Urban Dictionary

Can't figure out what the brother next door is talking about with all of his street slang? Well then have I got a website for you! The Urban Dictionary will walk you out of the darkness of suburbia and straight into the light of modern day urban vocab.

User Driven Content

There are several user driven social content websites in use today that allow a blogger or internet user to submit stories or articles which he deems newsworthy but might not be covered by the mainstream media with the proper amount of coverage and panache it deserves. These sites allow anyone with an internet connection to drive up the readership of the piece no matter how newsworthy, or un-newsworthy it is. Digg.com is probably the most popular to date, and one that I use regularly. How about Sphere? Or, a new one that has just come to my attention is based solely upon conservative views and relevance. Brownbacktakeback is brand spanking new and should be a useful tool in the days to come.

At Long Last....the iPhone!

Apple has just announced the unveiling of their latest have-to-have gadget, the iPhone, at the annual Macworld Expo. It is part ipod/pda/phone/web browser all rolled into one. Macworld has all the details about the latest and greatest updates from the coolest company around here. CEO Steve Jobs announced that Apple Computer has officially changed their name to Apple Inc. More info on the whole shebang here.

Political Websites

Amidst all the hype about who is running for president in '08, here are two sites to help iron out the confusion over the potential candidates and where they stand on the issues. On The Issues and Political Derby are very informative.

Disinvest Terror

One of the best ideas I've seen to help combat terrorism comes from Frank Gaffney, a Reagan-era Pentagon official, who, through his website, disinvestterror.org, is leading the way to curb the funding of businesses and organizations that do business with known terrorists and terror harboring states. Here is the mission statement from their website.

Throughout our history, Americans have risen to the challenge of defending our beloved country and our liberty. Following the 9/11 attacks, however, most Americans felt powerless. Powerless to respond to the tragic attacks in New York and Washington, DC. Powerless to express meaningfully their outrage. And powerless to help defeat terrorism. What we did not realize -- until now -- was that each and every one of us actually can play a pivotal role in winning the War on Terror. How? By demanding that our public and private pensions plans, college endowments, individual retirement account managers, 401(k) plans, and other investment vehicles exploit the leverage represented by investments in publicly traded companies that operate in terrorist-sponsoring states. In a unified front, we should all be saying "This is my money and it will not go to support terror." DivestTerror.org is a nationwide campaign aimed at some 400 public companies worldwide that are providing revenues, technology and moral cover to governments that sponsor terrorism.

The primary objective of this campaign is to force governments to choose between their sponsorship of terrorism and critical partnerships with publicly traded firms. To illustrate how such a campaign can achieve this objective, please review our synopsis of the South African model of the 1980's that succeeded in ending apartheid. DivestTerror.org provides the empirical analysis and architecture that can enable such a campaign. Its success, however, can be assured only if you and other Americans enlist. Doing so will allow each and every one of us to help wage the war on Terror by opening new divestment fronts through our universities, local communities and states, individual retirement accounts, churches and unions.

DivestTerror.org provides the tools. Now, patriotic Americans can once again do their part to counter the threat confronting our country. Join us and help ensure that dangerous terrorist organizations - and those that sponsor them - will not continue to flourish with our money.

U.S. Department of the Interior Blocks Conservative Blogs

Gates of Vienna reports that the U.S. Department of the Interior has begun blocking conservative blogs on their network. Read the article here.

Quote of the Day

General Colon Powell provides my quote of the day: Make it so! Spend less time making the right decision and more time making the decision right!

I just found a great website for Catholic jobs, catholicjobs.com, all kinds of great ways to work for the Church.

ProLife Pixels

After The Million Dollar Homepage made so much news and was such a success you knew it would only be a matter of time before there were knockoffs and imitators. Here is one that is actually a great idea and supports the pro-life cause, ProLife Pixels.com. I ran across it while perusing Pro Life Blogs, check it out.

You, Shake Your Junk!

I finally found one of my favorite commercials online!

Life Commercials

I've just come across a link with some great pro-life commercials, lifecommercials.com.

Pro Life Search

Here's a cool pro-life search alternative to Google, it's called prolifeinternet.com.

Links...

Check out these two, Intellectua and free credit report.

Gizoogle

This is some seriously funny shizzy, check it out, yo best be gettin' bizzy!

Props to Ebay

Here's an email my friend David sent to eBay over their allowing of the Holy Eucharist to be sold online and their response to his email, quite impressive!

-----Original Message-----

From: ----- -------
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 8:30 AM
To: Burke, Brian
Subject: Selling of Catholic Host

To whom it may concern:

I have been using EBay for the last five years and if
EBay allows Eucharistic hosts to be sold I will NEVER
use it again. I am currently patronizing overstock as
a result of this atrocity!



From: CSME
To:
Subject: RE: Selling of Catholic Host
Sent: Tuesday, May 3, 2005 1:27 PM


David,

Thank you for your email regarding the sale of the Holy Eucharist by one of our community members. We respect and appreciate your comments regarding this sensitive matter.

As you may know, eBay does not sell items itself. Rather, we are a global marketplace for sellers and buyers who transact directly with one another. Each day eBay’s sellers list 5 million items on the site, and those sellers decide what items they want to list. eBay did not possess, list or approve the sale of the Eucharist. The buyer and seller completed the Eucharist transaction on April 11th, before eBay even became aware of the listing.

As a marketplace, we strive to respect the diverse perspectives of our sellers. We also work hard to promote an open environment for trade. That said, eBay has policies in place to remove listings for illegal items as well as highly offensive listings that promote hate or intolerance.

We understand that the listing of the Eucharist was highly upsetting to Catholic members of the eBay community and Catholics globally. Once this completed sale was brought to our attention, we consulted with a number of our users, including members of the Catholic Church, concerning what course we should take in the future should a similar listing appear on our site. We also consulted with members of other religions about items that might also be highly sacred and inappropriate for sale. As a result of this dialogue, we have concluded that sales of the Eucharist, and similar highly sacred items, are not appropriate on eBay. We have, therefore, broadened our policies and will remove those types of listings should they appear on the site in the future.

As always, we welcome and appreciate the assistance of the community in upholding the rules of our site. Should you see another Eucharist listed on our site, we encourage you to notify us so we can take appropriate action. Further, we encourage you to directly communicate with the seller. Members are often unaware that a particular item is offensive to others. A respectful e-mail to the seller is often all that is needed for the seller to voluntarily remove the item. We believe this modification strikes the appropriate balance between respect for our community’s values and our goal of providing an open marketplace offering practically anything on earth.

Again, we sincerely appreciate your concern and thank you for communicating your views with us. Your input has helped us frame a policy that will enable us to better serve our diverse community of users around the world.

Regards,

On behalf of Bill Cobb, President of eBay, Inc., North America

Suza Capps

eBay, Inc.
Office of the President
Support Team

50 Million downloads!

Firefox has reached their 50 millionth download! In my opinion, Firefox is the best web browser around, no spyware, no adware, no popups, no trojans. I've been using them almost exclusively for about 8 months and I totally believe they are the best browser on the market, bar none. And the best part about it? It's free! Get yours today!


Here's a cool little survey to see what type accent you have, pretty interesting.

Your Linguistic Profile:

75% General American English

20% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Dixie

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Smash the Tones

I think I've found one of the coolest websites on the net. While browsing my friend Dave's site, Honestdave.com, I came across a link to a blog that told about this awesome new service called Smash the Tones. It's a new service that converts music you have from your computer and sends it directly to your mobile phone. Paying money for ring tones and phone graphics should go the way of the dinosaur. They accept MP3's, WAV's, and a few other file types. They support every (US) phone carrier and it's all free! Sometimes you have to wait a few minutes to have the tone delivered, but for a small donation of $1.25 they move you to the front of the line.
The guy who's site this is, Ben Guild, has a pretty interesting blog as well, lots of cool computer and electronic info and the like. He mentions about how to get a free ipod from gratis Internet in one of his posts, well, I researched the whole dealie, and it's supposed to be completely legit, you actually can get a free ipod! Read the whole article here. If anyone is interested in giving it a try, (and helping me get mine is well) then click here to sign up.

25,000,000 downloads!

They've done it! Firefox, the free web browser without spyware, adware, trojons, or pop-ups, has finally reached 25,000,000 downloads, exactly 99 days after it was released. If you've never used Firefox before, then now is the time to give it a try.