Clicked

Web perspectives on the May 12 earthquake in China

Will Femia — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:20:00 GMT

Well respected and established world-wide blogging initiative Global Voices Online was a first-click for many surfers and they are doing a great job with suggested links for further looking. They also have lots of videos.Shanhaiist is seriously owning this story with their liveblogging. I'm also watching IfGoGo for continuing updates. Also lots of updates from The Beijinger.Naturally the first place to look when there's an earthquake is the USGS site. Here are the details of the big one but you can...(read more)

Live free or move

Will Femia — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:11:00 GMT

This gated community of Ron Paul supporters would seem like a weird idea to me if I'd never been to North Florida where it seems like gated communities are everywhere. It does seem odd to get all worked up about living in a free country only to gate yourself into a place that allows you to paint your house only three shades of pale blue and you can't drive faster than 15 mph but then I guess part of freedom means being free to give up freedoms. At least in a Ron Paul community the dues are...(read more)

That Jessica Alba staring contest

Will Femia — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:21:00 GMT

It seems like a promotion for the I Beat You site but then she does seem to be interacting with the participants, so you don't get the impression she's one of these celebs who bopped in, read the script and left. NOTE: Volume blast! You need the volume up to hear her in the beginning and then they lay a really loud dance track over the clip....(read more)

I'll give it my full 28 percent

Will Femia — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:20:00 GMT

"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...(read more)

That Harry Potter contest

Will Femia — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:16:00 GMT

Just to close the loop on that Harry Potter contest a while back, Cat was the winner. I was hoping for a super-duper deluxe winner to answer the two officially asked questions plus the third implied question and though no one did that on their own, Cat did in a follow-up mail, so yes, she wins an umbrella with the msnbc.com logo on it. Plus that digital die thing. Plus, the super-duper deluxe prize which is a clip-on USB powered LED light. I'm not really sure what it's for, maybe to see the keyboard...(read more)

Almost back

Will Femia — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I'm on one of those long weekend "as long as we came all this way to go to the wedding we might as well stay a couple days at that time share your mother's friend offered" trips. Flying home tomorrow.I have to add that I'm softening my position on the bottled water ban now that I've had Orlando water for the past couple of days. Bleh. It's like liquid chalk!...(read more)

Every little birdie, every chickadee

Will Femia — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:52:00 GMT

Not Using Tweetscan to Manage Your Brand? You’re Not Doing Your Job OMG! You're doing it wrong! It is really amazing to see how much the hype about twitter echoes the blog hype of 2002. Back then this headline would have read, "Not Using Technorati to Manage Your Brand? You’re Not Doing Your Job." Like blogs we're seeing exponential rates of growth in Twitter use. And even if the numbers aren't huge yet, they're going to be. And even if they aren't going to be, Twitter users are the kind of people...(read more)

ROFLections on a conference

Will Femia — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:01:00 GMT

I attended ROFLCon over the weekend, a two-day conference devoted to Web memes and the phenomenon of viral popularity. What follows are some of my observations of the event. This isn't a typical Clicked linkblog post but it does apply to a lot of the themes and sites we explore here. I'll have a regular Clicked up later, including the re-launch of Ralph's Recommendations of free Web video games.The nature of "famous on the Internet"David Weinberger gave they keynote address and hosted a panel with...(read more)

Watching commercials on purpose

Will Femia — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:36:00 GMT

Wow, the video game on the Audi Ironman site is actually pretty fun and challenging. Better than the Nokia one the other day. Given those two plus another that comes to mind (ahem) it seems safe to say that no online ad campaign is complete without a video game component to help it go viral. (I was less impressed with the actual car part of the site. Though visually cool, I'm more impressed by the product placement on Dirt than on Ironman.) [And yes, I realize I'm the only person who watches Dirt.]Speaking...(read more)

That video of the kid threatening to kill the president

Will Femia — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:47:00 GMT

NOTE: Lot of cursing in the following links, even from the kid. Engage headphones.In what appears to have begun as a YouTube video that was taken down and is now hosted on a hip hop site and a variety of other places, a kid rambles for nearly ten minutes about his intention to kill the president and maybe himself too. UPDATE: the video has been taken down. No one seems to want to host this hot potato. UPDATE: Found it in pieces on UK YouTube. I wonder if the UK site doesn't answer to the same laws...(read more)