Everybody Votes
I’m in the middle of flipping between writing two emails and a document, and getting nothing completed, when I get distracted by the shiny blue light on my Wii. A message has arrived! What can it say? I must drop everything immediately and become distracted.
It was heralding the arrival of a new free channel called Everybody Votes. (there are some photos at Kotaku)
It’s kind of cute. You vote (with entertaining Mii graphics) on silly little questions like “Do you prefer cats or dogs?”, then predict how you think the majority will vote. Nosing around it, it looks like you get feedback on how well you predict the populous, as well as how far you verge from normal.
Joy happened to walk by as I was playing, so I got her to join in. It was fun comparing our votes, and if Nintendo were to expand it to allow you to compare with your Wii friends, I could see this becoming wicked popular, especially when you consider all the silly meme polls that flood LiveJournal and the like. People like showing off their opinion (plus comparing scores!)
If nothing else, it acts as an example of out-there thinking from someone at Nintendo. You wouldn’t see this on a PS3!
Social Networks: The Case for a "Pause" Button | 43 Folders
Great post by Merlin, particularly for this description of why I can’t be arsed with the hype about Friendfeed: “On a site like FriendFeed, which has quickly become the platform of choice for the web’s least interesting narcissists — and the slow-witted woodland creatures who enjoy grooming their fur — this is a major breakthrough in the makebelieve friendship space”