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In the blogging world, I’m a lightweight (special shout out to my very loyal readers… all THREE of you if I go by the number of people who leave comments…. c’mon, don’t be shy – say hi!!).
If you want to read a “real” Vancouver blogger, check out my friend Duane – photographer/software engineer/blogger/Jedi extraordinaire.
He’s in a showdown for the #1 Google ranking for the term ‘Vancouver Blogger’ so I thought I’d show my support.
GO DUANER.
May the force be with you.
When I joined Facebook awhile back, I thought it would be interesting to create a group for the Kneb family, just to see what would happen.
Well it took 6 months but finally one of our long lost cousins in France found us! We knew instantly we were related because really, how many people could there be out there with a last name like ours?!
It’s been an interesting couple of days as we’ve traced back our lineages in funny exchanges of half-English and half-French. Michel and I have figured out that our great-great-grandfathers, Benedykt (mine) and Guillaume (his – probably ‘Wilhelm’ in Poland) were brothers. One of Guillaume’s progeny emigrated to France and another to Brazil, hence the growth of those branches.
In one of our messages, Michel told me to go search our family name on ‘Orkut’ and I’d find more Knebs.
Or-What???
Apparently there are places in this world where people aren’t inundated with pokes, Funwall posts and invitations to join inane applications which enable you to throw sheep at one another.
Places like Brazil and India.
‘Cause that’s where Orkut enjoys a strange and wild popularity.
Orkut is an Internet social network service which is run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. [...] Similar to Facebook, Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-set-up simple forums (called “communities”) of users. Source: Wikipedia
Run by GOOGLE, no less!?
Orkut has been around since October 2006 January 2004. That’s almost 2 years after the around the same time as the birth of Facebook which is, as you probably know, the number one time-sucker for North Americans. It was purported to have over 67 million users in August 2007!
So how come lil’ ol’ me here in Canada had never heard of Orkut until today?
Should I be embarrassed?
I did consider myself to be relatively Web 2.0-saavy. I mean, I know about Twitter and Pownce and smugmug and Ooma and Lypp and a whole bunch of other stuff with really stupid names. Am I losing touch?
Apparently there’s no need to worry. Orkut was just an unfortunate victim of one of those freak phenomenons where one country goes ga-ga over an application/trend/way of life, to the exclusion of everyone else.
Orkut is the most visited website in Brazil, being more visited than Google Brazil, number 2 on the list. In total visits, Google is probably still more popular since it appears as the second (the Brazilian version) and seventh most visited site (the international version). The initial target market for orkut was the United States, but the majority of its users are in Brazil. In fact, as of January 2008, 55.32% of the traffic come from Brazil, followed by 16.53% from India. Source: Wikipedia
So it makes perfect sense that while me and my Canadian cousins were writing on each other’s walls and inviting each other to ’slap, hug or tickle’ one another on Facebook, our Brazilian relatives were leaving each other ’scraps’ on Orkut.
Though we don’t really know much about it over on this side of the pond, Orkut may one day turn out to be a social networking heavyweight to be reckoned with here, too.
In the meantime, now that a couple of us Knebs have bridged the gap between the branches of our family tree, it will be interesting to see what middle ground we will choose.
Maybe *gasp!* it will be good ol’ fashioned… email??
Well, I’ve been Hangin Tough for 20 years now and it’s finally paid off – THE NEW KIDS ARE COMING BACK!
This time, it ain’t no joke.
AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m so excited, it’s almost embarrassing.
I swear, if they don’t come to Vancouver, I AM GOING TO THEM.
I need to finally purge myself of the disappointment I’ve been carrying around all these years, the bitter, bitter disappointment of being the only girl in my sixth grade class that didn’t get to go to the concert and have Joey McIntyre blow them kisses from onstage. (That was a dark day in my life.)
I wonder if they’ll still be calling themselves the “new” kids on the block. Maybe the ‘Kids Who’ve Been Around the Block’ would be more appropriate?
Anyways, who cares. I still love them and I’m not ashamed to say it.
If you’re as dorky as I am, you can go to their recently resurrected website at NKOTB.com and sign up to receive exclusive updates. You can bet your boobies I already did.
What can I say? They sang, Please Don’t Go Girl. And so I’ve been here waiting this whole time.
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The news spread like wildfire the day before yesterday over emails, phone calls, IMs and even Facebook status updates that actor Heath Ledger was found dead in a New York apartment (supposedly Mary Kate’s).
Now that the initial shock is over, news media the world over are all taking turns speculating about the cause of death. Was it an accidental drug overdose? A lethal drug combination cocktail? Pneumonia?
Preliminary autopsy results were inconclusive and gosh, they say it will take 10-14 days for full autopsy results to be released. How ever will we be able to wait that long?!
As I was pondering this today, it suddenly occurred to me… I KNOW HOW TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED!!!
DUH!!!
All we need to do is call up John Edward or one of the thousands of other people all over the world who claim to be able to talk to the dead!!!
Omigosh, I am so brilliant! I can’t believe no one has thought to do this yet!
C’mon all you psychic mediums out there!!!! Here’s your chance to prove that you really AREN’T just putting on an act!
***silence***
Helloooo?
***more silence***
Anyone out there? Here’s your chance, guys…?
***sound of crickets***
Guys??
…
I have several blogs in my Google Reader that I read every day, because they’re funny, well-written, passionate or just plain bizarre (sometimes all at once!).
The annual Canadian Blog Awards has just announced its finalists for 2007 – go check out the list and maybe you’ll find a new blog to love. Some of my favorites are in there. (And don’t forget to vote).
You can also go ahead and click on one of the links in the left column of my blog to see some other sites that I like a lot.
And of course, if you know of one you think is cool, leave a comment or drop me a line at purplegables at gmail dot com.
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