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This Week In Crasstalk

Hello Crasstalk. Hope you are having a great day. We have had some great writing here in the last few weeks and Team Crasstalk feels that it is time to start recognizing some of the great stuff you all have taken the time to put together. We can’t include all of the fantastic posts, but we hope that this will be way of telling you all how much we appreciate all of your contributions to Crasstalk. This will be a weekly feature, so please email us your nominations.

Let’s go back all the way to last Sunday and wonder about the mystery of the death of a tragic socialite. We can move from the past to predicting the future in this post.

We also had a very servicey week. We had advice on how to dominate your computer, your dog, or your irrational sports rivals.

We also had some fun pop culture, some fun nerd culture, some fun youth culture, and even some fun Scandinavian culture.

Finally, we had this conflict-inducing post (read the comments), which lead to this.Which was pretty funny (sorry Arken).

Once again, thanks for all of your contributions to Crasstalk. Please support the writers of this site by sharing their posts with the social media links on each page. Have a great week.

 

 

 

#Crasstalk COW: In with the Zin

Well, folks, it’s Friday! That means, as promised, we’re going to give you a Comment Of the Week.

A few other things, first, though:

Now, comment recognition time. Of course, you’re a highly amusing bunch of people, but you knew that. Before giving out the high honor, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recognize pretty much the entirety of Wednesday’s Open Caption thread.

However, there was one comment that seemed to stand out above all those, if only because of the mental imagery it conjures up.  Also, because I tend to think that everyone involved has a pretty good sense of humor. So while there was some gentle mocking, I think we can all agree that this line from Momof3’s How to Drink Wine For Free article, from Cicada, gives you something to think about.

Out of context, that sounds mean. Fortunately, the person on the other end of it, Arken, has a sense of humor, which we can all appreciate.

Until next time, darlings. Remember, if you say something funny, or see something funny, email CrasstalkCOW at gmail, and pimp it!

Your Obsessive Web Browsing

Have you ever wondered how many times you’ve visited a website?  If you’re using Firefox and haven’t cleared your browsing history (they have a private mode for that you know) then your web browser will tell you.

  • Right click on the page background
  • Select “View Page Info”
  • Click on the Security tab at the top, it’s the one with the lock
  • Now read the line that says,  “Have I visited this web site prior to today?”

Shout out with your ridiculously high numbers for your favorite websites.  This number isn’t an exact science and only goes as far back as the last time you cleared history, but it’s fun to get an idea of how many times you’ve obsessively refreshed a particular site.

It’s Time to Update Your Twitter Settings

Twitter finally gives you the option to use full time HTTPS.  This will encrypt all of your traffic between your computer and Twitter’s servers making it more difficult for people to intercept or hijack your session with Firesheep or other tools.

To enable this feature:

  • Login to Twitter
  • On the upper right you should see your avatar and username.  Click this.
  • Select Settings
  • Click the check box next to “
  • Click Save
  • Enter your password to verify

That’s it, now you use HTTPS all the time.  Keep Tweeting those Crasstalk stories.

Source and screenshot Engadget.

Denton Was Right

It was just the execution that was wrong.

From Quantcast, first you can see that total page views are down.


Next you can see that visits are down.

But! Page views per person are way up.

If they hadn’t driven everyone away with the terrible bugs, non-working comments and notifications and pages that don’t load right, they would have the same number of people all clicking on more pages.  The idea worked but they lost the people.  The self imposed deadline to roll out a non-functional site killed a perfectly good plan to increase page views per person.

Top image from Faith Mouse.

Masterpiece Twitter: Chris Weingarten and Justin Bieber

By Danzig and Dancing Queen

During its nearly five-year storied history, Twitter has remained steadfast in its commitment to bringing the best…or just bringing 140 character expressions from individuals around the world. The Twitterverse is filled with eclectic characters and contemporary celebrities who have filled the ether with their random thoughts on life, love and luxury.

In this weekly series, Danzing and Dancing Queen will risk brain cells and credibility scouring the Twitterscape to bring you the best of Twitter. We will then perform dramatic recitations of these tweets for your listening pleasure. Please, enjoy.

This week we feature music critic Chris Weingarten and naturally, Justin Bieber. Chris is a freelance writer (Rolling Stone, Popmatters, Vulture, etc.) who used to play drums in an indie rock band called Parts & Labor (he recently had a “twitter beef” with them as well, though it turned out to be in jest). He is a solid, well-read critic, and outspoken about a lot of things. Here’s a talk he gave at a Twitter-centric conference on music journalism in the digital age. In this particular set of tweets, Weingarten is engaged in a “Twitter beef” with generally insufferable music blog Gorilla vs Bear.

Justin Bieber owns the hearts and minds of the entire world’s female population from the ages of 4 months to 40 years old. If you deny it, it only means you secretly like him. Here’s his video, Baby, which has only been seen over four hundred and eighty-eight millions times (488,214,503 as of 9:26 p.m. PT on March 14, 2011).

Chris Weingarten, as performed by Danzig:

Justin Bieber, as performed by Dancing Queen:

*Danzing and Dancing Queen are not professional actors, but do play actors on Crasstalk.

Should You Upgrade To Internet Explorer 9?

The long awaited Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 will be available for download starting tonight at 9PM Pacific.  If you’re on a Mac then the answer is no because Microsoft gave up after IE 6.  But if you’re on Windows and you don’t use your computer for work related tasks that might be incompatible, then the short answer is yes, eventually you should upgrade.  This is true even if you don’t use IE that often since the most of the new security work will go into IE 9, it follows standards more closely and it’s faster.

Tonight after 9 Pacific you can go to beautyoftheweb.com to download the installer.  Eventually Microsoft will push IE 9 through Windows Update but that will be many months.  Other than speed improvements, there are some interesting new integration features with the Windows 7 task bar, a cleaner look (it looks like Firefox 4) and support for HTML 5.  A full list of new features is here.

The speed numbers below are always changing, but the important thing is that IE 9 is on par with the other major browsers.

The address bar also gets an overhaul and now gives inline search as you type results.

Also coming soon is Firefox 4 which has recently hit release candidate and will be finalized in the coming months.  As you can see from the graph above, Firefox 3 is really slow.

The more cautious out there might want to wait a few weeks to update so that any major early bugs and site incompatibilities can be worked out.  And before you tell me that you don’t care because you use Chrome or Safari, that’s cool, but you should upgrade anyway there are some sites that still refuse to work with those browsers.

Screenshots courtesy of Microsoft.

Did Arianna Huffington Force Out Engadget Editor?

The bearded and bespectacled Engadget editor Joshua Topolsky has announced he’s leaving the fourth most popular blog in the country.  He gives no reason and says he has a few fantasy projects he might work on.  That translates to I have been fired and have no new job.

Engadget has been owned by AOL since 2005 when the founders sold the blog group Weblogs, Inc. for a reported $25M.  In that time they have had steady growth and are well regarded.  So, what changed? AOL purchased HuffPo and put Arianna Huffington in charge of the AOL blog empire which also includes the Techcrunch group of blogs.  It seems strange timing for the editor to “leave” unless Arianna wants to put one of her own in charge or Topolsky didn’t want to go along with the AOL Way.  This comes in the same week that AOL laid off 200 people.

Source and photo Engadget.

Gawker Editor Invents Dying Person As A Joke UPDATED – No, he didn’t.

EDIT:  Chen just posted a piece on Gawker stating that he is not the person behind Lucidending, and that his statement on Twitter was a joke.  It looks like I was wrong, and I apologize for that.  I’m not going to link to the Gawker piece because I still feel this is a pretty pathetic way to garner pageviews, but it appears that the only thing Mr. Chen is guilty of is being careless in a public forum.  Once again, my apologies.  Honestly, I’m glad it’s not true.  The thought that Mr. Chen could steep so low was disheartening.  I’m glad I was wrong.

On March 6th, a person on Reddit with the username “Lucidending” posted that he was going to die on Tuesday, the 8th.  He had cancer, and was exercising Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act to die.  The thread, referred to as an “AMA” (Ask Me Anything), became one of the most popular posts in the history of the site.  As of this writing, there were 9,823 comments, most showing an abundance of support or compassion for Lucidending.  People took the time to share stories of loved ones who had lost their lives to cancer, and others composed songs for the OP.  People from as far away as India wrote in to lend their support.  The story was carried by various news outlets, including USA Today.

The kicker?  It was fake.  Some people were suspicious when Lucidending said that he had been given the cocktail to end his life, and already had the I.V., so administering it would be easy.  The Death With Dignity Act doesn’t allow for the drug to be taken intravenously.  It has to be ingested either by mouth or feeding tube.

On March 8th, Gawker’s Adrian Chen wrote in his twitter feed, “I have a confession to make: I was lucidending.”

On February 4th, Mr. Chen posted a story about a woman who was soliciting donations for cancer research, and was accused of fraud by a fellow Redditor.  She turned out to be legit.  From his Twitter account, it seems that Lucidending was a prank to turn the tables on Reddit’s “hardheaded skepticism.”

 

 

 

Yup.  Point made.  The woman who was asking for donations used a personal PayPal account.  I wouldn’t send money to her, either.  Making up a story about someone with cancer who is going to kill themselves is a completely logical reaction to that.  If you ever watched someone you love waste away in front of you, Mr. Chen, then you might have some idea how heartbreaking it is to read a post like Lucidending’s.  I hope you never have the experience that makes you understand how heinous your prank was.

Your Facebook News Feed Is About to Get Angry

Hello, my name is Dogs of War and I’m an addict.  I’ve been addicted to Angry Birds for what seems like a millennium and I’m powerless against those egg stealing pigs.

There is one thing I will not do though, and that is to play Angry Birds on Facebook.  I have my phone with me at all times and that is about as much as I can handle.  But tens of millions of you will be playing Angry Birds on Facebook and publisher Rovio hopes to make some serious scratch.

The mobile version is bird focused and has no social interaction outside of wanting to get a higher score than your friends.  However, the Facebook version will give the pigs more time in the spotlight and like all successful Facebook games will feature social interaction.  So, get ready to use that “hide” button to save yourself from constant updates about your mother and high school friends getting 3 stars and saving the eggs.

Picture and source: El Reg.