Category Archives: GDNM

My first WordPress plugin!

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So I released my first WordPress plugin recently called ‘Broadcast MU‘ – Thanks Luke!

Its actually for WordPress MU (Multi-user) and it allows you to post the same post to multiple blogs, you can read up more on it here.

I hope people find it useful and it is a great opportunity for me to learn more about PHP and WordPress MU, it was developed because there was no similar plugin available for WPMU and we needed it for GDNM.org a site I have been managing for UCA Epsom’s Graphic Design: New Media and Graphic Design courses/departments.

Digg.com

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This is my first, in a series of posts towards my dissertation.

Digg is a company that was created by founder Kevin Rose, as an experiment. However its not the company which is important but the website digg.com. Since late 2004 early 2005 the site has had continual development and seen massive expansion, and is one of the biggest technology news sites on the Internet today.

Digg is often referred to as a social news website or social bookmarking website and these descriptions are accurate. The website is a place where visitors can submit stories on any subject for others to view. Other visitors can then view the title and description, and visit the linked site, and if they like it they can “dig” the story. Eventually when a story has enough digs it will be promoted to the front page of the website so other visitors can see the most popular stories first.

Over time the site has grown in popularity and traffic to linked sites has also grown with it. This has led to the term “the digg effect”, when a story is promoted to the front page the linked website receives intense amounts of traffic until the point where the web server crashes, or the web hosts closes the site because of high bandwidth use.

In addition other phrases such as “bury”, “dupe”, and “dugg”.

  • Bury or buried – Is normally posted in the comments attached to a story when someone does not like the story, more recently the creators of the site have added functionality to actually bury or -1 the count against the story.
  • Dupe – Is short for duplicate, and is also posted in the comments attached to a story when somebody believes they have read the same story before on Digg.
  • Dugg –  This refers to one of two things either the person as does the story, or more likely that the website effected by the dig effect, that was mentioned before.

Over the last four years digg has continuously evolved, expanded, and its design has been refreshed many times and many new features have been added, but essentially its core assets remain the same, as a site where you can post comments, stories and now photos and videos, and allow other people to rate them.

The site has also expanded its categories of news from just technology related stories, it has now expanded to a fully fledged news site visitors can find information about world, business, science, gaming, lifestyle, entertainment, sports, and other news topics.

The site is almost 100% controlled by its visitors, with no need for administrators or moderators on the site. In fact on the one occasion where moderation was required due to a cease and desist order. Mass outrage followed and the site had to deal with continuous spamming of the disallowed content. Eventually Digg conceded and the article was about to be posted and it would seem that no further action has been taken against Digg.

Dissertation Time

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As part of my degree at the University for the creative arts – Epsom I am required to complete a 6,000 word dissertation on the subject of my choice, and being dyslexic this is going to prove quite a challenge so I have decided to start early. My skill support lecturer, Ray has suggested that I start by writing 100 to 200 words each day on my chosen subject.

The final decision on the topic has not been made however, I believe it will be along the lines of communication on the Internet past, present, and future including, photo and video sharing, social bookmarking, social networking, social news, virtual worlds, online forums and other forms of Internet media which allow multi-user communication and sharing of information.

That rather wordy list above may sound confusing but really it translates into the following…

  • Photo sharing – Flickr
  • Video sharing – YouTube
  • Social bookmarking – Delicious & Stumble Upon
  • Social networking – Myspace & Facebook
  • Social news sites – Digg
  • Virtual worlds – SecondLife & There
  • Online forums – Penny Arcade, Overclockers UK, etc…
Obviously it’s not enough to talk about what the sites are how they work and where they came from, I will need to analyse and investigate how people use these sites now and how the Internet communication has evolved since the invention of these sites known as Web 2.0 (excluding online forums which have obviously existed prior to what is known as Web 2.0).