BoingBoing keep their traffic stats publicly accessible at http://www.boingboing.net/stats/ which makes for an interesting read.

A few generally interesting details

• They get around 2.5 million visitors a month
• Their RSS feeds account for over half of their traffic
• Nearly 80% of their visitors stick around for less than 30 seconds.
• Around 20% of their traffic comes from Digg
• Yahoo’s search engine spider has already hit their site nearly 400,000 times this month, approximately 4x more than Google.

Fun times with Fetishes

The real fun comes when you look at how people are finding Boing Boing.  Some of the search phrases are …. interesting.   Here’s a selection of some of the weirder fetishes search engines think Boing Boing will satisfy:

• goatse
• horse fucking
• sex
• porn
• lesbian kissing
• celebrity sex
• free porn
• indian teen sex
• disney porn
• warcraft porn
• space porn
• world of warcraft nude
• nerd porn
• lego sex
• tentacle porn
• superhero porn
• eat shit
• incest
• monster dildo
• persian porn
• and more….

Interesting stuff.  Well slightly interesting.  It’s Sunday night.

 The real competitors for the sloppy seconds of the market is a fight between Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Safari’s marketshare doesn’t move much – it’s specific to Apple computers and there’s alternate browsers that are reportedly, depending on which report you read, better.

But Apple’s got 3 million new Safari-only devices hitting the market on June 29, and they expect to have 10 million iPhones out in the wild some time in 2008.

According to May’s browser stats at TheCounter Firefox was detected on nearly 9.3 million computers, while Safari was found on only 2.3 million.

Factor in the 3 million iPhones Apple is almost certain to sell due to an endless viral campaign that’s hyped up every tiny feature, and those numbers inch closer together.

Opera meanwhile have got themselves embedded on every Nintendo Wii and DS’s, which is craploads of units, and they’re finding themselves selected to be embedded on loads of other devices.  It helps a lot that their browser is cross-platform and light on resources, and it makes them the obvious choice when it comes to a resource-limited environment.

So we’ve essentially got:

• Safari being pimped on every iPhone, with 3 million ready to sell and 10 million expected in 2008
• Opera being pimped on Nintendo’s Wii and DS units, which are capturing (or in the DS’s case captured) the console / portable game markets
• Spread Firefox, the communal ad agency of Firefox, with no new angles and no new stories.

By the end of this year the numbers for Firefox, Opera and Safari are going to look pretty similar.  It’s feasible for either Safari or Opera to overtake Firefox due to the excellent marketing and strategic placement they’ve fostered.

Like the sql queries they’re outputting, which reveals parts of their table structure to anyone with bad intentions.

What’s most amazing is they reveal how many active sessions are on the site.  Apparently over 100 people are browsing their retardedly-expensive notebooks.  Fucks me why a Voodoo with a paint job makes the machine worth $3000 more than the HP-branded notebooks.  No wonder ACER is creeping their way up the ranks.

Craploads of people expressed their support for the idea, and Dell figured it might be a good idea to follow through since there was so much demand for the machines.  They expressed their support for a few other open-source, fuck Microsoft oriented ideas, essentially hijacking the site and turning into a very boring place to submit and vote on ideas that could never become popular when competing with an ideology that has a following with nothing to do between school and sleep.

So anyway, Dell setup a new section of their website where you could buy a couple of flavours of Linux on known-to-be-compatible hardware and all that.

So where’s the results?  You’d think, given the huge number of people demanding it, there’d be a huge number of sales bearing at least some relation to the demand.

After nearly two weeks there’s been no follow up on the Direct2Dell blog and that strikes me as funny.  These 11 days have been an ideal time to keep the buzz and the hype burning, to congratulate the open source community for their insight and all that self-validating stuff the younger open source people live for.

But there’s been nothing.  No mention, no congratulations, no acknowledgement, not even a hint about whether it’s a success. 

This isn’t just an important moment for Dell, this is an important moment for the open source community.

So what’s the story Dell?  How many of these machines are you actually selling?

My favourite theory is a bunch of kids hijacked IdeaStorm, created a false demand for products they didn’t want to or couldn’t buy, and in doing so discredited the open source community and the IdeaStorm website.  No news means the sales were crap and there’s nothing positive to say about it.  I wonder how this’ll affect the rest of the tards’ ideas on IdeaStorm – notably to get rid of Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer and to preload a sizable volume of open source junk onto computers instead?

You don’t want to believe there’s a higher power that created us, life, the world and the universe, so what’s your proposed alternative?  Is it magic?  It’s magic isn’t it?!

It’s not just wrong because you say so and evolution isn’t the answer, it’s a circle that keeps coming back to “but where did that come from?”, and you run out of answers before you run out of questions.  The big bang isn’t the answer either – and yes I’m happy to believe it happened – because the question doesn’t stop there.  Where did the materials for it come from.

Where did the first particle of non-nothingness come from, and how did it become galaxies and universes and planets and life?

Seems kind of hard to believe the possible answers if there was no higher power involved.  Did it just “always” exist?  Did it just “appear”? 

Until you’ve actually formed an argument that irrefutably proves there’s no higher power, how about you step off your high horses and explain why.   Attacking the Bible is not an answer, all it does is unsurprisingly demonstrate that a book by written by hundreds of authors over hundreds of years might not be true.  Shock.  Fucking.  Horror!

Please also feel free to stop acting like it’s an achievement to be an atheist.  Deciding you’re an atheist is about as impressive a feat as deciding to have a Quarter Pounder over the Big Mac.

Love,
A non devout, educated Catholic who believes there is a god, even if the Bible doesn’t get the story right.

6) The cases just aren’t that pretty or even particularly unique.  They’re barely different from other notebooks and PC cases come in so many shapes, sizes and colours anyone who wanted one could build a Mac clone.

5) Being able to switch operating systems by shaking your weiner in front of the camera is a feature people don’t need unless the base operating system is inferior.  Windows and the software available on it does pretty much everything you can think of.  Windows itself would do more, but it would be anti-competitive if Microsoft shipped what Apple and Ubuntu are allowed to with their operating system.

6) iTunes is such a crappy application I have no faith in the rest of their suite.  It’s slow, laggy and awkward to use.  Sorry if you think otherwise.

3) I like to maximise windows.  I also like to maximise videos.  Add Quicktime to the list of Apple software that makes me hate them.  $30 to play full screen video, a feature of pretty much every other free and commercial media player from the last decade?  Right.

2) The culture is just plain irritating and unattractive.  Nobody buys a PC so they can sit in a circle playing with their neighbour.  A computer and operating systems are just tools to get to the applications you actually *want* to use.  I spend nearly no time at all actually using Windows features, or just playing with the operating system.  I wouldn’t feel comfortable joining a society that is obsessed with the second you see an operating system between deciding you want to open an application, and that application opening.

1) I’m not a trendy, hip, wanker.

A “trusted” source sent them an email that was circulated at Apple claiming the iPhone and OS X Leopard would be delayed till October and January respectively.

They were wrong, which is hardly news, but the results of their post were news.  Apple’s stock dropped about $4 a share – each dollar representing close to a BILLION dollars in value to the company), and people lost lots of money.

All I can say is, lol @ engadget. And double lol @ any retard who thinks recycling what other people are writing makes anyone an authority.

They know what topics you’re going to digg and they write specifically for you. Feel special or used, it’s up to you.

Here’s my predictions for today’s front page news.

Someone will write something:

1. praising Google
2. purporting to be an atheist, disproving or challenging Christianity
3. installation guide for Ubuntu, or some easily installed software to run on Ubuntu
4. about how great Apple [whatever]‘s are / will be / can be with this hack
5. about how great digg and/or digg users are
6. about how evil the RIAA / MPAA / Microsoft
7. about how awesome Firefox can be with some list of extensions you must have
8. some css or javascript, that you must have to complete your gmail or w1eb development experience
9. how or why linux is ready for the desktop, and/or various applications to replace the Windows software you’re already using
10. some crap about how to be better organised with or to get more out of some amalgamation of web 2.0 sites

Then the political kids’ll come along and flood the site with Ron Paul / Barrack Obama / whatever other underdogs are in *next years* election.

Ignoring the political crapolla since it’s guaranteed - how much does it cost to have a bunch of interns flood digg with a steady stream of political garbage Ron? - I bet 60% or more of those predictions happen.

The list was posted on May 14, 2007 at 12:35am, using whatever WordPress’s timezone is.  I’ll update it tonight with the results.

The Results

(3) The Ubuntu installation guide’s frontpaged, as is a RIAA hating article.   20% right already.

(1, 7, 10) Just frontpaged is a story on a website that offers web-based group chat, a feature of any instant messenger program and skype for the last decade or so.  It mashes up the Google Web Toolkit and instant messanger conferencing.  In the upcoming stories, with 58 diggs, is a writeup of how wonderful your life will be if you combine Google Calendar with some Firefox extension.  This has been frontpaged too. This isn’t frontpaged yet, but it’s on the way.

(6) There’s a “The RIAA is worse than pirates” story, telling digg exactly what they want to hear , that is, consequences are the problem, not piracy, along with one about PS3 users pirating games, and the obligatory ”micro$oft is evil” post.

(5) Now we’ve got “news” about digg adding a couple of new gaming topics, continuing the endless circlejerk of digg-related retardedry.

(4) In the Apple corner we’ve got 52 ways to make OS X run faster, which I’m not going to count as a successful prediction.  There is however the upcoming “Solid Gold iPhones for sale?” post which if frontpaged will satisfy my Apple prediction.

If the two upcoming and heavily dugg stories (gcal firefox extension and solid gold iPhones) that will put me at 70% accuracy with a few hours left to go.  At the moment 50% of my predictions have come true.

I’m sitting on 60% of my predictions having come true, with one possible contender that still has time to slip in and make it 70% – the solid gold iPhone crap.

I didn’t get a hit for #2, #8 or #9 which is quite a surprise.

PS.  In an unseen stroke of hilarity, digg users are having a cry about someone selling someone’s else’s photos online - aka copyright infringement.  The irony is so rich you almost need a tetanus shot.

I’m going to do a “Dear Digg” every few days to focus on areas where the site can be improved with almost no effort.

 Dear Digg #1

A very simple request, just do an http request of Coral Cache on stories that are about to be frontpaged.  There’s no better time to do it than when the digg servers are changing it’s status from “whatever” to “frontpaged”.

 2 lines of code, done.  Adding a link to the CC version should be as simple as editing an included file and distributing it to each of their web servers – the CC version of a domain is just adding “.nyud.net:8080″ to the url, for instance http://www.wordpress.com/ becomes http://www.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8080/.

With luck some of my suggestions, and I’m full of them, will be implemented.  Despite what I might write about digg, and despite my dislike for most of the users, I do like using the site and I waste loads of time on it.

This handy installation guide covers virtually every past, present and future release of Ubuntu and every other operating system.  It particularly applies to spinoffs like the shiney new Ubuntu Studio.

1) Download and burn it to a CD.  Alternatively, put it in a USB stick.  Or a DVD.   Or a postcard.  If you bought it it’s probably already on a CD so you quite obviously don’t need to download and burn it.

2) Boot from the CD, USB stick, DVD, or whatever you put it on.

3) Follow the prompts

4) When prompted with “Would you like to start a new blog, or post to your existing blog, about the installation process?” click “No” and stfu.

 On the off chance that you have some problem performing an almost entirely automated installation process, join a forum and ask for help.

On the very likely chance that you have no problems and manage to install the operating system, please just carry on with life.  You don’t need to tell us how you did it, we already know.