Vital Pixel

The Kennedy’s Wait, what?

A day or two ago, digg was swarmed by articles about Hillary making a reference to the Kennedy assasination.  Many people read into her statements a bit to much, and thought that she was suggesting, Obama could be assasinated.  Of course the idea isn’t too far fetched, and yes it is because he’s black.  Some people just aren’t ready to accept this, but Hillary probably doesn’t mind having that slight advantage.

Personally, I don’t see Hillary’s comment as a big deal at all.  So she made a reference to the Kennedy election?  Who gives a dump, not me… but since everyone else does, it matter quite a bit.  For future presidential candidate reference, don’t mention the name of a president who was assassinated during the elections.

Anyways, as most of you know, Obama is winning on the democratic side at the moment.

And, here’s my little comic strip on the event, Digg up!

Tags: assasination, black, candidate, clinton, elections, hillary, obama, presidency, racist

When will Computing Plunge into Virtual Reality?

Ok, since I was a kid I imagined being able to put on some glasses and then pretend like i was inside of my video game.  I’m pretty sure everybody has imagined doing that at some point in their life.  With technology becoming more and more advanced each day, this may be possible in the near future.  If fact, it seems like in some cases, it’s already starting to be implemented.  I was searching around the internet for cool things to write and read about, when I found Virtusphere.

Ok, so don’t laugh, most of you have probably already heard about the latest virtual reality technology.  For me though, this is the first time I’ve seen it as a realistic possibility.  Virtual reality may never work out to be completely practical, to the point where all you have to do is put on a pair of Virtual Reality Sunglasses and your in game.  But I know that it will eventually become a popular form of gaming, in arcades, and Cyber Cafes.

Think of being able to step onto a virtual reality beach, where the girls don’t look away in disgust.  Because they’re programmed to like you.  Or maybe, imagine going to a live concert via a sort of mmorpg platform virtual reality system.

Bionics, robotics, virtual reality, nano technology…
What will they come up with next!?

Tags: bionics, nano, robotics, virtual reality

Niche Youtube Sites

First of all, here are a few examples of niche youtube sites.
- http://www.topyoutubevideos.com
- http://www.turtlesays.com
- http://www.allaboutyoutube.blogspot.com

Youtube niche sites, are good for a little bit of traffic, but can’t be expected to make to much.  After all, everything on those sites can be found on the actual youtube.  The good thing about these kind of sites is the way that certain types of videos are grouped together.  When a user sorts through videos, and makes sure to only show the best content, customers are happy.  If you can build a site’s pr as high as Top Youtube Vids, you’ll be pulling in a lot of natural traffic from search engines.

There are many scripts on the internet that can be acquired for free nowadays.  These scripts will automatically pull videos with certain keywords off of youtube, and put them on your site.  I recommend hand picking your favorite videos though, because users will keep coming back for the quality content.

Teacher lets Morningside students vote out classmate, 5

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about Barton’s 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote. By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class.

This urks me a bit because my own brother is autistic, and autistic or not, no kid deserves to be treated like this. So the teacher encouraged the kids to explain what they didn’t like about the little kid, while he was there. Then she has them vote whether or not they want him out of the classroom. I’m sure the teacher had known that Alex was in the process of being diagnosed with autism as well.

Ugh.. but being autistic isn’t even the reason this is wrong. If that happened to your kid, wouldn’t you be pissed off?

read more | digg story

Making Images Glow

Sstep 1) Get the image you want to make glow, and open it in photoshop.

Step 2) Make a duplicate layer (you can use control + J)

Step 3) On the new layer, go to Filter > Blurr > Gaussian Blur

Step 4) Make the radius for the Gaussian Blur 5.0 and click Ok. Now your image should look something like this.

Step 5) In the layers panel, where it says Normal, drop down the menu and change it to Soft Light. You can play around with different effects and change the opacity to get it exactly the way you want it.

Finished Product:

Linking to movies leads to $4 million in fines

Two more sites have been fined some $4 million for enabling copyright infringement by linking to illegal movies and TV shows. The MPAA hails the judgments as a victory, even if the sites weren’t hosting the copyrighted material themselves.

Ok, so these type of sites are now officially out of the question for me. The two websites only linked to where the content was actually hosted, and they were fined for millions of dollars! I find it somewhat unfair that the sites that provided links to the content were the ones that got fined, but it does make some sense.

A good example to help you all to avoid making a site for watching movies online. Apparently it is illegal, and actions can be taken against you if you own them. So, be careful what you post on the internet, next thing you know… they’ll be suing people for posting links to youtube videos on forums.

read more | digg story

Using Social Networking (mainly digg)

Social networking is one form of advertisement that many webmasters are starting to utilize and use to their advantage.  You can’t just make a post, submit it to digg and expect to get a huge amount of traffic though, there are many things that one must do before getting on the front page of digg.

1. First of all, the desired effects:
   The desired effects from submitting your content to digg is to get on the front page.  Once you’re on the front page, you’re almost assured to get 10,000+ unique hits from referred from digg that day.
2. Building Your Rep:
   In order to have a decent amount of people digg your article from the get-go.  What you need to do, is add some friends, and get them to friend you back.  Message them, familiarize with your peers, do favors for them, so when you need a favor, they’ll help you out.  Go around to some of the blogs you read, and submit some of their good articles to digg.  The better the articles you submit, the better your rep will be.  The more popular you become, the more popular all of your future articles will become.
3. Submitting Your Content to Digg:
   Make sure and submit content that is up to date.  The most popular content is usually wacky, brand new, newsy, informative, useful, or just extremely amusing.  People are never amused by articles that have been posted before, are outdated, or aren’t useful to them at all.
   titles: are also an important part of your submission.  It should always be catchy, people should want to know what you’re talking about.  This will lead to some clicks to your website, just to figure out what you’re talking about.  Then if they like what they see, they can keep on browsing.

Phew, I’m actually no expert on digg.  I’ve never been a featured author, but I do like to think I know what I’m talking about.  I’ve read a lot of different guides, and it all turns out to seem pretty simple.  The only problem is, it takes a bit of time to get chummy with all of your friends on digg.  It also takes time to get popular, and your blog has to be getting a bit of natural traffic before anything can happen.

Hope this helps some people out - VP

20 Websites From Before the Internet was Invented

What would some of your favorite websites have looked like before you were born? One somewhat related post about what websites would’ve been like, if they had been around at any time before they actually were around. It was relevant, funny, and plus I’m testing out the Digg… blog it feature. I may do a longer post later on just to tell people how it worked out.

read more | digg story