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The popularity of adding some sort of quote as part of your email signature is on the rise (see discussion here and here). But some can be taken differently than intended. For example: “Too often we underestimate the power of a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” Quotes like these can come across as a bit preachy by presuming readers are insensitive and complacent.

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We pretty much know which users seem to get stories to the front page, but that is only half of the Digg experience. The other half is the dry, witty, insightful, or interesting comments about the submitted stories.

If you’re fast, or submit a ton of stories, or know how to uncover that hidden gem in a sea of web pages, you can get a story to the front page. But what does it take to garner a lot of diggs on one of your comments? In my personal observation, I’ve noticed several factors that will get your comment dugg, or buried, faster than you can say “all your base are belong to us.”

Note that the following guide applies to any social network or blog that allows voting on comments, but Digg is the quintessential example of how this works.

Comments that get dugg:

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(*Update* The deal mentioned in the title is over, but Amazon has an even better deal: HD DVD player & 7 Movies for $132.)

Today I came across this article by Joel Hruska at Ars Technica in which he links to this Blu-ray deal on Amazon and says the following:

“Samsung is hoping to tilt the scales in favor of Blu-ray; as of right now, Samsung’s BD-P1400 Blu-ray player is selling for $279 on Amazon, down from a $499 MSRP. That’s not so much a discount as it is a steal, and it drops the BD-P1400 squarely within the price range for an HD DVD box.”

I couldn’t help but respond with all of Amazon’s concurrent HD DVD deals, which happen to be much better than the above mentioned “steal.”

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We’ve all heard the line: If all of your friends were to jump off a cliff, would you do it too?

Well, there is a good chance all of your friends are not jumping off a cliff. Because they know better. In fact, if you have a large enough crowd, there is a good chance whatever they think is right. Sort of.

I’ve been playing around on Facebook. There are all sorts of interesting things going on there, but I wanted to write about something called the Never-Ending Movie Quiz. The basic premise is that you answer a whole bunch of questions and the more you answer right, the higher you are ranked.

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So I (and apparently a few million other people) picked up my copy of Halo 3 on Tuesday (about 11am if you must know). I beat the campaign last, and although it does start off a little slow I can say that it is by far the best Halo of the three.

Something has surprised me more than the twists and turns of the plot though, and that is Bungie’s Halo 3 website. It is a whole new level of game and interweb integration. Dare I say it, it is almost a social network.

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This is the second installment for my series on video rental options that work with Xbox 360 (or set top boxes in general). Vongo recently announced support for the Xbox 360, and with a 14-day free trial I thought I ‘d try it out.

Vongo is a download video service owned by Starz Entertainment that can best be described as a video subscription service similar to Netflix meets CinemaNow. For $9.99/month you get all the movies you can download from their current selection of movies. While the selection of movies (2,500 titles) isn’t as large as Amazon’s Unbox, there are more current mainstream movies (The Queen, Stranger than Fiction, Bridge to Terabithia, etc) than can be found on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” service.

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I have a standard rule of thumb: any product that sells with a warranty usually becomes a product I have specific questions about before I’m willing to make the purchase (especially technology/electronics). But what are my options for getting these questions answered? If I want answers now, I have to check out an FAQ. (Has anyone else noticed that FAQs answer your questions less often than not?)

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The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has compiled a top ten list of “How To’s” that IT Departments want to keep a secret. Along with the article is a video interview with a “security expert” from PricewaterhouseCoopers’s. The issue at hand (in a nutshell): should companies be able to monitor and/or limit your non-work activity in the office?

This seems to be a complicated issue that will never go away. I’m usually one to stand up for privacy and flexibility in the workplace. But then, it only takes one bad experience (spyware / virus / porn) for an employer to tighten up for a legitamite reason (even if often in an over-reacting way). In any event, see below for the video interview and the top ten workarounds:

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