Happy 2009 everyone! I hope this year is better than the last. Here is January’s Hot Topics that we will be looking for on the Informative Post. Write a good article on one of the below topics and we won’t care what your AP rating is.

– The death of Jett Travolta, John Travolta and Kelly Preston’s son
– Obama’s Inauguration
– NFL Playoffs
– An Economic Stimulus Package
– The December 21, 2012 Prophecy
– People’s Choice Awards
– Lisa Bonet’s New Baby
– Palm Pre
– Critic’s Choice Awards
– Casey Anthony in Court
– BCS Bowl
– Salmonella Outbreak

As always, keep an eye on this thread, because I’ll be updating it will new topics continuously.

I just updated the site with a new little feature.  All published articles now have a “Post to Twitter” button at the top right hand corner of the article.  If you click it, it will redirect you to a page where you can Tweet about the article.

If you don’t know what Twitter is, it is a micro-blogging site.  Think of it like a status updater on steroids.  It is hard to explain.  The best way to figure out what it is would be to just sign up and use it for awhile.  You will get addicted to it I promise.

Tweeting about your articles and about other articles that you enjoy on the Informative Post will give more exposure to us.  The more exposure and traffic for us, the better it is for the whole Informative Post community.

If you haven’t been following my Tweets on Twitter yet, you should be!  I tweet updates about all my sites over my Twitter account much more quickly than blogging about them.

http://www.twitter.com/dlbrown06

Barack Obama is now the President of the United States.

I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but we had an election yesterday.  What an amazing one it was too.  Last night, my wife and I went to the polls to vote, and it was an overall pleasant experience.  There wasn’t a long wait at all.  Well, it took us an hour, but that was hardly an inconvnience.  Needless to say, the candidate that I voted for did not win, but it isn’t troubling me.

I was a bit on the fence about who I was going to vote for, and I already had it in my head that I would be happy with either outcome.  So saying that Barack is now our President doesn’t bother me in the least.  There were positive and negative with both McCain and Obama.

What was the most positive thing about the election for me? No more campaign commercials! I think everyone can agree that they were getting old.  They hardily gave any incite to what the candidate was really like, and I would like to think that most Americans did not base their vote on that marketing.

I’ll be honest in saying that the main reason I voted for McCain and not Obama was because I’m an advocate believer in Pro-Life, and I am against Pro-Abortion.  That was what I based a lot of my decision off of.  I did love how Barack connected with the majority of Americans.  He had a certain sort of sincerity in his speech that made people want to believe.  Let’s hope that he didn’t fool us.

What now?  Where do we go from here?  What is going to happen?  Only time will tell obviously.  Only time will let us know whether the candidate that America chose will follow out with what they promised us all.  Will it happen today?  No, but hopefully it will happen.  We voted, we chose, and now we wait.

What took IMDb so long to start streaming TV shows, movies, trailers and other clips?  Who knows.  They’ve had nothing new on their site in years.  It’s almost as if they have been locked in the 20th century the past 8 years.  Oh well, I’m just glad they have figured it out.

Will I use their service?  Probably not.  If you take a look through a couple of their selections, you will find out quickly just how much of their media is being streamed from Hulu.  I would rather skip the middle man and use Hulu.  Granted they do have a small selection of media that isn’t from Hulu, but most of the stuff worth watching for me anyway is from there.

I LOVE to hear movements like this though.  The more websites that make streaming legal media, like full movies and TV shows, the more people will see how off-base the movie industry giant, MPAA, is full of shit.  Streaming TV shows and movies from the Internet is in most cases, easier than downloading them through bittorrent, and then watching them.  These websites are giving a viable alternative to piracy, and they are reaping the rewards.  If the MPAA would have learned to do this a long time ago themselves, they could have doubled their profits easily, instead of sticking their heads in the sand and throwing out ceist and decists out like rice at a wedding. Hopefully the music industry (RIAA) learns from this.

I kind of went off on a tangent there, lol.  Anyway, long story short.  Good for them.  IMDb finally added a little web 2.0 to their site streaming popular media. I’m curious as to why they didn’t do this sooner, but I’m just glad they did it. What do you think are going to be their next steps?

If any of you haven’t heard of CNET’s 404 podcast, you are missing some serious entertainment. I have been listening to them for about a year now, and haven’t missed a podcast since. The guys at the 404 (Randell, Jeff, Wilson, and the new and improved Justin) just started Twittering, or at least telling everyone else that they are twittering.

I decided to make a little php script that monitors their Twitter RSS feeds, and from them, generates a tag cloud from their tweets. From listening to their podcast, I thought it would be pretty interesting to get a quick summary of what they are tweeting about more often.

I see a “hooters” tag in Jeff’s cloud, and I see a “balls” tag in Wilson’s…? Coincidence?

404 Tag Cloud

Jeff’s Tag Cloud

Wilson’s Tag Cloud

Justin’s Tag Cloud

If any of you are interested in the PHP Twitter RSS Tag Cloud Generator, let me know and I can send it to you.