the digital world is pretty much completely integrated into real life. the type of discussions and issues related to and arising from technologies have become more and more parts of the physical world. Here’s an interesting roundup of articles.

Sarah Palin isn’t too pleased with crackho.com

Youporn, the largest user-generated porn website merits a statistical analysis

Harvard professor argues that p2p filesharing is legal.

Do you have any idea about the amount of data out there?

Breathalizer source code: no one really stops and thinks that drunken drivers’ worst enemies have software. Software that could be buggy.

The internet can kill people. Sometimes prematurely. Case in point: Patrick Swayze!

I had read about this somewhere, a few days before, and was wondering how to get my hands on an account (since Thursday, it’s been in invite-only beta mode…) when I read Mark’s announcement that he had invites to spare. Perfect.

Thanks to Mark, I am now a beta user over at Newsvine, a modern news portal that collects stories from well known news sources, and allows members to also type up their own news stories (to be displayed along-side the “official”, formal one). Well, it’s more than that, with a rating system similar to that of digg, user comments, providing links to articles without further reporting, your own personal column, etc. I was a regular contributor on shortnews, some time ago, and I’m still very interested in citizen journalism. I was bored with shortnews because it was somehow limited to that.

Newsvine brings in a modern internet paradigm (ok, ok, they STRESS that they’re not a regular Web2.0 company like others), but it’s very much user and service-oriented, relies on a certain level of trust, depends on user-generated content, offers several syndication alternatives, etc… Naturally, there’s still more to it than this. Tagging and categorizing content allows it to be presented intelligently, with relevant and related items near to each other. Basically, you’d have to look over it to get what I mean. Simply put, it does to online news what flickr did to merely having a page with your photos online. Sadly, you can’t. Haha.
The icing on the cake? You earn a part of the revenues made from ads on the pages holding your articles, columns or what not. A nice touch, I’d say.

Edit: Ok, my bad. I actually now have invites to give out. If you’re interested, send me an email (or just leave a comment with your email address).

boo fucking hoo…

I don’t hold much by resolutions or plans… but I do see improvements and potential, and I realise the time for seizing is now…

On the 10th-18th-whateverth floor… overlooking the breathing, crackling giant that is berlin… we danced well into the morning of January the first, 2006.

On the way home, I inhaled a deep breath of optimism, relaxation, happiness, (and slight intoxication) and vowed to myself to keep it in for as long as possible…

Welcome to the Realm. You are members of this household now.

Nothing has changed, apart from the fact that I needed a breather, and some change. I was planning to start from scratch, but when I imported all these old posts to see how they appear in my new layout, I couldn’t bring myself to delete them all. I deleted a whole lot that were pissing me off, and that were the main reason for putting a 2-year old project finally to sleep.

This is just an introductory post, i’ll show you how to get around. It’s still a blog, you guys know how to manage that. The comment system has changed, and will probably still change in the future, as will a few other things around here, but I couldn’t resist keeping this whole thing behind closed doors any longer. Posts are now categorized, have permaliks, trackbacks and pingbacks… pretty standard stuff.

The sidebar is a gem. First and foremost, is the “asides” category. Asides is a miniblog, that shows five small posts at any given moment… usually, links to interesting articles, stuff that need no further comments, or just nice links I want to share with you. Other than that, archives are there, as is viewing by categories, searching the blog, a link to my photostream, and blogroll… also coming soon, other insights into what makes R the ruler of this realm… things I want to do, places I want to go, music I’m listening to, etc… you’ll be informed in due time…

For now, welcome. I appreciate you sticking by while I went through this blogging slump, I’m sure you’re going to enjoy what’s coming next.

ps: how’d you like the design? any comments, bugs? let me know.

Happy new year people… see you around.

—–chat transcript—–
br.1:Can I ask you one more favor?
Me: sure bro… what’s up?
br.1:Tell br.2 to be a bit more picky about his choice of porn site I’m getting tons of viruses and spyware each week
Me:….
br.1:That horny bastard.
Me: You know I’m blogging this, right?
—–chat transcript—–

I logged on to ebay’s live chat to ask about a minor issue I was having.

I presented my problem, and was discussing it with my designated support person,”Nicole Be”. Suddenly, the issue was solved, by itself. So, I apologize to “Nicole Be”, and tell her that it was a problem from my side. She says “No problem, glad to have been of service”.. I geek out and send her a<@;) (clown hat- curly hair- winking- smiley face)… she sends a smiley back.

I go: “So… where are you from?”
Reflex.
I swear.

I was suddenly a 14-year old teen, perusing the great world of online chatting from the confines of my 486 machine!

Luckily, I say ‘bye’ and leave before my inner-teen managed to drop his ‘a/s/l’ line.

Xena, the latest planet in our SS?

What the hell? We’re still discovering planets in our own solar system? It makes me question how advanced this age really is.

Pluto was discovered in 1930, 75 years later, they discover another planet orbiting the sun. They christened it Xena, apparently, after the warrior princess with large boobies. The leather-clad dominatrix who has a pretty little slave girl to take advantage off.

Naturally, you made the connection.