:skyecade online

I bought a new domain name tonight.

robertsinclaire.com

I figured I should scoop this up before some other Robert Sinclaire attempts to. Luckily, the spelling of my name is very rare. Take notice of the e at the end of Sinclaire. That little baby sets us apart from the rest.

Sinclair, on the other hand, is a very popular name. In fact, both robertsinclair.com and robertsinclair.net are already taken. One of the Robert Sinclairs is web designer, and a pretty good one at that. Cool, huh? The other is a hair dresser. Umm, that’s cool too. Right?

Sorry, I’m babbling.

This brings my domain name count to 8, with about another 5 I have my eye on. One project at a time though.

     

Filed under: Cyberculture, Technology, Design / Development, Internet
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I’m a huge fan of Digg.com. I have been for quite a while now. I think the concept is brilliant; user submitted news, promoted to the front page by other users. No editors, no censorship, no agendas, just users. Democracy at its best. Sure, it has its share of problems, but by and large, it’s one of the best sources of technology news on the web. There are similar sites on the web that utilize the same user based model as Digg, but add their own unique flare and services. Some examples are Del.icio.us, Newsvine, Flickr, and Reddit. All of these are great sites I might add.

Then there’s Netscape.com. You might notice some similarities between this site and Digg’s. That’s because Netscape is a complete clone of Digg, through and through. That’s fine though, shitty, but fine. I’ve seen this done plenty of times before. What I’m confused about however, is what Netscape’s head honcho, Jason Calacanis, is proposing to do next. He is offering to pay the top posters of Newsvine, Digg, Reddit, and Flickr if they post a minimum of 150 stories per month to Netscape. They would receive $12,000 a year and be dubbed Netscape Navigators. Clever, huh? But that’s not what I’m confused about either. Business is business after all.

What baffles me is this; if you are going to hire professional posters (pseudo-editors if you will) to add content to your site, then why clone Digg at all? The whole point of Digg and the web 2.0 movement is to rely almost soley on user interaction and participation. A read/write web instead of the static web of old. Why not clone Wired, or Slashdot, or Google News for that matter? Or better yet, come up with something original.

Leo Laporte of TWiT.tv threw in his two cents, saying that Jason has once again “whipped up a nice publicity stunt”, and a distasteful one at that. He further states that the success of Digg, and the other above mentioned sites, isn’t limited to any one set of users, but rather by user participation as a whole. I tend to agree.

Here’s where the gloves come off. Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg.com, said the Netscape situation was Bullshit on Friday in his weekly podcast. Jason retorted by saying, “This is a serious discussion and I’m saddened that Kevin has reduced it to personal attacks.” Of course Kevin retaliated with this post on his blog, ending it with:

“ps - have a beer and relax, it’s just diggnation :)”

I had to chuckle. This is geek gossip at its best folks!

In a related story, Netscape got hacked today. Visitors to the site were greeted with a pop-up message saying”Hi to all you diggers out there“.

You can’t make this stuff up.

     

Filed under: Web 2.0, Cyberculture, News, Technology
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Who’d of thought we’d see the day. I honestly wrote this game off back in 2002. I guess you can’t keep a great game down.

I remember the good ol’ days in Team Fortress Classic playing my Engy; setting up sentry guns, chucking EMP grenades and wiping out an entire team, falling back in Dustbowl to protect the,.. umm,.. whatever that thing is we had to protect. There really wasn’t a game quite like it.

This was back in the days of the dungeon (my basement), when me and a bunch of my friends would set up a LAN and game all night long. We’d drink beers, smoke butts, talk smack, and kick ass. As time went on, the dungeon was used less and less in favor of gaming in the comfort of our own homes (VoIP just started showing up). Team Fortress Classic was eventually replaced by games like Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament. I quit smoking.

Don’t get me wrong, we all still game and we all still have a blast. There’s just something about the older games that you miss from time to time. I’ll say this though, if Team Fortress 2 is even half as good as Team Fortress Classic, I will be one happy camper. We may even have to reopen the dungeon.

To give you an idea of how long Valve has been developing this game, check out the original TF2 trailer that came out in 1999. A little bit of a difference, huh? It was originally developed on the Half-Life Gold engine until they scrapped it and went back to the drawing board. And seven years later…

     

Filed under: TV / Video, Gaming
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Okay, I know this is a bit old, but I still had to post it. I originally heard Senator Ted Steven’s speech on an episode of TWiT a couple of weeks ago, but this clip from the Daily Show really sums everything up. Thanks for the link Channa.

     

Filed under: TV / Video, Cyberculture, News, Zen Geekery, Internet
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