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Posts with tag BarackObama

Filed under: Fun, Internet, web 2.0

Time Waster: U Can Beez a LOLCATZ with LOL Feeds

LOL DownloadSquad

This is probably the awesomest thing we've seen in a while. LOL Feeds takes the lolcat phenomenon and melds it with Twitter, Jaiku, Wordpress, or anything with an RSS feed!

Basically, you plug in your user name for Twitter (or an RSS feed of your choosing) and it will make what you've written into a lolcat complete with images and LOLFontz!

Here's an example one for you to play with:
http://lol.ianloic.com/feed/www.downloadsquad.com/rss.xml


The possibilities are endless here. Your blog, your Facebook news stream, Barack Obama's twitter account!

Make your own and post the link in the comments!

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, web 2.0

Obama most popular with tech savvy voters

As you may know, the New Hampshire primary for the US 2008 Presidential election is today. Although web 2.0 itself has not been positioned as a major campaign issue, the power of the web and social networks has played a large role in not only individual candidate campaigns, but in the debate process itself. Additionally, with his victory in the Iowa caucus, Democratic candidate Barack Obama has become the first candidate leading in Internet metrics to pull off a major victory. So this begs the question, are Obama's fans the most savvy and "connected" supporters? Well, in addition to having the most friends on MySpace and supporters on Facebook, Sen. Obama is also leading in the war of campaign widgets.

According to Widgetbox, a major distributed widget marketplace, Obama has nearly double the number of widget impressions as his nearest opponent. In fact, he has almost as many impressions as his two nearest competitors combined! These widgets are embedded on personal web pages, blogs and social networking sites. This certainly gives additional (if ancillary) credence to the idea that Obama is the most plugged-in candidate.

Widget Impressions from Widgetbox Widgets

What effect, if any will the candidates online popularity have on the polls? Keep checking the news, and DownloadSquad, to find out!

Filed under: Internet, Video, Features, Web services, Social Software

Politics 2.0 - the big one is here


In politics, candidates have to contend with big money, big labor, big special interest groups, big corporate, big media, and now, they have the mother lode of all bigs to exploit contend with - netroots. Netroots is derived from grassroots + internet to describe a new brand of political activism organized through blogs and other online media, including wikis and social network services. With over 100+ million American internet users, netroots is the ultimate big for politicians, where size of votes really does matter.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, some 15% of all American adults say the internet was the place where they got most of their campaign news during the 2006 mid-term election, up from 7% in the mid-term election of 2002.

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Featured Time Waster

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.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

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.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

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

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