Google News Badges are Ridiculous!

I've stopped updating you all on my new discovery of Google News Badges because they have gotten out of hand. Really. Here's a current shot of my badges:

I know, right?! I used to put stock in these things as identifiers of my interests, but clearly things have gotten out of control. Google seems to just dole out random badges for articles that make no sense. I have a Britney Spears badge that I earned yesterday....yet I don't recall ever reading an article about her (or one mentioning her, for that matter). An Airlines badge? Huh? That's how I'd describe a lot of these badges: ridiculous.

Hopefully, this will be my last update about them. Maybe a year from now I'll have 100 of them for all sorts of random things I don't read about! :P

G-dub badge

I just read an article about a new prep school being proposed in my area and how UW-Madison should have been backing it all along...yada yada yada. Anyway, I read the article after taking the screen shot in the post below, and as I scrolled down the page, I noticed a new little gem there (see right). Interesting! Apparently it took 8 articles to earn! What?! 

I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I don't lean democratic...I'll add this one to my Tea Party and Mitt Romney badges.

I also wonder what the delay must be for posting newly-earned badges..

Badges and Badgers

Tip of the day: I just learned how to print screen on my Mac: Hold down Command, Shift, and 4. Drag the cursor to capture the desired area, and it will save to the clipboard. Pretty fancy not having to open Paint or anything :)

Let me get the Google Badge Updates out of the way so I can actually write about something else (shocking, I know!).

Here's what's up:

Check it out! An Ultimate badge! That's right. Reading 54 articles about Space will earn ya that one! I did earn a Tea Party badge at some point. not sure when that happened! You might also notice that I've got an Archaeology badge....it took 15 articles to earn it. That seems like quite a bit, considering my Biebs badge required a mere 8 articles read before that baby was on there (pardon the pun).

I should probably fess up about why I've been so lazy about updating the badges I've discovered: I stumbled across this link one day: http://goo.gl/4ipaA and it is an ongoing list of badges that is editable by anyone (think: wikipedia). I'm proud to say I've added a few on there myself :D but really, this guy is good! I would go there for more up-to-date info (but there aren't any pics, sorry!).

So...on to Badgers!

I got together with Katie E, Cait, Amy, Liz, and Ashley H. this weekend and it was SO wonderful! I won a free night's stay at the Marriott Residence Inn from a Relay for Life raffle and it had to be used by the end of the year, so there was no better time than now to try and get all the girls together. Steph, April, and Beth couldn't make it, but otherwise it would have been all of us Badgers! It was really, really, hard saying good-bye to everyone this morning as they went on their own way. I guess that up til now I hadn't given much thought to the fact that because we do all live all over the state and country, we don't get to see each other day-to-day and just catch up. Granted, I do see Steph the most and it's soooo great, but I forgot how much I really love the rest of our group and miss getting together with them as often as I do Steph. It was especially hard saying bye to Katie who lives in Spokane and is engaged. For the first time, I almost resented her getting married one day because we'd never have fun times like we did back in Old Ogg, 111, and 44#2. Those times just can't be beat and it's sad to think we'll never really have time together like that again. Just a part of growing up, I guess.

I should mention, too, that during that hotel stay my friend Lisa watched my little Popcorn and that was great too. I feel so very fortunate to have such wonderful people in my life, whether I see them regularly or otherwise. I guess it just means there are a lot of roadtrips in my future! :)

Sports Badges

I've got a friend, Stephen, who was kind enough to let me take a peak at his badges. Here are two he's got that I haven't seen before:

Happy Thanksgiving!

New Day, New Badges

It's been a while since I updated my Google News Badges, so I'd say it's time to show off my shiny new ones. Here's the whole collection:

You'll see that there a few new ones mixed in there, and that some have (surprisingly) moved up the ranks while others leave me wondering how they got there in the first place.

Let me break it down for ya:
Platinum Badge: Space (46 articles)
Gold Badge: Mobile Industry (42), Google (36), and Apple (36)
Silver: Android (28), Steve Jobs (16), Kristen Stewart (10)
Bronze: Politics (20), Music (14), iPhone (13), Nutrition (10), Netflix (9), Mitt Romney (8), Justin Bieber (8), Kindle (8), Kim Kardashian (7)

Whew! Just today I noticed a new Mitt Romney badge and a Nutrition badge. As of late I've been reading a lot of articles about the President and health, but I never imagined getting those two badges as a result. Weird....

So here is the full list of known badges:
Android
Apple
Barack Obama
Blackberry
Business
Chicago White Soxs
Dell
Democrats
Dominican Republic
Finance
Germany
Google
Groupon**
Harry Potter
Harry Reid
Hulu
India**
iPhone
Iran
Justin Bieber
Kim Kardashian
Kindle
Kristen Stewart
Lady Gaga*
Lebanon
Libya
Microsoft
Mitt Romney
Mobile Industry
Motorola
Music
NATO
Netflix
Nokia
Nutrition
Politics
Rand Paul
Republicans
Russia
Samsung
Skype**
Sports**
Somalia
Space
Steve Jobs
Stock Market
Sun
Syria
Tea Party
The Phillippines
Ukraine
US Elections
Warren Buffett
*See citation here
** See citation here

If you think these blog posts about the badges are egotistical, that's ok. I think it's fun to see which new ones come out and how they are earned and what divides badge levels from one another. I know, I need a better hobby. But between teaching, work, and school, this is all I have time for!

It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday

It's hard not to think of Rebecca Black on Fridays. Her song about Friday is horrrendous!

Anyway, I've landed myself three new Badges. They are:

Apparently I've read enough stories about Netflix (7 of them, actually), Kindle (8 of them), and Kristen Stewart (7 of them) to earn a Bronze Badge for each. Nice. That brings my personal Badge count to 14 very diverse Badges.

Next week Popcorn gets groomed for the first time. The big question: To cut his hair like Boo, or like a regular pom. Decisions, decisions!

Newest Badges

Someday I am going to look back and wonder what the heck I was thinking writing so much about these Badges, but it's sort of a fun obesession for now.

I am surprised to say that I've earned another three this week. THREE! What might they be, you ask? Only the finest Badges, of course. By the way, do you know how hard it is to not write "Badgers" out of habit?

They are:

Yep. You read it right. For reading 11 articles about Music, I earned a Badge. For reading 7 articles about Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber, I earned those Badges too. Not my proudest moment, but it is hilarious. Given the baby mama drama of Bieber as of late and the divorce drama with Kim, it was hard to not want to know the details!!

Wondering what my whole collection looks like now? Here it is, regardless!

More Badges..

So I've done some more sleuthing and it seems that there is also a Barack Obama Badge available (which is not all that surprising).

This poster tells us the Badges he's earned, which include one for Harry Reid, Democrats, Tea Party, Somalia, Rand Paul, and Germany. Interesting.
There is another blog, Macrotots, which has a posting about a bunch of badges earned while experimenting with reading only certain types of articles. From his work, we know there following badges exist:

Motorola, Kindle, Netflix, Dell, Hulu, Microsoft, Samsung, Republicans, Nokia, Finance, Harry Reid, and Blackberry are all badges earned that I've not yet seen before.

A Google image search for "My Google News Badges" turns up images including badges for: The Phillippines, Warren Buffett, Lebanon, Sun, Libya, Russia, Ukraine, Syria, NATO, Iran, and Mitt Romney (did I say that one already)?

So now we know of at least 38 badges. Pretty exciting! Earned any lately you'd like to share? I am only 462+ away from knowing what 500+ Google News Badges exist. I guess it's more fun trying to figure them out than waiting for a list to be published. Or maybe this will be the only place a cumulative list will published. Guess we'll have to wait to find out!

I did earn two more, however, since last I posted :) Here they are:

Gotta represent my new Politics and iPhone Badges! I was surprised to earn the Politics Badge after reading an article about Greece. I see the politics in the protests there, but where's my Greece Badge??

Google News Badges

Since the Google News Badges were unveiled in Summer 2011, I've found myself guilty of checking in to see which badges I've earned thus far, and wondering why aftering reading a litany of articles about a particular topic I've not yet receievd a badge for it. I keep up with the local news in my hometown and about 1 out of every 5 articles I read is about that little town. Clearly, there's no badge for that. We've read that there are 500+ badges, but no one seems to know what badges are out there to be had.

I thought it would be fun to start figuring them out, in hopes that oneday Google will publish an exhaustive list to satisfy my curiosity. Here's what I've got so far, in case you're curious:

So far I've managed to earn:

• Gold "Space" Badge for reading 32 articles
• Silver "Mobile Industry" Badge - 25 articles
• Silver "Apple" Badge - 22 articles
• Bronze "Google" Badge - 19 articles
• Bronze "Android" Badge - 15 articles
• Bronze "Steve Jobs" Badge - 14 articles

Since the passing of Steve Jobs, it was impossible not to graze a handful of articles about him (and incidentally, Apple). It seems apparent that multiple badges can be earned at once by way of reading articles about key topics (like the Steve Jobs/Apple example, just mentioned).

You can see in the examples (linked above) that there are badges for Politics, Business, Harry Potter, Chicago White Soxs, US Elections, Stock Market, Dominican Republic. On the forums I've seem complaints from Ron Paul fans having a Mitt Romney badge. I imagine that some articles do double-duty, earning you points toward multiple badges at once (as in the case of my Mobile Industry, Apple, and Android badges).

As interested in Space as I am, I am not all that interested in the Mobile Industry. I like reading about Apple, since I now own a Mac, but I still have a stone-age phone, leaving me all but interested in Android technology (though I do love technology, in general). Steve Jobs sort of comes along with the Apple territory, though I certainly read many articles about him after his death. The Google badge, well, it just showed up one day. I can't recall reading more than an article or two strictly about Google.

Any badges you'd like to share? Do you think your badges *really* say much about you?