Back in the old school days of 1998, I founded a Diablo 2 guild called “GreySoul” with a couple of buddies of mine. I was nominated to do the web design for it, never really thinking that I would fall in love with the craft. Sure enough, I really dug my heals into the design, programming, and server side scripts. We needed a place to host our site since we were getting to big for xoom.com, and after a few quick emails back and forth with Elly, she was able to set us up with a sponsorship to, what was then, “Diabloii.net.” From that point on Flux, Rush and Elly herself did one hell of a job promoting GreySoul which eventually shot it up to over a hundred members strong.

The promotion, linked with the overflow of members gave way to the complete overhaul of the guild site. I spent countless hours, toiling away on the Diabloii.net/Diii.net server setting up the appropriate CHMOD’s and CGI-BIN’s to get the new forum setup. Once that was done, I uploaded the brand new flash site which eventually won me a regional graphic design award in Marin County, CA. Now several years later, and one year since the announcement of Diablo 3,  it is good to see that Flux and the gang are still at it doing exactly what they love. Building up a Blizzard community based off of one hell of a game.

Why the nostolgia?
I was chatting with my Girlfriend’s cousin this weekend and we got on the topic of how the Net Raiders (myself and Jeremy) are heading to Blizzcon 2009 this year. She then mentioned that she had played Diablo 2 back in the day. “Yeah,” I thought to myself. Girls don’t play Diablo. Or atleast I am yet to meet one. Sure enough she explained how she had a Hammerdin that used to run Baal runs. Well, that’s pretty legit right there. She even knew how to combine synergies for the blessed hammer to really own up on the damage. And it just got my thinking about how polished and approachable the whole Diablo series was. You could pick it up and play without any prior knowledge, and get going within minutes. It really is a damn good series. Which lead me to the Diii.net shout out.

What’s this about Blizzcon 2009?
As I said, fellow Net Raider Jeremy and myself are going to be heading down to Aneheim this August to report the latest and greatest at Blizzcon 2009. I am personally excited for the Diablo 3 information and am anticipating an announcement of a 4th Diablo 3 class, or something large to that extent. Not to mention, try out the game in whatever state we happen to find it in. If it was playable last year, then there must be something pretty solid waiting for us to test right?

What is this business about GreySoul?
I won’t delve into this very much because it’s serves my own selfish needs, but that was the old Diablo 2 guild that we used to run up until winter of 2000. If everyone asks nicely we might just bring it out of retirement if Diablo 3 offers anything impressive in the way of a guild system or even some sort of guild housing.

Right away the design of the site itself is easy to navigate with a clear understanding of what you are here for. They divided up the news into the most common sections for each navigation. The real beauty of Knewsroom comes when you register for an account. After registering they give you what they dub “Watts” to invest into various topics. Watts work like diggs or stumbles, the more that are invested the higher it rises in the ranking and eventually to the front page. Now if a story goes to the front page and you have invested Watts into it, you get paid your share of Watts back AND ad revenue. Yes real money. Who doesn’t want to get paid to look at the things they like?

The concept is very new to me and overall the setup Knewsroom has going for it is well set. By proposing topics and submitting stories you secure yourself a better chance at earning more dollars. They make it pretty simple to submit storys. Plus you participate in a good social community. Is this the next Digg style site? Not really, this is definitely much smaller right now. Also I haven’t seen many comments on the submitted stories, so that leads me to believe its not an overly active community at least for the time being. With the added incentive to submit stories and earn some cash, I could see this site flourishing into something bigger.

For those of you who haven’t used the internets for a while, Last.fm is a social music website where you can “scrobble” your recently listened to tracks to your Last.fm account. Last.fm then can show you other music you may like and even match you up with people with similar tastes in music.

Now I have been using Last.fm for a little over a year now (my how time flies, Heres my account). The beauty of their social site is the use of their client side program. This program when installed on your computer will just sit in the background and catch any music you listen to on your favorite audio players such as itunes, winamp, etc. Another very nice feature is it will catalog songs you listen to on your iPod and then update your account the next time you plug your iPod into the computer. Now that the ease of keeping track of your favorite songs, artists, and albums is taken care of lets move on to what Last.fm does for you.

When you login you are shown some recently listened to songs. On occasion Last.fm will have that full song on their site for you to listen to. I listen to some pretty obscure and very rare music and they have happened to have some of that, so you can be sure they’ll have some of your favorites. Another excellent feature is the ability to save your favorite tracks into your own radio station. You can embed that radio station into any of your favorite sites (mine is here for you to see it in action).

Last.fm also houses an excellent database of music and music videos submitted by their user base. They Unfortunately not all of the music videos are housed on site, so occasionally you will find some missing or deleted videos still posted.

Another great feature is the listing of music events. Last.fm has a massive amount of new events listed in just about every area of the globe. Ranging from garage bands to big time stars. They make it easy to stay up to date on when your favorite artist will be in town and you can add your name to the attendee list to find other folks who will be at the event.

All in all Last.fm has been bringing a solid music setup to the social scene. They definitely have the funding to keep it going for years to come. I have been a member for a year now and I have to say its pretty awesome to have all of my music cataloged online. Take five minutes out of your not so busy life and register and download the app.

Twitter is a glorified blog/instant messenger, that allows you to keep track of every piece of your friends/enemies day. It’s basically installing a GPS tracking device on a host specimen and allowing them to come up with “clever” tidbits about where they are and what they are doing in under 140 characters. You can update your Twitter page by: mobile phone, stupid program you download, or visiting the stupid site. A typical Twitter Users day is much like the following.

shitface is awake.

shitface is walking to the bathroom.

shitface is taking a shit.

shitface is wiping.

shitface is flushing.

shitface is considering washing his hands.

shitface decided against it.

3 Hours Later

shitface is at work, wondering what it all means.

shitface is still at work, wondering if Debbie from accounting is wearing any underwear.

6 hours Later

shitface is on the internet.

shitface found an amusing story on an amusing blog.

3 hours Later

shitface is bored.

shitface is considering suicide.

shitface decided against it.

The main problem with Twitter is why the fuck do I need to know every little thought that pops into your fucking head?! A blog is basically that, just more condensed. Apparently that isn’t enough, because every douche bag mainstream blogger is adopting Twitter like the son they wish they had, but is stuck with the son who can’t hit a ball or run more than two feet without needing an inhaler.

If reading Twitter hasn’t made you consider a lobotomy, then maybe the fact that they call messaging on twitter: TWEETING. To hear the sentence: “I’ve been tweeting for a month now.” Makes you want to start stabbing at random people who pass by.

In closing, I hate Twitter. This is one web fad that I just don’t understand and can only hope that it will die away as soon as possible.

Thats where Vixy.net comes in. They will grab the video straight from the Youtube URL, convert it to the format of your choosing, and have it ready for you to download. The site is extremely straight forward and easy to use. You should quit using the internet now if you dont understand it. Now I must mention I have had problems getting some FLV’s converted. It doesnt always get the video from the url correctly, this only happened with VEOH for me. So bookmark it, use it, and abuse it!