Thanks, Santa for my Trivial Pursuit – Web 2.0 Edition!

Dear Santa,

Thank you for new Trivial Pursuit – Web 2.0 Edition you dropped off the other day. It’s perfect for a guy who spends his commute listening to the latest tech podcasts. I particularly like the fact that in this edition there are several “right” answers to every question.

The Portable Consultant was thrilled by Trivial Pursuit – Web 2.0 Edition’s insightful trivia, such as:

  • “What does RSS stand for?”

ans.: “lots of things

…and the ambiguous potential of questions like:

  • “Who is the Podfather?”

ans.: Depends whose podcast you listen to… Adam Curry (historical term), Ricky Gervais (The Pretender), or Leo Laporte (who favours Doug Kaye)

…and…

  • “What term is used to describe the distribution of audio content via RSS?”

ans.: “audio blog” (BC – Before Curry), “podcast”, “netcast” (if you’re a TWIT)

I love the educational value of such questions as:

  • “Name three patent holders who now effectively control the Internet?”

ans.: SCO (owns Linux), Apple (owns “podcasting” …except for Beatles golden hit shows), and Microsoft/Novell (owns Linux)

…and…

  • “When is open source not open source?”

ans.: When it’s Shared Source TM [Microsoft]”

Some questions certainly make you appreciate the value and spirit of our new online communities, such as:

  • “What did the founders of YouTube do for the video community that made them filthy rich (to the tune of 1.64B USD in Google stock)?”

ans.: They posted a short [1:36 min.] “thank you” video to the site.

Of course the publishers of the game get full marks for presentation, too! I love the O’Reilly animal pictures on the backs of the cards, the free 1000 page white paper on the definition of Web 2.0, and the one year free subscription to Wikipedia Online!

Thanks, Santa, for a great nerd’s eye review of 2006!
-pmh