the inevitable rise and liberation of music... thanks to NiggyTardust??

Really? Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) is himself producing this interesting fellow, Saul Williams. But here's the fun part, Williams' newest album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! is free to download (and a DRM-free download at that). I just wish he'd gotten a better designer for the website. Ouch.

+5 bonus points for the pirate cat, though.

Here's the message included with the pre-order email:

If you decide at any point you'd like to directly support the artist for this work and feel it's worth what we're asking, you can always click this button. It will also allow you to re-download the record at audiophile rates if desired.

Radiohead got all the attention for doing it a month back, but I still remember the album Harvey Danger released for "pay what you want, or nothing at all." It got a lot of play back in reddit hq that first winter in 2005. Are things actually changing in the music industry?

Noah Dinkin (full disclosure: a friend of mine) of UFO Music has been sticking it to the man for a while now ("the man" in this instance is the cabal of major music labels). Let's hear it for the rise of the independent musician.

Incidentally, this is all going according to plan, for Steve and I have already started a band -- we even have a name, all we need now is talent.

happy birthday, doc

Even as Chris KeyserSosa Slowe pushes ever closer to 30, the Force in him only grows stronger. It took me way too damn long to get this logo online yesterday, but hopefully he caught a glimpse of it before returning to Dagobah.

(see if you can spot how many times I've reused that image of the cake)

reddit alien-napper has been identified

Thanks to some super sleuthing by Andrew Hughes, co-founder of Yaperture, we now have evidence pointing to the culprit: Michael S Galpert. While this is by no means conclusive, sources have connected him to the earlier hostage photo.

His street name appears to be "MSG" and we have no reason to believe he's harmed the alien.

Because I refuse to use Twitter, if Michael would like to get in touch with me (alexis + reddit.com) about returning the alien, I'd be happy to discuss terms.

If not, I hope he could at least send a photo to reassure us (and the reddit community) that the alien is receiving good care.

puppy calendar update

Regarding yesterday's entry, digg was not in fact responsible for shipping that adorable puppies calendar.

Sorry for any misunderstandings this may have created. No word on whether or not Kevin Rose does indeed like puppies, but sources close to him have told me "Yes, he does."

become an official "facebook fan" of reddit

As facebook slides closer toward the spam-hell that is MySpace, I'm proud to mention that we now have a reddit brand page on facebook. Hmm, maybe "proud" isn't the right word...

There's not much going on there at the moment, but with a little bit of love and attention, it could become a worthwhile destination. In the meantime, we promise not to spam you.

I consider it a pleasant alternative to the "reddit alien" account I tried to create, which was disabled for what I perceive to be xenophobic reasons. They forced me to rename "reddit alien" to "Alexis Ohanian," which ought to explain why the real me appears to be married to myself.

Now hopefully the friends of the reddit alien can just switch over to becoming "fans of reddit." Just like your favorite band, only significantly less cool.

with bubblicious acquisition rumors circling, digg still comes through with free schwag

After meeting a bunch of digg employees at our SF meetup, I thought I'd send them over a few reddit shirts so they'd have something to wear at the next one.

Daniel Burka returned the favor with a set of digg shirts shortly thereafter, I've just been taking my sweet time getting this picture online.

Although I'm not sure where that puppies calendar came from. But boy are they cute (just not this cute).

And now I read in Valleywag that they may be getting acquired for $300 million. Pity you can't trust anything you read on Valleywag. But if you could, I'd buy Kevin and Jay a drink.

some q&a with steve and me

A PR firm, Schwartz Communications, asked us to participate in a podcast -- no, a Schwartzcast -- a little while back.

They definitely did their homework (the first interviewers we've had who knew our usernames) and he definitely slipped in a few references to my blog.

(A great way to score easy points with me. A harder way is to bake muffins.)

If you're curious about that quote from Thomas Jefferson, you can find it on spreddit (not as obscene as it sounds).

Alas, they edited out most of my obscenities, but most of the meat is still there. Here's the mp3.

missing alien update

Stumbled upon this incriminating evidence earlier today, it looks like our alien-nappers made their getaway in a New York taxi.

I've petitioned the reddit community for help in the past, but here's the update -- hopefully we can get our alien back safely.

detroit drankkit

Well, we learned from the Detroit redditors that most people don't actually come into downtown Detroit to meetup. Learn something new every day...

Despite that, a great group of courageous redditors came down for the free booze. Just about all of them made it into the group-pic this time; they'll forever be immortalized as a few blurry pixels on the reddit logo. (A few more photos here) It was a treat to be able to actually sit down during this event and have a long chat with folks. Thanks to all of you who braved the cold (although I guess you're used to it by now) to meet up.

(If we keep doing these meetups, I'll never need to doodle another alien logo!)

Since we had the same budget for Detroit as we did Boston, we thought it'd be prudent to "drop some Dom" on the event.

Shawn Smith snapped a pic of the decadence, so here's my chance to plug his site, New Media Bytes (you may soon find an interview there with a remarkably sober Steve and me). Hopefully we can get the folks over at Cristal jealous and make them fight over which drink will become the official crunkjuice of reddit.com.


Much to our dismay, Eminem did not show up.

where's reddit?

This gem was submitted in a comment about my plea to rescue our reddit alien.See if you can spot the alien. Heh. Classy, urabsurd, really classy ;-)

canadians drankkit, like champs

Wow. There weren't nearly as many people at this Toronto meetup as there were in SF, Boston, or New York, but they certainly drank enough to make up for it.At some point during the night, I promised the guys I'd take one of the event photos and turn it into today's logo to commemorate this monumental event -- the only stop scheduled for our "world" tour.

We've gotten to meet 4 of our super-redditors (top 10 and long-timers at that) on this drankkit tour. I'd gotten the chance to meet noname99 back in NY a few months ago, but it was great introducing him to Steve. And then hearing him say how much he was looking forward to tags. Hehe.

This was the best group pic of the night, so I thought it'd be an even better logo.

Change the logo in the middle of the day? Sure. That's the kind of power I have. I had to do a bit of photoshopping to get a few heads into the frame, but you could probably already tell from the pixels.

One intrepid redditor/journalist, Jordan Yerman, even documented the event on NowPublic. Thanks, Jordan, and thanks to all of you who came out.

Everyone was quite courteous, insisting that each team reddit member drink 3 shots for every 1 shot they had. I still affirm that shots of tequila are to be taken with salt and a lime, not a lemon. That was probably the biggest dose of culture shock on the trip.

Oh yes, your beer is better than ours. Your jager-bombs are also tasty, but comparable to ours. Maybe we really should have picked up some citizenship papers.

Unfortunately, we only had a day in Toronto. We'll have to come back, but now we're on our way to Detroit. We'll see if it is indeed a rock city.

I still haven't gotten an answer for why they're called the Toronto Maple Leafs and not Leaves. Hmpf. +5,000 points to whomever can explain this one to me...

nyc reddit alien-napping remains unsolved mystery

We just landed in Toronto. There's a slight drizzle and a brisk wind. Still no sign of mounties or moose.

Or our reddit alien bobblehead (but I did already find a Tim Hortons!)

My Craigslist post and reddit blog entry still haven't truned up anything. But we're not giving up hope just yet.

We'll have to push on with drankkit, it's what the alien would have wanted.

Hope you can make it. We'll be the ones pouring 40s on the bar floor for our little futuristic homie.

Remember: if you see something, say something.

redditor builds his own sweet app or: why our users rock

Chirag Mehta, who you may remember from his fashionable victory at Mashup Camp, has created a clever tool for calculating your personal "reddit score card."

I'll stop writing about it, because you really ought to just try it for yourself. And if you think this is cool, you'd probably be impressed with some of the other stuff he's working on -- including a startup called Chime.tv, which I realized I've already shamelessly plugged. Oh well, this is a fun little app.

Hurry, it's racing up the hot page as I type...

reddit new york meetup: the valleywag-fairy strikes again

For the record, Connor's digg shirt read "i digg [me]." It was the perfect attire for our New York reddit meetup.

Beer + geeks = Valleywag-bait. I guess we're doing something right.

Despite what you might have read about an 'impromptu' Q&A session, this terrible idea was advertised earlier as a chance to hurl vitriolic barbs at team reddit in real life -- just like in feedback emails. Only the problem was that despite our host's best efforts, the sound system wasn't going to suffice for a crowd as large (or as well open-bar-ified). Fortunately, we managed to get through a couple questions from our plants (congrats, Sabriya, you made it on Valleywag) and it was time to thank folks for coming out and return to taking drink orders.

I guess it turns out that not all user suggestions ought to be implemented. Like so many, this one seemed like a good idea at the time. Shit. Maybe that's because "the time" was at the last meetup and all those users had probably been drinking.

Unsolicited advice: Don't take user feedback more than 1 hour into open bar events.

Oh, and Julia Allison did show up (didn't you hear?) which was a good thing, because I was ready to Photoshop her into a picture to guarantee Gawker would have something to blog about Monday. It turns out she drives enough pageviews to be on Valleywag, too.My only complaint is that Steve's last name is Huffman, not Hoffman. Sloppy tagging makes Web 2.0 angels lose their wings.*

But twice in two weeks guys? I haven't even sent you reddit shirts.

Teasing aside, Julia was a big fan of reddit back when we were just a few guys in a Somerville apartment. And that's really cool of her. I think it was the alien (the drawing of which -- as Valleywag correctly reported -- is the only thing I do).

But we had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of the community last night, including another super-redditor -- raldi! We always try to be the first to admit that you all make reddit such a great site. This really was the least we could do. Thanks to all of you who came out (and apologies to those of you may have had to wait outside for a bit). With a population of 8M, things got pretty cramped; we're expecting a much smaller turn out in Detroit. Heh.

Details to come...

(Our poorly lit photos of the NY event are on facebook. The camera got misplaced pretty early in the night, so there aren't too many.)


*Kiwis have wings, but since they're flightless birds, they might as well not have them -- like Web 2.0 angels when someone tags sloppily. This particular kiwi is the mascot for some adorable product management software, FogBugz. I will gladly be a Fog Creek billboard.

q&a with team reddit at [today's] new york meetup

We arrived in NY a couple nights ago to a hotel where the toilets flush powerfully enough to send a softball-sized object into low earth orbit. It's kinda scary, really.

The alien costume didn't make the trip; that's really for the best. (Bonus: HowTo make your own paper-maché alien head, but not guarantee it will survive a night of drinking -- coming soon)

Tonight is our New York open bar meetup. And it has been confirmed that Julia Allison will be attending. Gawker has been notified.

Oh, and you'll want to show up by around 9pm if you want to catch the Q&A we'll be having with team reddit. Think of it as your chance to ask all those questions you've never had the nerve to write in feedback email, only this time it will be after two hours of free booze and in the middle of a crowded (hopefully) bar.

What could go wrong? Hopefully some good YouTube material will come out of all this.

boston meetup a success, paper-maché alien head destroyed

Valleywag was quite helpful mocking promoting the SF party. We hoped someone would be interested in mocking -- or at least writing about -- us in Boston as well, especially once they saw my outfit.

It just so happened that a journalist we met at CNet, Candace Lombardi, lived only a few blocks away from The Burren and our homecoming meetup. The allure of free beer was too tempting.

She arrived at the party with a camera, chatted with a few redditors, and snapped a picture of my attempt at a reddit alien costume.

The photo even made it onto the CNet blogs and somewhere the French guy who invented papier-mâché rolled over in his grave. And then surrendered. Thanks Candace, my parents were quite proud.

Admittedly, it was nice to wear a new costume instead of reusing the same Jack Sparrow outfit from our first Halloween and our second (which was a real treat).

Here are the photos on facebook. Flickr just isn't quite cool enough (and I've hit my upload limit, but don't have any incentive to pay for more space while it's free [and tag-able!] on facebook). You won't find any proof in the photos, but Randall and Davean from XKCD were indeed in attendance (in Randall and Davean costumes, respectively). We were in geek awe. No word on whether or not it will one day become a comic.

It's been great meeting redditors at the last two events (thanks for the Jager!) -- two of our all-stars, smacfarl and anonymgrl were even in attendance. Thanks to everyone for coming out, though, even those of you who couldn't tell what I was dressed as ;-)

In a symbolic gesture, we abandoned my melted and decrepit alien head on the roof of our old Davis Square apartment. I'd wanted to light it on fire like the funeral pyre in Return of the Jedi, but decided against it after someone reminded me how much that scene sucked in the remake. That, and Steve was worried the roof would catch fire.

zombie sneak attack!

With Halloween approaching, this late submission to the "redditors draw the alien week" just had to get some love. Zombie love.

It even came with a great email:

I noticed the little alien one day on my brother's blue powder t-shirt. He were always wearing it and I never really knew what it was until a few days ago. My brother sent me a link to this website. I think he's one of your daily readers and he knows I love to draw and create stuff.

Then I picked my pencils and drew up a Zombified Little Reddit Alien.
Why zombified???? I don't really know! I just love to draw that kind of gore thing heheheh

Just take a look over here: http://felix.laflamme.org

Oh also, me and my brother who's always wearing that weird blue powder shirt... we got a project together. It's called Skin Circus and we provide free MySpace Layouts based on Various Artists Artworks.

http://www.skincircus.com

There's some pretty cool, albeit twisted, stuff on his site, so check it out if you're short on Halloween inspiration. Felix LaFlamme is a 27 year-old from Quebec, which would have French-speaking zombies. Canadian zombies, armed with Tim Horton's coffee and hockey sticks, would be quite a menace, eh.Thanks Felix, I'll be looking for you when the zombies finally attack.

we're number twenty-one!

In a shameless effort to drive traffic to www.cs.cmu.edu (universities get more revenue from AdSense than alumni donations these days) some researchers in the Carnegie Mellon CS department calculated which blogs were the best sources of the freshest content. They probably hoped that every site on the list would write about (and link to) the findings.

Well done, Mellons. I'll bite.

Using a bunch of math words, they describe their process, but the results are here. As you no doubt guessed from the title, reddit came in at #21.

Considering reddit is the place where lots of this new content gets discovered, not created, I was a little surprised to see it ranked so high. That said, we also just barely edged out #22, the widely-read Soccer Dad blog. But don't click on that link! We can't let him pull ahead.

These findings are just the thing to get the team motivated this week, as the #20 spot is being held by our longtime rival, The Jawa Report. Once those Jawas started blogging, the Internet really jumped the shark. Back to Tatooine, you scavenger scum!

virgin: like flying for the very first time

OK, it's not nearly that exhilarating (or awkward).

Despite not being selected as a Virgin American, I wanted to see what all the hype was about. It's true that you can play Doom during it -- only it also felt just like the first time. Given the choppiness of the game, the hardware of the in-flight system feels worse than the 486 SX I had back then (oh, how I longed for a floating-point unit).Despite the gaming shortcomings, it's a pretty nice flying experience. I managed to finagle myself into an exit row seat, so I could be sitting next to a morbidly obese, crying pig baby and not give a damn. But these seats are comfy and it turns out there's no one sitting next to me.

Getting on the plane felt like walking into a club, the lights are dimmed, those that are illuminated all glow fuchsia, and a bunch of sweaty, scantily-clad youths are gyrating against one another to the dope beats of Kanye.

OK, one of those was a lie. But it did feel like I should have waited in line for an hour, got judged by a bouncer before paying a $20 cover and finally being let in, only to wait in another line just to get a drink.

All in all, not a bad flight. Jetblue still has free animal crackers and those mysterious blue potato chips going for it, though.

If you're looking to fly west on a trip out to seduce a VC or to return to the sanity of the east, it'd be worth trying Virgin; they're low-balling airfares at prices so cheap, you'd think they were indifferent to profit -- like a web 2.0 startup!

reddit alien gets put to work for wired

With redditors drawing the reddit logo all week, I had some extra time to make a few ads for the folks at Wired to promote their HowTo wikis.

I love getting feedback on these ads I make, so they've all been submitted to ads.reddit and are awaiting your constructive criticism. You will not be getting extra karma just for saying nice things.

reddit this ad

reddit this ad

reddit this ad