Google Voice spam

Would you rather die in a volcano eruption, a tsunami, an earthquake, a flood, a hurricane or a tornado?

The bot-spammers are now winning over on COTweets, so I went and created a new Colorado group-tweet list, ColoradoTweets, that works in much the same way, but has a few more rules that should help keep it from turning into a noisy ugly hot mess.

To break it down:

• Only tweets that *start* with (as opposed to contain) @ColoradoTweets will be published. This fixes one of COTweeters’ weaknesses.
• Any tweet with “RT” in it, or “Follow Friday” (and variants) will be ignored.
• If @ColoradoTweets isn’t following you, you can tweet to it, but those tweets won’t be broadcast to the group until @ColoradoTweets follows you.
• Abusing the list with repetitive, promotional tweets, is a sure ticket to a blocking.

The goal here is to have a list that takes the pulse of Colorado folk on twitter, that can help people who have questions about something Colorado, and is interesting. Thoughts? Post ‘em here.

-Joe

You simply can’t have a system which rewards nastiness over niceness and which offers no consequences for those who commit cowardly anonymous attacks and then act surprised when people don’t know where to draw the line. And if it carries on, someone is going to get seriously hurt, unless we all say – as Arrington has on Techcrunch today – enough is enough.

So let’s all say it right now. Let’s all of us who consider ourselves human beings and who want the internet to continue as a forum for free and frank debate get together and decide on a few rules of engagement. It strikes me that there are a few we can all agree on…

There’s a brilliant episode of The West Wing where Sam Seaborn discovers that two of his staff have anonymously attacked a Republican aide working at the White House. Furious, Seaborn confronts the culprits, saying: “You know what, fellas, when I say something, I sign my name.” Sure enough, he grabs a pen and paper and scribbles the message “you’re fired – Sam Seaborn”. Surely that’s rule number one – the Seaborn Rule of internet commenting: If you’ve got something to say online, say it in your own name or fuck off.

Paul Carr wrote that for the Guardian, and apparently Paul Carr also wrote a book called “Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore,” which is a beautifully snarky title.

If you’re in the none-of-the-above category, you can go right to the source, where I save these so-called awesome links: http://delicious.com/joemurphy/awesome.

Here are some samples from the awesome list:

• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
• Otto the octopus wrecks havoc, juggles crabs.
• McSweeney’s: Lit 101 Class in Three Lines or Less
• State-by-state popularity of your last name in USA
• Wordle – Beautiful Word Clouds
• The Village Carpenter: Carving for the future

Enjoy!

1. You’re not afraid to type a URL in the address bar of a web browser.
2. You know what “URL,” “address bar,” and “web browser,” mean.
3. You’ve used a browser that doesn’t have “Explorer,” “MSN,” or “AOL” in its name.
4. You know how to copy and paste a URL (From the page you’re on or from a link on a page) into an email.
5. You know that “http://” goes at the start of every URL.
6. You know how to clear your browser cache without looking up instructions on the internet, and you understand which situations a clear-the-cache can fix.
7. You know how to (and you do) add commonly-used links to your browser link bar (you get half points if you use your browser’s “favorites” in horizontal sidebar).

Sportsify aggregates what the major sports sites (CNN, ESPN etc.) are saying about upcoming games / races / mathces (NCAA Football, NBA, MLB, NASCAR, NFL), and turns that aggregation into a consensus pick on who’s going to win. According to the blurb on the site: “Sportsify combines the picks and power rankings from dozens of sports sites to build more accurate consensus picks and rankings.”

According to the blurb Adam wrote up on his personal site, “You can think of Sportsify like a Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic for sports picks and power rankings, aggregating all the #1’s and weekend favorites from around the web into one site.”

I like it.

1. This is an adorable interview (three questions) with Alexey Pajitnov, who invented Tetris … I’ve been putting together a “Philosophy of Tetris” article, and Alexey talks some Tetris philosophy here. Order out of chaos. Yeah.

2. Last night I won second place in the Tetris tournament … again. Third time I’ve finished second. This time I came in from the winner’s bracket, which means Vinnie had to beat me twice to take the championship. Twice. I put up a fight — this is the championship game:

3. This is the fifth in my Faces of Tetris series of interviews with people who play Tetris. I interview Vinnie, April’s champ, who talks Tetris, Colorado Springs, Steve Nash, and puts together a darn good metaphor about Tetris at the end:

I launched the site just in time, too — a Missouri j-school student had the same idea just this morning.

HappyJournalist.com

Update: Hey, woot! The New York Times’ CityRoom blog link-tipped HappyJournalist: Angry Journalist, Happy Journalist.