If you haven't noticed, I've been compiling all my online activities into one general news feed that appears on my home page, but I couldn't find anywhere that let me view my favorite YouTube videos as an RSS or Atom feed. Until now. I found this handy link while looking through the developer's guide for the Youtube API:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/your_youtube_username/favorites

It's not listed anywhere on the YouTube feeds page, and I couldn't find it posted on any blogs or other sites either. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but now I'm happy.

I also had a hard time coming up with a past tense verb meaning "to favorite". I would use "favorited", but it's not a real word and that bothers me. I'd also use "loved" but I am already using it for my Last.fm loved tracks. So I settled on "liked", but I am not entirely happy with it. It'll have to do for now until I think of a better word to use, or somebody recommends one that I like.

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Those who know me usually think I am "hip" and "with it" when it comes to web related stuff, which is why it surprises most people when I tell them that I don't use RSS feeds. It wasn't even until maybe six months ago that I started even bookmarking websites. I didn't think it was that odd, I just kept a mental note of those websites that I visited often and would check on them when the thought crossed my mind. You know those people who curse new things and refuse to accept changes in technology? I guess I am those people. But not anymore.

Today I decided to try out Google Reader, which lets you store and organize multiple feeds. It even has stats for nerds, like most read feeds or most viewed tags. I went through my list of (recently created) bookmarks and a few other sites I still type in manually, and I found out there are roughly 20 sites that I visit regularily. Some more often than others. They range from general news, music news, webcomics, friend blogs and other miscellaneous blogs.

One neat feature is a "shared" page. You can mark your favorite feed articles as "shared" which can then be viewed by anybody by visiting a public URL. Here are mine. I may replace the recently dugg articles on my homepage with the articles from Google Reader. That way I won't be limited to sharing strictly Digg articles.

Cool. COOL.

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It's always been obvious that those who regularily post comments on YouTube have the lowest IQs of anyone on earth, and today I am happy to find out that the people at YouTube are aware of this growing problem. Taking inspiration from one of xkcd's latest comics, they've added a button next to "Post Comment" that allows you to listen to a preview of your comment spoken out loud. The idea is that when people want to submit a comment, they can listen to it first, and hopefully become aware of their own idiocy. I like how they added the new button exactly where "Post Comment" used to be, so people who are quick to reply without paying attention will be forced to listen to their own dribble. My only suggestion would be to trigger the voice upon pressing "Enter".

Taking a minute to play with the new feature, I am impressed at its pronounciation of "lol" as "lawl". It needs some work, however, on "roflcopter" and "lollercoaster".

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A friend of mine directed me to this handy website. If you ever suspect a website of being blocked or otherwise inaccessible, you can give it a test by entering its URL into this site and it will let you know if the site is down, or if you are just being paranoid. It is pretty neat.

In other news, the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) is now active accepting registrations. This means you can submit your phone number, and (hopefully) within a month, you will no longer receive phone calls from telemarketers. Growing up, my parents always had an unlisted phone number. We never received a single call from a telemarketer that I can remember in the 19 years that I lived at home. So I guess that is another option if you want to protect yourself from telemarketers AND stalkers.

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I haven't made a post in a while so I am going to share with you some fine internet media. The first is an advertisement for some new Wario game for Nintendo Wii, which I feel is pretty neat. Watch it here. Do not continue reading until you have watched, because the next paragraph contains SECRET SPOILERS regarding the video.

Now that you have finished watching it, you can agree that it is the neatest thing. I want to know what kind of javascript turns your website into a drag-and-drop physics toy like that. If you know, tell me.

The next thing I want to show you is a video of a baby laughing in slow motion. It is extra hilarious if you don't actually watch the video, and just listen to the audio instead. The result is something sounding like a man barfing and crying at the same time.

That is all.

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