Woo-hoo! Digiwhack.me launches – YEY!
To say I am excited, would be a huge understatement. After almost two months of work, my latest project digiwhack.me is now live and ready for public consumption!
So what is Digi Whack? I’ll answer that shortly. Let me give a little back story first.
At the end of March I was on way to Texas to see my nephew. That morning, suffering from a serious hangover, I had one of those cartoon light bulb moments. People should be able to say random things on the internet without having to sign-in. The lynch pin to the idea, it had to be done right. Not right in that, make it scalable, use open source software kind of way (that was a given), ‘right’ in that graphic design, open and inclusive way, more on that in a bit.
I worked on the project on the plane ride down and after my nephew went to bed, he’s almost 3 so that is pretty early. In a just few days I had a rough prototype working. I contacted my friend and former colleague Roberto Gonzalez Rey for help with the visual aspects. He was excited by the idea and quickly hammered out the first round of designs. Since we both have day jobs, digiwhack.me got put on the back burner a few times over the last 60 days. But it’s ready for public consumption now!
What is digiwhack.me? It’s permanent graffiti in a digital world. It’s a virtual bathroom wall, a digital Jumbo tron. It’s anonymous and explicitly identifiable. Digiwhack.me is a contradiction to the personal web that has blossomed with Facebook. In short, digiwhack.me is what its user base defines it to be. The messages dictate the feeling, even the theme. Message writers can assign a theme that fits their message.
How can you interact with digiwhack.me? Great question. It’s on Twitter, identi.ca and Friendfeed. It also has an RSS feed. Users can send messages from the create message page in order to remain truly anonymous. Or send @replies to @digiwhack via Twitter.
The project is exciting by itself, but I am spicing it up even more by encouraging users to contribute their own designs and themes. At the moment, this is a manual process, but we are looking at automating the process in the future depending on interest. I will be posting instructions and guidelines shortly. If you want to get a head start, just take a look at this background.
Check out a few of my early favorite digiwhacks, this one, this one and this one are great!
And don’t forget to make your own whack message!
