Puceronie

Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Looking for Blogs

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

You'd think someone who has been blogging since 2003, joined a few forums during that time, made friends on the web, etc., would have a good list of blogs to read. I don't. So I want you to give me good blogs to read. After all, I keep reading from other people that they "cleaned [their] Google feed reader, going down from 2578295 feeds to 1784584". That's fun for you, but I can only sit there, jealous that you would have so many interesting things to read.

I don't want the average blog by a girl in her early 20s who talks about her life. I think I already know enough of those. No offense to those I do read, you are awesome, it's just that I'm looking for a different type of blog this time. I'd mostly love topical blogs. I'm interesting in video games (no one who's on a "kill Nintendo" war, please), movies, music, arts and computer/internet stuff (software, design, security, tips, etc.). I am not interested in fashion (unless it's alternative fashion) and celebrity gossip. Oh, blogs about politics or science can also be interesting, provided they're not written by religious nuts. Those would anger me.

Of course, anything funny or involving kittens is also welcome. I'm not only looking for deep, insightful things that will change the course of the universe.

Suggestions both in French and English are welcome.

Things That Just Don’t Work On The Internet

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

I just need a bit of ranting.

  • Multi-colored capchtas. It's already a pain in the butt trying to read an ordinary catpcha, with horizontal, same-sized letters, in shades of gray. When you make it multi-colored too (with a colored background and letters in different color), you're making it harder for the average person. Also, you're making it practically impossible to read for someone with an eye problem such as color blindness.
  • Close lettered captchas. I could list a million possible problems with captchas, but I'll go only with the previous one and this one. It's already hard to know if it's a 'zero' (0) or an O, if the letter is uppercase or lowercase, if it's a diagonal Z or a diagonal N, and you decide that the letters will be touching each others. Congratulations, now I just want to close the tab and move on to a different site.
  • SnapShot Page Previews. I can maybe perhaps do lots of efforts to try understanding the idea behind providing a preview of sites to your visitors. There are however problems with that. First, not every site in the world has a preview. Second, it is so damn slow. It's been forever since I last used a slow phone connection, but I still can't bear to wait for your stupid snapshots to load. When I put my mouse over a link, I'm expecting to see the hand cursor, with maybe a minor hover effect and a simple title, not have to wait for a preview to load. I just really don't see the point in the end. "It makes visitors trust your site". No, it doesn't. It just tells me what the site I'm about to visit might look like, because it once did. In no way does it tell me how very awesome is the owner of the site I'm currently visiting.
  • Keywords power! Some time ago, meta tags were implemented. You could fill them with keywords and a description relating to your site, in an attempt to boost your search engine rank. However, with time, people have learned that search engines, notably Google, barely rely on these at all because of how people loved to boost them with irrelevant keywords to get hit. So what do people do now? They place keywords all over the fucking place. "Dream personal site personal about me Julie Canadian girl female Asperger Syndrome Asperger's Asperger Autism autistic disease mental illness mental disease ocd obsessive compulsive disorder ocd oc disorder tutorials reviews movie reviews movies game reviews game gaming gamer gamers" would be the new text to display in my title bar. A good link to my site wouldn't show in the title something like "Dream, Julie's personal site", but rather "Dream, Julie personal site" with a million more keywords afterwards. And that just bug me. A lot. We're back to what I call cheap SEO ways. Why? Because they're not frank, in my opinion, and worse of all, they are not practical. Usability and practicability are two very fun things I wish people wouldn't forget about.

rev.iew.me

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

There are some things I'd like to blog about, but for the moment I will only plug rev.iew.me. Created by Jem and designed by Jacky, it's the new cool community where you can review other members' sites and get yours reviewed.

Don't forget to put me as your referral :P and to kick my butt so I actually start reviewing.

Art Thief Wins Contest

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Marie has created and posted on DeviantART over a year ago a cute little sushi design. The design has won a contest. But...oops! The contestant was not Marie.

In other words, someone stole Marie's artwork and used it to win the contest. To top it off, it is not just any average contest where you can win something like an avatar. It's a contest where the winner can get real money, a scholarship of a few thousands of dollars.

You can visit the site to warn them of this fraud, or add Marie's news on DeviantART to your favorites.