Internet

Nothing makes you feel "not so special" like having the majority of your daily comments -- that pass captchas mind you --  left by bottom feeding SEO consultants. Now before I explain why these consultants are bottom feeders, and why you could teach an 8 year old chimp to do their job* (which they charge upwards $75.00 by the hour!... adding insult to injury) let me tell you why I can't defend myself.

Like a tornado, online communities only form under certain conditions. If you're looking to build an online community, understand that they are very difficult to build artificially. They seem to only emerge from natural conditions. Indeed, you can help them emerge, but you can't *create* them in my experience.

Anyone who works a lot online will agree that this project is a godsend.:

The concept behind the StupidFilter Project originated during a conversation between Gabriel Ortiz and Paul Starr. StupidFilter was conceived out of necessity. Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point.

Writing those sort of headlines makes me feel like I need to to take a shower. Yet, sometimes the truth is dirty, and the truth is that Rupert Murdock "gets it".

Fox has annouced that that they will use their network of sites to offer downloads of their televised content. [see news story]

Now, admittedly, this pay-per-view model sucks the private parts of goats. Who wouldn't pay 1.99 for an episdoe of 24? Well, let's see....

Everyone.

However, these things evolve slowly, like the law. Sooner or later FOX will realize that there is far more money to be made from offering vidoes for free, and using whatever methods are possible to force consumers to watch 40 second ads for pringles, or the airforce. 

Jon Lebkowsky is right, this is an eye-popping thought: Ugly design = successful website. It’s a controversial claim; and but that’s about all it is.

You needn’t know a thing about design, or websites to see why this claim is complete humbug. Observe the logic:

Premise 1: Myspace, google, and craigslist are successful websites

Premise 2: Myspace, google, and craigslist are badly designed

AOL has always been an easy target for ridicule. So, when I found out today that AOL was trying to take on gmail with a new public beta mail service, I jumped at the opprotunity to test it out.

I was disappointed to find out that AOL did a number of things right with their new service; in many ways, I'd say its superior to gmail. Namely, AOL's webmail wins hands down in terms of:

• Overall user experience
• Overall design

However, even by the most charitable measures, AOL's webmail still loses to google. The first reason being:

A snippet worth framing: 

The attractively simple thesis of The Change Function is that most tech-nology ventures fail because tech-nologists manage them. Technologists think their business is the creation of cool technologies loaded with wonderful new features. They think this because they are engineers who thrill to the idea of change. By contrast, Coburn says, "technology is widely hated by its users," because ordinary folk loathe change. Therefore, any new artifact, no matter how much its various features might appeal to technologists, will always be rejected by its intended customers unless "the pain in moving to a new technology is lower than the pain of staying in the status quo."

This is crazy cool:

Okay, so time for a confession. I use AOL instant messenger for IM. Its not that I'm unaware that there are better clients; really its just that I'm lazy, and all of my contacts are on it.

As most AIM users have no doubt noticed, everytime you sign on, a stupid AIM browser opens up, and you get to take a quick look at the AIM homepage. This is a picture of the one I saw tonight:

Now this is worth sharing for a number of reasons.

I just noticed that someone came into this blog via the search, "dog lamp-post sex position."

Now -- I'm not exactly sure what aspect of this I find more disturbing. 1) The fact that someone, somewhere felt they needed knowledge to which this search might reveal or, 2) the mental picture that was evoked by the combination of words.