Stupid Site Idea #47: DrunkTweets.com

First there was drunk dialing. Maybe you've done this before. You're out with some friends on a Saturday night, and you've had one too many Long Island Iced Teas, when you get the brilliant idea that you should call up your ex-girlfriend who broke your heart last year, and (1) accuse her of being the worst human being in the world, and (2) beg her to take you back. Oh come now, hands up if this sounds very familiar.

Then came drunk emailing, the 2am email that says everything you wanted to say to your boss, but alas the sober you lacked the chutzpah to say it to him.

And finally, drunk texting. This I've never done before, honestly, because when I'm wasted, fine motor skills are usually the first to go. There will be no tippity-typety with my thumbs on a small, virtual keyboard when I'm blowing a 0.8 and above.

Certainly today, this long-honored tradition must live on Twitter. A quick search for "drunk right now" revealed some choice selections, including this gem:

Classic! Misspellings, statement of inebriation, unnecessary all-caps. All the things you want in a drunk tweet.

So here's my idea: there should be a site where people can submit examples of drunk tweets. People can vote on them, rate them, review them, claim them, and potentially even respond via a tweet-of-shame.

My normal rules of giving away site ideas holds: if you develop this site based on the idea I've given you here, I fully expect an Easter egg somewhere on the site making fun of me for being too lazy to implement the idea myself.

The web page isn't half empty, it's half full!

Sometimes the things that annoy you most can surprise you in delighting you given a completely different context. So that's the lede -- now that I haven't buried it, let me tell you what I mean.

Blogs and other content sites are wonderful. It seems my appetite for informational input, as far as I've tested, really knows no limits, and Web sites chock full of interesting information, thought-provoking viewpoints, and insightful analyses feed the part of me that craves this stuff. But lately, I've become increasingly annoyed at the content-to-other-crap ratio. More and more, site owners are shoving things into both the left and right hand columns. Some are interesting and useful, while some are simply irrelevant and annoying. I've seen pages where the amount of space taken up by actual content is less than 20% of the screen real estate!

The primary way these sites compress the area used up by actual useful content is by fitting them into a narrow column down the page. Daily Kos is a great example of this, where despite your political leanings, everyone can agree that there's an awful lot of non-content content on the page that has questionable utility and value to the content on the page. With so little space dedicated to actual content, in what context would this be a good thing?

And this is where the "web page isn't half empty, it's half full." Because on the Web, this situation is annoying, as so much real estate is taken up by non-content. But on an iPhone, the narrow column format for content means that on a small screen like the iPhone's, once you zoom in on the content, it makes it far easier to read.

I now cross my fingers and shake my accelerometer once for good luck hoping that this next page that I want to read has a narrow column for the content on the page -- and when it doesn't, I ponder throwing the iPhone down in disgust and walking away.

Annoyance has turned into delight -- I now would love to buy the designers of these sites a beer! Of course, that glass of beer you can bet will only be half full. I still have to bear viewing them on my full-sized PC, after all.

How to host Meet the Press

With apologies to David Gregory, for whom I have a ton of respect, I'd like to recreate for you every "Meet the Press" I've seen since he's taken over:

David Gregory: "But first, our first guest is Person A.  This person represents some viewpoint that I'm now going to question by pulling quotes and clips out of context.  Person A, welcome to 'Meet the Press.'"

Person A: "Thanks, it's good to be here."

DG: "Person A, you were quoted this week as taking Postions X, Y, and Z on Topics J, K, and L.  But we've got a quote from you ten years ago stating that you took the opposite positions on those topics.  Care to explain yourself?"

A: "Hedge, hedge, wordsmith, conditions have changed, stick to my current positions no matter what."

DG: "So what you're saying is though you currently take Postions X, Y, and Z on Topics J, K, and L, the opposite positions aren't off the table?"

A:  "I oppose those opposite postions, and am sticking to my guns."

DG: "Yes, but they aren't off the table?"

A:  "I have always opposed those opposite positions, and oppose them today."

DG:  "But you're not stating outright that they are off the table.  OK, let's move on."

[repeat the above several more times until Person A's genuine smile has turned into a snarky smirk.]

DG: "Thank you for being on the show.  Next up, I talk with media pundits with whom I will skewer Person A.  Stay tuned."

[break]

DG: "Welcome back, I've invited media pundits who will have nothing terribly or

iginal to say other than to echo back standard talking points to either defend Person A's current positions, or point and laugh that they took the opposite positions ten years ago."

Media Pundit 1: "I'm the pretty one."

Media Pundit 2: "I'm the old conservative fogey."

Media Pundit 3: "My goatee represents the hip edgy contingent."

Media Pundit 4: "I will laugh and encourage the other pundits to laugh at my only-

for-Washington-insiders' nudge-nudge-wink-wink jokes."

DG: "Well, that's all for this week.  If it's Sunday, it's 'Meet the Press.'"

[cue music]