Merry Christmas from EP

We wish our community a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays-- here's a few Christmas groups to mark the day:

• I say Merry Christmas


• I think Christmas is a really sad time for a lot of people
  
• I hate Christmas


• I love Christmas
  

Brittany Murphy's Death

Tragic to see any young person lose their lives, but particularly poignant when it's a movie star that so many people are familiar with and would relate to. EP's discussions include:

Q&A:

Have you Heard About Brittany Murphey's Death and What Was the Cause?

Experience Group:
Can't Believe Brittany Murphy Died

RIP, Mrs. Murphy

Andre Agassi Revisited

It's been almost a month since Andre Agassi's confession came out that he used crystal meth during the earlier portions of his tennis career.

For those on the less wild side, check out the I Play Tennis group!

Our Military Wives and Girlfriends

Military families have always been a big part of the Experience Project family, and so we'll highlight a few of our hundreds of military wife and girlfriend support groups here:

• I am an Army Wife


• I am a Navy Wife


• I am a Marine Girlfriend or Marine Wife

Life can be hard and often lonely in these situations, but these fine folks make their country and us proud. Their resolve and strength, with a little bit of help from their EP friends, is so admirable, and we're thrilled to call them our friends on EP.

Tiger Woods: Thoughts on the Girls

Tiger Woods has been the buzz of the online world for the last couple weeks. Just uncovered a fun Q&A thread:

Tiger's Girls - What do you think their Thought Process was

Ping Sitemaps to Google, Yahoo and Bing

Recently we discovered that our sitemaps-- the list of pages on the site-- for Yahoo and Bing were not updating on their own. Google handles this task automatically, so we had blissfully assumed it was the same case with everyone else. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be. You should manually ping the other major search engines each time your sitemap changes.

To help save you the time, here are all the addresses you need to hit:

Google Sitemap Ping Address:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=[your sitemap url]

Yahoo! Sitemap Ping Address
http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=[your sitemap url]

Ask.com Sitemap Ping Address
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=[your sitemap url]

Microsoft Bing Sitemap Ping Address
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=[your sitemap url]

You can also include your sitemap (or sitemap of sitemaps) in your robots.txt file.
Just add the following directive to robots.txt:

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Hope this helps! Happy sitemap indexing! For more information, check out the sitemap protocol site.

How Cute is Obama's Dog? Is Bo "the Cutest Dog Ever?"

In a recent survey, respondents rated Obama's new dog, Bo, cuter than 95% of all dogs -- with most respondents considering Bo "extra cute."

America recently watched Bo's arrival at the White House closer than it has that of any world leader, men and women of all ages fawning over this Portuguese water dog's every move.

Upon hearing my colleague Deven proclaim "OMG I think I am going to faint...that is the cutest dog ever!" I took it upon myself to figure out how cute Obama's dog really is. Is Bo really "the cutest dog ever?"

As many of you know, here at Experience Project we have a large and vibrant community of pet lovers among the tens of thousands of passionate life experience groups members have formed. One of the things that pet lovers enjoy on the site is the EP Pet Project which, among other things, allows them to share pictures of their pets, adopt virtual pets, and play "Cute or Not" -- a fun game where they can rate how cute they think a pet is.

To help me answer whether Bo is "the cutest dog ever," I asked a friend to submit a photo of Bo as a "contestant" in EP's Cute or Not game.

Within a day, Bo's cuteness had been voted on by nearly 600 people, and we had come to an average cuteness rating of 4.4 out of 5. So, how does that stack up against all dogs in America?

Since the EP Pet Project has had over 2,000 different pets submitted, I was able to look up my answer. Based on his cuteness score, Bo was rated as being cuter than 95% of all dogs! That's pretty remarkable and certainly places Bo as one of the cutest dogs in America -- quite an honor, if being America's First Dog wasn't enough!

UPDATE: the "Cute Puppies" Page on Facebook and @PuppyOfTheDay on Twitter also ran an informal poll on how cute fans thought Bo was as part of their Puppy of the Day game. According to them, Bo is cuter than 85% of all puppies. Nevertheless, Bo is still being considered cuter than most!

Experience Project Finds Osama Bin Laden, Receives Strategic Investment from Central Intelligence Agency

April 1, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO: Experience Project Inc, the world’s largest living archive of life experiences, announced today that the company has found international terrorist Osama Bin Laden as a member of its anonymous online community.

Mr. Bin Laden’s identity was spotted through the company’s new location-sharing feature, where members can share the location of where a confession or experience took place. Mr. Bin Laden shared his location as Sar-e-Raqowl, Afghanistan – a cave dwelling in southern Afghanistan inhabited by 6 people and 2 mountain goats.

Mr. Bin Laden, or “SamaBabby” as he is known on the site, shared a confession about his secret love for Mochi Ball kebabs, a dessert previously forbidden by the Taliban. Mr. Bin Laden and his supporters continue to protest Mochi Ball kebabs as a tactic by the “imperialist demonic powers” to brainwash his supporters through the Mochi Ball Kebab’s soft and delicious flavors.

Mr. Bin Laden was an active member of the community, and a member of communities including “I Loved Someone that Didn’t Love Me,” “I Want to Lose Weight,” and “I Live in a Sexless Marriage.”

Immediately following the announcement, the Central Intelligence Agency announced a $200 million investment in Experience Project at an undisclosed valuation. The funds will be used to develop state-of-the-art location technology and algorithms to match the writing style of Experience Project stories to that of international criminals.