Other than all of your brilliant posts on The Straight Dope what have you done to change and improve the internet? I’m looking more for those unsung heroes who corrected a Wiki error, posted an important clip on YouTube or leaked an important piece of information to CNN.com. Not so much looking for the fact that your college thesis is posted on some obscure website or that your Myspace page is the bestest in the world. Anyone who did something really big like invent Ebay has enough recognition so stay out!
My minor contribution to the web is to fix some bad information on Findagrave. com. I used to frequent that site often for some reason. Just found in fascinating. One day I happened to see the page for Neville Brand’s grave. In the short bio section they mentioned the urban legend that he was the second most decorated soldier in WWII after Audie Murphy. He was not. He was a war hero with a siver star and purple heart but did not come close to Murphy’s level. I sent a link that contained statements from his children and his actual war record. Very soon after they changed the entry to this. Very boring, but much more accurate. I never got a thank you or even an email. Thanks okay I didn’t do it for the glory. What’s your story?
While I’m not known for it or really had much to do with it. The internet service provider I worked for many, many years ago were a primary distribution site for this little bit of internet humor called sox. It was short for Spirit of Christmas, yes, the little tidbit that started Southpark.
There’s also a song about my character from Anarchy Online that’s out there somewhere.
Other than that, I’m pretty obscure and useless, although I have a wealth of opinions.
I edited and dramatically expanded the Wikipedia article on GSM frequency bands, illustrating the fact that all four main frequency bands are used in different places in the Americas, and clarifying the difference between ‘multi-band’ and ‘multi-mode’ equipment.
I’ve supplied reams of information on records and artists to many websites. I’ve sent in label scans of records of which there were no pictures, to confirm their existence. Thousands of people around the world have copies of my audio restorations. Some of them have even been bootlegged! I’ve seen my work being sold on British, Japanese and Russian websites, and listed on the sites of many traders. It’s been torrented and exchanged in trading trees, and is still being passed around by various means. It’s cool how I’ve managed to make an impression in so many quarters while remaining totally anonymous.
My Virtual Bubblewrap site was named by Pamela Anderson as one of her 3 favorite websites. It was also listed in Yahoo’s “Netrospective” 10 Years, 100 Moments of the Web under item #14 “useless” (http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/)
There are several hundred pictures posted by moi on the premier site for a particular group of plants…they are used worldwide to help others ID plants.
That was a joke that my Flash guy and I came up with. I think the math comes out to one fart bubble per 2000 bubbles or something, but it’s all random and so any given bubble does have that chance.
Well, yes, the insane version was actually a test we ran of some various sounds to test some stuff. It was left up over a 24 hour period by mistake, and after we corrected it, I got a lot of email asking for the test version’s return. So we brought it back as the insane version.
I was very involved with a P2P service in it’s infancy. Not programming but more in a customer service/support role. It’s since grown to be one of the largest on the net. I remember the days where we maxed out at 100-200 people. Looks like they’re up over 250,000 on right now.
I used to talk with the head programmer on a nightly basis. From a quick Google search it looks like he’s still programing. Not sure how much, if anything, he’s made licensing the program though.
Wasn’t paid, the sheer irony of someone asking me, “Have you heard of “X”? It’s a really great P2P program,” was enough. Also there were plenty of school paper article written about it when I was in college and I was very clear about where I was from and going to school in my profile. I was always surprised they never tried to seek me out or anything.
I run what was up until a few years ago the Web’s most visited urban planning-related Web site. Now, it’s just the second most popular; there’s a commercial site planning news site that has more buzz now.
