Leo Babauto’s Zen Habits is a true Cinderella story of the blogging world.
In less than a year, ZH has gone from two readers (Leo’s wife and mother) to over 26,000 subscribers, and is now among the top 100 blogs on Technorati’s list.
If you’re not yet one of those 26K, then be sure to give a look through the Best of Zen Habits in 2007 post, as it’s filled with what makes ZH one of the best blogs out there, and is a great way to catch up on what you’ve been missing.
Congrats Leo; I can’t wait to see what you’ve got in store.
[Zen Habits - Best Of Zen Habits In 2007]
Today is one of the Internet’s favorite holidays. Though I’m not going to try and trick any of the DYH readers (I promise), I am going to be covering the hoaxes and pranks that appear around the net. Here are some of the better ones:
Google announced Gmail Paper, a permanent archive service that prints your emails for free onto paper that is supported by giant ads that are printed on the back. It handles attachments, is good for the environment, and there is no limit on the number of times you can use it.
Google announced TiSP, a free in-home wireless broadband service that taps into your toilet. The service is supported by the use of “information gathered by discreet DNA sequencing of your personal bodily output to display online ads that are contextually relevant to your culinary preferences, current health status and likelihood of developing particular medical conditions going forward”.
Woot sold a $1,000,001 bag of crap. When users clicked on the picture of the bag, they were given a coupon code that knocked the cost down to $1.
Tech Crunch, a site that focuses on Web 2.0 startups, announced that it had acquired Fucked Company, a site that focuses on Web 2.0 shutdowns.
ThinkGeek announced “stuff for smart asses”, including a WiiHelm(et), an 8-bit tie, inhalable caffeine stix, and a lonely guy dream vacation digital photo frame. (They also announced that the iPhone was now shipping, but that’s just cruel.)
CollegeHumor made it look as if their domain had expired and was now for sale through GoDaddy.
Technorati switched around their letters and renamed their site haterTonic.
World Of Warcraft introduced a new item called the Tinfoil Hat. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you”.
CrunchGear gave their entire site a 1999 redesign, complete with flashy gifs, a horrible background, and a no structure (though it still reminds me of a lot of current MySpace profile pages).
[Wikipedia - April Fools' Day]
Technorati launched a new service today called WTF (Where’s The Fire, not the other popular acronym), designed to tell you what’s hot and why. Anyone can write a “blurb” about any topic, and then users vote for the best explanation. Though it’s an interesting concept, and is obviously trying to gain some initial awareness with its very “catchy” name, I don’t see how this is going to work out in the long run. Are people really going to want to explain why something is hot to other people? Do products like the iPhone even need an explanation? It seems like an idea that caters to the lowest common denominator, and one that requires explaining the unexplainable. WTF Technorati?
[Technorati - Where's The Fire?]
