The new music video from famously fabulous Rhett&Link will be my theme song for the next few months. I’m going to have to insist that you listen to this song now and every five minutes after for the next 24 hours. When you can sing the song in it’s entirety then I’ll let you take a dip in my photostream.

Regular Zerosign readers should know that I have an unhealthy obsession with starting new websites. Some succeed; most crash and burn. Maybe I do this because I have a wide range of diverse interests that I need to express online. Or maybe I just have a highly specialized form of attention deficit disorder. Either way, I’d like to introduce a new blog based on one of my new found interests: fitness. FitHacks.com is a blog where I talk about my adventures in weight-loss, fitness, and my journey toward running a marathon. You see over the course of the last year and a half I’ve somehow managed to stick with a fitness plan that I created myself and actually works. In that time I’ve lost right at 70 lbs and have gone from being able to barely jog 1/4 mile to completing several distance based races. The site has a slant to the geeky so all Zerosign readers should feel right at home. Feel free to come on over, subscribe to the feed and participate in the new era of fitness for geeks.

link - FitHacks.com

Geeky? Definitely! Useful? Probably not. Nevertheless, I would like to show off my ingenious Batman cable organizer. The Batman figure seen above came from a box of Cheerios that I purchased solely for the toy hidden inside (I was hoping for The Joker, and yes, I’m six years old). Where else would I place a piece of geeky memorabilia but on my computer desk already overflowing with cables? One day when trying to clear the clutter (or just playing around with my action figures, you decide) I thought of this as a neat way to organize the countless cables connecting my computer to all my much needed peripherals. I hope it impresses you as much as it does me.

We are a long way off from this case ever being decided but, just for pretendzies, would you care if YouTube lost? Currently, YouTube is one of, if not THE, most trafficked sites on the Internet. It hosts over 83 million videos and boasts almost 4 million user channels. But practically speaking, how would your life be different if the site disappeared tomorrow?

Personally, I don’t think I would care or even notice. I hardly ever go to the site these days. Honestly, I can’t stand the crap that constitutes 99.9% of YouTube’s content anyway. There’s only so many ball-in-crotch videos a guy can take, I don’t care about your video blog, and all the good stuff (copyrighted material) is likely being shown on the owner’s site - legally and in better quality.

Additionally, Google should be thankful for the forced shut-down of YouTube. The site has never made a profit and racks up nearly $1 million a day in bandwidth alone. Take into account legal fees and employee costs and YouTube may in fact be the single biggest black hole for money in the online world. However, since YouTube has such a large userbase it would lose some serious face if they simply shut down of their own accord due to profit margins. This could be the perfect opportunity for Google to play the victim and get their neck out of the noose at the same time.

Lastly, other companies with more specific niches (and better business models) would instantly fill the large hole left by the giant. See Hulu.com, Seesmic.com and 12seconds.tv for some examples. The fall of YouTube could be a virtual goldrush with countless companies jumping at the chance to legally and profitably fill the many roles that YouTube played to so many people

There is no doubt that YouTube changed the face of the Internet (and we thank it). However, there is a chance that it has overgrown its own usefulness and viability. Hopefully, at this point in time, we wouldn’t mourn too long.

Step 1: Oh my gosh! I have a great idea! - This period lasts anywhere from 10 minutes to a few days. During this initial period of brainstorming an idea that I believe to be at least somewhat worthy falls into my head and I begin to obsess over it. I try to look at the idea from a few different angles, but honestly spend most of the time thinking about how good it will feel once the idea blows up to be way larger than it could ever possibly be. “Man, it will be so sweet when my blog about Polar Bears ranks inside the Technorati Top 100!”

Step 2: Groundwork/Research - I then spend approximately 5 minutes (max) Googling terms that are loosely associated with my idea. If I can’t find a match after a few searches I move on to step 3. If I do find something close to my idea I immediately give up on it. No use reinventing the wheel.

Step 3: Implementation - If I have made it this far in the process, then I begin the grunt work. Often times in this step I don’t put enough time or thought into the actual design hoping that the idea alone will carry the project. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Good ideas are one thing, but good implementation is what every startup needs.

Step 4: Loss of Interest - Inevitably I wind up here. For some reason I always become discouraged with my projects. If the idea is good enough to outlast this stage then maybe I’ll put a half-hearted version of my idea online. If not, then most likely the idea is scrapped and I am left with yet another unaccomplished item on my to do list.

Perhaps you have an actual success story about how you made your millions. I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong

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1996: Visible Hit Counters

Back in the early days of the Internet, these visible hit counters were all the rage. If you came across a random number on the bottom of the page you could tell instantly how important this site was. If the number was somewhere in the thousands or *gasp* tens of thousands, you knew that this site was absolutely trustworthy.

2005: Feed Subscribers

A few years later, someone decided that hit counters weren’t good enough for describing the quality of a site. Anyone could just make a site and hit refresh over and over again until the hit counter number was high enough to be trusted. This led to the use of feed subscriber badges. These numbers represent unique people as opposed to just hits. Instead of having a number that shows the amount of people that have stumbled across your site for some reason, this number shows those who subscribe to your feed so they don’t have to to come to your site at all. The more people that you have coming to your site without actually having to come to your site the more established you really are.

2008: Twitter Followers

Today the game has changed yet again. Now, to be respected as on online authority you don’t even need a site at all - you simply need followers. A follower is kind of like a mindless zombie that obeys your every command. To get these followers you have to have something called a twitter. With one of these twitters you can catch followers and make them do your evil bidding. One common way to catch followers is to follow as many people as possible hoping that in return they would be stupid enough to follow you back. However, the best way to catch followers is to give away something. It doesn’t even have to be real, just promise that someday, somehow you will give something of some value to one of your followers. Who can resist the allure of such a deal?

So, if you’re really important or just want people to think of you as such online, you better get with the times. Remember, the person with the biggest zombie army will always be the one with the true power.

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Pownce - Usually, my first instinct is to head to Pownce.com and try to rekindle the feeling of connectedness that Twitter provides. However, even Kevin Rose admits that that is not what Pownce was designed for. I don’t have near as many friends on Pownce as I do on Twitter anyway. At least I can get exposed to some new media files…

Facebook - I know I could always go to Facebook to look at all my friends’ status updates, but it just isn’t “realtime” enough for me. Joe added a few more pictures to his profile, and Jennifer sent me another application invite, but I want to know what my friends are doing NOW.

Catch up on RSS Feeds - It’s funny how impatient I’ve become since I started using Twitter. If I can’t read an entire item in 140 characters then I simply don’t have the time. Plus, all the important news is announced on Twitter anyway.

Write a blog post - Hey, there’s an idea. But what will I write about? Man, I wish Twitter was back up…

Go Outside - I know this one seems a little drastic, but when I can’t keep in touch with my followers, I feel very cutoff from society. It’s good to go out and make sure that the world is still moving at times like these. If you think Twitter downtime is bad, imagine if reality had the same connection problems…

At 7ypo.com there will be a random definition of a word that isn’t yet created (but should be) posted everyday. All you have to do is give it a name. Do this by signing up for our comment system and leaving your suggested name as a comment to each post. You can then vote on other peoples’ terms with handy little arrows beside each comment. The term with the most votes automagically floats to the top. After a week’s time, the term with the most votes is declared the winner. The thread is then closed and a new word is born. Sound simple enough? Then check out the site. You just may like it.

link - 7ypo.com

The functionality of the standard Twitter badge is to display all of your most recent Twitter updates. However, most of my updates are @replies meant to be seen by only a few people at most. Others would have no idea what

“@Utch I see what you did there”

means, nor would they care unless you happened to be @Utch or knew him. So in an attempt to remove all @replies from the Twitter feed shown on Zerosign, I tweaked the Twitter badge JS code and created my own. So, if you would also like to display your latest tweets on your site but, like me, don’t want your @replies to be shown feel free to follow the instructions below.

1) Copy and paste the following code wherever you want to display your Twitter badge:

<br /> <div id="twitter_div"> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/USERNAME" class="twitter-title">Twitter Updates:</a></p> <ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul> </div> <p><script type="text/javascript" src="http://zerosign.net/twitter.js"></script><br /> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/USERNAME.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=10"></script>

2) Replace “USERNAME” in the code above with your own Twitter user name.

3) Follow @leadingzero on Twitter. (Not essential, but highly recommended)

Disclaimer: Install this code at your own risk. This code is not guaranteed in any way shape or form and I hold no personal responsibility for any effects it has on your site, desired or otherwise. blah, blah, blah…