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Posts with tag topix

Filed under: News, Social Software

Topix shifts focus to become social news hub

Topix
News aggregator Topix has moved away from its Google News-like roots and adopted a slightly more Digg-like model. The company has traditionally taken a top-down approach to news, providing users with links to newspaper articles from around the country. Starting today, Topix will instead implement a bottom-up approach, by asking users to submit relevant news stories in local, national, international, sports, and entertainment sections.

Users who sign up for the service will be able to submit local news clips or original stories through the web site or from a cellphone. When there's nobody around to submit or edit news, a "roboblogger" posts links to newspaper articles.

Right now, most of the content on the site seems to be links to mainstream news articles, with very few articles written by users. But the goal isn't necessarily to turn Topix into a repository of user generated news overnight. Rather the goal appears to be to get users to have more meaningful interactions with the site.

While Topix gets about 10 million unique visitors a month, most just look at a few articles through the site and then move on, not the best way to generate advertising revenues. Adding social features to the site will give users a reason to spend more time on Topix.

Filed under: News

Happy 25th birthday to the computer virus!

This year marks the 25th aniversary of a moment which changed computing forever; The first self-replicating (though non-malicious) computer virus, Elk Cloner. The author (who was 15 at the time, but is all growed up now), reminisces on his blog, "Back then nothing was networked. We had these computers in a lab, and there was software for them on floppy disks. You stick in the disk and run the software. Simple. The aha moment was when I realized I could essentially get my program to move around by itself. I could give it its own motive force, by having it hide in the resident RAM of the machine between floppy changes, and hitching a ride onto the next floppy that would be inserted. Whoa. That would be cool."

You can only imagine the gravity of that "aha moment", as Edison said, "Genius is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration." Elk Cloner's author Rich Skrenta also has a few words on the essence of the hack, that 1% moment of inspiration that leverages a giant mass of energy hidden behind its magic doors, "[it] isn't just realizing you can use a system in a new, unexpected way. It's getting a disproportionate effect from your effort. It's catalyzing potential energy stored in the system."

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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