So, following up my post on what is a good prize, I would like to announce a competition to redesign the way weblogtoolscollection.com looks and feels. The competition will last for 30 days starting this Sunday, 9th of April. Since there is not a whole lot of time, entries in non-working or presentation formats will be allowed. Prizes will be sent out when a working copy of the design is in my posession. First Prize is a Microsoft XBox 360 Premium system or equivalent cash Two consolation Prizes 2GB Flash Drive or Shuffle 1GB or equivalent cash The three top designs will get a link from the front page to their site of choice for a month All entries must be emailed to mark @ wltc . net with a subject of “weblogtoolscollection.com redesign” All decisions regarding the competition are at my sole discretion. A few things about the design […]

In your mind, what is a good prize for a competition beside money? I personally would like to win something that I would like to buy but do not have the money to go out and get. What prizes do my readers yearn for? PS: I still yearn for an XBox 360, but at this point I think I am just playing into the hands of the brilliant Microsoft marketers. I am not even sure I will have the time to play it past the first month of ownership.

Maybe I am feeling a little too cynical, but I think this April Fool thing has run its’ course. I had started to put together a list of all the blogs that were making the half hearted attempt and then just lost interest. It was cool for a year, now it just looks tacky. What news did you come across today that was a joke? [EDIT] Let me excuse myself while I start a list. This might be interesting after all. WordPattern Google Romance WOOT Think Geek Yahoo Search A pretty definitive list thanks to Waxy MSN Ubuntu Pretty funny videos on MSN.com

So I am looking to remove some of the items in my news feeds and add new ones. I read a whole bunch of relevant topics along with a whole bunch of unrelated and useless feeds that are interesting to me but not really of any “news” value. In all, I have about three hundred feeds that I try to peruse everyday. I recently started using FeedDemon again and remembered (again!) why I like FeedDemon as much as I did while I beta tested it. I just could not see paying a whole lot for a feed reader but the usability and the control is SO worth it. I found out that a whole bunch of my daily reads were not being updated anymore or had bad URIs. So I am looking for suggestions. What do you read? (I hope others can benefit from this as well)

I have been receiving an increasing amount of spam, of both the comment and the email kind, from TOR which led me to the EFF homepage of TOR. With power comes enormous responsability. Anonymous proxying of data and connections can be a good thing on the one hand, but can be a big problem on the other when you consider that criminals and miscreants can easily manipulate the anonymity to suit their nefarious needs. I see this network (and all like projects) becoming a huge problem in the future. Does this anonymity come with any responsability? Should there be accountability added to anonymity on the internet? What gives an user of TOR the authority to use/abuse their services? Does TOR hold their users responsible for their actions? More generally, does the Internet, as a medium, offer unabashed and unfettered anonymity without consequence? Is that how we, the end users of […]

I am travelling through India at this time and posting will be light for the next two weeks. It has been a blast so far and will only get better. For those that are interested, I will be blogging my trip at http://mindfulmusings.net/weblog Also, for those that are interested in “Green” cars and alternative energy vehicles, a friend of mine, G2 has started writing regularly on Greencar.us. I really like his factual bloggins style, especially considering the subject.

This is a personal rant. I read a whole bunch of blogs everyday when I get a chance. It is a diversion, an escape and is a means of research. I like actually visiting blogs as opposed to reading them all through my reader. I have noticed an alarming trend that literally bars me from reading these at a public/semi-public location, that of ads with naked people on them and/or large text ads with offensive language. I understand that ads make money and these ads pay more than others, but I also believe that ads such as these hurt your reader count and might turn people like me away from your blog. I rarely ever visit BoingBoing anymore for just this reason. What do other readers/bloggers think of potentially offensive ads?