Like to Argue? Try CreateDebate

Do you agree with this? If not, you can join the debate going on at the web site CreateDebate. The site aims to take the classic internet flame wars and turn them into a more civilized event. Debates can spring up around any sort of topic and the homepage features the hottest ones. Expect to see topics involving religion, politics, morality, and, yes even Mac vs PC. (PC is winning right now!)

Each user on the site has a profile, which automatically builds itself over time. Your allies, enemies and hostile relationships are tracked and a news feeds provides personalized updates. Debates can be sorted by most heated, most arguments, most recent, etc. and there’s even a handy "Research" section which can help you craft your arguments. Within "Research," there are articles you can click on to become the focal point of a new debate. Each article has a little RSS feed icon next to it - different colors for different blogs. It’s subtle features like this that make CreateDebate stand out as one of the better debate sites.

I’m opinionated, but I like debating via a blog platform myself. However, I can see where this site could appeal to casual internet "arguers," who like to just pick a topic and riff on it. The site is also well designed, so it’s easy to navigate through the myriad of debates going on as well as access the other features, like your own profile for example - a feature that’s often, surprisingly, hidden on some of today’s services. There’s also a Facebook app to check out, which extends CreateDebate out into your social playground. If this sounds like your kind of internet fun, you’ll definitely want to try it out. 

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OK, this could actually make Facebook Chat useful: you will soon be able to access it via Jabber. Tonight, Facebook is announcing that they will soon release a Jabber/XMPP interface for Facebook Chat. Via any Jabber-based chat apps, you’ll be able to communicate with your Facebook friends, see who’s online, view friends’ profile pics, and set your status.

Which reminds me…seriously, what is up with Trillian Astra? I’ve been waiting on that for a year. I’m beginning to think it doesn’t really exist!

Again, apologies in advance for those that follow me both places, but here is another round-up of my recent articles at RWW:

Android Developer Challenge I Winners Announced

The Android Developer Challenge is a two-part contest whose goal is to encourage developers to build apps for the new Google mobile platform, code-named "Android." In this first round,  "Challenge I," submissions were accepted up until April 14th. Yesterday, the top 50 entries were announced. Each of these application authors received $25,000 to fund further development of their app. We’ve dug through the list of winners to pick out our favorite apps and the ones we’re most looking forward to. Continue reading »

Digg Townhall #2 Wrap-Up

Last night was the second Digg Townhall, a live session hosted online by Digg founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson. Like before, Kevin asked Digg users to post their suggestions on Digg as to what topics should be covered. (The thread is here). Now that the event is over, we can review how well those questions were addressed. Continue reading »

RSSmeme Launches API, Provides Filtering Tools Galore

Benjamin Golub has been busy. He runs the site RSSmeme, an RSS aggregator that displays the top Shared Items items from Google Reader users. For a brief time, RSSmeme was the only Google Reader aggregator in town after ReadBurner closed up shop. But not too much later, ReadBurner was purchased and relaunched (our coverage), putting the two sites in competition once again. However, it looks like Golub has no plans to slow down with RSSmeme’s development. He has recently released an RSSmeme API, which allows for all kinds of new filtering options, a mobile web site, and much more. Continue Reading

Nexus Graphs Your Facebook Friends and More

Looking to visualize your Facebook friend graph? You can with a Facebook app called Nexus. This app is a friend grapher that displays a visual analysis of your Facebook connections. But it’s not just a pretty picture: in addition to viewing how your friends are connected, you can use Nexus to discover what interests your friends share and which of your friends are the most similar to you. Continue Reading

Wikipedia Gets Published - Should Writers Get Paid?

It seems a debate is brewing in the "Wikipedia-sphere" surrounding the commercialization and the soon-to-be-made profit from the voluntarily written and edited online encyclopedia web site. For the first time, a major publisher has made plans to print out and sell popular articles from the site, leaving many wondering if the content’s writers are being scammed out of royalties to which they are due. Continue Reading

How To Find the Top Twitterers in Your City

While it’s fun to follow some of the bigger names on Twitter like Scoble, Jason, Leo, and Kevin, it’s even better when you find others with similar interests with whom you can have real conversations. And even better than that is finding others to connect with from your same hometown. Connecting with other locals is something that the site TwitterLocal has helped facilitate for some time, but now they’ve added a new feature for finding top local Twitterers: a TwitterLocal Leader Board showing a city’s top tweeters. Continue Reading