbag:I just saw this, from Slate.com, funny/harsh/on target. It seemed like you'd enjoy it.
PW
