Author: ashley-sisti

Online networking sites have clearly taken over the Internet. First there was Myspace and Facebook, which quickly became all the rage among status-conscious teens and bored college kids. Next, working professionals started to jump on the bandwagon with sites like LinkedIn.com. In the middle of this growing Internet friendship frenzy, I guess it was just a matter of time before our fine furry friends got in on the action.
Yep, you heard it right: Now even your four-legged pal can experience the joys of competitive picture-posting and rampant friend-collecting. From the folks who brought you Friendster, say hello to Dogster, and its feline counterpart, Catster. Created to provide a forum for the “purest online reflection of people’s love for their dogs and cats,” the sites have obviously caught on—as of this writing, there are 265,000 pets making puppy and kitty pals online. Dogster, as you might imagine, works just like Friendster: Owners post their pet’s personality traits and quick facts (and adorable pictures, natch), and visitors have the option to send the l’il doggy a message, invite him or her to be “pup pals,” and even give the dog a (virtual) bone. And, just like on their owners’ site, the rules of doggie dynamics seem to favor looks over talent—the cuter the pup, the more pals they collect. Catster is more of the same (for felines, of course), but strangely, dogs and cats cannot link through the two sites. Seems like, even in cyberspace, some stereotypes just won’t die.
And there’s one more thing these sites have in common with their human counterparts: Everyone lies. See, Dogster allows users to rank their energy levels, playfulness and disposition (while Catster kitties rate their activeness, curiosity and friendliness), but you rarely find a “silly/sleepy/not curious” cat or an “aggressive/anxious/not playful” dog. Come on—we’ve all met one of these not-so-desirable pets in our day, so where the heck are they? Hiding under their owners’ pride, I suppose. It’s the same old story: As long as we can hide our faces (or whiskers) behind the computer screen, seems like we can all be perfect. Long live the Internet!—Ashley Sisti

Last week, Fifth District Republican Congressman Virgil Goode (the incumbent) and his Democratic challenger, Al Weed, appeared together at Charlottesville’s Senior Center (see pg. 17). To mark this 2006 campaign milestone, Hit This Site decided to take a look at just how in-tune the two candidates are with the district’s technology-savvy constituents. And so we bring you (drumroll, please) Goode/Weed: The Campaign Website Battle.
    Perusing a politician’s website is informative, at best (and akin to watching paint dry, at worst) but Al Weed—or at least those in charge of making him look good—seems to have a pretty good grasp of how to liven things up. Info and news about Weed and his campaign, how visitors to the site can contribute, and a blog make up most of the site. Though the obnoxiously patriotic color palette and elementary design are unfortunate, there are a few small touches that give the site character: Humorous headlines, such as “Weekly Weed Report” and “Mr. Goode Flip Flops” (complete with photo of people adorned in Big-Foot size flip-flops); pictures of Al as an innocent young boy, studious young man, and nature-loving environmentalist; and a “Volunteer of the Week” blog entry (which, as of this writing, features a girl showing a lot of leg—way to up the sex appeal, Al!). Overall, it’s clear that Weed’s campaign cash isn’t being used on high-priced Web designers—but he comes across as a genuine, everyday guy.
    Incumbent Virgil Goode’s site wins the “pleasing to the eye” award: Expertly Photoshopped images of Virgil top every page, so that half-asleep surfers won’t ever forget where they are. As far as content goes, though, the site leaves a lot to be desired. At final count, there are only eight actual pages—with two of them empty, and one a duplicate. “The Issues” page is, appropriately, the most extensive, but it’s filled with boilerplate (“I believe that marriage should be a union between a man and a woman,” Goode says, surprising no one) that most voters have surely heard before. Of course, Goode’s taxpayer-funded site (www.house.gov/goode) is more extensive, but it also proves that more is not necessarily better. One look at his “Kid’s Page,” with its eyeball-searing Microsoft Paint aesthetic (dig that hi-tech animated inchworm!), would make most kids I know run for the Weed. And so, in the early rounds at least, it looks like Al’s got the online upper hand.

The concept of “cool” makes many of us cringe. As kids, we pined over the popular kid’s next-generation backpack or flashy Trapper Keeper; as adults we lust after high-tech cell phones and ultraluxurious cars (wait, your car doesn’t give directions and make you coffee? That’s like, so 2005). For the überhip among us, the quest to be “cool” never ends. Well, thanks to trendhunter.com, we all can stay one step ahead of our friends.
    Trend Hunter is a free online magazine dedicated to keeping even the most clueless of trend-hungry fashion hounds on the cutting edge of new gadgets, designs and hobbies. “Trend spotting” and “cool hunting”—finding current trends, and ferreting out those that are so cool they’re not even cool yet—isn’t a new concept for huge companies like Nike and Coca-Cola, that pay good money to divine consumers’ fickle whims. But for the everyday schlub like you and—well, not me, but you get the idea—such cutting-edge info was largely out of reach.
Until, of course, the Internet (as always) came to the rescue.
    Admittedly, Trend Hunter can be overwhelming at first, but it’s actually quite simple: quick descriptions (with great photos) of sometimes bizarre, sometimes functional new products—a laser-guided pool cue here, a self-stirring coffee mug there—which are then rated by (supposedly) in-the-know visitors, who collectively pinpoint exactly how hot the trend is right now. Curious if that alarm that snatches off your sheets when you hit the snooze button
really is all the rage? Trend Hunter can help!
    Despite their amusing appeal, many of the more out-there items, like the shower that comes complete with built-in TV, seem unlikely to ever become mainstream. Whereas others, like the device that reads printed pages out loud for the blind, border on genius. But who knows? Ten years ago, I never would have guessed that I’d be sitting in front of a glowing screen, contemplating what thousands of people think about a $345 ring that doubles as a salt shaker, so I guess anything is possible.

www.savetheinternet.com

“It’s not a truck,” insists Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) during his long, rambling explanation of “the Internets.” This statement, and others like it, has made Stevens the laughingstock of every techie blog out there (which are accessible, Stevens assures us, through a “series of tubes,” in case you were wondering). All jokes aside, however, the so-called “net neutrality” battle is no laughing matter (though with Stevens commanding the forces, one has to wonder). Savetheinternet.com is the weapon of choice for the Save the Internet Coalition, a grassroots campaign comprised of small businesses and members of the community who don’t want big telecommunications companies controlling their Internet usage.
According to the site’s FAQ, congress is considering a revision of the Telecommunications Act—a rewrite that essentially allows large providers like Verizon and AT&T to determine customers’ access to websites depending on how much cash those sites are willing to pay. Which would, of course, end Hit This Site as you know it (teardrop).
The coalition offers proactive advice for concerned citizens hoping to preserve the free Internet we know and love. For example, you can call or send a letter to your senator (always an
effective measure)—the site even provides a script, along with a handy list of each senator’s current position on the issue. Best of all, it seems the members of the coalition have a sense of humor; check the blog for videos, songs and comics poking fun at Ted Stevens (almost too easy) and rallying for net neutrality. To familiarize yourself with what’s at stake (and seriously question the representation of a certain noncontiguous state), log on and read up. The Internet is important to all of us, after all—as Stevens helpfully explains, “[it’s] not something you just dump something on.”—Ashley Sisti

O.K., I admit it—YouTube is so six months ago. By now, even my grandmother has probably watched a video of a few thrill-seeking guys attempting some ridiculous stunt (most likely involving an explosion and the exclamation “sweet, man!”). Though online video sharing isn’t exactly breakthrough news, YouTube.com is so ridiculously addictive that we couldn’t help but give it some (much-coveted) Hit This Site attention.
    Now, explaining the addictive intricacies of YouTube would require an in-depth exploration of a typical college student’s psyche (and frankly, you just don’t want to know), so I’ll just stick to the basics. YouTube was launched last December to provide an online forum where the “broadcasters of tomorrow” could share the “special moments” they catch on tape, and viewers could discover “the quirky and the unusual” (now that’s an understatement). When they coined the phrase “Broadcast Yourself,” the YouTube folks probably weren’t sure exactly what they’d get (but a big serving of homemade karaoke seemed likely).
    And then a funny thing happened: YouTube users began feeding off each other, drawing both ideas and inspiration as they tried to one-up the previous clip. A perfect example is the strange case of Mentos and Diet Coke. Here’s what happened: Some curious candy lover dropped a pack of Mentos into a soda bottle and caught the resulting (explosive) chemical reaction on tape. Before you could say, “Did I do that?” there were 10, then 20, then hundreds of videos of Mentos-fueled madness on YouTube. (Heck, even David Letterman got in on the action.) But the pièce de résistance arrived courtesy of two lab-coated nerds, who used 200 liters of Diet Coke and 500 Mentos to create an artificially flavored replica of the famed Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas.
    And this, in a nutshell, is YouTube’s real charm: With such an “extremely viral” service, the most creative (and insane) videos get the most hits, and therefore inspire the most entertaining and extreme responses. So put on your thinking cap, grab a camcorder and try something outrageous—you might just start a new YouTube craze. Come on, you know you want to.
—Ashley Sisti

direct link – www.youtube.com

    The digital music world has become a confusing jumble of online stores, generic radio stations, and illegal downloading programs (Napster vs. Metallica, anyone?). If rifling through the virtual smorgasbord of choices isn’t your cup of tea, there is a friendlier option out there. Pandora, an offshoot of the Music Genome Project, offers listeners the chance to create and customize streaming audio “stations” according to their personal tastes.         The Music Genome Project is a momentous, user-created database that categorizes 60 years of music, from a wide variety of genres (sorry, classical and world music fans—they haven’t gotten to you yet). It seeks to identify the “genes” that make up the identity of a song—upwards of 400 different attributes based on technical makeup and listener appeal. Now, fueled by this database, the Genome Project geniuses have created Pandora —a Web-based music player that allows users to personalize up to 100 stations that, theoretically, will cater to the listener’s every whim. Here’s how it works: You tell Pandora a song, album or artist you like, and it spits back a radio station designed around the musical attributes of that selection. It even explains the reasoning behind the songs it chooses. Still not satisfied? Well, you can always add songs you like to a favorites list for later reference. And, for all you control freaks out there, there are other ways to refine the station as you listen. Giving a song a “thumbs down,” for instance, causes similar-sounding tracks to play less often.
    Yes, registration is required, but at least it’s free (you can also subscribe to access the ad-free version). Rewinding is not permitted, because that would allow users to play specific songs on demand, which is a no-no for streaming audio sites. Same goes for too many skips in one hour—if you want to find a specific song, Pandora suggests that you buy it on iTunes or Amazon.com. Technicalities aside, the site’s sleek and simple design is sure to steal you away from other pocket-gouging digital music options. Why? Because their goal is to help curious music-lovers discover new tunes—no credit card (or jail time) required. Mission accomplished.

www.pandora.com

In case you’ve been living under a rock (or a giant asteroid), Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has been tearing into theaters recently, leaving a heated global warming debate in its wake. But how “real” is this whole global warming thing, anyway? Well, to make sure that kids have the right facts, the Environmental Protection Agency is offering a cheerful website that helps concerned youngsters learn more about the science of global warming.
     As you might expect, cartoon dinosaurs and oversimplified sketches fill the site’s pages, but strewn among the child-friendly graphics are pages explaining everything a child could want to know about the environment, including definitions of commonly heard terms like “greenhouse gases” (with handy pronunciation guides so nerdy kids can impress their equally nerdy friends). Of course, this is coming from an arm of the warming- skeptical Bush Administration, so the site doesn’t exactly err on the realistic side (equating the problem of global warming to dental hygiene–“neglect now, regret later” –might not be the best way to spur kids into action), and the writers obviously aren’t buying into Gore’s alarmism. For example, after vaguely describing what could happen down the road, climate-wise, they append a cheerful reminder that if Earth’s temperature rises, cold places will be glad to have warmer weather. (Compare that with the claim on the official Inconvenient Truth website that, in 25 years, deaths from global warming will have doubled to 300,000 per year).
     But, to be fair, the EPA doesn’t totally pull its punches. While the language is a bit wishy-washy (it seems as if every other sentence begins “some scientists think…”) the site actually gives a surprisingly thorough, if sugar-coated, explanation of the science behind global warming. In fact, it’s so simple and clear, maybe President Bush (who still insists that “there is a debate over whether [global warming] is manmade or naturally caused”) should log on and check it out.— Ashley Sisti

Yet another sign that our cozy little town is, in fact, big-city material: the notorious online swap meet (and meat market) Craigslist has finally come to Char-lottesville. The popular online classified site is the brainchild of Craig Newmark, who started the service in 1995 in the San Francisco area. Five years later, Boston got its own Craigslist, and since then the site has taken off
in more than 190 cities worldwide. Newmark attributes the site’s enormous success to its personal feel, simplicity (read: butt-ugly HTML aesthetics), and lack of annoying ads.
    Now Charlotesvillians can use Craigslist to find housing, jobs, services, and almost any conceivable item for sale: tickets, jewelry and yes, even free stuff! (Anyone else foresee a plethora of overpriced Dave JPJ tickets in Craig’s future?) Right now, though, our version of Craigslist is new, so the listings are pretty sparse. Plus, the site’s got some pretty stiff competition from the far-better-designed free classifieds on C-VILLE.com (cough-shameless plug-cough). But, if past experience is any indication, Charlottesville’s Craigslist should soon be swarming with bargain hunters.
    In addition to rentals and rock show tix, the site also offers discussion forums and personal ads. But a word to the wise: Beware of those ads. As the site warns upon entry, some portions of the personals section (like, say, “casual encounters”) are explicit—and, boy, they’re not kidding. (Hey, “m4m 28”— the hotel cleaning staff is not going to appreciate your planned rendezvous.) Please, take my word for it: You should make Craigslist personals your last (and by last I mean after cold-calling numbers from the phonebook) resort for finding your soul mate.
    And one more thing: The “rants and raves” section doesn’t even come close to The Rant. So don’t even try it.—Ashley Sisti

hotlink – Charlottesville.craigslist.org