The Almighty Status Update

Six words. One question. "What are you doing right now?" It's staring you in the face, almost mocking you. That's right, mocking the fact that it's been three days since you've updated your circle of friends with a catchy status.

They're dying to know what you're doing this very second. Maybe you're "going through pictures of a schizophrenic poet" or you "will not be taking up rollerskating as a back up profession anytime soon." And if nothing comes to you, there's the all encompassing "is." It's the postmodern take on "Cogito, ergo sum."

To find the origins of this microcosm of monologue, you have to reach way back. I'm talking old school...or at least high school. Back when you first discovered the instant messaging phenomenon.

You would run home from school in order to dial up America Online, wait for that annoying tone, and before you knew it you were conversing with the same friends you hung out with all day long...without even picking up a telephone.

Back then, status updates were known as Away Messages. You might be sitting three feet away from your computer, but you had to tell the world something clever to sustain them while you were taking a hiatus.

Flash forward back to today. Twitter, Facebook, SMS, FriendFeed, and yes IM. We have a nearly unlimited number of tools at our disposal to instantaneously apprise the world with our every thought or action.

This newfound freedom is a double-edged sword. If you're a very interesting person with a healthy dose of humor, the internet is your oyster. If however you lack either one of those. Don't fret. You too can have award winning status updates. It just means you have to work a bit harder.

What do you think...are status updates the greatest thing since AIM or a thorn in your side?

Did You Know...

Check out the video below for some pretty crazy stats about the current state of the world.

Note to America: it's time to get crackin'!

We need to worry less about saving aging industries and get busy creating brand new ones.

YouTube in HD...almost

Sick of watching grainy YouTube videos that look like they were shot on a webcam five years ago? Me too! Luckily we have options...

Where the Hell is Matt...in standard low-def.


Where the Hell is Matt...in higher-def.



Notice a big difference? Learn how to perform this magic trick for yourself.

Even better news. If you have a YouTube account, you can click on Playback Setup (under My Account.) Select "always play higher quality video when it's available."

And just like that, you're on your way to watching higher quality videos on the world's largest video sharing site.

Happy Birthday Google!

As part of Google's 10th Anniversary they're doing some pretty sweet stuff, including a search engine that crawls a 2001 cached internet.

I just googled Barack Obama and it returned 771 results in the 2001 time capsule vs. 77,900,000 results if you google him today. It's amazing what can happen in a short 7 years.

They also launched a micro site featuring all kinds of cool widgets and gizmos.

But Project 10 ^100, easily takes the cake with the search giant giving back. It's going to award $10 million to whoever has the greatest idea that can positively affect the largest amount of people in the world in various categories.



What an awesome way to celebrate a birthday? I wish I had tens of millions of dollars to give back to others on my birthday.

1,000,000,000,000 Pages on the Web

I heard this weekend that there are now over 1 Trillion pages on the world wide web. According to The Official Google Blog...

"We've known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we've seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. Recently, even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days -- when our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!"

Wow! I can't really comprehend that big of a number. But the real question isn't how many pages are on the internet, but rather how many of them are useful to YOU. The good news is, there's no need to waste hours and hours scouring the web to find relevant content.

Thanks to RSS readers like Google Reader, NetNewsWire, and Bloglines you can now bring the web's best content to you. It's like having your own personal newspaper version of the internet. Pretty cool.

So to all the web designers, bloggers, journalists, comedians, and other content creators please keep it coming! Here's looking forward to a quadrillion pages.


In other news, according to The New York Times China now surpasses the U.S. in number of internet users.