What really happens when your kernels panic?

Check out more awesome comics over on Blaugh.

Kernel panic [COMIC]

Windows Phone 7 devices hit store shelves today in the United States. Have you gotten your hands on one yet?

Did you get your hands on a Windows Phone?

Let’s see if this sums up your feelings:

Do you Yahoo!?

What do You do When Yahoo Goes Down?

I can’t think of the last time I set any site as my default “start page” (other than my own, or a local document of collected links and search fields). I was checking referral logs for bLaugh and noticed that Protopage and Netvibes kept popping up. I had visited each of them a while ago, but never really bothered to return to either – portal sites aren’t really my thing.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that our daily comic was toggled as a default widget on the primary Protopage tab! So, not only is Protopage the best designed AJAX portal, but it also has the best sense of humor. Okay, so maybe I’m a bit biased with the second claim – but it’s still incredibly thrilling to see just how many people have picked up on bLaugh since its launch a few months ago. Technorati reports that we’ve moved up to 831 (3,919 links from 1,353 blogs), though Hugh has been around substantially longer and has a insanely better numbers (and rightfully so).

Comic impressions are different than text impressions and/or video plays – just like most Web images (read: banners) have always been better played for branding purposes. For instance, there’s virtually no way of telling how many people read bLaugh on a daily basis through mass aggregation services like Protopage, Google Reader, Bloglines, etc. I can tell you one thing: I certainly welcome the use of our feed and/or API by any third-party. Brad and I have already been profitable with our madcapped adventure – without having to resort to venture comical capital. GoDaddy seems equally as happy! Move over, United Feature Syndicate and King Features Syndicate!

My Favorite Portal: Protopage

When we released the bLaugh API, I was hoping that some enterprising developer would use it to create something fun. Mike from Singer’s Creations just unleashed Comicazzi tonight. Essentially, it’s a desktop app that will let you drag and drop bLaugh comics onto your current wallpaper. If that doesn’t sound very exciting to you, I’ve suggested that the interactive comic viewer eventually include other Web comics – hence, the generic “Comicazzi” title. If you would like your comic to be included in the app, you’ll have to talk to Mike about it (and give him an easy way to access the images). I’ve also suggested that Comicazzi eventually call on the Flickr API to help people build dynamic wallpapers from Flickr iamges, too. Fun times! Download it!

Comic Freeware

Who does this remind you of?

Okay, so… Brad and I released this comic on bLaugh today:

Should be chuckle-worthy, though it wasn’t the original strip. I showed another image to friends, with some of them suggesting that we hold it indefinitely – and others suggesting that we run it immediately. If you’re offended easily, you don’t want to see this: the comic we chose not to run.

Did we make the right decision in not running the original version? It’s culturally offensive (playing on stereotypes), but so are countless political cartoons these days. I personally think we did the right thing by going with the ski-masks. Last thing I’d ever want to do is incite an interracial (or international) incident.

Is This Offensive or Funny?

For some reason or another, choosy users choose bLaugh. At least, that’s what the readers and staff of BusinessWeek Online report. We just received a “Best of the Web” award in the Humor category. I’d still like to see bLaugh pushed out and shared on more Web sites, portals, and print media. Who else won?

• The Onion
• The Joy of Tech
• Rocketboom
• gapingvoid
• Go Fug Yourself* (tied)
• Ze Frank* (tied)

I suppose this means they want us to do a parody of their brand. “BusinessWeak” sounds kinda funny, especially if we do a mock cover? Until then, I guess today’s bLaugh will have to do…

bLaugh is a Reader’s Choice

Okay, bLaugh is up and running – including a great gag on the Friendster patent today. I’ve been using FeedBurner to manage the feed, which has (for the most part) been a good experience. To make bLaugh fully PSP compatible, I had to create enclosures for the comic images – which can only be done with a direct hyperlink to the image itself. In doing so, some of my non-Friendster friends are telling me that two images are showing up in each bLaugh feed item. The reasons are simple: (a) the news aggregator is ignoring the HTML I’ve set to hide the image link from plain view; (b) the news aggregator is rendering the enclosure inline for your convenience, as well as the image that’s pulling in directly via the IMG tag. So is anybody really to blame here? Wish I knew. FeedBurner has allowed me to infuse the Flickr images tagged “bLaugh” with my regular ol’ blog feed – allowing my tens of thousands of subscribers to get the day’s gag without having to subscribe to the separate bLaugh feed. Still, others are saying that my feed in Bloglines is giving them fits. Argh! Can I just blame the dog?!

The Blame Game

We’ve been Hughtrained! Told you I love this guy…

I can’t imagine anybody wanting to put bLaugh on business cards or coffee mugs. Gaping Void, however, is teh shiz no matter where you view it. We’ve got a good lampoon coming up for you, Hugh.

A Void Has Been Filled

I was playing around with our new Web comic this evening. We launched the other day and are making fantastic progress with the gags. Steve Rubel wants a larger version of his strip, suitable for framing. Don’t know if there’s a market in that, but… maybe we should post larger and smaller images, too? I thought I’d check to see if RubelWithoutACause.com was taken, and it’s not. I kept playing with the GoDaddy search form and found several that weren’t taken (as of the time of this entry):

• ComicCrazies.com
• MyComputerAccident.com
• SpywareRules.com
• SearchMyCloset.com
• ComputerAdvice.com
• FileFever.com
• DownloadDisco.com
• GottaBoogie.com
• FreewareFunHouse.com
• SirNotAppearingInThisFilm.com

What I really want to know is if you subscribed to the bLaugh feed and tried it on your iPod or PSP yet? We’re looking for testers for those (and other mobile) devices.

RubelWithoutACause.com

I love to laugh – so now I’m preparing the world to bLaugh! Today, we’re launching the (un)Official comic of the blogosphere – colorful, satirical, and comical. Expect parodies of “A-List” bloggers all the way down to the meme of the day – no holds barred. Brad Fitzpatrick is bLaugh’s artist, and I’m the writer. The strip is exclusively sponsored by a single company, GoDaddy. We have a bLaugh feed for you to suck down – and we’ll rotate the daily comic image in a static URL to encourage deep-linking from anywhere (widgets, anyone?). Of course, all you ego-whores should be watching closely – because you’re likely the ones to be parodied on a regular basis. If you blog, or your name (brand) is getting tossed around in the blogosphere, you’re on our radar. That includes you, Hugh and Jacek (because we love everybody equally).

bLaugh: The (un)Official Comic of the Blogosphere