Here’s a little old school shark jumping to take us into the weekend (are you most people aware that “jumping the shark” stems from the infamous Happy Days episode where Fonzie literally jumps a shark?).

And let’s hope that I have not jumped my personal blogging shark (let’s name him Tippy) quite yet. Or something.

I do very much enjoy grabbing cool images that I find during my travels on the webs and throwing them up on my desktop as wallpaper. For web workers and Internet fiends, it would probably be shocking to know how often you are actually staring at the often “negative space” of your desktop while hunting around for files, firing up/powering down your computer, and so on.

Recently I stumbled across a great and easy way to find cool desktop backgrounds that perfectly fit the size of your monitor:

1) Go to Google Image Search

2) Click Advanced Image Search

3) Search for something cool in the “Find Results” fields at top
I love cool shots of cities, particularly my homeland of New York, so I put in New York City as an example

4) Use My Desktop Size
Now, this is where things get kickass. Look underneath Find Results for the row that says Exact Size. In the right column, you’ll see fields for width and height. To the right of that you’ll see a link called “Use my desktop size.” Click that and your desktop dimensions are auto-inserted (mine is 1440×900).

5) Click Google Search
And presto! You have a bunch of amazing shots that are available to put up as desktop wallpaper and spruce up the visuals on your online day a little bit

6) Desktop Wallpaper
Have no idea what desktop wallpaper means? Click on the image you like after completing Step 5. Then click “view full image” (this doesn’t always work so you may need to select another image if this happens). Right click on the full size image and choose “set as desktop wallpaper” (note that Google Chrome doesn’t offer this feature). Then minimize all of your browser windows and applications and behold the artistic wonders.

If you’re a fan of Parks and Recreation (and you should be), Star Wars (who isn’t? and we’re talking original trilogy here!), and, ideally, both you will absolutely go out of your mind for this opening theme parody called Hutts and Recreation.

Okay, so if you absolutely don’t go out of your mind, there’s a very very good chance you will at the least get a chuckle out of this. Or not. But please know the attempt was made in good faith.

But seriously… I thought I’d give a little sprinkling of some of the more interesting things I’ve seen going on around the big game today.

I’m a somewhat serious football fan, so I’ll start with the “real” football stuff. Pretty good analysis of Super Bowl XLIV over on NFL.com, in which typical considerations (stopping the run, getting to the QB) are covered, as well as X factors such as the Dwight Freeney injury situation, Reggie Bush, the genius of Peyton Manning, and the seemingly unstoppable New Orleans offense. Unfortunately, the video over there is not available to an embed (not to NFL.com: set your videos free!).

It’s also fun to look at experts’ predictions, not so much for the fact that they have a lot of relevance to the actual outcome, but to see that most expect this to be a high scoring affair as well as one of the more competitive Super Bowls in Super Bowl history. (It’s my wacky sense of humor that makes me think it would be pretty cool to see a 6-3 squeaker or 44-0 shutout, no?)

Now that huge events are now hip to social media, it’s fun to see what they’re doing with it. Lost Remote notes that the NFL is pushing the Twitter hashag #SB44 for wild tweeting on game day. Those tweets, along with photos and other stuff, are supposed to be showcased on nfl.coms/sb44, but it seems to be down at the time of this writing.

Of course, the Super Bowl becomes about so much more than just football. Hulu is running an ad zone to highlight the advertising industry’s biggest day of the year. Here’s one for Cheetos:

The Saints reaching the Super Bowl for the first time is also shedding new and updated light on New Orleans post-Katrina and the resilient spirit of its people.

On a much lighter note, Asylum is running a “LiveTweeting/drinking extravaganza” (via TV Squad).

And finally, we save the best for last. Puppy Bowl VI. That’s all you need to say.

Enjoy the game! I have no clue who is going to win but am expecting a thoroughly entertaining aerial show.

Part of the reason for this has to do with the relatively non-intuitive way that RSS feeds are added to RSS readers for end users. And part of it is due to the rise of social media applications for information sharing (read: Twitter, Facebook) and the real time web.

So where does that leave things heading into 2010? The consensus of the blogosphere is, well, a muddled one.

ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus reported late last month that the RSS Reader market is in disarray but then dialed back and returned with 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock. Venture Chronicles bluntly states that "RSS as a standard has failed to evolve in ways that solve publisher problems." And Louis Gray (rightly) points out that "the current discussion around RSS being less useful, or less important, than in years past, is flawed, period."

With the web, one thing that we know is that things are forever changing, and usually more quickly as opposed to less. So it is with RSS as well, and one thing we know for sure is that the use of RSS will evolve based on patterns affecting the social web, the real time web, and so on.

Allen Stern's smart takeaway is that the era of full RSS feeds may be ending because online publishers can now effectively promote themselves without "giving away" full content via RSS. Personally, as a heavy Google Reader user, this would not bother me all that much as I often click through to the stories that I take the time to read end-to-end.

Meanwhile, I still see huge potential and opportunity of Google Reader as a content sharing and social media tool. At its best, the shared and shared + note features offer the an ideal combination of "smart social network" and "smart content aggregator." And no doubt Mother Google will have more in store for us this year.

Finally, it just occurred to me: if Google had acquired FriendFeed rather than Facebook, would the RSS landscape look significantly different today?

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

Twitter is a central gathering point to talk about live events, both real world and virtual. So when popular web hosting company Rackspace experienced a major outage today, causing all kinds of online mayhem – websites from the well known TechCrunch were offline to the relatively obscure Online Media Cultist (my blog, that’s how I found out!) – people headed to Twitter to vent, inform, commiserate, and twiddle virtual thumbs.

Searching “rackspace” on Twitter search caused a massive torrent of activity to return. Quickly I noted Robert Scoble’s (as ever) omnipresence. He pointed people to a Twitter List he created of Twitter feeds of Rackspace employees and news sources. Tracking that list shows a quick transition from tweets about impending snowstorms and how “my cat Dracula caught a Hummingbird” to real time updates about the widespread service outage.

The RackStatus Twitter feed also announced that Rackspace is “experiencing problems and are actively investigating their source. Please follow @RackStatus for more updates.”

Less than 20 minutes later, the issue seemed to have been mostly resolved, and the Twitter masses again related the changed status, reminding me of late night website development builds where production teams often frantically instant message each other with “are you up?” and “what are you seeing?”

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler notes that other affected websites included, “37signals, Brizzly, Scoble’s blog, all of the sites hosted by Laughing Squid, Tumblr custom domains, and many others.”

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger has long been one of my favorites, and that’s because of the supportive and friendly spirit of its content and community, as well as Darren’s overall take on blogging as a professional business. A few recent ProBlogger articles have particularly drawn my attention. 

How to Make $30,000 a year Blogging is a good illustration of the it’s hard/takes time/quality content/quality promotion dynamic. It also delivers a fabulous primer on different kinds of online advertising strategies, such as CPC, CPM, commission, and sponsorships. And Rowse points out that using multiple advertising networks and types is a good way to maximize revenue. Of course, you need to drive a lot of traffic before you can expect to make anything close to $30k per year! 

And here’s helpful news for money-seeking blogs who use the popular Blogger platform: Google and Amazon Partner Up to Integrate Amazon Associates Program into Blogger Blogs. One of the more interesting things about this news is that Google-owned Blogger is now openly promoting a non-Google advertising product. And since many bloggers use both Google Adsense and the Amazon Affiliate program as a bedrock of their money-making strategy, the move makes a lot of sense. 

There are also a number of “indirect” ways to make money from blogging, including professional networking opportunities, promotion for consulting and online services, direct product sales, and more. Some of the most prolific and ambitious bloggers are writing books (both e-books as well as the dead wood variety) and promoting them to their readers. The latter – old fashioned books distributed via old school real world distribution – gets the spotlight on Mashable: From Blog to Book Deal: How 6 Authors Did It. Profiles include how Ben Huh of the I Can Has Cheezburger empire, Pamela Slim of Escape From Cubicle Nation, and Walker Lamond of Rules of My Unborn Son converted Internet celebrity into book deals.

Even though the blogging game is highly competitive, it’s also fun and challenging and changing all the time. Bloggers are forging new business models out of online publishing, with the result that the best of the best online writers and self-promoters are able to live la vida blogger full time.

For a lot more information about professional blogging in 2009, check out Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report.

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

The latest is leaked screenshots of a new "contributors" feature, which aims to give businesses that utilize Twitter for online marketing, PR, and customer service purposes more control over their accounts. Mashable's Ben Parr explains that "Contributors is a feature that focuses on creating more authentic engagement for business accounts. With Contributors, a business account with multiple contributors (say, for example, the @Twitter feed) can add the specific user that tweeted on behalf of the business to the byline."

For example, companies that have multiple people tweet to the same account will be able to more easily manage access. Additionally, "enhanced access" and "partial access" will enable companies to give certain people "lower level" control over accounts so that they will be able to tweet, for example, but won't be able to grant access to additional employees.

What remains to be seen is how much Twitter will charge businesses for Contributors-level accounts. Twitter has also stated that Contributors is just one of several new features in development. We'll be watching!

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

It’s okay if you don’t. I’ve mentioned the blog directory/search engine to a few dialed in friends recently and received blank stares. At one time it was a pretty big deal though, at least within the bourgeoning blogospheric community during the middle of this decade.

The search and ranking system were always a little bit wonky, but what I loved about TTLB was its blogosphere ecosystem page. Beyond the fact that I’ve always been obsessed with rankings and statistics and numbers, TTLB did a few things really really well.

• Its ecosystem mimicked the real ecosystem – On the “lower” or less popular end, blogs are ranked into broad groupings such as Insignificant Microbes, Multicellular Microorganisms, and Wiggly Worms. Rankings are based on “the number of incoming links [blogs] receive from other weblogs on the list.” As blogs increase links and influence they “evolve” into categories such as Crawly Amphibians, Slithering Reptiles, and Marauding Marsupials. The most popular blogs according to TTLB take on lofty titles such as Playful Primates, Mortal Humans, and, at the very top, Higher Beings. I love the tongue-in-cheek titles and think that they did a great job of parsing the blogosphere into relative categories. A TechCrunch or DailyKos really is a “higher being” as compared to a blog with eight visitors a day, you know?

• It provided a daily snapshot of the growing blogosphere – I used to visit TTLB every day (particularly to see where Blogcritics was sitting in the mix), and it was interesting to watch the leading “higher beings” of the time flip flop rankings with one another. The overall trend was explosive growth. Back in the day, I kept an eye on the 100,000 page view mark (they used to use estimated page views as a main metric) and noted how achieving that milestone placed you relatively lower on the list as more and more blogs started to see serious traffic.

• It gave a quick snapshot of The Powers That Be – While I’m sure a few major players were missing, keeping an eye on TTLB allowed you to quickly know who really mattered in the blogosphere each day. Daily Kos, Instapundit, Gawker, and Boing Boing were then as now megapowers.

• It provided an early read on trends – Checking out TTLB over time revealed some interesting trends, including the rise of gossip blogs and the voracious appetite for gossipy content (which continues today of course) and the explosion of blog networks such as b5media and SB Nation.

What’s up with TTLB today? That’s a good question. I vaguely recall that it went through regular service outages some years ago, and at some point dropped out of my daily rotation. A bit of research doesn’t reveal much, though a few people seem to concur that TTLB is sadly “dead” or at least has been cast adrift for a good long while. (The current rankings don't seem to make a lot of sense and site blog hasn't been updated in nearly two years.)

The march to provide quality blog rankings goes on, of course. Today, Alexa and Compete and others are striving to provide the best and most comprehensive Internet-wide rankings and stats, while Technorati is a major player in the blog ranking space.

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)