I Could Do That

I’m a huge fan of Digg.com

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple years, here’s the rundown on Digg:

Digg is a “social news” site. Basically, you sign up, and if you’re surfing and come across a news story, an interesting site, video or article that you find particularly interesting, you “Digg” it, which posts it on Digg.com

Then everyone else who visits Digg can see what you’ve submitted. If they like it as well, they can also ‘digg’ it, and the more diggs a story receives, the higher it climbs on the list.

However, my favorite thing about Digg is “Diggnation”, the weekly podcast.

First of all, I just have to say that I really admire Kevin Rose. It’s incredibly rare for someone to voluntarily leave a TV hosting job because they disagree with the direction of the network they appear on, and ‘demote’ themselves to podcasts.

Whaddaya know? A TV personality with principles! Kevin Rose, I salute you!

Anyway, let me explain the podcast.

It’s essentially Kevin Rose (who created Digg.com) and Alex Albrecht. They sit on a couch with their laptops, drink beer and talk about some of that week’s top stories from Digg.

It’s incredibly simple, but massively entertaining. A lot of the time, it’s laugh out loud funny.

However, I arrived late to Diggnation, and have been spending the past couple of months slowly working my way backwards through their entire library of podcasts. One I watched yesterday left me open-mouthed.

To cut a long story short, Kevin Rose had changed laptops, and the good people at IBM contacted him and asked him why. Obviously wanting their logo back on a podcast viewed by about a half million people a week, they sent him their latest laptop, free and for nothing.

Now here’s the thing. Diggnation has real “I could do that” value. While I’m not belittling Kevin and Alex in any way (as I said, they’re both highly entertaining), how hard is it to sit in front of a camera, drink a few beers, and talk about shit you see on the internet?

Damn, I have everything I need to make my own podcast right here. Why can’t I get a free IBM laptop? Forget Digg, how about a podcast about the top videos posted on Youtube? I write a lot about the stupid shit I see on the news, how about a podcast about that?

That couldn’t be too hard. Instead of writing blog posts, I rope some unsuspecting friend in, and we rant in podcast form, rather than me just writing here.

Well right there, we come to the problem with podcasts. Literally anyone with internet access, a microphone or a camera can make one. I could easily make a Diggnation clone, but the problem with doing that is that it would be just that…a clone.

So I decided to do the right thing, and not inflict myself on the internet in podcast form. See? Just like Kevin Rose, I have principles.

…and if anyone from IBM, or any computer manufacturer stumbles across this post, my act of selfless sacrifice for the good people of the interweb has got to be worth a free laptop.

Just email me and I’ll send you my mailing address. Oh, and can you please make sure it has some decent graphics hardware in it? Oh, and built in wireless would be tops!

Thanks!