If you don't have a MySpace account (my page here), you're missing out on a whole different world of advertising.

Labels: advertising, internet

Want to know something sad?

I'm all giggly and mindblown that I can now chat with my AIM friends and my Google friends, all within GMail. I don't need to have two IM programs open. This made my day. The fact that something this insignificant made my day makes me sad. So many conflicting emotions...

Labels: internet

I've been on Facebook for awhile now (here's my profile (membership required) (first triple quadruple parentheses on mattstooks.com ever) (not sure I did that right)). I love it so much more for what it could be than what it actually is.

MySpace and Facebook didn't get popular until I was well out of college. As a result, a lot of my close friends aren't on either. More of my friends are on MySpace than Facebook, mostly due to MySpace letting the general public in before Facebook. I try to tell my friends how cool Facebook's news feed is, but they won't convert.

It's so slick to get little one-sentence updates on what your friends are up to today. Then, Facebook decided to go and put "applications" in the news feed. So "Zombie Attacks" and "Movie Quizzes" dominate my news feed instead of worthy and depressing items like "Such and such isn't having a baby anymore."

Labels: internet

Check out the top items in Google Trends for 10 pm Thursday. They're all for lyrics. It's quite the variety, too. I didn't realize "Green Acres" was such a great sing-a-long song.

1. green acres lyrics
2. soul man lyrics
3. should i stay or should i go lyrics
4. taking care of business lyrics
5. if i could turn back time lyrics

Labels: internet, music, trends

Google Trends is a pretty cool tool for seeing what the world is searching for over a given time period.  I subscribe to an RSS feed in Google Reader that delivers the latest hot trends.  Some pretty random stuff shows up.  For example, tonight's 11 pm feed shows Habba Syndrome at number 13.  

What is Habba Syndrome?

Habba Syndrome was first described by Saad F. Habba, MD. The main symptom of Habba Syndrome is post-pandrial diarrhea, (three or more bowel movements per day for at least three months, which can range from simple urgency to incontinence) which is generally thought to be due to dysfunctional gallbladder which produces inappropriate amount of bile, but cholecystectomy does not greatly influence the symptoms, and approximately 10% of patients have nearly no change. Hence, the gallbladder may not be the only factor causing the syndrome.

Making this odd query even odder, "cordless drill" is listed as a "related search" at the trend page. I'm sorry, but I don't want to be anywhere near a Habba Syndrome sufferer handling a cordless drill.  That situation holds the potential for a pretty decent mess.

Labels: disease, fun with words, internet, toilet

Check out those silly teens.

More than four in 10 teens, or 43 percent, who instant message use it for things they wouldn't say in person, according to an Associated Press-AOL poll released Thursday. Twenty-two percent use IMs to ask people out on dates or accept them, and 13 percent use them to break up.

It doesn't say what percent set up encounters with 40 year olds at Waffle House.  Sorry, pedophiles, you'll have to wait for the next study.

Labels: internet, tech, teens

Gene Simmons shares his insight on the music industry.

There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free?

The record industry doesn't have a f---ing clue how to make money. It's only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there's no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They've got freckles. That's a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit's mask.

Great, now a less talented version of Lars (see my take on Lars) is out blaming the Internet for inability to sell music, instead of blaming the natural decline of aging rock stars' abilities along with their ball sacks.

I remember when Napster was on fire, me and all my freckle-faced friends sat around downloading KISS until sunrise every weekend. Although, you couldn't see our frecklie faces behind our bandit's masks, which never smelled thanks to our constant state of freshly-scrubbed faciness.

Labels: dumbasses, internet, music

Check out this headline from a discovermagazine.com story and the accompanying picture:

Labels: internet, tech

This article points out Kucinich's total domination in the results:

But here's the interesting point. This website also gives some statistical history of how people have voted. As of this writing, 153,350 people have completed the quiz. Of those people, more than half (57% in fact) have discovered that Dennis Kucinich is the candidate they should be supporting.

Of course, you have to take into account who might be taking this poll in the first place. For example, Kucinich is an Internet sensation. People love blogging about him and looking at him. Spending all this time online will likely lead to them discovering the "Pick Your Candidate" site.

Labels: dumbasses, internet, politics

There are a number of ways people come to mattstooks.com. Most visitors have the site bookmarked, some come over from my MySpace, Facebook or YouTube pages.

A few people come to the website through web search. Check out the breakdown of search strings that have brought people to the site this month.

Labels: internet, random nonsense

I do most of my email through GMail, but I still have an old Yahoo! address that gets some action. GMail retrieves the email from my Yahoo! inbox, but not the bulk folder. So, I go to Yahoo! and check it every week or so to make sure nothing important got snagged. I have to go through about 500 emails each time.

Lately, I've been getting spammed to death with the "Just saw you on Yahoo messenger" technique. It includes this message:

Hi

I have nothing to do at night a lot and would like to talk with someone. Are you interested?

Stacy19

Is this working? I can't imagine a high probability of someone who just got off Yahoo! Messenger seeing this message and saying "shit, I could be getting E-laid by Stacy 19 right now!" Click.

Every time I observe a new spam technique, I always get the same picture in my head: a toothless hick gullible enough to click through. Why can't the Internet Gods take access away from the people who pay spammer's bills?

I'd have to wake up pretty early in the morning, with an even smaller penis, to fall for this crap.

Labels: dumbasses, internet