The official Would You Be Mad If... logo -- we didn't make it

Griping is like breathing to most 20-nothings, and at a new site called “WouldYouBeMadIf…” a panel of your peers, that is the viewing public, vote to decide on whether you have a legitimate gripe, or you’re overreacting like a kindergartner whose PlayDoh has been taken away.

The brainchild of lifelong friends and current NYC residents, Molly Bush and Erica Saleh, the site posts stories and anecdotes submitted by the public, with an attached voting survey created by the founders to determine if the frustration, anger, humiliation or other array of negative emotions you feel are validated.

The idea for Would You Be Mad If… came about when the two friends were at happy hour. Finding themselves in the midst of yet another conversation that began with a complaint about a boyfriend/friend/parent/coworker/what have you, they realized that having a sounding board to let you know whether or not you are overreacting is vital to sanity. With most friends and loved ones having a hard time being completely impartial in their sentencing, the two women thought of how great it would be to get even more opinions. The opinions of the public to be exact, the perfect way to generate fair and unbiased judgment.

And so the site was born. Providing a sanctuary for anyone to see if their anger is justified by gathering as many opinions as possible and opening it up to the public via the Web, the site frequently posts submissions and provides comical voting answer options.

Growing up together in the small upstate town of Dryden, NY, Bush and Saleh went their separate ways for college. Bush to the University of Colorado at Boulder where she studied Sociology and Saleh to Brown with a concentration in English. Saleh later went on to receive her MFA in playwriting. After seven years in different parts of the country, they both found themselves in NYC. Back together in the same place, the site was launched in no time after they stumbled upon the idea in the city that never sleeps.

“We want to provide people with a place to vent their anger and share their stories, to see what the general reaction is,” said Bush. “We have a lot of friends who overreact to things but also some who really under-react to bad situations. Our site is largely for entertainment but it’s also an anonymous place to get reactions from people who are not invested in your problems and therefore might have a more levelheaded reaction to them.”

On the Web site’s About Us page, it states “Would You Be Mad If…? is designed to supply that jury of peers. You tell us what you’re mad about. We post it. Everyone votes. Democratic emotions. Awesome.” Awesome indeed. A new way to give your friends and family a break from being judge, jury, and the bleeding ears to all your life’s worries, this niche social media device is a refreshing way to take the temperature of the public on a very specific issue plaguing a 20-something year old life.

Do you think you’re validated in your blinding apocalyptic rage? Send your submissions to see what the world thinks.

Lionhead Studios, the development team behind the storied Fable series, launched a redesigned website recently, allowing fans access to the latest Fable and Lionhead news as well as the ability to jump into the conversation in forums.

The new website, which has a neat little animated graphic on its figurative ceiling, has tabs for news, games, jobs, contact information and of course a Twitter feed on the right-hand side.

New website

Hit the Community tab for a chance to join in the discussion on topics ranging from Fable III to Project Milo as well as the always entertaining Off Topic destination.

And now that we’ve learned of Lionhead’s intention to fill the Fable III world with animals, perhaps the studio will gush more informational details somewhere on the new site’s pages in the future.

Whatever Lionhead’s intentions were, the new website makes it harder to leave after  just one click, thus justifying its existence as a hype machine for Fable III. But that’s not so bad, is it?

Lionhead.com

The author of our favorite webcomic xkcd redesigned his homepage today as a tribute to the passing of Geocities.

Every so often, someone will tell me something that reminds me of how old I am. For instance, did you know that kids who turned 18 this year didn’t see Aladdin in theaters? Today, it’s the passing of Geocities, which is shuttering its doors tonight at 11:59pm.

Finding that out today is just one big mixed bag of nostalgia for me. I’m writing this from a bus wi-fi connection, which has about as much bandwidth at the 14.4k modem I used way back when I made my first Geocities website. Of course I let it fall into neglect shortly thereafter and Geocities, or the current owner Yahoo, cleaned it off their servers.

For those too young to remember geocities, it was one of the first sites to allow used with a basic knowledge of HTML to code their own web pages. Five million fan pages for Jonathan Taylor Thomas later, we had what was the most garish collection of sites that were perpetually under construction displaying blink tags “"perish the thought “" and comic sans headlines. Yahoo purchased Geocities back in 1998 for $3.5bil, which was no small sum of money, and has taken care of it since.

However, now that personalized sites are more likely to be found on Facebook or (the equally garish) Myspace, Geocities has become something of a money bleeder, and Yahoo is pulling the plug. Users are encouraged to port their sites over to Yahoo’s paid service.

So, let us mourn the passing of Geocities as it goes into that good night.

Boy, now that sounds sexy.

Blast relies on a big MySQL database for all its stuff. It’s a great technology that let us and millions of others run dynamic websites.

More and more people turning to WordPress and content management platforms on their own domains, through hosting providers that make setting up your SQL database a cinch.

But like any database — or like any pile of data — it gets cluttered, and your hosting provider usually isn’t there to help with these problems.

Just like your computer’s hard drive needs to be defragged every now and then, it’s also a good idea to “optimize” your MySQL tables. Optimizing a messy database can create drastic performance improvements.

Here’s how.

Before you do ANYTHING to your database, make sure you back it up. A good method is to “export” the database to a file on your hard drive. We aren’t responsible if you screw up.

The common MySQL management tool is called phpMyAdmin, and it can usually be accessed by typing the name of your SQL server into your browser and logging in. Once you’re in, click on the database you want to optimize. On the left panel, you’ll see all the database’s tables. Scroll to the bottom and click “check all.”

Then — very carefully — click the dropdown menu and select “Optimize table.” Again, be careful, because “drop” and “empty” are also options in this menu. You don’t want to click those.

Now your server will run an analysis, repair and optimization sequence on your entire database. It can take a few minutes depending on the size of your database.

Enjoy your optimized MySQL database.

Now I love free news. It’s a real privilege for us to be able to access, for free, what domestic and foreign reporters toil and trudge over for hours, days, weeks and sometimes months. We’re pretty lucky and most of us don’t know it.

News websites make ad revenue, that’s how they stay afloat, that’s how they make their money and keep content free. Sometimes they have really kind, noble and hardworking writers who will write for no pay (*ahem*), just to be heard as a part of the internet news and opinion landscape.

But as a journalism student and someone who has a future in the field of news-gathering and reporting, I have to say, against all my Indian instinct, that the journalist in me (he comprises about 90% of my soul) is beginning to hate the person who created the first free news website.

Amidst all this horribly daunting news about the news industry, amidst all this talk and inquiry into the future of journalism and whether or not traditional journalism is dead, I feel as though some free news websites have contributed to this problem. Not websites like Blast, which has a solid group of talented writers who have day jobs or are in school.

I mean big news websites that also have material publications, ones you can pick up, touch, flick through and sometimes, cause you to bust out the soap to get that damn black ink off your fingers. The best kind.

Papers, which are owned by parent companies that often have television stations and websites in their portfolios, are going under. They have no money. When they want to charge for content online, people just go elsewhere. It makes sense. I did it when the Times started the “Times Select” fiasco.

If newspapers die, which is still a big IF for me, ad revenue and all the money they get from being online won’t keep them afloat. It won’t pay for investigative journalism, it won’t pay for local reports and it won’t pay for hard-hitting interviews with big name screw-ups.

It’ll pay for news wires. It’ll pay for shitty, generic reports and day-to-day affairs. Nothing with any real substance. Nothing worth more than a few hundred words. Nothing worth much.

I can’t and won’t be subjected to a field like that. I didn’t get into journalism to report on the farmer who breeds super-strong pigs (can’t get swine off my mind). I got into the business to educate the public and to bring hard new stories and internationally relevant developments to light. I got into the business to, essentially, help people. And I refuse to settle for doing anything less.

Salon already charges for content. Soon Variety and News Corp. will, too. And while I don’t have any desire to read anything put out by News Corp. besides The Wall Street Journal, my emotions are mixed.

In a time of recession where online advertisers are spending a little less, free news websites are having trouble staying above rumbling waters. Even student newspapers are feeling the pinch. The Eyeopener, my university’s student-run publication, cut itself in half because of reduced advertising dollars.

I want my news quick and free, but in this age, and with all this going on, that isn’t a realistic possibility anymore. It sucks but it’s true.

We’ll always need the news and while people will be angry, they will pay for it in whatever medium they choose, whether it be online, print or television.

Realistically, at least in my opinion, it’s necessary to make journalism an honorable and noble profession again. There are too many hacks in the industry writing unedited garbage that gets published just because it’s cheap to manufacture and pump out.

Let’s bring it back to the days of Murrow, Cronkite, Woodward and Bernstein. Let’s manufacture and allow a new generation of Cooper’s. At the very least, let’s help prevent more like Stephen Glass.

But you, and I, need to pay up.

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It’s 5:17 p.m. and the owner of the silver Audi behind you is honking his horn, along with the 13 other cars that surround you.

Yep, you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic again, and you only have five minutes to get to your girlfriend’s house.

The traffic excuse — true or not — will not subside her whines for your tardiness. Pull out your TrafficOne Mobile and you won’t have to stop at the drugstore on the way home for a pair of earplugs, but flowers still wouldn’t hurt.

Traffic.com, a leading website with traffic solutions for stress free drives, joined forces with NAVTEQ, a leader in digital maps to create TrafficOne Mobile.

TrafficOne Mobile issues subscribers immediate traffic reports in high definition. The downloadable software sends traffic reports in 3D via mobile messaging. Easily and efficiently, TrafficOne Mobile enables users to access reports through any wireless browser and includes a voice activator to give commands while on the road.

For more information, please log onto Traffic.com and click on TrafficOne Mobile. The few minutes it takes to log in can save you hours on the road.