via: O2

The Best thing have heard in a while is after I lost my own phone charger. I went on vacation in Orlando and I accidentally forgot my phone charger. So I had mentioned it a couple of times during the week and someone suggested this idea but they did not got really in depth about it. All they said was go in to a hotel and see if they had any phone chargers that someone had left. But we thought about it and we decided that was never going to work because they were never going to give us someones charger to us. So we added a little Social Engineering to the mix.

So it was time to try out what we had discovered. So I went to the hotel front desk and told them that I was there a week ago and I had forgot my phone charger. And I was just passing back through again, so I was wondering if they had found it and if they had still had it. They told me to go back to housekeeping to see what they had.

I went back to housekeeping and asked about my phone charger and I told them I was not sure what room number I was in so they said I would have to dig for it instead. I started thinking what she meant when she said “dig for it” but it was not long before I found out what she meant.
This is what I found.

They pulled out this huge box of phone chargers and some were in bags and some weren’t but there was a excess of 100 phone chargers in this box. There was actually more than just chargers for phones in the box, there was PSP and DS chargers and also some power cords for computers and game consoles. I ended up finding “my” charger in the box after all. We have found out that the box we had gotten at that hotel was actually a really small box of chargers and they have much larger boxes at (go figure) larger hotels and all you have to do is use a little social engineering to get yourself a free phone charger. So I hope alot of people will try this so they never have to buy a new phone charger again.

Wii Gift Card
The Wii was released a couple of months ago with the PS3 and everyone wanted one of those awesome Wii gift cards. If you never saw one here is a little video of what it did and it also makes pretty colors.

PS3 Gift Card
The PS3 Gift Card is honestly the dullest of the bunch but still is better than those regular old gift cards.

Note: All of these gift cards are currently at Target and you dont have to buy a game console to get one.

BloodJunkie
Current Ranking: 2

I stick to submitting stories that I find interesting, useful or entertaining. The more you do that, the more friends you make with similar interests. As the number of friends you have increases, so does the number of people that are watching your submissions, and therefore the number of people who are likely to digg your submissions increases. It takes time, but the end result is that you have an awesome network of friends with similar interests.

DirtyFratBoy
Current Ranking: 3

Uh, I don’t really have a set list of tips. Just submit stories that interest you. Submit lots of them. If you enjoy reading stories on Digg, then you probably share many interests with other users. As more of your stories do well, it’ll get easier, because others will notice your consistent quality and add you as a friend.

p9s50W5k4GUD2c6
Current Ranking: 4

Some suggestions:

1.Don’t forget to have fun (massively important).

2.You might want to consider using an RSS reader and with some RSS feeds you like. There is some downside to this – many others are doing the same and you have to wade thru a good deal of stories. I find it to be a good content generator overall.

3.Gauge your a potential story by how much in interests you and then remember it will need to interest another 25 – 60 Digg users as well.

4.You really want to submit high quality material as much as you can.

5.Developing an eye for a good story takes time and effort. This step is much more art than science.

6.Don’t kill a good story with a lame title. A good title and description is very important.

7.Get yourself plugged into a network of friends. And then don’t forget to be the type of friend to others you expect in return. I know some Digg users who only Digg their own stories. I can’t say I really understand that approach. Don’t forget to Digg stories that interest you.

8.Outside of your friends, the most important users in Digg are those with a (0) after their user name. This may sound counter-intuitive in view of recent “top-user” stories on the net. But the fact is, THEY constitute the Digg Mass. Without them, your story will go no where. “Top Users” are NOT the essence of Digg – these users are.

9.The front page ‘algorithm’ appears to change based on traffic flow and the category you are submitting in (i.e.: related to statistical traffic flow for that category). Of late I have seen stories appear on the front page ranging from 20 diggs to 65 diggs. If the past is any indication, the algorithm(s) will move higher as traffic on the site increases.

10.The front page is, by no means, everything. I often get more enjoyment from the commentary in an article than I do the story itself. Digg is a hilarious community of sharp and witty people. In addition, there is some superb expert commentary within many comment threads (often people who the story is actually about or whom are affiliated with the story in some way).

11.Don’t ever give up and ALWAYS remember to have fun. Enjoy what the other users in Digg have to offer you in return.

Hope that helps. Best of luck!!

Sincerely,

P9

Capn_Caveman

Current Ranking: 8

1. Concentrate on news that is of interest to you and news that you are most familiar with. My personal interest is science and science related technology news so I stick with that brand of news quite often. It helps when you are very familiar with a subject so that you can spot breaking news quickly and be the first to post it. I find that a lot of my submissions that end up being “duds” are usually from news categories where I’m not quite as familiar with personally so my submissions may not be up-to-date or particularly interesting to the public.

2. Use an RSS reader application to gather news from across the web in near real-time. My personal favorite is SharpReader (Windows only). It’s a stand-alone application that runs in the system tray and you can either set it to update automatically (at a maximum frequency of 15 minutes) or you can refresh it manually (my preference).

3. If you go the RSS route, then you need to get set up with some rss feeds. Just add RSS feeds to your favorite news sources (I currently carry about 40 feeds) and watch the news come flooding in! Time is always of the essence when submitting so if you see something interesting – don’t waste any time submitting it or you’ll just be dropping in a duplicate story.

4. Don’t rely on RSS 100%. I find a lot of interesting stuff on the web from websites that are not on my RSS feed list. I keep a loooonngggg list of websites bookmarked in my browser and usually make it a point to check those sites manually once a day or every couple of days. You just never know what you may stumble on that you wouldn’t or didn’t see with RSS.

5. Link directly to the source! Sometimes blog links are acceptable, but sometimes is just annoying to have to click on a link and then have to go to another link in order to read the full content. Since a lot of my news (typically science news) is produced by an educational or research facility I try to link to that website as opposed to an ad-supported website. Just for an example look at the following 2 links: http://www.physorg.com/news73830714.html and http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/biguni.htm. I first found out about this news via physorg.com, but after a quick google search for “research Ohio State” I was in touch with the identical article on a website that isn’t ad-supported which in my opinion is just nicer to submit. I’m not physorg bashing here, but submitting stories from websites that don’t have a ton of ads is always better in my opinion. Do note that sometimes articles from the source are posted after other websites post the information so you may not have a choice to link to a source article – it just may not be posted yet on the source’s website. In the cases where I’m not able to find the source immediately I will just submit links to the websites I originally found it on.

6. Be a good citizen on digg. If you’re trying to become one of the top submitters, realize that you have an audience and conduct yourself accordingly. People don’t appreciate the person that is running around posting crazy comments that invariably get negatively modded. People don’t appreciate posting duplicate submissions so search before you post. If you do dupe something (it does happen), apologize for doing it, redirect people to the other submission in your comment section in your article, and undigg your own submission and digg the original. There’s always more news to be found somewhere else – just move along! People don’t appreciate not using the spell checker (I’m guilty of that one from time to time!). I guess my main point is behave yourself and you will earn friends on digg and your reputation will grow and you’ll notice that the number of diggs you get on your submissions will also grow.
Tommytrc
Current Ranking: 9
1. I say never give up.
2. Keep working at it and find things that you love that differentiate yourself from others.
3. Be Diverse…
4. Get an rss reader or news aggregator that will help alot
5. Read what others post and search our dups and spam

msaleem
Current Ranking: 10

“The thing is, in order for people to know you, and respect you as a good contributor, you have to seek out other users with good stories. You have to support their stories that interest you, and if possible, provide good commentary. This way, other users will get to know you, and will gain respect for your submissions and your comments. Over time, as your rep grows, so will your ranking within the digg community. I would also recommend that you make good user of resources such as 1. Fark, 2. Boing Boing, 3. Reddit, Addict3d. My most valuable resource, if you can call it that, would be Daily Rotation”

Wayjer
Current Ranking: 11

I am more old fashioned I don’t use RSS as much as the other guys. I have one as a back up in case I cant find anything on my own, but for the most part I let my mouse take me where I need to go. I like news sites that have links to stories from all over the place such as Megite or Topix.net. Once I get there I let the links take me to the stories because most of the time the stories that are headlined are old and have already been submitted. You need to have friends, I guess that is why they call it social bookmarking, but like minded ones who will digg your stories and help you get them noticed by the masses. Good title writing skills also help to attract attention as well as a decent description to entice but not give away everything

Snipehack
Current Ranking: 13

1. Don’t link to personal blogs unless they are already popular and not yours.

2. Dont use all caps when submitting the story especially in the title and make it an interesting title most of the time that is all that people pay attention to anyways.

3. Make sure the page you’re linking to does not have bad design or looks like it came out of the 90′s.

4. Don’t make the article too long and if you’re making multiple points for an argument organize them in lists with the main idea in bold for each

5. Use proper grammar

FudgeBrown
Current Ranking: 25

1. Get a good RSS reader – subscribe to the RSS feeds that interest you… and submit stories likewise.
2. Keep your submission title and copy to the point but point out the most important aspect of the story sorta like newspaper writing
3. Also – always see if you can submit the original link – usually it’s regurgitated 4 or 5 times – and it takes a while to find the original link if the original link has no images – find the next link up that has a good image

Those are some basics – There’s a lot more to it than that

Sometimes the gayest story makes it to the front page
I could submit like 10 stories – and one could be the “winner” but it will be buried – and a gay story about mating flies or something makes it instead

Curtiss Thompson
Current Ranking: 26

I don’t really have a set of tips, I just share what I find interesting on the Internet generally.

1.Submit stories from reliable resources, not blogs, unless it is verifiable and reputable or voices an opinion about a current event (like the Digg/Netscape fiasco).

2.Submit stories that interest you, as it is likely that some, if not many digg users will have the same interests as you do and will Digg your content.

3.If you consistently and frequently submit quality content to digg in the form of stories or even useful and insightful comments, users who’ve followed and liked your content in the past may befriend you and then track your future stories and digg them.

4.Certain quality sources (C|Net News, Wired, BusinessWeek, etc.) and topics (iPod, Wii, Digg, AMD, etc.) always get a lot of attention/diggs, but to be honest, even a blogged story can hit it big on digg, I mean look at the PriceRitePhoto stories on digg (they still hold their place as some of the most dugg stories in digg’s

5.Keeping track of all your news sites is much easier through a Feed Aggregator, makes it much easier to sift through the mass of news for many different sources on the Internet.

6.Posting helpful information and more content (from personal knowledge or another reputable Internet source) is always a good way to make friends and gain respect on Digg.

7.Doing a simple search before you submit a story will prevent Digg from becoming cluttered with duplicate submissions, and will help you decide what stories haven’t yet been dugg on Digg.

8.If you are a newer, or lesser known digg users, submitting during the morning during the weekdays, seems to be a good time to submit content as digg has some of its highest activity then. Also submitting during the weekend when less content is submitted to digg, can make it easier for your story to make it to the homepage, as there is roughly half the number of stories in the Digg upcoming/queue for your story to be competing against to hit the Digg frontpage.

9.You can find more useful and interesting Digg statistics here.

10.If you need to get more attention to a submission you think others will like and may want to digg to the frontpage you can submit it here on the unofficial Digg Fans website forum.

More than anything I like Digg for the collaboration and wisdom of the crowds, there is always something new and Interesting on Digg, every time I log on. Just remember to have fun, the rest tends to fall into place. Digg on!

ndm007
Current Ranking: 29
1] Content: I subscribe to over 30 RSS feeds in Safari and constantly check them throughout the day. Have a good range. Don’t stick with just one side of the tech industry, as there’s bound to be something big happening in the other. When I see a story that I know is big news, I instantly hit my “submit to Digg” bookmark and submit the link.

2] Presentation: Once I have the link submitted, the most important part of any story takes place. A title and description can make or break a story. I’ll admit to have duped several stories where the title or description has been misleading or complicated and when people call The Digg Dupe Police on me, others make comments about how my title or description was better. Keep it simple, yet informative and remember that misinformation and sensationalism will ruin even the biggest stories.

3] Timing: This is difficult when there is a breaking news story, as you know several other will submit it before you. But when scanning through the web and coming across something cool, I’ll make sure to submit it at just the right time, ensuring it’s not early morning or when people are at work. Living in the UK, 5pm-10pm is a great time to submit, as across America, people will be on their lunch hours, giving them free time to check out Digg.

Finally, better stories means more people will not only Digg them, but more people will become your friend. Don’t ask your friend to Digg a story when you submit it. Wait until it’s almost at the homepage and then get some friends to digg it. Not only does this mean more diggs, but it means the story will appear more times in the Digg queue, exposing it to the masses.

Stack

Digg Stack shows diggs occuring in real time on up to 100 stories at once. Diggers fall from above and stack up on popular stories. Brightly colored stories have more diggs.

Swarm

Digg Swarm draws a circle for stories as they’re dugg. Diggers swarm around stories, and make them grow. Brightly colored stories have more diggs.

(via Digg Labs)

This means that everyone is now looking forward to the great customizations to these two tools. So I will say

“Digg API Race is Now ON!!!”

Digg This

Archie:

My absolute favorite was when Telus (BC provider of home and cell service) called and left a voicemail message on my pay-as-you-go phone (that was dormant because I let the balance lapse). So I got a calling card and activated it only to find out the message was to tell me my pay-as-you-go minutes had lapsed….

I was searching for cool things about Digg on Youtube and there was some pornography. They apparently did not check because there is no warning or anything on the link. I would like some feedback on what you think about this and what should be done.

My opinion will be in the comments.

Here is the link to the search I did. Link

Itunes Music Store Says “In the event that a customers entire music library is lost, the iTunes Music Store does re-grant the purchases history. Please keep in mind that Apple does not offer protection against the loss of purchases, so this is a one-time exception.”

Is it just me or has apple very rarely granted this. Well now you can hold this to them when you lose all of your music.

Update:

The Episode of Firefly that messed up was put back in my purchased account and all I had to do to download it was “Check for Purchases” under the Advanced Option.

Edit:  I have found that alot of you do not know exactly how to contact apple about this problem.  So here is the link and then you go to the bottom of the page and tell them your problem.

http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/lostmusic/

Pandora:
It creates a playlist specialized to the type of music that you like. Then it suggests other bands that are similar to what you like.

Portable Playlist:
Portable Playlist is an online audio player that enables you to create a playlist of all your favorite podcasts and audio tracks. You can listen to your portable playlist from any computer, anywhere.

Napster:
As most of you know Napster was forced to become a pay site by law. But most of you don’t know that they have released a free version of there site for anyone. But there are a couple catches, you can not download the songs, there are adds when you listen to the songs, and you can also listen to the songs 5 times.

Radio Blog Club:
Radio Blog Club is a group of people that record music off the radio then post it on this site.

Liveplasma:
Liveplasma is a new way to broaden your cultural horizans according to your taste in music and movies.

Last.fm:
You get your own online music profile that you can fill up with the music you like. This information is used to create a personal radio station and to find users who are similar to you. Last.fm can even play you new artists and songs you might like. It’s addictive, it’s growing, it’s free, it’s music.

That is all for Today But More Sites to Come

ABC Launched a service Monday (May 1) that allows anyone to watch any of there shows for free on the internet. They are still going to continue selling there episodes on Itunes. There is still going to be commercials on the show but it is only about three thirty second sections. So in my opinion and in others, I think this is a good move by ABC because I do not have to buy the shows anymore just to watch them , Even though I can just Bittorrent all off but I do have to say this is alot easier.