Good news for crashnauts out there still trying to score the coveted Xbox 360. Xbox live heavy hitter Major Nelson has Confirmed that stocks of the new console will be replenished weekly as we approach the holidays. So if your local Best Buy rep tries to tell you that they’re not getting any more consoles until January or March, don’t believe his heathen tongue!

I was taking a quick look back at the Crashpod archives today, and I noticed we’ve never put up a good write up on the Internet’s new darling: Digg.com. It’s a site that’s quickly moving up through the ranks of internet popularity, and for good reason: the content found on Digg’s front page is arguably the most consistently up to date and timely aggregate of technology news you can find on the net today.

Can you Digg it?
Digg.com allows all of its users to post links with short explanations to a master pool of content. At first thought, you might believe this would be a pointless endeavor, as the signal to noise ratio would likely make finding anything truly interesting or pertinent exceptionally difficult. Digg’s master stroke is the filter they apply to all of these content submissions: each story can be “dugg” by users of the site, and only after a predefined threshold is met are stories promoted to the front page.

Putting the fate of these news items in the hands of its readers allows Digg to move and react far more rapidly than sites that rely on an editorial staff to decide what is and is not worthy of prime time (think Slashdot). Of course there’s also an element of danger in this strategy: websites that put their fate in the hands of unknown parties from around the ‘net are naturally putting themselves at risk of accepting offensive and obscene content. Digg’s got this covered as well: just as any user can vote to promote a story, they can also report content as being bad links, spam, or as in digg’s words, “just lame”.

If you’re a dedicated tech newshound, you’ll find Digg an invaluable tool. Even if tech isn’t your thing, keep your eyes out for news about Digg: they just scored a nice bundle of venture capital, so they’re developing plans to branch out of tech news into other areas of interest. I love seeing the idea of social software really starting to come into it’s own: it feels like everyday the internet becomes easier to use, and thus a more integral part of everyday life.

If you dig animation, there is some great stuff going on over at Channel Frederator. The site was developed by the creators of some of the most fresh and exciting cartoons of the past few years (Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Laboratory, The PowerPuff Girls and more) to give a voice to all the animators and artists that don’t get the big TV and film deals.

The way it works is, anyone can submit an animated short for consideration.  If the Frederator editors like the piece they will include it in one of the weekly Channel Frederator episodes.  The cool thing is, audiences also get to help pick what type of works get aired.  Each episode is profiled on the Channel Frederator episode and viewers are allowed to rank the shorts on a scale of one to five.  This feedback is then used by the Frederator editors to guide them in picking content to air in future episodes.  Regsistering with the site is thankfully easy.  All that is required is picking a username and password, and submitting your email address.

Users can watch streaming episodes online, subscribe via iTunes, or browse the site and download individual epidsodes for viewing.  Most of the clips I’ve seen thus far have been really creative and very original.  It’s something of an unsettling contrast with the obvious Adult Swim rip-off of the between show bumpers.  Nevertheless, Frederator is a great way to get your cartoon fix while supporting aspiring animators at the same time.  I highly recommend everyone go check out Episode 2 if only for the first short War Photographer.  It has vikings, flying-v guitars, pyrotechnics and hot-licks galore.  How can you go wrong with so many choice elements?

The unstoppable Google has recently announced Google Local for your mobile phone!

Go check out their beta site to see if your phone is compatible with the software (looks like all you need is the right version of Java), download and you are good to go!  You can plan routes, get turn by turn directions, satellite imagery, even look up the location and phone number of the pizza place around the corner, and then call them right from the app.  The maps load very quickly given their detail and it is easy to scroll around, zoom and search.

This would be a very handy tool for those times when you are on vacation and in need of some quick chow, a pharmacy, anything you can think of really!  It basically gives you the power of Google’s search engine and Google Maps all on a mobile platform.