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What in the heaven's name just happened to the last.fm playlists?
On one hand, we now have the ability to create more than 1 playlist. On the other hand, now only the subscribers can actually play those playlists, and that is only if the playlist contains at least 45 tracks and 15 different artists!! As you can imagine I'm not happy about that at all! On top of that, what really ticked me off last night was that I noticed the new 200 track limit, which has already been applied on ALL playlists, even the ones that had been created before the updates. This of course means that large parts of some of my favorite neighborhood playlists have simply been annihilated. No backups, nothing. So now I have 5 playlists which I can do very close to zilch with, and I can no longer go swimming in the mighty playlists created by my friends.
And just to make my mood even darker, obviously the flash playlist player widget no longer works either... it did till 2 days ago... grrrrrrrrrr!!
So, anybody else sharing my mood?Labels: Grotesque, last.fm, Music, Web
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For the past few weeks I was constantly bumping into articles here and there, talking about the new last.fm beta and all it's cool and new features, and of course that it would be available to the website subscribers. Well, I've been using last.fm for the past 2 years and can call myself a pretty serious user, although somehow I never found it necessary to subscribe, and I never have. So I guess you can imagine my sheer surprise when yesterday morning I received an invitation to the beta, regardless of my status. No clue how this happens, but I'm glad I got the chance to have a look inside, cause there really are some very cool changes. =) So let me see, where to start...
That's my new profile, and yes I do have a tendency of sneaking into my friends channels and listening to what they're listening to. As you can see I was stalking amvee.=) Click for larger images.
I guess I better start with the part that is the most important to me, the user profiles. When I first logged into the beta, it took my eyes a couple of seconds to get used to the lack of some of the previous version's eye candy. There's a very plain red strip on the top of the page which I'm not the biggest fan of, but perhaps that's the only part that I'm not a fan of. The first thing that _really_ took my attention and put a smile on my lips, was the answer to my prayers, a perfectly working playlist player on the right column. YAY. YAAAAY. And guess what, my Loved Tracks are now actually good for something as they're playable through the playlist player. This means that I can get much better a view of what my friends really consider loved music and not just frequently played music, and vice versa. [Yes, I can actually see everybody's profile on the beta...] The charts are still there, only with more options to play around with. And now there's something called "Library" that contains information about your listening habits, every artist you ever listened to and the track counts. The Library is customizable, you can have it show whatever you'd like, and it looks great too.
The artist pages also look neat and pretty much the same as user pages. Generally the information is a lot better organized, and it's much easier to use features like tagging or making a recommendation. Both user and artist profiles have an "activity feed" lower in the page which again, is a pretty neat fature.
Not all the features are working as of yet. As you can see in the screenies, Videos, Charts and Events are yet to be added. But from what I've seen on my 1st day, I can say that last.fm did manage to make an even bigger fan of me than I already was. Way to go guys, and thanks for inviting me. =)Labels: Kool, Music, Selected Posts, Technology, Web, Weeee =D
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 I've been using RSS Bandit as my feed reader for a few years now and I'm a big fan of it. I even posted an article about there here [in 2005], and I like it now as much as I did back then, or even more. The cool thing is, apparently these folk never stopped working on the project and making improvements to the software, and now as a result, there's RSS Bandit Phoenix. This is a new version of RSS Bandit who's alpha installer is now available for download through the RSS Bandit Website. Phoenix has all the old Bandit goodies, as well as a whole bunch of kool and new features that make it even more of a joy to use. So whether you're already a Bandit user or you've never heard of it before, and if you're as much of a feed freak as I am, do check Phoenix out. =)Labels: Kool, Software, Web
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So today's supposedly the FF 3 download day, but up to this moment I haven't been able to get a hold of Mr. Firefox 3 due to apparent server overloads. I mean, come on, when you get _that_ many people to actually _pledge_ that they're going to download the same thing on the same day, why wouldn't you see to it that they actually _can_ do what you so badly want them to? 
What I would like to know right now, is whether any of you, dear readers of this blog, have actually been able to download the oh so popular FF 3. Let me know if you have! =)
Update: Late at night I was finally able to download FF3. What makes me very very happy is the fact that the problem with Silverlight is solved! Yes! Silverlight now works with FF3.
Labels: Software, Web
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To be quite honest, I've never liked delicious very much, instead I prefer the link directory in my own website. I don't use Flickr in any serious manner, never have, and I just post my photos in my own little private self built online photo gallery. I find Twitter quite useless, and I have an  official dislike for MySpace and similar services. I guess one of my major issues is that I don't like to sign up for 292384 different services, and have 292384 different profile pages, and 292384 accounts, to do 292384 different tasks for me [and often even repetitious tasks!]. I find that my friends and family, as well as all other people that I know and care about, tend to find it quite comfortable to just go to my website, read my blog, have a look at my new links, news, pictures and everything else as it's all in one place. I get the feeling that I'm not a fan of disconnected / decentralized / all over the place data, which is one major reason why I like the whole set of ideas behind DataPortability [hence the "I Support" logo].
Of course I have a Facebook account which I was pretty much forced into signing up for, given that some folks I know only keep in touch that way. But well, I only log into it every once in a blue moon. I have a passionate dislike for what they do [or don't... when it comes to things like Google Friend Connect] with your personal info [yeah... "those"].
In general there are a lot of things that I don't like about current social networking websites. The constant competition among users to add to their popularity scores by going around and randomly adding people they don't know, have no interest in ever getting to know and have no common interests with, bothers me. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy it very much when somebody adds me to their network because of... well... "something", anything other than being just another face in the list. I enjoy getting to know people who like to share something with me very much. But I'm sick and tired of constantly receiving add requests from people who don't even read my profile before pressing the "add" button. What royally boils my noodles though, are the people who send you rude messages if you don't accept their add request. Fancy that! There's also the spam, the chain messages, the conspiracies and cyber bullying that result in people committing suicide and tons of other annoyances. Interestingly enough, yesterday I came across this article that summarizes the best of what bothers me. So instead of writing it all down again, I just direct you to the article.
So, with all of the above reasons, the only social networking capable websites that I seriously use, are the very few very special ones that I find worth it. If you Google my nickname [Aasemoon] you'll see that I've given a try to almost everything that's out there, including some very recent social networking / bookmarking websites like Zigtag, Mento and Myrl, but out of all of that, here's what I actually use:
Shelfari - Although I have had my share of disappointments with it, as I receive too many really annoying spammy messages in there, and therefore I have cut out of all social networking capabilities of the website and I'm just using the shelf [and for that, it's the best].
last.fm - I love this one... just love it... absolutely nothing else like it for the purpose.
 And of course, the most recent addition is twine. This one has impressed the heavens out of me so far. =) I didn't just come across twine. I was Googling for something with the capabilities that twine has, and that's how I found out about it and eventually joined the beta. So far, I love it. I have to confess, my approach to twine has been a very self centred one. Ever since I joined the beta I've been mainly playing with different features trying to find out exactly what twine can be for me. I also have to mention that sometimes I have a way of using tools in ways that I find beneficial for me, even if how I use that tool isn't exactly the intended purpose of the tool [as long as I don't bother anyone else, that is!]. So that's exactly what I've been doing with twine, and here's the result: I'm now using twine as my ultimate social bookmarking tool, my 1 line blog, my image blog, my twitter, my interest profiling tool and a whole load of other things, and in time I'm sure I'll find more uses.
I have created a few twines related to my interests where I and other interested people post relevant links, pictures and all sort of data. That's very cool because I get a chance to have a look at what other people with similar interests are looking into, and I've ended up learning a lot that way. I've also created a public personal twine, where again I and others post all sorts of things... anything that any of the members of the twine might find cool. That's also where I post images, thoughts, notes.... it's very multi purpose. I also have a personal personal twine, that only I can see or post stuff to, and I mainly use it for testing twine related stuff or collecting articles to read later.
Another thing I like about twine is how alive it seems to be. I constantly see changes, improvements, new features and new ideas. I guess a large part of that has to do with the fact that the developers of twine are very open to suggestions from users. I know that there's a lot more that needs to be done before twine goes public, a lot that the users and developers want to have before they can call it ready. But even as it is right now... I'm really enjoying it, and honestly I'm a little surprised with a few articles I've read here and there on the web talking about people's disappointments with using twine. Hey, it's beta after all... come on! I'm only hoping that the day twine goes public, the spam protection capabilities will be fully "there". Other than that... I just want it to go public so that I can show off with my twines. =D ;)Labels: Aasemoon, Blogging, Selected Posts, Semantic Web, Technology, Thoughts, Twine, Web, Web Development, Website
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 As probably obvious by the title, I'm currently somewhat confused and you could even call it somewhat ticked off. Last night a Persian speaker friend of mine sent me a link to an article in a Persian weblog that he found amusing. Well honestly the article itself didn't take as much of my attention as the little banner on the corner of the page did. Yes, it's similar to the one I've posted here. I had a feeling that I had seen the same banner before on possibly another Persian weblog. I clicked on the banner and was directed to THIS website, where I got a bit of an explanation as to what's cooking, and I also found the link to THIS OTHER website, where I got the complete and full version story.
So, as far as my understanding is, this is what's going on. The 2nd website is the homepage for an Iranian government organization who's name translates to something in lines of "The Iranian Website Classification Organization". To make the long story short, this organization's soul purpose is to classify and register all the websites or weblogs owned by Iranians, so that [obviously] they can take their nasty acts of censorship and harassment of the Iranian internet users to it's next, simpler step. The organization's expectation is for every single Iranian domain owner to go ahead and hand them all information about their websites, weblogs and whatever other sort of online identity that they have, which in turn will make it a lot simpler for the Iranian government to either annihilate whatever online content they don't find to their liking, or make them inaccessible from Iran. How bloody bizarre is that? I wonder who's unholy idea this is, to take away the smallest peace of freedom of speech that may be left through the internet, using this new, enhanced and completely idiotic tactic? And I really do mean idiotic: what on earth makes them fancy that people will just go through with this? Hence the first website I mentioned, and the banner.... that's the big "NO" for the answer. Thank you very much!
But you know what bakes my noodles even more? Just out of pure curiosity I had a look around the organization's website and came across their website registration form. And guess what. It's applicable to Iranians everywhere, not just in Iran [you can select whatever country you're in]. Yeah. Bloody right. I wonder how far they think they're going to get with that one....Labels: Grotesque, Horrible, Iran, Selected Posts, Web
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 I guess if you know me or if you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that for the past few years I've been a huge fan of Opera, and it's pretty much the only browser I've been using. I did always have Firefox installed for the sake of seeing how my various web pages look in it, and every time there was a new version of Firefox, I did give it a try. But so far Opera had always been better. Why? Because of a lot of cool features that it has. The smallest little things that make my life easier. I like the way Opera handles downloads, I like the Opera speed dial feature, I like the fact that it's toolbars are customizable since I have a habit of making my toolbars as thin as possible [using as little rows as possible], I like the fact that it had lower memory usage than Firefox, and I like it's speed of loading pages. And these are just to mention a very few. So I guess it's now clear what I mean, when I say "I just switched my default browser to Firefox"! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Firefox finally sold me!
About a week ago I installed the new Firefox 3 Beta. It was just supposed to satisfy my curiosity, but that wasn't exactly what happened. For starters I opened up a bunch of tabs and had a look at my mem usage. Low. Lower than Opera!! Then I loaded a few pages and darn it, this thing's fast! It's now faster than Opera! And unlike Opera it doesn't simply re-display the entire already loaded info from the cash [which in case of Opera, usually means you have to refresh the page a few times in order to see the changes that you just made to your web page]. Then I had a look at the add-ons ... ah well. Speed Dial, only better: tabbed and completely customizable. The toolbars are also fully [and I mean FULLY] customizable, and quite neat, clean and thin. There's also this other add-on that can handle your downlaods and alike in a neat, auto-hidable sidebar. And again, this is only to name a few. It's also the case that Firefox passed the Acid 2 test with no problem, and had a pretty good score in the impossible Acid 3 test as well. And then of course there's the issues that Opera has with handling things like xml pages. If your xml doesn't have a defined style [for example if you're looking at somebody's pure xml APML or something similar], Opera will end up showing you nothing. But Firefox can show you the pure xml with no problem. And I could go on about this for a few more hours, but lets just say that Firefox seems to have finally done it. I'm now very much looking forward to the alpha. Lets see how that one will look like. =)Labels: Kool, Selected Posts, Software, Technology, Web
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
OpenID
 It was sometime near the end of 2005 when I first heard about the OpenID idea and concept, and I became and instant fan of it. For someone like me who uses an insane amount of websites and online services, the idea of not having to create a username and password for each one, and not having to fill in the profile each time, was such a pleasant notion. Not long after that I started testing various OpenID providers, including myOpenID, ClaimID and Verisign. So I registered my OpenID, but I didn't use it that much because of a number of reasons. The idea of having an OpenID is very cool, but even today, [about 3 years later], not that many website are OpenID enabled just yet. I mean, for this to really work, it's necessary that some of the major websites start supporting it, and so far they haven't. What's funny is that everybody is now offering to serve your OpenID, but they're not accepting it if you try to login to their service using an OpenID provided by someone else. If you have a blogger profile, your URL is now your OpenID. But you can't login to blogger using an OpenID from Verisign! Obviously everybody likes to advertise for themselves by providing the URL that the user is going to use everywhere, but they don't like to go through the pain of supporting OpenID login. [I have to mention here, for anybody who might not know this, that your OpenID is a unique URL to some info page about you]. The other problem is that, if you already have an account in a website that now supports OpenID, there usually is no way of tying your already existing user info to your new OpenID. Although, I also have to mention that recently I saw a website doing that: aboutus.org. I really have to send a "way to go" to those guys, although mine didn't work so far but at least they're trying. So, it's possible, it just takes some work.
On the plus side, there actually are a good number of websites that have started supporting OpenID [one of my favorites would be legaltorrents.com]. And day by day, more websites add OpenID login pages. That's good news. So recently, I felt there are more places on the web that I can use my OpenID, which is cool.
But then, there was another problem. I didn't like the fact that my ID, contains the provider's URL. I also didn't like it that it pointed to a profile page on the provider's website. I mean if it's supposed to be MY ultimate ID, it has to be MY URL, and pointing to my biggest online profile, which is my website. So I did some digging, and I found the solution to that too. I found an open source PHP application, called phpMyID, which works as your own personal provider. So you can have your own OpenID server, and then with a few steps you can use your own domain name as your OpenID. I set that up a couple of weeks ago, and so far I've had no problem using www.Aasemoon.com as my OpenID. I had a few people asking me how this whole thing works, so I've wrote a few paragraphs about OpenID in general, and setting up your own OpenID server and delegation, which you can view on the Programming & Web-Development page on my website.
So now, I only hope that at some point major online services will start supporting OpenID. Life will get a lot easier that way. =)Labels: Kool, OpenID, Programming, Selected Posts, Technology, Web, Web Development, Website
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Below is the "Cuss-O-Meter" result for my weblog. =) Apparently I'm not doing that much cussin' around after all. I imagined, considering all that's been going on recently with BlueHost and Rogers and all those other monster companies that I hate with passion, my cussin' level would be somewhat higher than this. Ah well. I guess I should work on it!
Labels: Funny, Interesting, Web
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Well, yes. And I have to mention that this isn't just about BlueHost, it concerns a lot of other currently popular hosting services, that offer huge web space for not such a big price. Well, let me tell you about my experience with BlueHost in the last 48 hours. To start with, let me give you a part of the official BlueHost terms of use, that you can find on their website. I have to mention that the TOS page is basically nowhere to be found, unless you search for it in the help center. Yeah, very informative. If you want to see the whole page, it's here. But here's the section of interest to me:
"No material that provides sells or offers to sell the following: controlled substances, illegal drugs and drug contraband, weapons, pirated materials, instructions on making, assembling or obtaining illegal goods or weapons to attack others. Information used to break, copyright, violate the trademark of or to destroy others property or information. Information used to illegally harm any people or animals. We do not allow pornography, nudity, sexual products, programs or services. Escort services are not allowed or other content deemed adult related."
This is the only thing that they are saying about "copy righted material". That you don't have the right to sell them. I add to it myself: don't share them either, basically don't violate the bloody copyright laws. But hey, what part of any copyright law, OR the bloody terms of service, says that you are not allowed to back up your legally collected copyrighted material on your web space? What if you're using the God forsaken 1500 Gigs that "supposedly" they should give you, to back up parts of your hard drive? And what if that backup is 1 - password protected, 2 - outside of your public web folder, or to say it in simple terms, what if nobody but you has access to that back up? Exactly what are you violating that way? Well, let me tell you what gets violated that way: BlueHost's shameful marketing scam. They tell you that you have 1500 Gigs, but they know that most people use only something about 20 Megs [I'm also quoting parts of this from Genox, as I was speaking to him about it yesterday]. They advertise 1500 Gigs to get your attention, but they never have the kind of resources to allow people to use 1500 Gigs each. Which means that if you, as one of all these supposedly clueless customers, actually want to use some of the space, they will freak out and start pushing you with limitations that they never ever mentioned anything about, in their terms of service. You just wake up one morning, and figure out that your website has been suspended, without any sort of warning, and not even your email addresses work. I mean how un-considerate and un-professional is that? Then you call them, and they tell you that you are "violating" their terms of service, and you are "violating" copyright laws, while you were doing no such thing. They tell you that unless you remove everything you have in your personal folders, they will not give you access to anything. It doesn't matter how many times you try to tell them that this is wrong, they simply won't listen. They use the fact that you need your website back online, and push you to do exactly what they say: to never use what you have paid for. Yes, this is no kidding, this just happened to me. And then I emailed their "abuse" department, asking for an explanation about this, which so far they haven't responded to, and something tells me that they won't.
But hey wait, this is not all, it gets even better. You know what they primarily made me remove from the server? PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS, AND LEGALLY FREE MUSIC! Yes, no kidding, how stupid is that? I had, in my public folders, eBooks that are legally free and fine to share and distribute, and music that happens to be made by my boyfriend [Genox] who releases his music for free, and somehow I'm pretty sure that he doesn't mind me sharing his music! Yes, the bloody BlueHost support didn't listen to me when I tried to tell them that this is free material!! They kept telling me that until I remove it, they won't re-activate my services. What does that tell me? That this is not at all about TOS or Copyright or law or anything like that, this is about the fact that they're lying about the 1500 Gigs, and they're just counting on it that with the kind of limitations they apply, you can never use the damn thing. I mean exactly how many full text websites can you have to fill up 1500 Gigs? Is everybody going to start their own eBay or something?
Now as I mentioned, this is not just about BlueHost. It goes for bunch of hosting services out there, but I would say BlueHost is the worst because:
1 - They don't mention anything in their TOS about their backwards policies,
2 - Their live chat support STILL tells you that it's ok to have copyrighted material as long as you don't share them [I tried this with a fake name yesterday!],
3 - Other similar hosting services won't get b****y with you if you're using their space with legally free material, and they understand the concept of "public domain books". Or at lest that's what their phone support tells me,
4 - The BlueHost support "lady" got quite offensive with me yesterday and hung up the phone on me, when she basically couldn't say anything in response to my logical argument.
So, ladies and gentlemen, this is _THE_ one most ugly behavior I have ever experienced from a company offering a service. In one act, BlueHost has managed to surpass even Rogers and Network Solutions. Good job, really!
So here's what's going to happen now. I already have full back up of my websites and databases and everything, and I'm fully prepared to move to another host if they bother me again. Actually given the current horrible downtimes of BlueHost, that would not be too bad anyway. AND, I have just put back my legally free material online, and I have absolutely no intention of removing them. And I have every intention of filling up the web space I'm paying for, with completely un-copyrighted material that can be very useful to my website viewers. Lets see what happens.
Labels: Grotesque, Horrible, Selected Posts, Web, Web Development, Website, Weird
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 Yes yes, I did receive an invitation from the Twine cast and crew. =) Honestly I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and I'm happy to say that I haven't been disappointed with what I have seen so far. The truth is, I also do have the same feeling as Genox about the number of current social networking websites, as well as their quality. [Which is: not a very good feeling!] But now after having used Twine for a day and half, I can say that it's something new. Yes, finally something new! I still have to use it quite a bit more before I can talk more about what it does and how it's like, but from what I've seen so far, to put it simple, it really is a way of sharing knowledge and interests! It's like Wikipedia + del.icio.us + Digg + a public weblog, and it has social networking tools and abilities too. I'm currently very much curious about the "behind the scenes" of it, and I guess I have some digging to do. ;) Oh yes, I also have to mention that although you get a warning when you try to log-in using Opera, saying that the browser is not supported, but actually everything works just fine on Opera, including the bookmarklet.
Also: The online version of Zine #13 is out! Yes, it is, finally! Click here to read.Labels: Demoscene, Semantic Web, Twine, Web, Web Development
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Has any of you folk, reading is blog, heard about Twine yet? I guess I could start with giving you some background as to what this is about. You know how I have this habit of digging around the web for..well.. for everything? Including useful tools to add to my website for organizing this and that, and the latest big bangs of the web world? Well last night I was looking at my own blogger profile and the ton of interest links that don't exactly do much.. and then I thought to myself, that maybe just like my little link organizer, I should fix a little something of my own that would give me the ability to organize my interests in a somehow more useful way, instead of just having a repeated bunch of words in every profile that I have on every website, including my own. But then... organize the interests to do exactly what with it? For example on my blogger profile, if you click on each listed interest, you get a list of other people with that interest. That's kinda cool, but not so much since a good many people using blogger never really create a profile. And half of what you do get is actually pretty outdated anyways. Not much of a good way of figuring out exactly who may be able to help me out with my Pliant problems [the programming language that I like and somehow nobody else does]. And I have to add this, the "interest search" feature in most of the networking websites isn't exactly much better either. So, I figured I needed some ideas, and the googling started. My first query was "organize your interests online", and the first result that popped up was this article on techcrunch.com talking about something called "Twine". Following the link to the Twine website and having a look around, I figured that this, is probably the 10000 times more advanced version of what I was looking for. The ultimate way of organizing what you're into, and finding out that you're not quite the only person with that certain weird interest that you think nobody else in the entire universe has. So, marvelous all of that, lets give it a try! But hey, not so fast apparently. Just when I wanted to sign up, I saw that tiny little banner saying that this a beta and invite only. Meh. Now my interest is boiling and I can't get inside this thing. Ah well, I thought I should probably ask my friends! I got into every other invitation only beta by asking friends! But no luck, nobody has even heard of this. Ok then, lets ask google again. Maybe I can find something. And yes, I should probably post an article about it, maybe someone gets back to me. So I was halfway writing this post when I found this weblog: Minding the Planet. The latest post on that blog says that if I write an article about Twine, and send the author of that blog the link to it, and if it passes all tests, I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiight get an invitation. Of course it's a pretty big "might" since from what I read, there's a good 30,000 people waiting out there for an invitation. But well, I already wrote this, I may as well send it in and see what happens, right? =)Labels: Interesting, Kool, Semantic Web, Technology, Twine, Web
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Sunday, September 30, 2007
ShoutNox!
Today I finally found the time to get rid of the old messy ShoutBox, that had became full of junk thanks to the spam bots, and due to it's old PHP syntax couldn't work out with Fast CGI [which my beloved host recently offers]. As you may have already noticed, now I have a ShoutNox instead. Neat and clean and spam proof, thanks to it's creator the great Genox. =D Try it out if you like!
On another happy note, today's edition of Garfield is definitely one of the cutest ones I've seen so far. =) Here it is:
Labels: Cute, Funny, Genox, Web, Web Development, Website
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OMG Google finally took over Youtube! :D Hehe... check out the news!
Also, look what I just dugg up! The article just amazes me, check it out! :)
"It's a bird. It's a plane. Or it might turn out to be a little like both. Researchers are aiming to find ways to enable aircraft to change shape during flight to improve performance or efficiency. The University of Dayton project is funded by a $580,000 defense contract to further the development of "morphing" aircraft..."
read more | digg storyLabels: Electronics, Engineering, Interesting, Mechanics, Technology, Web
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Nice. I've been waiting for this almost forever. Hopefully this will solve a whole bunch of JavaScript + FireFox problems.
"JavaScript 2.0, aka ECMAScript 4 will be coming in a future version of Firefox, and with it will come Python-like generators and iterators, among other things. The good news is that Adobe and Microsoft are on the spec alongside Brendan from Mozilla, so there is hope for the language to improve in all browsers in a standard way."
read more | digg storyLabels: Coding, Programming, Web, Web Development
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A couple of days ago a friend of mine told me something about Google banning the BMW website. Then I read the same thing in an email, and then I saw an article on digg.com about it. It seems that the public opinion on the matter is quite diverse. Some are enjoying this and some...well....not so much! But me, well I'm a bit confused. I mean I don't quite get the argument that's going around! First of all, not BMW, but BMW.de has been banned. Well they tried to use doorway pages and they got caught, isn't that so simple? I mean I don't understand why some people are getting ticked off with Google for stopping cheaters!! If u owned Google and someone tired to take advantage of it in some unethical manner, wouldn't u try to stop them?? And hey, what's this got to do with being big and powerful? Some people seem to think that Google is trying to show off it's power by banning BMW.de, and that Google is starting to show the "MS symptoms"; well this is like saying that spammers should be allowed to take over the web and anyone who tires to stop them is trying to show off their power! Come on, does that make sense to u?
I honestly don't know where Google is going with the current speed, but I know one thing for sure, stopping doorway users is in no way a sign of becoming the new big bad.Labels: Interesting, Technology, Web
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Tuesday, January 31, 2006
IEEE website
The IEEE website has a new design. I don't know how long it's been there, less than a week probably, but I noticed it last night. The significance of this? Well....just that I really "disliked" the old one. It was quite disorganized, the design of each part of the website sang a different song and certain parts of it were quite ugly! Altogether I thought that for an organization of such size they could probably do better, and since this thought kept coming to my mind every time I visited that site, it was nice to see they actually did something about it. The new design is nice and well organized, so....good job to whoever took care of it!
Now was that "significance" enough? Or is it that there's about 15 minutes left to my next class and I'm just incredibly bored?? And yes, I'm posting this from ENG406, on the 4th floor of Ryerson Engineering Building. :PLabels: Electronics, Engineering, Interesting, Web, Website
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Well...I already know where I stand with this! :P I mean...if I wake up to get a glass of water in the middle of the night, I check my emails too on my way to bed...Anyway, check it out:
"It seems that the Japanese always have some newfangled idea that it appropriately spun to sell product. For only 2980 Yen (this mouse that'll nag you about addicted to the Internet you are. Alternatively, your boss can use this mouse to record how active you are at work on your computer."
read more | digg storyLabels: BlaBla, Interesting, Web
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