We have a new thing: Introducing the News Faucet
Off to our left (your right), you may have noticed a new widget here on BBG. It's our "News Faucet," a frequently updated news stream made possible by a sponsorship from Delta Faucet.
Here's how it works: Rob, John, and I are all updating our Twitter streams throughout the day with a tag that pushes to the Faucet account, which shows up in the widget on the side. (It refreshes every minute or so, but Twitter being what it is sometimes it can take longer to update.)
Why? Because while we don't seek to be a comprehensive digest of the day's gadget news — Lord knows there's plenty of other resources for that out there — we do run across news that doesn't merit a whole post that we'd still like to link. There's also plenty of times when a single line of commentary is all that's necessary. We've been trying to build something like the Faucet since the site started, but Delta's sponsorship made it happen.
Even more interesting, we're starting to reach out to some of our favorite BBG commenters and asking them to participate, too. I've been trying to build more ways for the Boing Boing community to get their thoughts and discoveries on the sites. This is a great first step. Any blogger worth their salt knows that we're made smarter and faster because of our community.
Delta is launching a new line of faucets that use a diamond coating to make them more durable and less prone to leaks. They've also got a new "Dryden" line that have a more efficient flow rate, minimizing waste. If you find the News Faucet to be a useful addition to BBG I'm sure they'd be happy if you checked their new product lines out.
This is a sponsored post, sort of. Delta didn't ask me to say anything specifically, but obviously they've given us money to build and promote the News Faucet widget.
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I like it. But only because i can adblock it.
Neat; it's a twitter feed for people too embarrassed to actually get a twitter feed.
Stay classy, Tresser!
Pretty cool.
Just noticed something... adding a target property to those links so they pop in a new window would be nice.
Agreeing with #5. I'm using this on a outdated Mac at work, and while I would love to check out a new syringe, I can't seem to anything more than their side-frame.
Whoa now. Yeah. That whole opening in a side frame is... an interesting choice. Not necessarily a good one, but interesting nonetheless.
ok that's nice, but here's the thing: the metaphor here is a slow drip of news; your sponsor is a faucet company; thus in my unconscious I have just made the logical connection that delta faucets must leak with a slow drip. I am not sure that is what they intend...
Tresser, why would you want to adblock it? It is almost entirely stuff we (and you!) write: they're just paying to put an ad over it.
Good point, Pork! I completely forgot this was going to be Iframed -- middle/right click does the trick for the time being.
Also, how are you deciding which commenters are invited to write in the News Faucet?
Opening in the side frame was just a mistake on my part -- it's fixed now, and you'll get it as soon as our load balancers do.
are all the links going to be bit.ly? i like to know where i'm going before clicking.
Dean, we don't really have a firm process in place to add commenters. I sent out an invite to about half-a-dozen regular commenters who seem like they'd have something to offer, but we'd love to add more. If anyone would like to participate you can send me an email (joel@bb.net) and make your case.
We are giving you access to post links on our front door, though, so if I don't know you you're going to have to be pretty convincing. And as I said to the first wave of folks, it's a one-strike-and-you're-out policy!
I like it, and as I could do with some new taps (wrong side of the pond for faucets old chap) I clicked through...and this is the image you see on the front page when javascript is off:
http://deltafaucet.com/images/bg-flashHome.jpg
Anyone from Delta want to translate the description of that curvy object for me? ;)
(in case they fix it quick, it reads 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...', you can guess the rest)
Craziest Gadgets: We still have to work within the 140 character limit of Twitter, so the links will be bit.ly. I understand why you like to know where you're going (me too), but we don't have the luxury of characters we do in the blog posts.
All I notice is a big column of nothing on the right side, forcing me to click the BB Gadgets button at the top instead of looking for "The Latest" at right. Not sure this is what you're trying to do or not.
Craziest, we're looking into make it so the script we use, after getting the tweet from twitter, then asks bit.ly for the real address before generating the HTML.
Feature suggestions welcome.
Also on our right are a bunch of animated ads. I find these actively painful, and they've driven me off other websites. Can you *please* convince your advertisers that some of us respond to unnecessary activity in our peripheral vision by directing our business _away_ from folks who do that to us?
No objection at all to advertising sponsorship, but this particular technique really is the next-worst thing to obnoxious pop-overs. If you must animate, run something SHORT to let us know it's there, then stop it until/unless we mouse-over.
@18 - I know it's treating the symptom and not the disease, but in most browsers the ESC key will do what you ask and pause animated gifs. May not help with flash ads though.
For what it's worth I hate those video ads, too. It's a bit beyond my ability (or desire to engage in the hassle, I guess) to get them to change them at this point. If it were a BBG-specific campaign it'd be easier, but it's not.
BBG, now in crack form!
This fills a weird void nicely, for those things that BBG readers might like to see, but are awkward and a little embarrasing to submit as full stories (The world needs to see the new Chuck Norris Cellphone game, dammit).
I'd like to be able to subscribe to a faucet feed. Feeds are how I browse my internet... If there was a way to do that I could get all of those twitter updates without having to go and find each one of you on twitter, especially the extra special commenters. Thanks!
I don't see it. Is it the part called "Don't Miss"?
No, it should appear above that.
Oh! The advertisement! I am amazed at how well I have trained myself never to look at banner and margin ads, even if they are flashing!
I can't find the darned thing even with Adblock Plus disabled. Or is this some sort of new experimental video-tweet (and proof that BB has an older readership than I ever imagined)?
No, not the advertisement. The text between the ad and the "Don't Miss" icon. You might be confused because it has a dark background, like the ad immediately above it.
I guess that Delta faucet looking down at the feed -- with its iris of tentacle-porn suckers -- does look like some insidious, alien, all-surveilling CCTV eye -- as if Cory Doctorow’s "Little Brother" was in that awful Steven Spielberg version of "War of the Worlds".
Apparently, some combination of FF, Linux, and mouth breathing makes it not work on my laptop.
Don't waste hours seeking a solution for one user, though. Instead, would you please just call me up and read the headlines to me as they come in? Thanks.
Galoot, that's really weird! Adblock Plus does block it for me, but if I disable it, it does show up. Right under the two ads you have, right above the "Don't Miss" section. I'm running Firefox under XP, though.
You mention that Twitter updates sometimes take longer.
Why not implement this as an SMS-to-email gateway?
That way, you could text your update it, or e-mail to it. If the gateway writes the one-liners to a file, you could also use a web page with script to attach a line to the end of the file, giving you many different ways to "pump water to the faucet"
Q&A time!
Dear Europeans and other worldly folk, can any of you see the news faucet?
Dear residents of the USA, can any of you NOT see the faucet?
Scratch that, we figured it out.
Yes you did. I can see it now, even with Adblock Plus engaged. Maybe it's 'cause I moved to Canada?
Interesting. I don't like ads but this doesn't bother me, although at first glance I did dismiss it as a "regular" ad until I realized it had some content.
So for the Twitter uninformed (am I the only one nowadays?), how does this work? You find an interesting tidbit while surfing the web, convert it to a shortened link, then use Twitter to send out that link with a brief comment? And it automagically shows up in the faucet?
If the above is the procedure, and assuming you are surfing on a PC (which I know may not be the case), it would seem to be easier to just post the link to BBG the old-fashioned way.
So what am I missing?
This is what the "faucet" reminds me of (I hope this link works...first time trying this):
http://tiny.cc/H8RdG