I really need to get back to writing again, maybe I’ll get more visitors then

and yes, I know, StumbleUpon is known to bring a huge peak and after that only some visitors. Still…

P.S.: Some friends of mine started a German website called Projekt Datenrettung (no frame version of Projekt Datenrettung).

I don’t want to cover all of the new features.
I only cover one which I don’t use and I believe there are many people who don’t want to use either. I’m talking about the “save as local bookmark if thumbed up or if tagged”.

Maybe you noticed it already:

You stumble a site, you like it and you give your thumb up – Pew, and it is bookmarked.
You want to tag a site – Pew, and it is bookmarked.

I wish StumbleUpon wouldn’t set this feature to auto enabled, or at least they could ask us if we want to use this feature before enabling it. I’m not sure if they mentioned it somewhere and I’m a bit too lazy too Google for it.

Anyway, time to get rid of this feature:

1. Open the StumbleUpon ToolBar Options
2. Select the tab “Search & Tagging”
3. Look for “Bookmark upon Rate or Tag”
4. Uncheck the box next to “Save favorites to a Firefox bookmark folder”
5. Click “ok”

And we are done. I don’t remember if I had to delete the auto-added bookmarks on my own, so just have a look if they have been removed. If not, I guess you know how to delete bookmarks.

What do you think about this feature?
Do you have it enabled or disabled?

P.S.: I’d appreciate it if someone can tell me if he or she had to delete the bookmarks after disabling the feature.

skippy got a list with topics and a handful instructions how to fill them with music tracks to create your own, unique soundtrack for your life. It was fun to create my own soundtrack and I believe it is also a good chance to think about your life while you listen to your soundtrack.

Enough said, time to show you my soundtrack list:

• Opening Credits: Twilight And Shadow – Howard Shore & Renée Fleming – The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
• Waking up: Easy – Seeed
• Falling in love: Ritual Dance – Michael Hedges
• Fight song: Gra’tua Cuun (Our Vengeance) – Jesse Harlin – Star wars: Republic Commando
• Break up song: The Dreaming of the Bones – Davy Spillane
• Making Up: I have the Touch – Peter Gabriel
• Life’s Okay: Everybody wants to rule the world – Tears for Fears
• Mental Breakdow: Mad World – Michael Andrews
• Driving: Sultans of Swing – Dire Straits
• Flashbacks: Heart of Gold – Neil Young
• Happy Dance: T.N.T – AC-DC
• Regret: In your Eyes – Peter Gabriel
• Final Battle: Battle Of The Heroes – John Williams – Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
• Death Scene: The Funeral of Qui-Gon – John Williams – Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
• Final Credits: Up in Arms – Foo Fighters

Feel free to post your soundtrack as comment

Fortunately I paid enough attention to the “stumblecard” to see the short description explaining what it is:

Congratulations…you have found a “stumblecard”!

The latest sensation sweeping the web, “stumblecards” are simply an online version of the humble trading card.
What’s so great about “stumblecards” is that you never know when you’ll find one.
There are many out there to collect so keep your eyes peeled.
When you find a card, be sure to bookmark this page or give it a thumbs up so you can go to collect them all.

I myself found two cards via StumbleUpon so far. I did not try a Google search as I believe it spoils the sensation of this, well, game.

Upon my research for this new StumbleUpon “thing” I had a few questions, like who created it and if there is a place which tells you how many are out there. Some questions I was able to answer.

Who created the stumblecard?

Adam Atom, know as upnatom at StumbleUpon, invented this kind of game.
Before I start quoting or create any kind of plagiarism I will link to an Interview with StumbleCards Creator, Adam Atom.

How many StumbleCards exist?

I’m not sure how many exactly exist. On the upnatom.org website you learn that there are 25 of them floating around on the Internet.
However, it won’t surprise me if many other people decide to create their own cards to promote their website/blog.

Is that some kind of viral marketing strategy for StumbleUpon?

Again I found an article, this time about Stumblecards: Viral Marketing For StumbleUpon?.

What do other people think about the stumblecards?

If you use Google to do some research you will find a wide spread range of opinions. Some people literally hate them, as you can conclude from the amount of thumb downs (and sometimes quite vulgar reviews). There is even at least one blog post giving 4 reasons why the stumblecards suck.

And there are people who enjoy the “trading card game”, giving them thumbsup and of course a good review.
Despite my intensive research I had no success at finding a blog post giving reasons why the stumblecards are great.

Although I prefer a neutral opinion on the whole topic, I decided to get at least 4 reasons to like stumblecards:

1. They give Stumblers, who are getting somewhat tired of StumbleUpon a new goal. A target they can go for. Just keep in mind that you have to stumble about those cards thus you have to keep on stumbling.
2. It is a fun game and way better than those lolcats and the many plagiarism posts stumbleupon tends to serve.
3. They kind of reflect the way StumbleUpon works. I mean, you won’t be able to stumbleupon all the stumblecards in a short time. At first StumbleUpon has to learn about the fact that you like this game. Then it still randomizes what you see as the next page. In short, even after StumbleUpon learned that you like to see stumblecards, it still takes your other preferences into consideration.
4. Websites/blogs who have their own stumblecard receive a little bit more traffic than usual.

Which cards did I find so far?

No, I do not provide a link to the cards. I don’t show screens either although all stumblecards are copyleft.
The cards I found are “Piece o’ Cheese” and “AC/DC – Back in Black”.
I know two cards aren’t many, but I keep on stumbling.

Last Thought

Maybe I’m not that much neutral as I like because I do give the stumblecards a thumbup.
I see it the way it is: a fun game which keeps me at using stumble. Especially after I considered stopping to use StumbleUpon as I got a bit tired of it.

If you find my stumbleupon account and you have a look at it, you will see that I’m not one of the “pro stumblers”. I don’t participate in the community either (Actually I do participate occasionally, but not enough to be one of the greater StumbleUpon users). It is not because of the community itself, it is just that I don’t have that much time and I don’t really bother much about giving a review. Maybe I change it in the future…

Anyway, what are your thoughts about StumbleUpon’s stumblecards which weren’t created by StumbleUpon?

Update:
Nick at e3internet.com sent me an email, explaining that the name of the creator used in the original interview was wrong. For now, the creator of the stumblecards prefers being known as Adam Atom. As a result I updated my article.

It is called “MyMiniCity” and it is very easy to play, if you can actually say “playing”:
First of all you create your own mini city (or not, if you prefer helping a friend…)
My mini city is called Coruin City, not a fancy name but I have to live with it. After you created your city you visit it each day once. You can also bug your friends or fellow bloggers to visit the page each day.

When you or someone else visits the page, a new citizen will “move” to your city, making it grow. Once a certain amount of citizen are living in your mini city, you get more options to increase parts of your mini city. These options are:

• Increase population
• Increase industry (50 citizens)
• Improve the transport network
• Increase security
• Improve environment
• Increase business

The first option exists right from the beginning and since my mini city is still young I can’t tell when I will unlock the next option. Once I unlock the next option(s), I’ll update this post.

I hope I woke your interest for this neat browser game. Let me know if you also start a mini city or if you decided to help me with my mini city.

Update 2008-01-30: I finally unlocked the “Increase Industry” option with 50 citizens

Duplicate Content

is one of the major problems a StumbleUpon user encounters and there is no way to prevent this from happening!

I stopped counting how often I saw one and the same picture, article, “lolcat”…whatever…again and again. Usually, I give a thumb up the first time. The next time I just ignore it…and then? Well, if I give it a thumb down, it will mess up the system because although I like it, I say I wouldn’t like it… I wish there was a way to report duplicate content.

No real fresh content

comes along with the duplicate content issue.

If I don’t stumble upon duplicate content, I either discover older articles or articles on topics, which I read about already. So it is nothing new for me. Maybe the style is different, still, it is kind of the same content. I don’t know how StumbleUpon can prevent this from happening, but if they could implement something that deals with that…I would use it more again.

Neutral Thumb

where are you?

You know the problem: StumbleUpon presents you a page, but you can’t say that you like nor dislike it. What now? Right, nothing. You can’t give a thumb up, you can’t give a thumb down. So you just stumble on. But that’s not the real thing. You kind of like/dislike that page so it would be good if StumbleUpon would add it to your personal filter. Yet there has such an option to be implemented. (Maybe the Premium/Sponsor Members have such an option?)

Premium Account

or better known as Sponsorship

To be honest, I see no benefit from becoming a Sponsor. Maybe someone can actually give me any good reasons to upgrade.

Wrap Up

Well, I won’t cancel my account, nor do I stop stumbling. I just do it less often and, the good part of the story, I’m no longer StumbleUpon addicted. What about you? Are you still stumbling like you did after you stumble upon StumbleUpon (pun intended) or is your stumble activity ceasing?

The guy at “whyisfirefoxblocked.com” claim that Firefox users are thieves if they use AdblockPlus or other ways to block the advertisement on a website.

Matt from webmaster-source.com outlines a few holes in their arguments about why blocking Firefox is necessary. After reading it I couldn’t stop laughing, as you can see in my comment.

If you really decide to block Firefox because your visitors don’t want to see the Ads on your page, maybe you should think about a few things:
1. you Ads are annoying (or wasting bandwith for the user)
2. the market share of Firefox keeps on growing, you will hurt yourself on the long run
3. not everyone uses an Adblocker on Firefox, those who do, usually block annoying ads
4. maybe you better download and use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer
5. if you rely on Advertisement to earn money…maybe you should rethink your business plan…

I believe if you fix point 1 and 5 you will see that you get one or more clicks on the Ads…although I doubt that because although I see many ads I rarely click them…

Note #1: whyfirefoxisblocked.com is currently down with a 509 – Bandwith Limit Exceeded. I assume a bunch of Firefox users were visiting it, using a User Agent Switcher Add-On…

Note #2: @the owner of whyfirefoxisblocked.com: Would be nice if you would add a comments option to your website…wait, you will get spammed by the blocked Firefox users, aight? Well, feel free to reply on here if you are brave enough…

Update: I just found a page countering whyfirefoxisblocked.com, so feel free to visit whyisfirefoxblocked.com

Fortunately I stumbled upon a website called chocolaterain.org after watching that song I decided to have a closer look at the guy on YouTube.

I got my favorites of his YouTube videos right after the jump. So if you are too lazy to visit YouTube direct….


I won’t be surprised if he would become famous in the near feature. That voice is just awesome. Really cool.

Maybe I better bookmark his website….

The 1500+ inmates of Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in Cebu City, Philippines, do a lot more than just languish in a cell. They have livelihood programs and personal savings accounts, allowing them to earn and save money for legal fees or the families they left behind. Perhaps even more impressive is what they do with the rest of their time: rehearse and perform elaborate parades and dance numbers, like the recreation of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” seen here.

The choreography, the coordination, and the precision are insane. The Rockettes have nothing on these guys.
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I like the concept behind it. The inmates are kept busy and they actually see a positive result while working on the whole coordination. Would be interesting if other prisons would copy the concept. I’m wondering how the fall back rate of the inmates is after they are set free again.