slamboard

I doubt that there is
anyone reading this
who has not
witnessed long term
relationships that
were begun and/or
ended as the result
of social activities on
the Internet.

Early adopters of
social media are
not representative
of the general population, but there have been many waves of adopters recently. I think it is time for someone to start a serious study to determine whether social media and online dating have been beneficial or detrimental overall.

My wife and I were aghast when we found out that a certain blogger had left his wife for another blogger after a few months of mostly online flirtation. Wait, we were not aghast at that point. It was more mild disappointment and guilty bemusement. The man had left his wife and driven 11 hours or something to be with his new lady who had just recently left her spouse. The two started playing house in a new place. It was blogged about. The ‘aghast’ part came when he returned to his wife after only a few weeks. Oh, and he stopped blogging (yeah, right.)

Successful online matchups are not as apparent. I know of at least one personally. I just heard about a self help book for single women that deals extensively with online dating.

A handful of people have been finding my site via search queries on Ask.com. I hadn’t bothered investigating this until today. I was very surprised to see that Kimkins.com does not show up on a search for ‘kimkins’. Not on the first page. Not on the second page. I actually looked through a number of pages and it just didn’t seem to be there.

Here is an explanation of how Ask.com works…

Ask’s ExpertRank algorithm provides relevant search results by identifying the most authoritative sites on the Web. With Ask search technology, it’s not just about who’s biggest: it’s about who’s best. Our ExpertRank algorithm goes beyond mere link popularity (which ranks pages based on the sheer volume of links pointing to a particular page) to determine popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search. This is known as subject-specific popularity. Identifying topics (also known as “clusters”), the experts on those topics, and the popularity of millions of pages amongst those experts — at the exact moment your search query is conducted — requires many additional calculations that other search engines do not perform. The result is world-class relevance that often offers a unique editorial flavor compared to other search engines.

Clear as mud, Right?

Even though I am not an American, I followed the Democratic primary quite closely. I was intrigued by the character and the behavior of the front runners. I was especially interested in observing how they both utilized new media like YouTube. If the contest had been about YouTube popularity, Obama would have won much sooner and with a huge margin. That difference didn’t interest me that much because it was a simple matter of demographics.

I was fascinated by the evolution of comment moderation. I feel that Team Obama had a edge with that. Both sides moderated comments on the majority of videos, with a few exceptions.

Figuring out a comment moderation policy based on the ones that get approved is quite an exercise in conjecture. Based on my observations, the moderators at HillaryClintondotcom generally only allowed positive commentary while their counterparts at BarrackObamadotcom tended to approve comments that created the appearance of an open discussion. At first, I thought they should allow comments to appear without prior approval, but I changed my mind when I looked at the level of discussion elsewhere on YouTube. I am still frustrated because it seems like the approval process on an individual video is abandoned once it is a few days old.

Hillary Clinton at this point only has six videos that have more than 100 comments. A dozen Obama videos have more than 1000 comments each. ‘A More Perfect Union’ has nearly 10,000 comments.

Now that Obama has shifted focus to the general election, it appears that there has also been a slight shift in comment moderation policy. The folks with their fingers on the approval buttons seem to be more willing to approve moronic and vicious comments because now they come predominantly from Republicans and they are just making themselves look bad.

To save my readers some time, here is an example of an critical comment that was approved by Barack Obama’s official YouTube channel:

Shame on you, Barack Obama! You just destroyed the only hope of restraining already obscene Presidential campaign costs. You’ve made it clear that you’d rather bludgeoning McCain with TV ads rather than engage him in debates or other free mediums. How can you refuse millions in public money to ask for MORE from the very supporters you acknowledge are hurting so badly??? You call that “change?” I gave money to you in the primary, but you won’t see a dime from me again.

Here is one for Hillary on her channel

Long Live Hillary Clinton! The true president of the people. I hope to be able to vote for you soon as candidate for the democratic party in 2016! I campaign all i could all i went overboard for this campaign. So Hillary I thank you for running I am sadden for you not being president in 2008. Hillary we all supporters did these for you campaign and we pledge our vote to you and we did not see the candidate we wanted but Hillary we love you!

The Obama video that drew the sample comment currently has about 580 comments, while the Hillary video has 7.

This is an interesting coincidence…

Yesterday I posted a movie and some commentary on the ethics of manipulating photos. Now there is a viral video from diet.com talking about the same thing, but with a diet and body image slant.

I haven’t actually listened to the whole thing, as I am supposed to be working. Some of the tricks remind me of some things that I saw on the ‘Watch Us Lose’ table on the front page of Kimkins over the last year or so. Of course some of Heidi’s pictures needed nothing more complicated than a slight vertical stretch to help recreate past weight loss success.

That question is just an extension of what people were discussing in 1995 in relation to the picture in this video. I looked into it and it is indeed becoming a trend…

Vanity Fair

Carroll Daily Times Herald

Men’s Fitness

In the interest of ethics, I should point out that I got all those links from a blog that focuses on Ethics in a Digital World.

This is great software marketing, I think.

FF3 is coming out today and Mozilla has decided to try for a World record. As I write this, 1,540,366 people has ‘pledged’ to download.

SpreadFireFox.com has a dynamic map showing the numbers for each country. The numbers in Iraq are surprisingly small. I wonder if military personnel are prohibited from downloading new browsers.

I have actually taken a course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. I chose my title based on my experience. People who are learning English as adults generally love idioms. This post is mostly a shout out to a school with a very cool advertising campaign. I first saw this video on something called The Pop Culture Translator. This thing is a promotional tool for the Canadian College of English Language.

I did the math, the cord should have been fine with the electric kettle. It wasn’t. Last year, we bit the bullet and bought a half dozen good quality surge protectors for the office. The bargain cords and multi-plug gizmos have been relegated to less vital tasks. I have another one of these KHiND extension cords and I don’t think I will use it for anything.

The thing that disturbs me is that the plug contains a 13 amp fuse that did not blow.

With fuel costs breaking new records everyday, lots of people are considering curtailing their driving. For some people, this may involve putting a car into storage for months or longer. I was considering it and I realized that there are probably a few things that I should do to the car if I want it to stay in the condition that it is in. Here are a few links with helpful information:

Mothballing your car

AAA has advice that seems to cater to people with really nice cars.

After moving in 2005, we went carless for a whole year. It can be done. I consider my 1990 Skoda to be a time saving device. It is not a necessity and it is not a part of my identity.

We are going to the gym 5 mornings a week. I have to confess that I am the reluctant one most of the time, but I am really feeling much better. I rarely get that dragged out feeling during the workday.

Exercising in the morning before starting a day’s work is something that I would highly recommend. I did a quick web search to see if people agree with me and it is a bit of a mixed bag. I saw a few people on boards saying that they can’t exercise on an empty stomach. When I lived on my parents’ farm, I used to have a cup of tea and an apple before the morning chores (I did a good 45 minutes of shoveling and pushing cows around). The real breakfast came after chores; grapefruit, oatmeal and a soft-boiled egg.