instant quaker reddit

zachalexander just created a quaker reddit for the online Quaker community. He blogged about it on his LiveJournal and thus I couldn't help but give him a shout-out here.

Best of luck growing your new reddit. Hopefully it develops as quickly as some of that instant oatmeal. I have a feeling there won't be many flamewars or trolls on a Quaker reddit.

Remember, zachalexander, you can customize the look of your reddit with a little CSS, or simply change the logo. Not that I have any suggestions...

an extra serving of holiday mirth

FeedANeed is kicking ass and taking names -- literally (well, only the second part, that's how we sign up all our volunteers and non-profits). Erik is doing some great work, but that would obviously be moot if it weren't for our community, which has responded so enthusiastically.

And I can't say enough about the job a bunch of Canadian geeks did with HoHoTO. In fact, I thought I'd said everything here on the breadpig blog. But here it is again, just because I'm so impressed by how a disparate group of people can mobilize and do some good so quickly and efficiently.

I'm actually feeling good about 09.

JoelOnSoftware gets a neat redesign - with a few blurry aliens

Joel got a redesign. It's pretty hip. It features a header with a huge picture of the FogCreek offices. And if you look closely in the upper-left corner...

I'm waiting to get some conclusive numbers back, but I'm almost certain those bobbleheads have increased FogCreek productivity significantly. Thanks for not cropping them out, Joel.

And a thanks to Mike, an avid Spolsky reader, for first pointing this out.

reddit is trying to make the world suck a little less again this december

One year ago it was the reddit-xkcd fundraiser for the EFF (as chosen by the greater reddit community). This year, it's Feed A Need.

The economy sucks and we know that. More to the point, Erik realized that, so when he joined reddit, he came armed with a radical new idea for this year's fundraiser.

It wouldn't even be a fundraiser. It would be a skill-raiser.

To quote blog.reddit:

This holiday season, reddit.com is launching its first Feed A Need project. Instead of asking for monetary donations, we're asking people to donate a few hours of their skills & energy. So if you are a programmer, designer, artist, lawyer, geology professor, bacon cooker, or anyone else with a few hours to spend for a good cause please consider participating in this year's Feed a Need charity drive.

And from these volunteers, a chunk will be randomly selected to win a range of prizes - including an XBOX 360 (with games) from Destructoid and autographed XKCD goodies. Of course, none of these great prizes will compare to that feeling you get from volunteering some of your time and skills. But they are nice.

deadspin gets a redesign, blames reddit

How touching. Deadspin got a very reddit-esque redesign

Yeah, yeah. I know. You're looking at this page and thinking 'when the hell did Deadspin turn into Reddit?'

But relax. What you're seeing right now is the "condensed" version of the front page. This whole thing is done to make the Deadspin reading experience more enjoyable, especially for people who just like to skim headlines and pretty photos of Steve Young getting bopped in the face with a plastic cup.

Aww, shucks. Thanks for the shout-out, DAULERIO.

I think it'd be worth asking Nick why you don't have reddit buttons yet...

We've got an up and coming sports.reddit, you know. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell it -- it's sensitive.

bostonist is reading reddit (appropriate, given we're a boston - er, somerville - founded company)

Yes, we were happy to read that students in Massachusetts are defying the overall American trend of math and science failure.

Bostonist nailed it in this recent entry, Mass Kids Smarter than Scottish Schoolchildren, Slightly Dumber than Singaporeans:

Unfortunately, the US as a whole still lags behind at 539, which could mean that while we won the race to the Moon, even Latvia could beat us to Mars. Here's hoping that with a sitting president in office who values math (read: won't insist on manipulating data to suit his needs) and science (read: doesn't believe that humans and dinosaurs shared caves back in the old days) these scores will improve. Until then, Reddit readers may continue to vote this story up as proof that the liberals of Massachusetts are, in fact, smarter than the rest of the country.

Sure, redditors were no doubt upvoting this with gusto, but despite the misleading reddit headline, this has little to do with ideology (left or right) and more to do with a heightened focus on math and science education.

That, and I bet all of those kids who skewed up the average are hardcore redditors...

the secret is out

I take it as a compliment that people still get surprised we're not just "some dudes in their basement." A redditor named oddasudda just realized we'd been acquired.

We've tried to maintain the feel of a small site and Condé Nast has gone out of their way to not intervene with how we operate reddit. As a result, the site has continued to grow and we continue to have disappointed redditors learn we've got health insurance and work in an office.

And we've even open sourced!

In fact, we're still learning about our own users, who volunteered to share a bit about themselves on this ask.reddit: Who Are You?

a good week for cute on thecutelist

We've been busy naming dogs and a cat on reddit's TheCuteList, but this is our second reddit dog (Bacon was our first). Andrewinmelbourne spotted this dapper canine and submitted it yesterday.

Granted, redditors like mdedm were conflicted:

+1 for Reddit logo. -1 for putting a shirt on a dog.

But that's why you can vote up, down, and not at all. Don't worry, reddit dog, I voted you up.

going to be in new york on january 24th? you should be

Mark your calendar for the first ROFLThing of 2009: January 24th, 2009. New York will never be the same.

Not only will it be as epic an event as the first ever ROFLCon of last April, it's also going to be hosted by me. I'm still trying to decide on a costume, but I have a feeling this is an event you wont want to miss.

It's the same ROFLtastic team who brought you all those other flavors of ROFL, only this one is going to be in the New York city, which means LOLcats doing lines off strippers and TronGuy brawling with Naked Cowboy (TronGuy wins, easily).

They generously announced it on the ROFLBlog, but you should probably see my moderation of the LOLcats panel that sealed the deal.

And then watch this clip from the original ROFLCon in Cambridge:

biggest reddit alien ever

I need to share this. A redditor called AlLnAtuRalX made a huge frigging alien.

He shared it in this comment thread two months ago, yet somehow I only found it this week.

A huge Reddit alien (55 inches x 42.5 inches) on my wall above where I sleep... I am welcoming our new overlords.

Took me an hour to make, but it was worth it.

And we're even treated to an update:

it's still proudly taking up that whole wall... You can see it from outside my house and at night it kind of glows... Makes for a nice eerie, Reddit-y feeling as I near my house :D.

I can only hope that one day everyone gets a "nice, eerie, reddit-y feeling" when they approach their house...

sarah palin invades reddit? i think this was photoshopped

Whoa, ProbablySucks.com must really like Mrs. Palin. Will the LOL-Palin catch on?

half-life redux is 1 minute and 54 seconds of awesome

Now this is impressive.

this is not what i would call 'over-selling'

Chris wins the day with this picture of our favorite sandwich board on the way to our favorite Chinese restaurant in SF.

Also, it's not blurry at all -- get your eyes checked.

it's like twitter is mocking me

I'd just twittered about how my Blackberry Pearl survived a 15 story free fall (sent via txt from said phone). And when I logged on, this "Is your phone okay?" message greeted me.

Real comforting, guys. It turns out I'd shut off my ability to send/receive txts thanks to a fail-ful phone conversation with AT&T to enable tethering.

But even that couldn't dampen my glee when the maintenance worker retrieved my phone from the bowels of the elevator shaft. Yes, I managed to drop it through the crack between the elevator and the hallway. Look at it sometime, you'd never think someone could do that, but this is a skill that comes only with much practice (10,000 hours, Malcolm!).

Oh, and I'm a shareholder in Research in Motion (makers of the Blackberry) but don't consider this an attempt to single-handedly resurrect the company's stock -- I'm saving that magic (and my last sacrificial goat) for Yahoo!.

andrew sullivan cheers "the power of the reddit generation"

We had a nice mention in this FastCompany article by Chris Dannen: People-Powered Internet Grows Up

Reddit is a user-generated clearinghouse for "what's new online." Like its rival, Digg.com, the site presents visitors with a numbered list of linked headlines that they can either vote up or down, depending on their taste; anyone can submit headlines, but no one is paid.

"There's a core group of Reddit users that are submitting and editing," says Alexis Ohanian, Reddit's 25-year-old co-founder. "But [at] some point we're going to hit the ceiling of nerds on the Internet who want to share cool, geeky stories. It's depressing, but we know that we will." So to keep the 3-year-old site growing at a brisk pace, the Reddit team--which says it receives about 4.3 million unique hits per month--recently announced a new function on the site that will allow users to create Reddits for their own online communities.

And Andrew Sullivan added some 'Cool Whip to the pumpkin pie' (Thanksgiving's answer to the 'icing on the cake' cliche) with a brief entry, The Human Algorithm:

Chris Dannen sees the power of the Reddit generation.

The power of the reddit generation.  I like the sound of that. Chris and Andrew, I hope you each got an extra slice of pie.

Wish you all had a great Thanksgiving -- no shortage of things to be thankful for here.

reddit will help you lose your virginity and make your goat famous -- not simultaneously (the la times said so)

Somehow I missed this post on reddit, but Mark Milian of the LA Times technology blog didn't:

Thanks to some attention from Reddit, the social news website, Help a Virgin has seen a major surge in Web traffic. The site has been up since at least the summer (the last time it was updated was July), but after it hit Reddit's front page on Sunday, the traffic counter has more than doubled -- to 80,000 and rising. At this rate, his scheme won't succeed (he wouldn't even get half the target number) so he'll definitely need some additional attention. (He didn't respond to my e-mail requests for an interview, but, then again, I'm not a woman.)

In other news, reddit will also help make your goat photos famous:

A photo of mountain goats scaling a cliff, featured on Roger Eickholt's Flickr page, was all the rage on Monday. It was plastered on social media sites and around the blogosphere, driving more than 200,000 people to view it. [...]

When Eickholt analyzed Flickr's link referral page to make sense of his newfound prominence, Reddit.com topped the list. What is Reddit, you ask? "This website talks about current events and stuff like that, I guess," said Eickholt. "I have no idea. I've never really been to those websites before."

Reddit, like all social media websites, is serendipitous. Few know what type of photograph, video or news bit is going to explode, and what's going to fizzle. And often times, content creators aren't the ones who submit their own links -- they don't discover that their photos had struck gold until later. "It just seems so random," Eickholt said. "You never know what's going to take off like that."

Welcome to reddit, Roger.

co2stats up for a crunchie

It's almost time for some frivolous Web 2.0 awards -- must be the Crunchies!

I purposefully haven't written about my investments before, but VentureBeat spilled the beans a little while back. One startup I've invested in is CO2Stats.

They've developed a way to analyze a site's total power consumption and automagically purchase carbon credits to offset it. The duo behind it is a force to be reckoned with and their business model is straightforward. Being profitable definitely helped, too.

While I don't believe carbon offset credits are the total solution for combating climate change, they're an effective step in the right direction.

I naturally felt compelled to vote for them. And some part of me feels it's my duty to include that link in a blog entry. That, and work on a mascot for their green search engine: GreenSeng.

the internet shows its support for crowbars and gordon freeman

Our crowbar announcement went over well on reddit, fark, and Destructoid. But that was to be expected -- these communities understand the importance of having this crowbar at CERN and in the hands of Dr. Freeman.

But this important event didn't go unnoticed elsewhere:

• Kotaku: Large Hadron Collider Guys Get Theatrical With Half-Life Street Theatre
• Gizmodo: CERN's 'Gordon Freeman' Employee Receives Crowbar, Starts Murdering
• ShackNews: CERN's Freeman Picks Up Crowbar from Gamers, Begins Saving the World
• 1Up: 'Real Gordon Freeman' Saves CERN from Headcrab Invasion
• The Escapist: Meet The Real Gordon Freeman, Ready For Action
  

gordon freeman gets his crowbar, the internet responds gleefully

Not surprisingly, the dramatic conclusion of gaming.reddit's crowbar intiative did well on reddit and fark. If you haven't seen them yet, the photos and video are pretty spectacular.

We couldn't have done it without AlpineKat, the physcist also responsible for such Internet greatness as The Large Hadron rap.

We've gotten some nifty remixes from redditors (below are two of them) and our friends at Destructoid are soliciting photoshop and YTMND awesomeness from their own community. And to top it all off, Fark gives it their blessing -- after all, they provided the invaluable Half-life strategy guide, so Gordon would know exactly what to do when it all goes down.

shopped (or is it?) by TheNoxx

shopped (with gusto) by iamah

we care about frog literacy

Blast from the past: Aaron emailed a surprising shoutout (albeit unintentional) from a book on lit crit.

A friend tells me that in the book An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle), there appears a joke along the lines of:

Q: What does a frog say when you give him a book?
A: reddit, reddit, reddit, reddit, ...

Deep down, I'm imagining Nicholas Royle is a hardcore redditor.

finally a site for online metal fanatics

This was an amusing reddit submission: Enought with the FAQ pages. These guys have a RAQ page!

It didn't go unnoticed by the folks over at OnlineMetals.com, who blogged about the reddit-love. So if you've seen one too many FAQs in your day, try the Rarely Asked Questions of OnlineMetals.com

There's a lot to learn:

Q. Dealer has a 6 showing, you've got a 6 and a 5. What is the correct play?
A. Double Down

reddit aliens in your office, watching you code

The FogCreek offices in NY have a bit of an infestation problem. The kind that bobbles.

After an interview Steve and I did on the StackOverflow podcast, I decided the FogCreek offices needed a box of happy aliens to combat the economic madness happening down on Wall St.

Hopefully they'll improve productivity, like Dundies, or at least tossed off the side of their building.

I've seen evidence of a LOLmagnetz plague on their office fridge as well... I think the aliens are in good hands.

mushroom.reddit has a perfect first submission

We don't have a mushroom.reddit yet, but if we did, this recent find by qgyh2 would be number one. It'd be really impressive seeing this mushroom formation on a pizza. I'll keep dreaming...

reddit hires a trouble-making rogue

I announced it on the reddit blog but ReadWriteWeb trumpeted our newest hire with panache:

Here's a hot hire we missed last week - another community manager position - this time at social news site Reddit. Erik Martin, by all accounts a trouble-making rogue, has joined the Reddit staff to assist the many users of the site.

Erik still doesn't have an alien avatar, so I really ought to be working on that instead of blog entries.

Read about his alien abduction on his blog.

startup insights from dharmesh shah - in video!

Couldn't make it to Business of Software 2008? Not only did you miss Pierre Francois, you also missed a presentation with actual substance (and great style) given by Dharmesh Shah of OnStartups. redditAll.com is a big fan.

Don't fret! You can view it below, which you really should do if you have any interest in startups or penguins:

I lied, there are no penguins in his talk, but now that you've watched it, I don't think you're complaining.

yes we did

I remember when he first announced his candidacy -- didn't think I'd actually see the day he'd become President of the United States. Wtg, America.

we pay joel and jeff a visit on the stackoverflow podcast

Steve and I skyped into a podcast with Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood last week to discuss all things reddit. Stop reading and start listening here. We had some technical difficulties, so there were a couple redos, but the finished version sounds pretty solid. You'll never know when I went on my 3 minute stream of profanities.

I promised the guys a newer, hipper StackOverflow mascot (great site, btw) and I'm finally delivering:

Enjoy, gentlemen. StackOverflow will never be the same.

super reddit man!

This caught my eye last week, but it's eternally relevant. After much speculation, here's what super reddit man looks like:

Click for the rest of the comic. You know you want to. POW! BANG!

this is a dainty cow, one of many cute pictures you can find on TheCuteList.com

In this time of heated campaigning, I'm asking for your vote on TheCuteList.com for this dainty cow. This is the kind of change America really needs.

And here's an ad we're running for TheCuteList that preys on your fears of economic meltdown. TheCuteList is not ashamed for running a dirty campaign.

sxsw isn't going to be as yc-tastic as i hoped, but ars technica and roflcon are sure to please

After the second round of panel announcements, it looks pretty clear that my Y Combinator panel isn't going to happen. Making it a broader look at startup fundraising strategies would have probably helped. I really hoped I'd get to make that orange kool-aid, too.

Nonetheless, we're still heading to SXSW next year and I'd like to promote two panels that did make the cut.

Ken Fisher of Ars Technica is hosting a panel on building and maintaining strong online communities. I know he's got some strong panelists, too ;)

Tim Hwang of ROFLCon will also be discussing the state of the Internet Memescape. The panel title includes the years 2008-2010. One can only suspect that Tim has some sort of time-travel machine, which lets him see the Internet of 2010. Fascinating.

happy halloween

Long-time redditor, Adam Fuhrer, sent over this over.

We've evidently got a mole in digg, a pumpkin-carving reddit sympathizer. That, or it was going to be used for smashing.

Either way, I think it had a good chance of winning the digg pumpkin carving contest. Kevin booed the reddit alien, but that's OK; I know he's going out dressed as it this year.

a splasy surprise - email from wikipedia

This was a first.

Hi, I'm a Wikipedia administrator and was wondering if you would be willing to license the Mr. Splashy Pants reddit logo under an open source license for usage in the Mister Splashy Pants article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Splashy_Pants).

Of course I said yes. You can bet Splashy would have done the same for any of us.

In fact, I'd already uploaded the SVG files for both Splashy and "Fightin' Splashy". He truly is one hell of a whale.

We're likely going to be overhauling our environment.reddit in the coming months -- Splashy will be playing a pivotal role.

pirate aliens coming to a website near you

Our sympathies are well known. Pirates are the chosen people of the flying spaghetti monster. It should surprise no one that we also offer a pirate reddit button.

What should surprise you is that people are actually using it.

We made an Ahab-style offer last week, the bounty was simple: a bobblehead to whomever sent me a link to one.

Lucas, of eleZeta, was first to deliver. Congrats. May the bobblehead bring you much distraction and simple amusement.

But http://ty.rannosaur.us gets the honorable mention for having both a pirate reddit button and tag cloud.

thanks, deadspin, we <3 you, too!

Bernie Davis, a friend of reddit here at CondéNet, sent this over.

Just an innocuous link on Deadspin, right?

Follow the link back to Washington Post and you'll find an interest referrer -- reddit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/22/AR2008102201645.html?referrer=reddit

This was a pleasant surprise, Rick. You know, we've really got a lot in come, you and sports.reddit. I smell a partnership...

We may be star-crossed lovers, what with you being a "Denton" and we being a "Nast," but like a modern-day Montague and Capulet romance -- what could possibly go wrong?

reddit and the independent team up to create internet awesomeness

In case you missed it on reddit, we've announced a partnership with The Independent.

Readers of The Independent will now have a reddit to call their own, with nifty reddit voting buttons coming soon beneath every article.

Cnet's Caroline McCarthy got the scoop, which even made its way to digg

mike alstott gets punked on sunday night football - tampa bay maintains its legacy of fail

I don't think I've got a lot of NFL fans reading this blog, but I couldn't help but post this snapshot from this past Sunday Night Football game.

One of the best Tampa Bay Bucaneers, Mike Alstott was being honored at half time with a pair of framed jerseys (both the original, heinous orange Buccaneers jersey, and the less appalling one they were now).

It must have been a special night for Alstott and his family. So why did they have a typo on his jersey? (Oddly enough, the modern jersey had it spelled correctly.)

Yep, Als[t]ott. Unless he happened to change his surname after his first few years in the season, someone in Tampa got fired today.

Update: Ah, this is what I get for being sleep-deprived. Not a typo, just a memento.

will the real reddit please stand up?

The Biker Forum: By Bikers For Bikers showed up as a Google News Alert for "reddit." It's not the kind of place I'd expect a reddit shoutout, but maybe they're celebrating the one year anniversary a chopper.reddit community they created. They're English, too. I wonder if there's another slang for "chopper" in the UK...

But I digress. The shout-out was in fact for a biker in the community named reddit.

Hope you had a great birthday, reddit, I'll gladly send you a birthday bobblehead if you email me your address.

The only downer to all this was seeing a set of familiar 'social news and bookmarking' icons -- but reddit is missing.

aliens invading ars technica

While I was in Hungary, Steve got his drink on with the Ars Technica crowd, who celebrated their 10 year anniversary in New York last week. Ten Years. Damn. I didn't think decades existed in the dot-com world.

MediaPost's Kelly Samardak was charmed by my blue-eyed co-founder and the PR-force-of-nature, Jenna Landry (with pic!)

So I'm standing at the bar talking to Reddit founder, Steve Huffman, who by the way reminds me of this kid who I used to club over the head in 4th grade with my broken wrist cast. I can say that because Steve and I might both look like 4th graders today [...] I left Jenna and Steve to ponder Steve's fame and yukked it up with Gary and Bernie Davis.

Coincidentally, this was the week a reddit alien landed at the Ars offices in Chicago. According to the flickr pic, it's found a good home. Congratulations, Ars, and if you need any more bobbleheads, email me. I'm counting on a box of Ars bobbleheads (any guesses as to what in the hell those would look like?) to show up in the reddit office one of these days...

so that's where algorithims come from... (hint: not storks)

This discussion started innocently enough, but quickly became one of those chin-stroking affairs that appear in reddit comments every now and then, warming my heart:

> the concept of an algorithm

Really? Do you know of an Arabic or Indian algorithm that pre-dates Euclid's (Greek, of course) algorithm for computing greatest common divisors? That's from about 300 BC and I was always taught that this was the first known example of an algorithm found in history. I'd be very interested to hear if this is not actually the case.

Copying and pasting the response here wouldn't really do it justice. See it in context. Careful, you're about to become smarter.

Thanks, reddit...

photography reddit gets a shout-out

Here's a community I could learn quite a bit from. I wish I could be an active participant in the photography reddit community, but I'm a total camera n00b. That said, one active redditor took the time to write up the site on the GiiNii blog.

If you have never visited Reddit, you don’t know what you’re missing. Reddit is a great (the best, in my opinion) social media site. Users from all over the world go to Reddit to submit links to interesting Web sites they find. And now, Reddit has a photography page.

Called a subreddit, the Photography page allows users to post interesting pictures, tricks and tutorials. It’s a great community with lots of discussion about cameras and photography in general.

Want an easy way to get quoted on my blog? Say incredibly flattering things about reddit. It's easy!

That said, I actually just found a slick (free!) auto image stitcher thanks to this reddit. Huzzah!

<3 gossip? there's a new reddit in town, in heels

Last Thursday we announced our most radical reddit redesign yet: WeHeartGossip.

Dear readers, you'll find that this community is perfect for all of your shameful brain-indulgences. And by that I mean it's full of celebrity gossip; in case the name didn't give it away.

You may notice a few ads around the CondéNet empire for it, but I also designed one specifically for the reddit community. I wonder if advertising can have the same effect as peer pressure...

After flipping the switch, I was asked by Brent Csutoras about why we're moving away from Lipstick (a site we developed back in 2006) and to a new, slightly more pink gossip site.

My response:

“We thought the lipstick brand was too geared toward women and men who wear lipstick. As a man who doesn’t wear lipstick, but is curious about Natalie Portman’s dating habits, I personally wanted a site that was less pigeonholing.

The important thing for us was to create a new vertical that was totally unrelated to the existing Reddit network. Celebrity gossip was about as unrelated as we could get, as you pointed out by the low subscription count.

The goal with WeHeartGossip is to create a standalone site; subscription count isn’t a focus, traffic is. That, and Devendra Banhart — I can’t believe Nat is dating him…"

Nat, I know you're reading this. All I'm asking for is a second chance. I'll leave my lightsaber at home. I promise.

martin sargent - fan of breadpig (and reddit?) - rocks and this video proves it

Martin Sargent invited me to an interview on his show, Internet Superstar, over at Revision3. They've been doing some great work; I'm just sorry they've hit such a low and brought me on.

The breadpig already blogged this, but in case you missed it:

I didn't want to be a lousy guest, so I brought a few gifts. I wonder if they've gone skeet shooting with the bobblehead yet...

philosophy reddit is taking utah state by storm

I stumbled across a blog entry on the Utah State University Philosophy Departments website that reviewed our philosophy reddit community. Now I feel like I ought to design a custom logo for them, but Rodin's Thinker just seemed too cliche.

One quote that philosophy reddit submitter irony was most accurate:

Many of the regular users are really quite sharp, and they do not suffer fools gladly!

With some luck, a few new people interested in philosophy discovered reddit as a result. Thought, it may come back to haunt them around finals once they learn what it does to productivity...

the sociability of reddit - and why the vegan reddit doesn't jibe with bacon reddit

Here's an interesting post by zgiltner from a Human-Computer Interaction blog on the Sociability of reddit.

My favorite part of the analysis is below -- the observer rightly addresses the striking differences between communities.

Coordination

There are many different subreddits which coordinate the where people may look for certain subjects. In the screenshot I posted the article was submitted in the politics subreddit. The entire culture of commentors varies vastly from the “bacon” subreddit to the “vegan” subreddit. This allows users to narrow down their conversations. Users have been known to post other articles related to the discussion of the conversation, allowing further research on whatever topic and continuing conversation can happen.

reddit finds hope in a young jedi

I like propaganda as much as the next guy, but when it's starring Luke Skywalker, it achieves a new level of awesomeness.

What started as a popular reddit submission has now been anointed 'approved' fan artwork by the Lucas folks.

In fact, as my pal Pete (maker of Brawndo, what plants crave) noted in an email to me, the poster is now for sale (along with shirts).

laughing squid laughs out loud at our magnetic LOL poetry

Scott Beale, friend of the breadpig, just blogged about a certain kit of magnetic LOL poetry.

This is especially appropriate given Scott was the first person to ever document LOLmagnetz. That was back in April at ROFLCon. Many thanks to Scott for his continued support of breadpig's inanity.

A fellow cephalopod-lover, he also has great taste in friends, as evidenced by this picture.

google like it's 2001

Jeremy passed along this neat Google trick (for their 10th birthday) to search in the past -- 2001 to be precise, their oldest index. All the results are what you'd have seen in that glorious year of my high school graduation.

The results for "reddit" were a tad different, to say the least.

new reddit propaganda

Jim Hopkinson came up with the idea for a back to school ad to run on Wired and a few other non-reddit places within the CondéNet empire. I sat down yesterday and with some help from an old reddit avatar slapped this ad together.

And after hearing that our wrecking bar was received in Switzerland, I got inspired to do this house ad for gaming reddit. I'm clearly trying to start a feud between gaming and science communities.

pierre francois strikes back - how to start, run, and sell a web 2.0 startup

My secret weapon in the Pecha Kucha competition of the Business of Software Conference was to purge my presentation of any useful content and then fill that void with creamy nougat.

The result was Pierre Francois' second talk on Web 2.0 startups. He's recently started a company of his own, called 74 Signals. The guru is back, folks.

Neil Davidson kindly edited and uploaded the video. Keep an eye open for the Mister Splashy Pants shoutout.

better late than never - i declare my unabashed love for xkcd

I was out of the country at the time, but this got passed around the team reddit email. You know you've done something right when you've entered the subconscious of Randall Munroe. Bonus points for making the title attribute, too. Thanks for the reddit.com shoutout and thereby making our day.

Incidentally, the digg community wasn't too pleased...

finally a korean comedian i can really appreciate

You don't need to speak Korean to get this, just geek.

alltop: "all topics, all the time"... almost

Catching up on my bloated inbox after a couple weeks of vacation, I found this solicitation from none other than Guy Kawasaki. We've never spoken, but we did share a plane ride together once. Ergo, I became eligible for this email:

I’d like to show you my latest project: Alltop. Alltop is a website that functions as an “online magazine rack” with the latest from a wide variety of news sources and blogs covering “all topics.” Many of the Alltop sites are very useful to entrepreneurs, investors, and everyone else in the high-tech community:

I'd just finished watching my beloved DC football team upset our arch-rivals, the Cowboys and could use a nice aggregation of Skins news since sports.reddit doesn't quite have my obsessive narrowmindedness. I'm also very web-lazy, so when I got to Alltop, I gave search a try.

And on a search for "redskins" I got 0 results. Alltop could find no topics.

I decided to push on and click through Sports/ProFootball and finally came to a page that looked strikingly similar to popurls - except it was just a collection of "all the top football news," which was exactly what I didn't want. I just need a collection of the best news about a specific topic, the Washington Redskins. Guess I'm going to stick with Chris Cooley's blog...

Sorry, Guy, your newest project isn't quite mixing my Gatorade, so to speak. But Thomas of popurls ought to be feeling quite flattered.

from cambodia

Pol Pot's barbarous regime used this equipment for an advanced interrogation technique to torture captives in the Tuol Sleng prison (aka S-21) over the roughly four years of the Khmer Rouge's rule.


It's known as waterboarding.

While here, I've been reading a very good book on the subject of the Cambodian genocide - First They Killed My Father.

in case you didn't hear, breadpig is going to be on spiketv this saturday

I thought just the breadpig blog wouldn't be enough, so I'm letting you all know, too.

Set your DVRs: September 13th, 11:30pm EST on SpikeTV. Prepare to be rocked. The band reunited for this show.

cow porn on every virgin america flight

I was reminded of this on Monday when I settled down in my seat for this afternoon's Virgin America flight back to SF. They've got a "welcome to this airplane, here's how it works" video that's actually tolerable. In fact, it's the best I've seen thanks to a creative hand-drawn style and a good sense of humor.

To that latter point, check out what the bull sitting beside the matador is reading.


See that? It's a magazine with OLE on the cover and a cow udder on the back.


That's right, it's a bovine titty magazine.

The artist probably didn't expect anyone to notice it, but I guess I was just that interested in my pre-flight movie. Kudos, Virgin America. Somehow I feel like an American carrier would find this little gag too raunchy.

Point this out to the person beside you on your next VA flight and you'll look really observant... or odd.

business of software conference was a great success - pierre even took home a macbook air

I can't thank Joel Spolsky and Neil Davidson enough for putting on such a great conference. Granted, I was only able to stay for the first day of it, but if that was any indication, day two could have been presented entirely in Coptic and it still would have been interesting.

Be sure to catch up on what you missed on the Business of Software wiki and keep your eye on Neil's blog for video and future updates. I do hope you two will do this again next year.

I should also divulge that I'm a bit biased, as this was the first conference I came back from with a prize. Well, I didn't win it, exactly, but Pierre Francois did. Admittedly, whereas the rest of the presenters opted for intelligent, helpful presentations, I chose something much less useful.

Pierre Francois (of 74 Signals) gave a Pecha Kucha presentation (that's 20 slides with only 20 seconds a slide - also not pronounced like you think) entitled Keeping it Real: Starting, Running, and Selling a Web 2.0 Startup. A number of folks asked me to put it online, so you can find it all at 74 Signals, including the very first Pierre talk from 2006. I'll blog about the video of this most recent presentation once it goes live. I've also been advised to create t-shirts. We'll see...

The audience voted it the winner and Pierre walked away with a brand new MacBook Air that he loves almost as much as he loves himself, which is saying a lot.

wtg, metallica

This is not the Metallica from a decade ago; I'm happy you guys learned your lesson. Don't worry, you're not unforgiven in my book. Maybe for St. Anger -- that album really sucked.

The new album sounds pretty good, though.

a hot, new (and frothy) reddit called cappuccino

Meet Cappuccino. No relation to the drink I'm effetely sipping right now.

There's a new web framework in town with all the sex appeal of your favorite Apple apps, but for producing those desktop-caliber apps in your browser. The YC team behind 280North stopped by the reddit office to give us a sneak peek and we were all quite impressed.

They launched it last week to much fanfare, which you can find here on their reddit. It'll be fun watching this project evolve.

Don't worry, they're not eligible for our Raise a reddit competition. But you probably are -- there's $7,500 in prizes up for grabs, so lay off the Spore a bit and get to growing your reddit.

michael arrington loves feedback fail!

See what I did there? It's not true, but I crafted an attention-grabbing headline.

The actual piece just consists of an email he received as a "tip" from a concerned TechCrunch reader who was dissatisfied with the coverage. Not for legitimate reasons, but merely to plug his own startup. So Michael indulged him. This startup has a promising pitch, from John the tipster himself:

Its [sic] the first dating service in the world that allows you to meet and date real celebrities as well as find people who bear a facial resemblance to the love of your life.

Michael, I know we haven't always seen eye to eye in the past, but I'm just happy to know that we all share in the joy that is feedback fail.

more great reviews of lolmagnetz, one even confirming the death of english

The Modern Materialist has the best LOLmagnetz review I've read yet:

What ever happened to the ambitious Emily Dickinsons of our generation? The Bukowskis, Plaths, Whitmans, and Miltons? When did the English language itself devolve into missplaced [sic] consonants and smiley faces?

Perhaps the English language officially died at the time when LOLMagnetz became available.

Indeed, we've won a great victory against the English language.

The forum readers of Badger and Blade approve, after rabidpotatochip posted a link and great little review. I kid you not, the first response was simple and emphatic:

full of win!

If that (and the downafll of the English language) wasn't enough to convince you, the profits from LOLmagnetz are donated to the SF SPCA to ensure there will be future generations of pets to be LOLified.

Get your LOLz on and post your LOLmasterpieces at LOLmagnetz.com.

thinkgeek + lolmagnetz = full of win

LOLmagnetz just went on sale at ThinkGeek. They're apparently selling well and a slew of sites (including Mixx?!) have been spreading the word.

A few other sites (non reddit competitors - hehe) also appreciated the LOL-ramifications of this innovation. ThisNext, Kaboodle, and the Swedish Fascination.se -- I salute you all with a mighty glass of lingonberry juice.

And the most exciting news of all, LOLmagnetz.com is now online, entirely thanks to the hard work of Chris Slowe. Once you've got your LOLmagnetz kit, photograph some of your creations and submit them to this reddit-powered site for fellow LOLfans to vote and discuss.

banner day for popcuts

Disclosure: This startup is in Y Combinator.

I'm consistently impressed with this company. The founders are diligent and earnest, but I could say that about most YC startups. They don't even have a mascot (wtf, guys?) but they do have a clever revenue model. And now they're getting some love in the AP.

In case you don't want to read the whole thing (but you should), here's a blurb:

Being a trendsetter can be pricey. As any fashionista or gadget hound knows, the latest frocks and tech toys don't pay for themselves. But a new Web site is trying to make it profitable for music lovers to stay ahead of the curve — by paying them when other people purchase MP3s they've bought.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that they also gave Breadpig the band an early entry into the PopCuts artist library. Sales haven't quite taken off yet, but we're giving the maximum amount possible to our early adopter fans. Get in on the ground floor.

wisdom of crowds? internet pwnage on wired

Sure there's a Wookieepedia, but when Wired asked its readers to plot the Star Wars galaxy, the Internet stepped up to the challenge. Doomeru was able to capture this screenshot before it was taken down.

He also pointed out that, judging from the aliens, I have a feeling the reddit community was a bit involved...

penny arcade expo just got an order of magnitude more awesome... because of bacon

Sure, I got my ass handed to me in the Soul Calibur tournament, my day immediately turned around when I saw this man in costume. It wasn't just any costume, though. He was a slice of bacon. I just wish I could say I was half as drunk as he was at the time of this photograph.

I think he's making the "shocker" gesture, but it's a bit sloppy. You'll recognize my facial expression as the one I make in nearly every photo. Nonetheless, I'm counting on this doing well over at BaconBuzz.com. Don't let me down, bacon community.

internet pundits approve of the recent reddit announcements -- bacon a deciding factor

You can read about it on the dev blog, but today's announcement went over pretty well.

Granted, my reddit submission didn't do nearly as well as yesterday's about qgyh2. But those 1200+ point story days don't come around too often. I just hope all the attention doesn't have a negative impact on BaconBuzz.com -- the online bacon community will never be the same.

If you're curious to know what the Internet seemed to think about the announcement, here's a quick 'n' dirty list of blog writeups. Thanks for all the linklove, folks:

CNET - Reddit now lets you create your own social news site
Mashable - Bookmarking Gets Distributed; Create Your Own Reddit on Your Own ...
Industry Standard - Custom Reddits get even more customizable
ReadWriteWeb - Reddit Now Fully Customizable: Bring Your Own Design and Domain
VentureBeat - Custom Reddits get even more customizable

-- Don't trust anything these next two say about us, heh (everything else is golden, though) we're owned by the same company --

Ars Technica - Design customization lets you have a reddit of your very own
WebMonkey - Reddit Expands Personalized Features With Skinning, Custom URLs

wrecking bar painted and ready for shipment

You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a "replica Half-life crowbar" online. Fortunately, spray paint is very easy to come by.


I just hope this gets to CERN in time.

npr loves sean tevis, deftly avoids including the word 'reddit'

We've been impressed with Sean Tevis ever since his comic turned up on reddit. I reached out to let him know. Turns out he liked the logo tribute, too.

But we he really appreciated was the outpouring of support not only on reddit, but the Internet at large.


Sean gives a good interview (give it a listen) and patiently explains all those geeky phenomena he tapped into. Despite that, reddit ends up being called a "community publishing site." Where's the love, NPR? It's because I didn't make a contribution last month, isn't it?

The comic is drawn in a style similar to a popular Web-based cartoon called XKCD and uses terms like downmodding (which is when a user in a community publishing site votes to lower another post's popularity) and to the online phenomenon Rickrolling.

Nevertheless, it's great to see Sean continue to get nationwide exposure. I hope his campaign serves as motivation for other non-politicos to get involved in politics. We could use a few more geeks in office.