Friday, August 15, 2008

PoopTag = Social Defecation

(It's not as gross as it sounds!)

Everybody poops. Every U.S. president. Every Jonas Brother. Every Olympic athlete. Even Michael Phelps. Actually, at 12,000 calories a day, he poops a LOT!

And so while you're pooping, have you ever wondered who else is pooping at exactly the same time? Really? Me, too!

So with the help of some friends, I created PoopTag, a sort of game that strives to be both encouraging and enlightening. It's easy to play: you simply notify PoopTag whenever you poop. You do this by sending a direct message to the pooptag account on Twitter using your mobile device. PoopTag will then determine whether anyone else is pooping at that time. If they are, you will have successfully "tagged" them, and PoopTag will notify its followers of this happy event.

And in response to your direct message, whether you successfully tag anyone or not, you will receive a random pithy reply. That's the "encouraging and enlightening" part.

There are two modes of play: public and covert. You decide which way to play each time you poop.
  • Public (send more than one character):
    d pooptag This text will be broadcast to all PoopTaggers

  • Covert (send any single character):
    d pooptag !

Obviously, the public notification makes it easy for someone to tag you, though they must be pooping in order to do so.

Eventually, we'll publish statistics at pooptag.com, enabling services like Poop Cycle Compatibility Matching, prospective home-buyer bathroom sizing tools, and life-saving medical history to present to your doctor, among other things.

Come join the fun!

UPDATE 9/20/08: Changed covert pooping method from an empty message to one containing only punctuation due to Twitter no longer delivering blank direct messages.
UPDATE 10/13/08: Covert pooping now triggered by a message containing only a single character (letter, number, punctuation, whatever)

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Create

I'm big on creativity. You know, building stuff. Putting things where nothing was before. I think it's both the secret to happiness and the meaning of life. I think it's what humans are SUPPOSED TO DO.

Create. Re-create. Recreation. Play, especially at work.

I follow why the lucky stiff on Twitter. His tweets are usually funny and clever. And once in a while, he'll write something like this:

when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.

Very cool.