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Is Windows Live (MSN) Spaces the world's biggest blogging service?

Windows Live SpacesAccording to Richard MacManus, Windows Live General Manager George Moore told an audience at Microsoft's TechEd 2006 conference in New Zealand yesterday that Windows Live Spaces (formerly MSN Spaces) is "now the largest blogging service on the planet," and his assertion is causing a bit of a stir. Microsoft says there are 72 million Spaces in existence, but former Microsoftie Robert Scoble says maybe that's so, but are they really all blogs? Scoble says no, and outlines his idea of what makes and doesn't make blog. "First, let's define what a blog is, at least enough to count for this purpose.
  1. Have original content. Spam blogs that are copied off of somewhere else don't count.
  2. Have at least 500 words of new text-based content every month. Things that look like Flickr streams aren't blogs, sorry.
  3. Have at least two posts in at least the past 30 days. If you aren't posting, you're not blogging.
  4. I don't care if you have comments, have trackbacks, have blogrolls, or any of that."
That seems pretty reasonable to me, but many of the commenters disagree. But Scoble is soldiering on, setting out to collect some data on what Microsoft is counting as a blog. His first sample isn't very promising, with only 2% of the recently-updated "blogs" meeting his criteria. Microsoft's Mike Torres piped up on the original post to tell Scoble his methodology is flawed, because over half of all Spaces are private, to which Scoble replies that a private blog isn't a blog at all. So, who's full of what, here? Is Microsoft blowing up its numbers to inflate its ad rates (or something else?), or is it Scoble whose ego is out of control and who's picking on the low-hanging fruit?

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Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

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Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

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If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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