This a very simple plugin for Safari that makes full screen slideshows from folders on Flickr and most of the other major photo sites. Nicely implemented and a great use of screen space.
Month: December 2006
Looks like Slashdot is doing something about getting their ass handed to them from Digg. Now, according to our pals with dubious numbers at Alexa, Digg has well surpassed Slashdot in terms of reach, rank and pageviews. This isn’t news. Even if Digg had not expanded beyond its tech crowd, Digg was growing at a rate that outclassed Slashdot in every way.
Slashdot Firehose
Slashdot has launched a editorial voting system called Firehose to “allow users to assist the Slashdot editors in the story selection process.” It’s a straight up copy of Digg, but Slashdot is not giving up ultimate editorial control of their home page.
I haven’t seen it before, so I can only guess that it just launched and it seems to only be launched to logged in users.
Somehow, I don’t think that this will get new users on Slashdot, but allowing users to vote on stories certainly will make editorial decisions a little easier.
Darfur Wall
There were a lot of good speakers and 5 minute presentations at last night’s Ignite Seattle, but one that stuck with me in particular was Jonah Burke’s Darfur Wall project.
From O’Reilly Radar:
Jonah Burke left Microsoft to found the The Darfur Wall with his father and brother a couple of weeks ago. If you’re not aware Darfur is in a crisis. The Burkes have created a novel website for collecting money. There are 400,000 subdued numbers on the site; each time a dollar is donated a new number is lit. All of the monies go to Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and others. In just 21 days, they have raised $5052 from 445 donors. Buying a number is fast and easy; consider it. (Blog).
When I look for donations to make during the holiday season, I always try to look for both local and global causes. In some ways, this accomplishes both. Helping someone locally who is trying to affect change globally seems like a perfect mix.
Jonah – I didn’t get to meet you last night, but I really appreciate the work you are doing to help this troubled region.
Zillow – Make Me Move
Zillow unveils its latest feature tonight, Make Me Move.
The idea is pretty simple, set a price that you would be willing to sell your house for and wait for the offers to come in. Ok, this is a bit gimmicky, but fun nevertheless.
Of course, this is a pretty good way to get people to give Zillow a little more info about your home.
But at least I can finally move my house down the hill where it belongs.
Moving is a pain in the butt, but we all have our price.
TechCrunch has more on Z’s other new features, the Real Estate Wiki and free listings for agents and sellers.
How to rig Digg
CNET reports this morning about how internet marketers are “planting stories, paying people to promote items, and otherwise trying to manipulate rankings on Digg and other so-called social media sites like Reddit and Delicious to drum up more links to their Web sites and thus more business.”
Thanks for giving away all my secrets, CNET.
Seriously, though, there are certainly good ways and bad ways to use social media to market goods and services. This CNET article goes over the bad ways.
Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells are coming to town! In the last several months, I’ve gotten to know these guys fairly well and enjoyed our “big picture” discussions of the web and social media in particular.
Here’s a blurb from their site that best describes Social Media Club.
Social Media Club is being organized for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media. This is the beginning of a global conversation about building an organization and community where diverse groups of people who care about social media can come together to discover, connect, share, and learn.
As someone who has been working in social media for a while, I’m planning on attending. Hope to see you there.
Date – Wednesday, December 6
Time – 6:30-8:00 pm
Location – Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, 4408 Delridge Way SW, Seattle
Social Media Club
Register
Details on Upcoming.org