Ha ha ha ha ha! Hee hee! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha hah ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hee hee ha ha ha hee hee hee hee hee ha! Hee ha hee ha hee hee ha ha ha ha ha! Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee hee hee hee hee hee hee! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee hee hee hee hee!

Hee hee ha ha ha ha hee ha ha hee hee he ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha! Hee hee ha ha! Ha ha hee! Hee hee ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee! Hee hee hee hee! Hee hee! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee hee hee! Hee hee hee hee ha ha hee hee hee ha ha ha hee ha hee hee hee ha hee ha ha ha ha hee!

And here’s the video to prove it:

I Love to Laugh

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?

In semi-related news, I’m on the front page of YouTube today (and have been since late yesterday evening). It’s for my Airplane Safety Instructional Video. Don’t ask me what took the TubeGods so long to feature it front-and-center.

Stop Emailing “Funny Stuff” to Me!

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