We have been receiving reports from some of our users that the process of reading new Qwidget messages was confusing.  So we reacted.  Here’s the new process.  I hope it helps. 
Feedback in your answers would be much appreciated.
[ed. note]: The title of this post was changed from “New Message Icon Added to the Qwidget” to “Mail Icon Added to Qwidget” because users reported that they thought the icon would appear only when a new message was present. Since many people will go to a Qwidget to find their messages when they are not signed in automatically, we needed the icon to always be visible. We’re working towards a more clear process.]

Obama’s aides are saying that the president-elect will issue an order to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay military prison within his first week in office.  This is obviously not a formal announcement but two anonymous sources within the transition team leaked the information to the press on Monday.

The facility currently holds approximately 250 al Qaeda and Taliban suspects.  Obama’s order will not see those prisoners released or transferred to another location.  It will simply direct his administration to come up with a plan to move the suspects and close the prison, which has become a symbol of the sometimes controversial tactics used in America’s war on terror.  This is sure to be one of Obama’s more debated moves that will come to dominate headlines in the next few weeks.

Early on New Years Day, a BART police officer fatally shoot an unarmed black man in Oakland, CA.  Cell phone videos of the shooting captured by a number of witnesses show that the man, 22-year-old Oscar Grant, laying face down on the pavement surrounded by a number of officers at the time he was shot.  Some have claimed that there was an element of racism on the part of the officer.  Others say it’s an example of extreme police brutality, in which race played no part.

In the aftermath of the shooting, violent protests have broken out in Oakland that have many questioning the efficacy and motives of this reaction.  As the SFGate put it: “The roving mob expressed fury at police and frustration over society’s racial injustice. Yet the demonstrators were often indiscriminate, frequently targeting the businesses and prized possessions of people of color.”

In June of 2008, a pro Christian advertising campaign entitled Jesus Said ran on city buses across London.  The ads displayed the URL of a website which stated that non-Christians “will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell … Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire prepared for the devil.”

Now a group of British atheists are fighting back.  They purchased advertising on 800 buses all across the UK with the message: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”  Adriane Sherine explains their reasoning: “Our rational slogan will hopefully reassure anyone who has been scared by this kind of evangelism [in the Jesus Said campaign].”  It looks like atheist groups in Spain, Australia, and Italy are following suit with planned bus campaigns of their own.  This is sure to drum up some good old religious controversy. 

With Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the United States only two weeks away, a lot of people are beginning to doubt if he can turn this country around in the next four years even if he is the second coming of Lincoln or FDR.

With so many problems and such high obstacles, does he even have a chance?

Amazon recently published its list of 100 best selling albums of 2008, and Nine Inch Nails’ album Ghosts I-IV sat at the top. This has a few observers of the music industry scratching their heads because NIN front man Trent Reznor made a large portion of the digital version of the album permanently available for free on his website. Not only that, he personally uploaded it to notorious torrent site the Pirate Bay.  Now if a musician is giving away his music for free, why are people still buying it?

The answer probably has something to do with the relatively low bitrate (low sound quality) of the free versions, the bonus-laden deluxe editions that were for sale, NIN’s loyal fanbase, listeners who enjoyed the nine free tracks and then bought the rest, and the buzz generated by the early adopter/super fans who got the album for free and talked it up to their less tech-savvy friends. Whatever the case may be, it’s certainly fascinating that despite the widespread free distribution of the songs, the album still outsold every other album on one of the web’s biggest music retailers.

Notice that Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which the band made available online for only a suggested donation, is at number 11 on the list.  Weird times. 

Most of your visitors don’t leave comments on your site.  That goes without saying.  But one interesting related question is will they take some other sort of action.  Can you entice them to participate in a dialogue on your site by offering an easier way to initiate conversations than diving right away into the chaotic commentosphere?

A quick look at a two websites suggests that users are more willing to interact on publisher web sites than the usual absence of comments suggests.

On Download.com’s blog, The Download Blog, there is an article about Google taking Chrome out of beta. The article accumulated a whopping 100 comments in the few days since it was published.  However, in the same amount of time, over 10,000 people answered a Polldaddy poll that accompanied the article.  For every commenter, there were 100 people who clicked the poll.  These are people who were moved enough to take an action based on their opinion.  In that moment of motivation, Download.com lost an opportunity to engage them further by offering another simple way of increasing their participation.

In another example, the celebrity site Oceanup.com posts pictures of the sisters of famous actresses with the question: who is the cutest? While only 60 readers left comments with their thoughts, over 18,000 people weighed in on a poll that accompanied the post.  In this case, 300 times more readers answered the poll than left a comment.  Among these 18,000 people who took initiative to express themselves, how many more would have taken another simple step if one was offered?

The Qwidget was designed to capitalize on these missed opportunities.

Note: To all the bloggers signing up to test the Qwidget, I apologize for not being able to release it you sooner.  We are fixing a few stability/usability issues before opening up our doors.

(ed. note: This is part of an ongoing series of posts about issues in politics, entertainment, media, business, technology, etc. that do not necessarily have anything to do with the Qwidget.  The posts are meant to showcase how the Qwidget can be used with any type of blog content.)

Best-selling author and champion of alternative medicine, Deepak Chopra has made quite a bit of news in recent days.  He has appeared on Larry King, been accused of anti-Americanism by the Wall Street Journal, publicly feuded with Sean Hannity and appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show.  All of this because he made some seemingly uncontroversial statements about how America’s recent foreign policy has inspired some people around the world to resent it.

Deepak has also recently begun asking whoever will listen to take a vow of non-violence.  But this is not your grandfather’s peace treaty.  The vow, as he calls it, involves banishing violence not just from your actions but from your thoughts and your speech.