Ramble On

Moving

2008-02-17T09:31:00.002-05:00

I think I will be moving my blog over to Wordpress. Working on Propeller I have been turned off of Blogger because of all the spammers using it and giving it a bad name. I also don't feel that Google is doing enough for it, and don't see too many new features. So this will be my new home.

Pagey's Blog

I will give it a try and see how I like it.

Rock and Roll

2008-01-31T08:34:00.000-05:00

Over the years I have seen many concerts, The Rolling Stones(2x), Pink Floyd(2x), Robert Plant, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Rush, The Black Crowes, Bad Company, ZZ Top, just to name a few. With family and work, I just didn’t have the time or money to do this anymore, and I didn’t have much interest either. So after a break of about 5-6 yrs I am heading up to Ottawa to see John Mellencamp ,Tom Cochrane and Red Rider. Hopefully it’s a good show, I have been a fan of John Mellencamp since he was John Cougar, it’s also my wife's first concert which should be interesting.

Since buying these tickets, all of a sudden other concerts have popped up that seem to work with my schedule and I have bought tickets for. My hometown of Kingston has recently built a new arena and very famous band in Canada, called The Tragically Hip, famous to Canadians (probably not so much Americans) is from Kingston and will open the arena so we picked up some tickets to go see them. As the dust was settling on this, Def Leopard, Styx and REO Speedwagon announce they are touring Canada, and while I probably wouldn’t have hunted down tickets myself, a co-worker of my wife decided to buy some tickets for the show at the Air Canada Center in Toronto, and wanted to know if we would like some. With it falling on a weekend I said sure, and the more I think about this show the more excited I’m getting about going to see it. Crappy 80’s music, You got to love it!

My thoughts on that later.

Mont Tremblant pt.2

2008-01-24T16:20:00.005-05:00

Just got back, and wish I was still up on the hill, yesterday afternoon was crazy, sunny at the bottom and complete white out at the top, couldn't see 10 feet in front of you, still didn't stop me.

View at the top of the mountain. The board with the lights tells you which lifts are open.

2008-01-24T16:20:00.003-05:00

2008-01-24T16:20:00.001-05:00

A shot from the gondola looking back at the village.

2008-01-24T16:19:00.005-05:00

2008-01-24T16:19:00.003-05:00

Making snow!

2008-01-24T16:19:00.001-05:00

Bottom of the mountain.

2008-01-24T16:18:00.003-05:00

Winter wonderland

2008-01-24T16:18:00.001-05:00

Amazing views from the summit!

Off to Mont Tremblant, Quebec

2008-01-17T08:29:00.000-05:00

For a few days of Skiing

Propeller update

2008-01-10T08:28:00.000-05:00

Got another look at the new site last night, and it has even improved more from the last time I saw it. I can't wait for this to launch, it's so exciting. There is no other site on the web like it, and I'm not talking just looks but the way it's gonna work is very unique.

Geo caching

2007-12-27T12:07:00.000-05:00

Got this GPS for my wife(she asked for it, I'm the one playing with it) Were going to start Geo caching with the kids. Nice handheld!

Merry Christmas to me

2007-12-27T12:03:00.000-05:00

My new Sony Bravia 46"
Just ordered my HD package from my satellite provider, should be running on Saturday.

We Will Rock You

2007-12-03T21:20:00.000-05:00

Just went and seen We Will Rock You in Toronto, if you get a chance to see this go. It is awesome, I only think it's playing in Toronto and London and I'm not really sure why it's not in New York.

The new Propeller

2007-11-29T14:46:00.000-05:00

I just got a sneak peak at the new site design for Propeller.com and all I can say is WOW!!! We are going to kick ass!

Fellow Scout Wil agrees
wil wheaton sees aols propeller

Propeller Taking Off

2007-11-25T08:12:00.000-05:00

A nice post about Propeller at Centernetworks

" Does this mean that Propeller will grow to the Digg traffic level in a year? Nope, I certainly doubt it. But could Propeller become a strong #2, absolutely. And looks like Duncan Riley might just be eating these words, "It might be too early to Deadpool the Netscape Social news experiment yet, but without the type-in traffic and brand recognition of the Netscape name, the whole idea will struggle to survive. I give it 12 months max."

Here is the story

Cars of the future?

2007-10-30T21:27:00.001-04:00

One of the channels that I'm assigned to on Propeller is the Auto Channel. I see many stories about hybrid and electric cars, and one of the things that stood out is how ugly they have been over the years. It's almost like if you decide to build an electric car, then you had to make sure it's not pretty. That all seems to be changing, lately it has been going in the opposite direction and these cars are looking better then the gas guzzling Corvettes and other sports cars. A lot of these are just concept, but it is looking much better. Here are a few I have taken notice to.

AC Propulsion's tzero

From their site "The tzero is not for sale. It is a concept & development vehicle to demonstrate that cars could be both fast and efficient."

http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero/

The Chevy Volt(One of my favorites)

Not in production, but GM says it will be soon

http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/

Honda CR-Z, another favorite of mine

Another Concept car at this point

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/honda/honda-cr+z-hybrid-concept-car-too-awesome-to-be-a-honda-308956.php

PHEV Ford Edge with HySeries Drive

HySeries Drive is a plug-in series hybrid system, that uses a 336V lithium ion battery pack to drive the electric motor. This makes it the world's first drivable hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with plug-in capability.

Again, not in production(can you see a theme here)

Tesla Roadster

This is probably the most promising for spotting driving down the road. They are now taking orders for these.

Some impressive stats;

100% electric
0 to 60 in under 4 sec
135 mpg equivalent
245 miles per charge
Less then two cents per mile

So while all of these are yet to be down at your local car dealer at least it's a step by designing a sexy car to generate some interest, and hopefully they will be on the road soon.

New Firefox Extensions for Propeller

2007-10-04T06:34:00.001-04:00

New Extensions have been released to replace the old Netscape Sitemail Notifier and the Friends Activity Sidebar, Check them out, they also work with Netscape 9.
Sitemail Notifier
Friends Activity Sidebar

Time to Fly

2007-09-19T13:13:00.000-04:00

Propeller is now online, the switch over went quite smoothly, it could be a couple of days to get the bugs out.

This from Tom Drapeau;

We have just completed our planned changes to Netscape.com. As we originally reported, a new portal has been launched on Netscape.com, and the social news site previously located there has been moved to propeller.com.

Over the last week, we have received some very positive feedback, both from early social news adopters and from those who were gradually won over by the communal experience at Netscape.com. I want to thank you all for your great feedback, and want to reiterate that the Propeller social news experience is not going away. On the contrary! In the coming weeks, you will be able to see Propeller content on both the new Netscape.com portal, as well as AOL News.

We have not been neglecting our member feedback either. We do realize that there have been undue performance problems and a few technical glitches over the past few weeks. Let me apologize for this poor user experience, and assure you that we are hard at work in fixing these. We have also had more spam escape our filters lately, and I want to apologize for that as well, and give thanks to all of our great members who reported these stories as such.

Also, we are not happy to simply stand pat with our existing features. In the near future, we will be able to share information about our new social news platform, which we are extremely excited about. It will bring together the best of all worlds: a world class design team, an advanced website platform, and a host of new and interesting ways to enjoy social news.

Best of all, we won't rush the new social news site to the public. We will want to hear your opinion on the new site, as it is because of you, the newly named Propeller member base, that we continue to develop social news services. We really hope that the Netscape.com social news community will come visit Propeller.com. We are confident that you will feel right at home!

http://blog.netscape.com/2007/09/19/propeller-lives/

Propeller.Com

2007-09-11T21:10:00.000-04:00

Just last week Tom Drapeau announced that Netscape would be re-branding the site. That Netscape.com would be turned into a news portal like it used to be and the social news site would be moved to another location. As usual everyone jumped all over this as some kind of funeral as you can see here.

techcrunch: netscape-digg-clone-is-kaput
wired: Netscape ends Digg-clone
Wikinomics: netscape-social-experiment-digg-clone-is-dead
PCWorld: Netscape scraps redesign
And so on, and so on

Fast forward to today, Tom has announced the name and location of the new site. Propeller.com.
A great name and a very slick looking logo, things are looking great for the new site and now we can emerge from under the shadow of the Netscape name. We are about to take this site to the next level and a lot of great things are in the works, stay tuned!

Interview with Netscape Director, Tom Drapeau

2007-08-14T10:34:00.000-04:00

Tom chat's about Netscape and where it is headed.
here...

How you can make Netscape better

2007-08-11T08:30:00.000-04:00

I realize not a lot of the Netscape community visits my site, but the few who do can pass on this to their friends.There are a few things that can be done to make Netscape an even better social news site.

Site Mail
This is a big problem right now. Too many users are abusing this great feature. It was designed as a way for the community to communicate with one another not as a voting tool. Why do certain people feel they need to site mail EVERY story they post. If you come across a breaking story, then yes please site mail it. If you come across a very very interesting story sure share it with everyone. I would like to see more people share out there friends stories and not their own, I think this would help a lot. Right now the spammers are using this feature to drive traffic to their site, and it affects the overall quality of the homepage and site. This is supposed to be a Social News Site and stories about someones lawn ornaments is just not news, and does not belong on the homepage in my opinion. When voting don't just vote on a story because it was site mailed to you, take your time and see what the quality of the story is before voting.

Story Submissions
Some of the members of the community feel they need to submit only stories from their own site. A lot of this is spammers trying to drive traffic to their ad filled site, some have legitimate stories that they want to share, I don't have a big problem with that but I think the best submitters are the people who are diverse and submit stories from many different sites. In my opinion I think the ratio should be out of every 10 stories submitted from other sites include one from your own.

Don't make it Personal
Just that; don't' make it personal, this is what sets Netscape apart from Digg is that we have a diverse friendly community. This is one of the reasons I left Digg, and I'm sure a few others have done the same. When deep in a debate with someone over a story, please refrain from personal attacks, and don't be sucked into a personal argument by someone. If it is getting to heated move off to another thread for a while and cool down, if someone is attacking you, use the report function to report them as abusive. It is great to see some stories comments hit 1000+, you would never see this on Digg, and lets keep it that way by showing courtesy to other members of the community.

Please pass this on to other members, as a reminder why we have the best social news site on the web.

Follow Me

2007-08-11T07:34:00.000-04:00

A Cool Firefox/Netscape plug in for Mahalo
Also if enough people install it, I might win a 20-inch 2.0GHz iMac(only in my dreams)
Follow Me

Stephen Colbert a Netscape user?

2007-07-25T23:53:00.000-04:00

How cool, Stephen Colbert refers to a Netscape Article to introduce a story about the Illuminati.

Part Time Guide

2007-07-20T23:02:00.000-04:00

I am now a Part Time Guide at Mahalo, you can check out what I'm doing here

Like I have time for this too, what is wrong with me, I guess I will have to give up sleep.

Why Netscape is better then Digg

2007-07-20T12:14:00.000-04:00

There is a great article over here that I would have to agree with, but I guess I'm a bit biased too. What is more interesting is the comments.

Bush is a Joke

2007-07-16T12:01:00.000-04:00

Heard a great joke the other day.

George Bush's approval rating walks into a bar, and asks the bartender for a drink. The bartender says " sorry I can't serve you". Bush's approval rating says "why not". Bartender says "because your under 21"

I think I want one

2007-06-27T12:23:00.000-04:00

At first when all the hype started about the iphone, I thought it was just that"hype", typical Apple hype. I figured the demo that Steve Jobs showed, was just a demo and that a lot of the features would not make it, but it's starting to look very promising, I can't wait to try one out.

Update: Maybe I don't want one, think I will stick with my BlackBerry, after I read this:
iphone, one month later

Netscape 9, The next Gen Browser

2007-06-07T06:21:00.000-04:00

Netscape has finally released it's new browser, and while I might be biased I have to say that I will be switching from Firefox, which I thought would never happen. First off the browser is very much Firefox on the backend, it is light weight, all Firefoxe's extensions and themes work with it, what sets it apart is the integration with Netscape.com. If you are part of the community of Netscape, then this browser is a must.

Here are just a few features that makes it work well with the site and community.

Integrated Voting

This means that a Netscape.com member has submitted the page you’re reading to be voted and commented on. You can vote for the page by clicking the orange vote button, or you can view the comments about the page by clicking on the green comment icon. The gray arrow is for “sinking” (or voting against) a page.

Friends’ Activity Sidebar

This button opens the “Friends’ Activity Sidebar,” or FAS, for short. If you are a member of Netscape.com ,you can add other members as friends. When you are signed in to Netscape.com, this button will become activated whenever one of your friends submits a new story or comment, making it simple to stay up-to-date on what stories your friends find interesting.

Sitemail Notifier

If you are a member at Netscape.com, you can send sitemail messages to your Netscape.com friends. This button will be activated whenever you have a new message, and clicking it will open your Netscape.com Message Center.

Netscape.com Activity Tracker

Netscape Navigator 9 comes with the Netscape.com Activity Tracker built right in. Tracker lets you view the very latest activity on Netscape.com, whether it’s breaking news, community discussion, or newly shared videos. You can customize the types of activity shown by the Tracker in the Navigator options dialog.

Plus a bunch of other features like:

Mini Browser

Use the Mini Browser sidebar to compare webpages side-by-side or to keep a website in plain view while you browse other pages. It’s perfect for working through the links at your favorite news site without losing your place in the page, and You can choose whether new links are opened in the sidebar or in the main browser window.

Link Pad

Link Pad is a sidebar that you can drop links onto to save for later without cluttering your bookmarks. Find a link to a YouTube video you want to watch, but don’t have time now? Drop it into Link Pad (or even just on Link Pad’s status bar icon), and save it for later.

I encourage you to try it out, if your a Netscape.com user or want to join the community this browser is a must. Get it here

Finished my Deck

2007-06-03T16:39:00.000-04:00

Very,Very Cool

2007-05-30T22:26:00.000-04:00

Is this not one of the most coolest search sites ever? Jason has done it again.

http://www.mahalo.com/Main_Page

Deck Building 101

2007-05-11T09:44:00.000-04:00

Now on to my next project, I tore my old deck down that was rotting away. and replacing it with a new larger deck. The old deck was 12' by 10', the new deck will 16' by 12'. The worst part about it is that the building code requires that I dig down four feet.

Work,Work,Work

2007-05-10T08:20:00.000-04:00

Last fall we had some flooding and I had to renovate the basement/rec room, which I did over the winter. Here are some pictures before and after.

Beginner's Guide to Netscape

2007-05-09T08:19:00.000-04:00

This is a great guide if you are a new or existing user at Netscape. Written by Muhammad Saleem

In an effort to help our readers completely understand the various social media sites out there, we have decided to do a series of 'beginner's guides' dedicated to teaching you how to get your feet wet. Following in the footsteps of Neil's beginner's guide to Digg and based on the same model, here's your beginner's guide to Netscape .

Here is the Link
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/beginners-guide-to-netscape21116.html

Hockey Night In Canada

2007-05-04T08:02:00.000-04:00

With the playoffs in full force I thought back to last year, the Edmonton Oilers and the Carolina Hurricanes were in the finals, and it was nice seeing a Canadian team there. With the extended NHL season now running into June, it’s nothing to be wearing shorts while watching the game. Last year the family decided to try out the whole camping thing and see how we liked it, my brother had been doing it with his family for a few years and we would head back to the camp ground and visit, since the kids were older now we thought we would give it a go. Camping is great, one of the few places where you need no excuse to sit your ass in a chair and drink beer(after the kids are in bed of course). Anyway, back to hockey.

My brother is a big Edmonton fan, and he was back at the camp ground for the weekend and game 6 was coming on that night, we headed back to visit and I asked him how he was going to see the game, he said he had a small TV to watch it. I mentioned that too bad we couldn’t put it on something a little bigger to watch it, that’s when the plan came together. We ended up getting an LCD projector, my satellite receiver, some speakers and a satellite dish, we then rigged up the dish to a picnic table, dropped down his canopy from his tent trailer and tah dah, we now have a screen about 8 feet wide by about 6 feet high(now were rockin)

As it got dark we fired it up and it was amazing, people started to show up with their lawn chairs and before we knew it we had a large crowd. It was like being at a real game, people were yelling things like “you suck ref”, yelling at the players and cheering, good times.

This is me on the left and my brother on the right.

Game on!

The seats are starting to fill up

Me and my daughter and my brother and my niece.

A Couple of Questions

2007-04-19T07:17:00.000-04:00

I would like to ask the Netscape community a couple of question, feel free to leave some comments.

What is it about Netscape that keeps you coming back? I know that each user has his/her own reasons, I would like to see if there is a common reason among everyone.

What do you like the most about Netscape? Which could tie into the first question.

What do you not like about Netscape?

What changes would you like to see to make the site more interesting for you and other users?

Please let me know either here or through sitemail
or email me at jpagej@gmail.com

Thanks everyone.

Vista

2007-04-13T12:38:00.000-04:00

I just installed Vista, first thoughts "it's pretty". I can't find anything anymore, it's like re-learning windows again. Tried to install antivirus software-not compatible.Tried to install Nero-not compatible.Tried to uninstall Nero-not gonna happen.Tried to access my "Documents and Settings" I don't have rights as an administrator(I guess only God has rights, or Bill Gates.) Did I mention it's pretty.

To be continued.....

Update: Spent many hours now trying to install Nero, I am reading that it will work with the newest version, but it seems to go through the install, but not really install.

Update: Finally got Nero installed, thanks to capn_caveman for the help. Even with all the problems, I do like it, its very clean looking and love that Media Center is built in. I have all of my devices working with very little driver issues, and I have all the "eye candy" turned on and it is running well with an AMD 2ghz, 1.5 gigs of ram and an Nvidia Geforce 6600 video card.

Stats 101

2007-04-05T22:59:00.000-04:00

With the newest change happening on Netscape and my Home page stats no longer available I thought I would go back and take a look at them from Netscape and Digg, I hope you find them as interesting as I do. If not read them before you head off to bed at least I might be able to help with a good night sleep.

I first will start with my current site.

Netscape:

Submits: 1400 and counting

Votes: 8000+

Homepage Stories: 234

Best Ranking: 16

First story I submitted:
http://news.netscape.com/story/2006/08/30/pics-of-space-shuttle-heading-back-to-launchpad

1 vote (my own)

First Homepage story:
http://news.netscape.com/story/2006/09/02/more-than-400000-without-power-as-ernesto-sweeps-mid-atlantic

40 votes

It took 24 stories submitted before I had a Homepage story

Most votes on one of my stories: 144
http://family.netscape.com/story/2007/03/21/soldiers-dad-tells-bush-this-war-is-wrong

And where it all started Digg:

Submits: 1231

Diggs: 2955

Homepage Stories: 108

Best Ranking: 45

First submit: 11 diggs (which the story also turned out to be a dupe)
This is when my social bookmarking journey began September 2005 http://digg.com/tech_news/3D_TV

First Homepage story:685 diggs
http://digg.com/tech_news/Alleged_subway_wanker_caught_on_cameraphone,

Netscape #2

2007-03-23T15:08:00.000-04:00

Over at ebizmba.com they have rated the top largest social bookmarking sites and Netscape is sitting number 2. There has been a lot of press about Netscape losing numbers and being a failure, in which I will disagree with. I might be biased since I am part of the Netscape team, but anyone on the site can see that we are getting more stories submitted and the stories in general are getting more votes. Digg.com who is rated number one and has a huge following also have a huge group of users who probably feel threatened and would like to see Netscape fail. Any negative press about Netscape hits the homepage and anything positive gets buried. I have used Digg longer then I have been on Netscape and feel that even if I was not part of the Netscape team I would still be at Netscape. The diversity of the stories and the maturity of the users far out weigh Digg, all you have to do is head over to digg and read some of the comments to see this. I would challenge any Digg user to come over to Netscape and try it on for a couple of weeks, and see what I'm talking about
I would like congratulate everyone involved who continues to make Netscape great, the Nav's Anchors,Developers and most importantly the users.

On a side note, I am now the primary Navigator for the Auto channel, and have the Family channel as my secondary, so you will find me in these channels mostly submitting. I will still be out and about voting and commenting on all other channels, and as always any questions or concerns please send me a sitemail/email

Update: Jason Calacanis has a great article about this here

Gore: Don't single out cars and trucks to solve global warming

2007-03-21T12:06:00.000-04:00

Harry Stoffer | Automotive News / March 21, 2007 - 11:41 am

In a highly anticipated appearance before Congress today, the former vice president said he supports higher fuel economy standards. But automakers alone should not be expected to solve global warming, he contended.

"Don't single out cars and trucks," Gore said in a lengthy statement before a pair of House subcommittees. He described emissions from motor vehicles as "only a slice of the problem" and not the biggest slice.

Still, the future Gore envisions would be vastly different. He called for an immediate freeze on greenhouse-gas emissions and a 90 percent cut in those emissions by 2050. He did not say exactly how those moves could be accomplished.

The ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, said a freeze, if taken literally, would mean no new businesses, no economic growth and no more people.

Gore also called for:

* Taxes on the carbon in fuels, offset by cuts in payroll taxes.

* U.S. participation in a new international treaty on climate change, which would follow the Kyoto treaty rejected by Congress and the Bush administration.

* Programs that would encourage consumers to generate their own electricity through means that don't release greenhouse gases into the air.

Gore said such steps are needed to deal with "a crisis that is by far the most serious we have ever faced." He has achieved international recognition for his Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.

Auto industry leaders who testified last week before a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee said they could support a cap on total U.S. emissions. But they said the burden for compliance should be spread across all businesses.

Automakers say that regulators should determine the highest feasible fuel economy standards and that lawmakers should not arbitrarily set tougher standards.

You can read it here, requires a subscription
http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070321/REG/70321008/1128/emailblast02&refsect=emailblast02

2007-03-08T06:31:00.000-05:00

2007-03-06T18:29:00.000-05:00

Social Bookmarking Dupes

2007-02-15T13:03:00.000-05:00

One of the biggest and most time consuming problems with Netscape is dealing with duplicate stories or dupes, we like to call them. This problem exists in all the social news sites and each one deals with the problem differently. At Netscape it is up to the staff to find and close these stories off. With hundreds of stories being submitted a day it is hard to spot these right away. If a big story breaks some of the Navigators and Anchors will watch for stories to be posted and close the duplicates off. We also count on the users to report these stories to us, preferably before they hit the homepage and really gain momentum.

There are a couple of reasons why this is important. 1) We want to give credit to the user who submits this story first. 2) We want to give credit to the news source that originally breaks the story. 3) We don't want the homepage cluttered with the same story multiple times.

Sometimes closing a story because it is a dupe can require a bit of thought. If it is a breaking story the original submission might not have a lot of information about the event, while a story submitted from a different source or submitted a little later might have a lot more detail. So it's a judgement call at this point. The other issue is that two different news sources might have two different spins on the same story both of equal weight; again it's a judgement call.

There is a couple of reasons that dupes are happening, the main reason is that people are using submit tools to submit their stories. Some of these tools don't do well to check for duplicates unless the URL is the same. When using the Netscape submit tool it has a check my story button.

This then checks the URL and the story title to see if it has been submitted. It also shows some stories that might be a match to the story you are submitting. This is usually where the user either does not look closely at them or does not care. If you look at the story below you will see that the title and URL don't match anything but if you look at the Similar Stories section you can see it has been submitted multiple times , meaning there is already dupes in the system(guess I got more work to do)

If someone is using a third party tool to submit stories these tools are not working to see duplicates. Some users just go ahead and submit the story anyway in hope theirs will leap frog the original and hit the homepage. Others try and cheat the system with little tricks to allow the same URL to be submitted twice.

I ask that the users take more time to submit stories and check to make sure they are not duplicates, and if the tool they are using is submitting duplicates to try something else.

The Submitting Sweet Spot

2007-02-08T06:07:00.000-05:00

Some users on social bookmarking sites become very involved and submit hundreds of stories a week, which seems fine if they have the time and want to do that. The problem is that their stories tend to be lost and buried from the sheer volume. When a story is initially submitted to a social site, the user counts on his friends for the first few votes, so that it stands out from the crowd. After that if it is of interest, other people will see it and it will continue on until it hits the homepage. Most people in general when they check out friend’s stories will look at the latest ones submitted. In general it might be the last 6-12 stories, so anything beyond that could very well be missed. With Netscape’s Friend activity Sidebar this makes it more true, as it generally shows a friends last half dozen stories. Many times I have found a good story and then submit it only to find that it has been already submitted by one of the top users and has only have a few votes with no hope of hitting the homepage, and since I cannot dupe it, the story is lost. If the users scaled back a bit and submitted a half dozen stories every 12 hours or so, and spent the rest of the time voting and commenting the experience as a whole would be more successful. The user would probably have more homepage success, it would open up stories for other people to submit and more voting and commenting would happen, also a lot of great stories wouldn’t get buried. Everybody would win.

Netscape Community, what gives?

2007-02-05T09:15:00.000-05:00

As a Netscape Navigator, it can be very tough dealing with the masses on the site. No matter what you do someone will disagree with your choices. The problem is that the people that disagree seem to speak the loudest, which in turn intimidates the people that do agree. This is the current problem on Netscape at the moment. What I don't understand as a user and a moderator of the site is why the users do not see that the staff at Netscape want to make the site the best it can be and that we need to constantly make changes and tweaks to try and do this. There seems to be a core group on the site that would like to see Netscape fail, and I don't understand. Being a Navigator is a great gig and I want it to last as long as possible, to do this we need to move forward with the site, which means constant changes and tweaks, the launch of new features and killing of other features that are not working. If users started to look at the long term and not the short term maybe they will understand. These users constantly are trying to draw the Netscape staff in to arguments in the comment section, and when we engage it usually turns into name calling and accusations. When we decide not to be drawn in because of this abuse then we are accused of "doing things behind their back". I currently don't know of a solution, but maybe a forum for this to discuss this as adults would work better and leave Netscape for the news of the day.

A fellow Navigator has posted a great blog related to this also.
http://throwawayyourtv.com/2007/02/thoughts-on-netscape-community.html

I really like his draft of a code of conduct:

1. Respect – As a community member of Netscape we expect you to Respect every individual who shares the same community space as you. If you make any COC violation in regards to Respect you will be suspended by management.

1.1. Respecting Netscape – This website is a free service, by signing up and participating you are supporting Netscape and we appreciate that. We also appreciate that you respect the employees. The Anchors, Navigators and Developers who are working on site 24/7 to make this community the best on the web. Publicly disrespecting Netscape an it's employees does not help make Netscape better, if you have any issues please email us internally.

1.2. Personal Attacks – Any personal attack directed at another user will not be tolerated, if you do not agree with an opinion please debate the issue, not the user.

1.3. Restraint - Do not post messages that are inflammatory, extreme, divisive, incoherent, or otherwise inappropriate. Do not engage in anti-social, disruptive, or trolling behavior. Do not post broad-brush, bigoted statements.

If you feel you have been disrespected on Netscape please contact a member of the management team and we will deal with the situation, do not contact the member who disrespected you.

2. Discussion – Netscape is a Social news site, we encourage discussion on every link submitted. In order for discussions to be enjoyable to all participating parties we that you follow the following etiquette procedures.

2.1 Presentation - Please try to use complete sentences with correctly spelled words and proper punctuation. Overuse of abbreviations makes your posts hard to read and your point(s) can be lost. Like using "u" for "you" make your posts less credible. Also please remember that typing in all capitalized letters is considered shouting. If your submission title is in Capitals it will be deleted.

2.2 Stay on Topic - We ask that you try to keep your posts relevant to the topic of each thread. Threads will naturally have some variance or evolving topics, but try to stay as close to the topic at hand as possible.

2.3. Opinions – As an online discussion forum, many opposing opinions to yours will be presented within a thread. Please remember that Netscape is a large diverse community made up of people from all over the world from different cultures, religions and nationalities. We encourage that you respect each members opinion, even if you don’t agree with it.

2.4. Challenges – We ask you to understand that your opinion will be challenged, please wear a thick skin when getting into online debates and remember not to violate the COC during your discussion.

2.5 Debate Etiquette – When in a debate, we encourage that you use the Internet as a tool to your advantage, although it’s not mandatory it’s helpful to add weight to your argument when you reference(linking) your point to a fact. This does not only help your statement but it helps the audience (the 100’s of people reading your comments).

Following these rules will make your posts easier to read and create the higher level of civility within discussions. Ensuring that the user is able to communicate with others in a positive manner is a top priority within this community.

3. Features Abuse – Netscape is a Social News site that employs many forms of Social Web 2.0 applications and concepts such as Tags and Voting. Any abuse of these features will be considered a COC violation.

3.1 The Sock puppet – This type of abuse happens when a user votes up their submission from multiple accounts, this practice is not tolerated on Netscape anybody caught is banned.

3.2 Tag Abuse – When submitting articles you have the option to apply related Tags, please only use related Tags. A form of Tag abuse would be when you add popular but unrelated tags to your story in order to get more views. This impedes a users experience when searching for ‘Niche’ articles.

If the community as a whole uses each feature for its intended purpose it will make the Netscape a more enjoyable place to read news.

4. Submissions – Netscape is a link submission website, we accept any link from around the web, However there are exceptions and not all links will be accepted by Netscape.

4.1 Spamming - Just like it says in the TOU, Spamming of any nature is prohibited. Netscape identifies spam as unwanted content that is often trying to sell you something. Netscape wishes to ensure all users are not tricked into visiting a website that is not legitimate. If you believe your submission was wrongfully removed please contact management.

4.2 Social Spamming – In the world of social media, we see another type of spam in the form of users submitting nothing but their own content in an effort to draw traffic to their site. This is a form of advertising that we do not recognize or endorse, if you wish to have traffic drawn to your site via Netscape, please contact our advertising department.

4.3 Middle Man / Link jacking – Breaking the middle man rule is another form of submission spam, if you submit a link to a personal website that contains a video or an article and you are not the original source? Then you are attempting to “link jack” a story. In these cases Netscape Management assumes you are social spamming. Netscape does offer leniency on this issue if you can prove to us that your site is offering a unique perspective on the original story.

If you follow these simple rules in regards to Link submission we guarantee that you and everybody else sharing this community will have a much more enjoyable time.

...and still more

2007-01-19T11:07:00.000-05:00

More snowman art

2007-01-19T11:05:00.000-05:00

I love Calvin and Hobbs

2007-01-19T11:04:00.000-05:00

Mars

2007-01-19T10:24:00.000-05:00

This is one of my favorite photo's on the web

Photos

2007-01-19T09:39:00.000-05:00

We have an ongoing photo contest at work , here are some of my submissions

Category: Light Category:Auto Pre-1980 unrestored

Cool screenshot of every extension and add on in Firefox enabled

2006-11-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

I am a Netscape Navigator

2006-11-15T22:08:00.001-05:00

How very cool, I am now a Netscape Navigator. If in August of 2005 as I was submitting my very first post to Digg someone had told me that I would one day be paid to do this I would have thought them crazy. That is how it started,more or less.

About 3 years ago or more I watched a channel on my Satellite called Tech TV. On that station was a show called The Screensavers, hosted by Leo Laport and Patrick Norton I became very hooked on this show. At some point in time they hired an intern who sat in the background and answered phones, his name was Kevin Rose. Kevin managed to work his way up the ranks very quickly from the odd banter with the hosts to becoming “The Dark Tipper” and then co-hosting the show after Leo left, to finally hosting the show when it was bought by G4 and moved to Los Angeles. Ratings quickly fell as G4 turned it into another show on Gaming, they fired everyone who had moved with the show except Kevin. Kevin continued on with the show but also started up Revision 3 and Digg.com, eventually he left G4 to focus on his other projects.
At this point I still had not checked out Digg but was on Rev3 and started to listen and then watch a podcast/vidcast called Diggnation, which is a weekly tech/web culture show based on the top digg.com social bookmarking news stories. It was here that my curiosity got me to look at digg, and then to submit to see if I would be mentioned on Diggnation. After getting a couple of stories to the homepage I was hooked. Over the next year I submitted many under the name Geekforlife. There is a whole other side story to me putting my profile up for sale on eBay, you can read that here http://john-rambleon.blogspot.com/2006/11/geekforlife.html.

I started to become increasingly frustrated on Digg, it was very popular with 4000+ upcoming stories making it very hard to get to the homepage, but more importantly it was the immaturity of the users and the comment system on Digg. To try and have an intelligent debate on a topic was impossible; with the Digg down feature your comment would be buried. This by far is the worst feature of Digg. Netscape in the mean time had setup their site as a social bookmarking site and was paying top users from other sites to come over and submit stories. At this time I was rated around 75th and figured I would not be considered. Some more time went by and I noticed a few Digg friends were not as active on digg, I found them on Netscape and decided to try the site out, it has only gotten better since I first started at the end of August.
Here are some of the things that make it better then Digg:

• Huge diversity of stories compared to Digg’s tech and video’s
• Large diversity of people, more importantly men/women, compared to Digg’s mostly male crowd
• NO DIGG DOWN feature in the comments section
• Your story cannot be buried by a few people because they disagree with you
• Built in email
• Chat
• No user rating in the sense that so and so user is rated #2,or 200,000th
• Video uploading
Plus lots of other little things.

So over the next 3 months I contribute to Netscape, I also let some of the people I have become friends with and some of the people within Netscape that I would be interested in becoming a Navigator, I then receive a message asking me if I am still interested and to pass on contact info, then a phone call and I’m in…Awesome.

Now there is more to being a Navigator then submitting stories and collecting a check. Here are some of the things expected from a Navigator:
• a) submit great stories
• b) close down duplicate stories
• c) train users on how to participate in a social news site
• d) let folks know when they break the rules on a social news site (i.e. posting spam, a press release, a dupe)
• e) shut down spammers
• f) shut down voting rings
• g) post intelligent comments and keep discussions on topic
• h)give input on site design/changes
• i)test new builds

So my job is to do my part to make Netscape as successful as I can, and I will try.

Unofficial Firefox Ad?

2006-11-06T12:08:00.000-05:00

Let the games begin

2006-11-06T08:30:00.000-05:00

Spike the Vote is about to launch, with the hope of gaming social bookmarking sites, here is the email circulating...

From: Spike the Vote
Date: Nov 5, 2006 8:17 PM
Subject: Ready to game Digg?

Spike the Vote is ready to launch! Please login and provide your Digg username so we can get started. If you are interested in gaming del.icio.us and Netscape, please provide those usernames as well so I can estimate the overall level of interest.

As you may know, there has been an algorithm change at Digg. Now it takes about 60-100 Diggs to hit the front page depending on your category. Please note that you will only be able to spike a maximum of 50 votes for each story you submit. The spiking is meant to give your story a kick start; it's not meant to spam Digg. If your story has any legs at all, it should have no problem making the front page after 50 spikes.

Spike the Vote is offering 250 points for $50 to a limited number of spikers to get the system started. Please respond to this message if interested.

Thank you for your patience.

Spike

Walking twenty-five miles to school every morning ... uphill BOTH ways

2006-11-06T08:09:00.000-05:00

I got this from an email , not sure where it originated, very funny

IF you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning ... uphill BOTH ways .. yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that...

I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy!
I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!
And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter ... with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

And talk of about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it!

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! ! ;We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "asteroids" and the graphics sucked big time! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens; it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died!.. Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!

You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little brats!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove or go build a fire - imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use hat stupid JiffyPop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled.

You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Regards,

-The 30 Something crowd

GeekForLife

2006-11-03T20:57:00.000-05:00

This past summer I had my 5 minutes of "Internet fame" when I decided to sell my Digg.com profile on eBay. Here is the original post It was meant to be a joke more then anything else, but it quickly escalated and I started getting emails, some for interviews for which I did two, others were for people wanting me to use my account for what I perceived as spam. The bidding went crazy for a couple days and topped out at $822 you can see it here In the end the winner did not pay, which I had expected anyways. It still was a very interesting week and I still find it amazing when I do a Google search for digg profile on ebay, or geekforlife how many people picked up the story.

About Me

2006-11-03T20:28:00.000-05:00

My name is John. I will be 37 years old this month(I can't believe 3 to go before the big four O). I work in a I.T. department at a local hospital in Kingston, Ontario, Canada doing desktop support. Kingston is a small town of about 116,000 and sits on Lake Ontario about 2.5 hours east of Toronto. It's a very historical city, the first prime minister of Canada resided here and it was the capital of Canada for a short time until they decided it was considered too small and lacking in amenities, and its location made it vulnerable to American attack. Consequently, the capital was moved to alternating locations in Montreal and Toronto, and then later to Ottawa. But enough with the history lesson.

I am married and have two beautiful girls aged 6 and 3 who keep me very busy. When I am not working or doing the "family thing" I spend my time on my computer, playing with Linux, Gaming, and social bookmarking. This whole blogging thing is new to me so if there is any suggestions or questions let me know.

Hello, Like a Virgin

2006-11-03T11:34:00.000-05:00

Hi, welcome to my very first blog. I'm a little late in the game, but I'm here.