Walk2Web:Walk,Explore, Have Fun

"If the Internet wasn't a word describing a virtual world of computers, joined together in a network, how would it look like? walk2web is a really interesting website, trying to do exactly that - visualize the connections between sites, while allowing to view, review, bookmark and vote for your favorite sites.

You type in a starting point-like http://www.blogschmog.net-and you see a page with a screenshot sample of the site and the first two levels of a search network, with sites as nodes. There are no more than six at a time, split between incoming and outgoing links with options to display more in either direction. The network grows as you explore, allowing you to make use of some simple directional tools to navigate the part of the World Wide Web you are manually crawling.

That's just the core functionality.

The nodes are also color coded to make the network easy to differentiate between incoming links (green) and outgoing (blue). There is a complete community-driven content component that combined digg-like voting with spam prevention, tagging, and comments about the web sites. You can request a refresh of the current screenshot yourself, which means you don't have to rely on a web crawler to routinely get it for you. You can also flag your own web walking network to allow you to find them again, either as favorites or with little green flag markers to let you see when you encounter a good site again. There is sound (which can be toggled off) that reads as you go. And there are visual cues that show you positive and negative indicators of the community. It is even interesting to just watch the front page-which they call a live sites show-as interesting sites go sliding by.

Unlike traditional search, where you start with a motivation for searching that relies on some search terms, with Walk2Web you have to know where you want to start. The entire experience and best practices change dramatically as expectations switch to one of discovery and not definitive expertise. This is a tool to find new things in ways you simply cannot with traditional search. It is not likely to be much help if you want to know the tallest mountain in Peru (unless there is a site called http://www.tallestmountaininperu.com

There is also a browser plug-in (for Firefox and Explorer) that brings the interface to you. So if you wind up on a site that is worthy of a little walk on the Web 2.0 side, simply start the walk from there to bring up the network. The user ratings controls are also in the browser toolbox, so you can rate sites and contribute to them on the fly.

Best thing I've seen in a while. I hope it catches on."

Akmed- The Dead Terrorist

Jeff Dunham and his suitcase posse are funny – very, very funny – and the public has responded by making his Comedy Central one-hour special, Jeff Dunham: Arguing with Myself, one of the network’s highest rated standup specials ever. The DVD of the same name has gone on to be one of the most successful comedy titles in history, achieving quintuple-platinum status (500,000 in sales) over the last year. Not bad considering the average comedy DVD sells around 25,000 units.

“These guys are my secret weapon,” says Dunham, “There’s some sort of unspoken rule that allows them to say things and make observations that no mere human could ever get away with, and it’s all under the guise of comedy"

Says Dunham, “You really have to have been there to understand it when folks walk out of a comedy show saying to each other, “I KILL YOU!”