Scrabble Football, Blogger's Dictionary, Slashdot vs. Digg and Mostly-Free Photos

Hi folks -- I'm not going to link to anything about today being Friday the 13th. That's right, I'm bucking the trend! I'm a wild man! Watch out, who know what I might do next!

Urm, yeah.

Here are a few tidbits you might be interested in:

* I sent this item over to Jamie for his sports blogging pleasure, but there's no reason why you can't have it, too: According to blogger Matt Sussman:

"...there may be some underlying merit on what the best possible starting lineup of NFL players would look like if their performance was based on the value of their last names in Scrabble."

So, presented for your perusal, here's the NFL All-Triple Word Score Team (found via Fark.com). Finally, a football team that Scrabble fans can really get behind.

If you're a fantasy football player, keep this lineup in mind. It's crazy enough that it just might work...

* Keeping in a literary mindset, Blogcritics highlighted a new Blogger's Dictionary. Here are a few definitions from it:

Blog:
(1) An unforgivably ugly sounding word. (2) A collection of writings which usually lives up to the sound.

Blogger:
(1) A diarist in search of an audience. (2) A patient in search of a therapist but unable to pay by the hour.

Counter:
A popular depressant.

Editor:
(1) An individual who reviews a written work to ensure its accuracy, quality of writing, and interest to the reader. (2) A being not found in the blogosphere.

Hey, that last one... wait just a second!

Of course, Jumper Bailey's Blogger's Dictionary is an moderized take on Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, which is an infamous glossary of cyncial (some might say "realistic") definitions of everyday words.

* If you're one of those people who pay attention to these sorts of things, there's a lot of noise right now in the big ole' sphere o' blogs about whether Slashdot is going to be overtaken by Digg, and what that means for community sites all over the Web.

Slashdot follows a more centralized moderation model, where a team of editors or authors culls through the submissions people send in, then pick the ones that show up. Digg uses a newer model, where stories are selected by everyone -- that is, the community votes on the stories that get bumped up to the front.

Digg is still a relative newcomer, but it's been growing really fast. Both models have their pluses and minuses, and there should be room for both types of site, though that still doesn't stop the debates -- it's kind of an updated version of Ford vs. Chevy or Mac vs. PC.

Anyway, Jason Kottke over at Kottke.org had the same article from his blog featured on both Slashdot and Digg last week, so he took the opportunity to do an in-depth traffic analysis, complete with lots of graphs and numbers. Check out the similarities and differences he noted.

* Speaking of Digg, here's an item from there about a graphics blog's listing of free stock photo resources, available for use by folks who need photos to incorporate into their blogs or Web pages.

As the blog entry notes, "free use" doesn't just mean you can grab everything and go wild -- when looking for royalty-free, public domain, or copyright-free images, always check for restrictions or limitations on use. For example, some sites may require you to credit the source... that's the "price" you pay for using the image.

Thanks -- Joe