automaticable

We are only a few days away from the Wegner summer vacation and it is about time I announce our first annual Mountain Man Competition. Not only am I announcing this to the folks here on automaticable, but this is the first time the other vacationers are hearing of the idea as well. If you want to help participate, make sure to read through the end of the post to find out how you can be a part of the Mountain Man Competition.

For the first aspect of the Mountain Man Competition, we are going to have a beard growing contest. I’m not sure what the state of all the participants’ facial hair is, but for everyone participating we will have a final clean shave Friday morning and document our spikey growth over the entire week. Expect a photo-blog of our facial evolution when we get back. The winner gets to bask in his (or her?) manly glory as the most masculine (and hairy) person of the bunch.

Help us come up with more ideas!

How do you want to see the Wegner brothers compete over a week in the mountains? Leave your ideas in the comments. We only have a few days left, but any great ideas will have their own post created (which includes a link to your site, if you have one) and the competition photo-documented if possible.

This is open to everyone: automaticable readers, vacation attendees, random extended family members…anyone really. There is only 1 rule: no running competitions! (grrr…)

If you're new here, you can subscribe to automaticable's RSS feed by clicking here. Or, you can get post updates through your email. Thanks for visiting!

We just added a new Wordpress plugin here on automaticable so you can use OpenID login IDs. If you’re not familiar with OpenID, it’s a framework that allows you to use the same login information on a variety of webpages.  From the OpenID site:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

So what does this mean for you?  Well, if you like to leave comments here, you can claim them with your OpenID login, rather than actually registering for automaticable.  This is convenient if you’re a casual visitor and like to leave comments on a variety of blogs– you can use the same login on any blog that supports OpenID.

If you already have a login on automaticable, you could associate your OpenID login ID with it, and enjoy all the same benefits.  Check out your profile page for details.

Staying true to my promise for this week, here is another daily post!

Although much of what I enjoy throughout the internet eventually makes its way to the readers of automaticable, a very large chunk of what I find useful or entertaining hasn’t found a home here.  That doesn’t mean, however, that these gems are lost.  Much of what I find across the net is through the many blogs I read daily.  My RSS reader of choice is Google Reader for its flexibility, portability, and speed.  If you aren’t up to speed on RSS readers, you can find out what all the hubbub is about here.  Anyway, Google Reader recently added a new feature to the “Share” function: comments.  Instead of blindly “sharing” a story, I can now add a small comment about what I found useful in the post.  This adds a huge amount of functionality and usefulness, especially when sharing with a large community.

How does this help you?  Well, for one, if you use Google Reader already, you can become my “friend” through your gmail address.  My name is simply kyle.wegner[at]gmail.  Add me and you will automatically be subscribed to my shared posts.

For those of you who do not use Google Reader (or any RSS reader, for that matter), you can also check out my shared posts at this URL.  Bookmark that page if you enjoy it, as I tend to share stories quite often.

You may notice that many of my shared stories have comments on them directed at a specific person (Scott, I’m looking at you!).  I have taken the functionality of comments and integrated them into a Twitter-like conversation.  If I respond to someone else’s shared feed, you will see their original comment as a blockquote at the top of the post, directly under my comment.  If this sort of functionality is popular throughout gReader, I am hoping they start integrating a reply function so I do not manually have to quote other people’s comments.

Some other quick notes for those of you who want to experiment with the “share with note” function on Google Reader.  First, you have the ability to change the original post in any way you see fit.  This may be a blessing and a curse, as changes are not marked, meaning people could change the original text and the readers would never know it was not the original post.  What is nice about this, though, is you are able to use most HTML tags, so if you want to add a link, bold or emphasize text, or blockquote a response like I do, the functionality is there.

So check me out.  If you frequent Google Reader and share posts often, leave your gmail address in the comments (or email it to me) and I’ll subscribe to your shared posts as well.

If the 16+ years of schooling I went through taught me one thing, it was that plagiarism is as close to murder as you can get without becoming a criminal. I don’t think I’ve seen people get riled up about something as easily as a professor who catches a whiff of plagiarism. So why is it that there is such obvious, guiltless plagiarism running through the blog world?

You may not see it if you casually peruse your favorite blogs, but as a semi-addicted stumbleupon user (the first step is admitting I have a problem, I know) I see this all of the time. Every stumble-session I have invariably leads me to a page that has blatantly ripped their content from another source without citation whatsoever. I can almost forgive someone for copying content word for word as long as they give a hat tip (and link) to the original source, but generally this is not the case.

I imagine some people, especially those that repost their favorite photos from other sites, do not realize that they are stealing other people’s work. These people see something cool and just rip it into their own blog without even thinking about it. But most people who blog know exactly what they are doing, and they do it purely out of laziness and/or selfishness. People want to drive traffic to their own blogs and they either don’t want to work for it or they do not know how to come up with their own content. These are the people that infuriate me.

Not only are they stealing someone’s work, but they are creating what I like to call “internet pollution.” This internet pollution is not only morally wrong, but it is ultimately bad for the user as well for a number of reasons:

1. The obvious reason plagiarism is wrong, the original author does not get credit for their own work
2. On social sites such as Stumbleupon, this creates duplicates of content which adds no value (and I would argue, negative value) for the user, and
3. Related to #1, the work loses its original citation, which means the user will never be able to find further work produced by the creator if they find it interesting

Reason #3 is what has personally annoyed me the most. I can’t tell you how many times I have run across a set of amazing photographs, blog articles, or artwork that I wished I could have followed up on.

Because of my continued frustration with the online polluters and moral internet scum (yeah, it’s that bad!), I have come up with a way that I feel I can personally help clean up this mess, even if it is just a tiny bit. I’m hoping that you will use this strategy to help me combat plagiarism and internet pollution online. Here is my strategy:

If you know for a fact (as in, you’ve seen the original work published elsewhere) that the page is plagiarized, make your way down to the comments field. You will always have to put in a login/email to post a comment, but luckily these things aren’t validated. So just type in whatever you want, it doesn’t matter that much. Here comes the good part. It is a little bit rude, but I feel that if my words can drive traffic away from sites that lack common decency online then I have helped out the internet community as a whole. Anyway, I generally say something along the lines of,

I don’t know if you realize this or not, but every bit of your content is ripped from [insert source here]. You have blatantly copied this work with not even a link to the original article. By reposting this work, not only are you plagiarizing the author, but you are helping to pollute the internet with this reposted tripe. Post something original, or at the very least give credit where credit is due.

Ok, that is actually a little nicer than how I usually word it, but go ahead and add your own spin. I give you permission to take creative license with it.

The great thing about this is even if the comment is moderated out, the author will see your words and will hopefully take them to heart. I know that it sounds a bit like a personal crusade, but I am hoping that a few automaticable readers will join me in helping to clean up the clutter that is plaguing the web.

If you have any success or similar frustrations, let me know in the comments.

We are very excited about our new look and feel here at automaticable and hope you are too. Along with a new URL, theme, and author (welcome Brian!), we have also started spreading the message of automaticable throughout different web sources in hopes of driving traffic to the site. Many of you are coming in through facebook feeds (and I’d guess some of you are just reading the posts within facebook), people have found us through technorati, and there is also a ton of random traffic being shot our way. Welcome everyone!

As much as we love you all reading what we have to say here on automaticable, we would really love to hear what YOU have to say! To let us know what you are thinking, start participating in the comments. Tell us what you like, how you’ve used some of our tips, or what you suggest instead. Let’s make this a conversation that we can all have fun with.

Hope to hear from you all soon!