Happy New Year!

We're one year closer to the end of The Great Slowdown. Whew!

Need To Send A Telegram?

With International Telegram, you can send up to 100 words for $19 and your message will get there in 2 business days.

Superhero Quiz!

Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

I took the superhero quiz and turned out to be Ironman. Update: If I were a super villain, I would be Apocalypse.

Moths Drink Sleeping Bird Tears!?

New Scientist: "A species of moth drinks tears from the eyes of sleeping birds using a fearsome proboscis shaped like a harpoon, scientists have revealed. The new discovery – spied in Madagascar – is the first time moths have been seen feeding on the tears of birds."

John Edwards Announces Candidacy on YouTube

Footage shot by Rocketboom.

Asian Earthquake Shuts Down Internet

Engadget: "[A] nasty earthquake near Taiwan disrupted all six major undersea fiber optic cables on Wednesday, and knocked out internet for nearly all of Asia, with victims including China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and even Australia."

Firefly MMORPG

Press Release from Fox and Multiverse: "The Multiverse Network, Inc., a company building the world's leading network of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and 3D virtual worlds, today announced it optioned the rights from Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising to develop an MMOG based on Firefly, the science fiction television series created by Joss Whedon that has enjoyed a hugely popular and loyal following since its premier in 2002."

This Is The Last Time I Saw My Camera

Noah Effing Glass
Originally uploaded by bizstone.

It seems I have misplaced or lost my camera and this is the last photo I took. Coincidence? Conspiracy? Somewhere in the upstairs closet? Anything is possible.

Introducing "Shortcode Apps"

A new breed of applications that can be accessed via mobile shortcode seem to be popping up with increased frequency. Thanks to the folks from SkinnyCorp who made Extra Tasty, we've started calling them Shortcode Applications or Shortcode Apps.

Twitter can be included in this category because technically you never have to visit Twitter.com to use the service. However, Twitter is also a full web application. We throw Instant Messanger in the mix too—it's definitely integral to the whole scene.

Oh, and speaking of such things: Twitter won Mashable's Top pick for Top Social Networks of 2006 in the Mobile category. Nice!

How to make money on your news content website

Online Journalism Review: "To make $36,500 a year, you'd need to earn $100 a day on your site (plus whatever expenses you incur). Let's assume your site is attractive to advertisers and earns $10 in ad revenue for every thousand page views. That would mean you'd need to serve 10,000 page views a day to meet this target. (And more if your site earns less than $10 per thousand page views.)"

BlogThis! for New Blogger?

I am a huge fan of using BlogThis!, the bookmarklet shortcut for blogging on the fly. Sadly, BlogThis! no longer works for the new version of Blogger.

Gmail2Blogger—Drag this to your browser's toobar or bookmarks!

Thankfully, Gmail will post to New Blogger without a hitch (and you get a backup in your sent folder). You just have to create a secret Mail-to-Blogger address in Settings > Email. When you want to blog on the fly, click the Gmail2Blogger bookmarklet and address the post to your secret Mail-to-Blogger address.

Not quite as good as a shiny new BlogThis! but it will work for now. (And if you're a Windows user you can install the Google Toolbar—that has BlogThis! built in.)

A New Kind of Search

Jimbo Whales: "Just as Wikipedia revolutionized how we think about knowledge and the encyclopedia, we have a chance now to revolutionize how we think about search."

Twitterquakes!

We've had three earthquakes in the Bay Area this week. The first one was Wednesday and I was on the BART heading to Berkeley. The second was last night. And we just had another one this morning in the same spot at the same magnitude (Berkeley, 3.5-ish). Each time, the first thing I do is Twitter it and then read my friends Twitters. You get news of an earthquake within 5 seconds of somebody experiencing it on Twitter. It's comforting to see people joking and complaining.

Buying AdWords for 'Blogging?'

Google has a tip for you: Use Blogger.

Does running a "tip" that is essentially an ad seem sketchy in this situation? Google is making Typepad, Squarespace, and Ourstory outbid each other for the top spot above search results but they display an image-ad for their own competing product right in the sweet zone. Plus, it's a "tip" which seems better than an ad.

Update: This is true for other stuff too like "photo sharing."

Update#2: I'm not the only one who thinks this is sketchy. Firefox cofounder Blake Ross has a Tip: Trust is hard to gain, easy to lose and TechCrunch thinks this is the beginning of a bad kind of Tipping Point for Google.

Monsur Knows Things

Monsur says Amazon has made a move to make their URLs more Google-friendly. (Monsur was an Amazon employee before becoming a Xangod.)

Tom Rose on Twitter

"This is like the Seinfeld of the internet — a website about nothing."

Love it!

Wanna Work on Twitter?

We're hiring!

Monsur Picks

I forget to read Monsur's blog because Xanga doesn't really support feeds. So I wandered over there this morning and remembered that Monsur has great posts. Even the first five posts displayed on his page are worthy of re-blogging.

5 Monsur Picks
1. Ubuntu
2. Instacalc
3. eMusic
4. Windows Tutorials
5. Coding Horror

Monsur picks 'em and we all win.

Google Wants You To Blend In

Google AdSense Help Center: "To increase the likelihood that your readers will see and click on your ads, blend your ad units into the background of your blog. Choose a bold color for the ad title to help draw attention to your ads, then make sure that the background and borders of your ads are the same color as the background of the area where the ad is placed."

Peter Gallagher Voted Eyebrow Magazine's Man Of The Year

Funny!

Just Checking Something

Can't post from the Twitter blog so I'm seeing if this blog works.

A Young Girls Journey from Milan to Minsk

List of fictional films in Seinfeld - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He's Blogging

A Good Day

Yunus and Grameen Bank receive Nobel Peace Prize: "OSLO (Reuters) - Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank that he founded received the Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday for their work to lift millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans to the poorest of the poor."

Professor Yunus' work and life is amazing and inspiring. I'm happy that today he has officially received one of the world's greatest honors—it is well deserved for the work he has done so far and the work yet to be done!

Is The World Too HOT or NOT?

An Inconvenient Truth is an awesome documentary because it unites the whole planet around an issue we all share. The message of the film is one of hope—we can actually do something. In fact, just watching the film is the first step and when you leave the theater or turn off the DVD player you already feel like you've begun to make progress.

That's why today I donated to Is The World Too Hot Or Not—to get copies of An Inconvenient Truth delivered to the teachers across the US who want to spread this meme but are being blocked but bureaucracy. Help spread the word!

Pixelotto

From the creator of the Million Dollar Home Page comes Pixelotto. This time, $2 buys you a pixel and a chance to win a million bucks. Looks like Lastminute.com already grabbed a sweet spot. Don't miss out!

Wordie: Like Flickr, but without the photos

Wordie: "Wordie lets you make lists of words -- practical lists, words you love, words you hate, whatever. You can then see who else has listed the same words, and talk about it. It's more fun than it sounds."

It's amazing what is still left to be done with text. Something to think about while everyone is making such a big fuss about video.

Twitter Email

Last time we sent out an email to our users Niall Kennedy told me that it should have come from a real person, not a support email. So today's email came from me. Since Niall is now renting a desk here at Obvious HQ he came downstairs and told me he was happy with the email header. Good stuff.

The Future of Blogger

Eric Case in a video interview explaining what the Blogger of 2007 and beyond is going to be like.

Looking for Good Blogs?

Fimoculous.com has a list of the Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren't Reading.

An Inconvenient Gift

Amazon should buy 100,000 copies of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth DVD and make it free with free shipping. If they don't want to do it, they should make it easy for companies to do it using Amazon.