Lots of things going on today so I'll just briefly cover them. First off, Digg has had a change of heart and unbanned many domains, including mine. Next time you feel that something is digg-worthy, fire away.
Mozilla just rolled out a small update for Firefox by releasing version 2.0.0.2. This version has the requisite bug fixes but also a fair bit of Vista enhancements. In addition, Firefox usage has increased again, taking more users from Internet Explorer. ArsTechnica has all the deets and a few fancy graphs.
And finally, 9ruler Kevin Fricovsky of Juxtaviews has launched a service called Million Dollar Avatar. Before you jump to conclusions and pass it off as a get rich quick scheme, you must realize that it is a completely free site to help users promote their site(s) and find new ones. Kevin coded it from scratch in about a month using an open source ".net ROR-esque framework" called SubSonic.
Here's what Kevin told me about how the site works:
Basically, you register, add tags for yourself to place you into communities of users (ie. blogger, blog, sports, music, video etc) then add your profile, description, rss, url, etc. Then we track when and where people clicked on your info, and also allow for adding favorites, sending messages, etc, etc. But there's even more of a twist - I detail that below.
- Every day we display only 100 randomly selected members on the homepage (this will kick in once there are 100+ members)
- The "backpage" randomly select 100 new members every 5 minutes so you have a greater chance of being discovered.
- Every day the system generates The Daily 20 which is 20 randomly selected members and provides a link to their profile and their tagline. This Daily 20 is then inserted into the MDA blog so users who subscribe to our main feed or just our Daily 20 feed and get 20 new random links each day.
There's also other ways to find people by location, tag, favorites, recently viewed, etcetera.
Here's my profile page if you decide to sign up.
Edit: Forgot to mention that one of my Flickr pictures was posted on MAKE: blog. I basically taped the USB extension dock that came with the Belkin hub, to my desk.