Web Critic

Thursday, September 05, 2002

BlogBack: Followup on Miscellaneous Random posts Just a follow up to different recent posts.... About this Blog I mentioned rearchitecting this blog (god I hate that as a verb) earlier and here's what it looks like.  I'll make these sub blogs which don't exist yet hightechmarketing101 inbox buddy lessgeekyscott (for at least my mom and perhaps people who want my writing that is understandable to non geeky folks) evectors blogging opensource php & fuzzyoffice searchcritic webcritic Frequency on the sub blogs will obviously be less but this Radio blog will remain my "SuperBlog" and contain everything.  Comments?  This will all happen around next weekend when i have the time.  A preview of 1 of the blogs is a http://www.hightechmarketing101.com/ with a small taste of the content and some problems with the CSS / broken links. All stories will remain here but be pointed to from the other sites Radio makes this all intricate to setup but not hard at all. PHP Stuff I've been coding too much PHP to write some more but work is ongoing on FuzzyOffice and other things.  Checking some of the domain names I've registered recently might be interesting for folks. www.oscommerce.com seems like an awesome open source replacement for the pain that is Miva Merchant.  I'm still getting it running for a new test site but someone I respect greatly has it up and running already (from like Friday).  And you have to love a product so good that it runs a cool online lingerie store. www.phpbb.com is outstanding !!! Marketing 101 John responded to my responses to his article.  Got that ? Rich Editing in Mozilla or "I Don't Wanna IE No More" Andy from www.surfmind.com is taking a swing at this.  If you are interested in it, swing by www.surfmind.com and let him know or IM / email me and I'll hook you up. Xopus is another approach to it. Adam seems interested enough to at least respond to my email about it.  A big name pushing for this would help a lot. Mozilla 1.1 is much better -- it runs well on my machine at least.  And Andy is a huge advocate for Mozilla as always (side note -- it's astonishing how just one enthusiast can change your mind on an Open Source project; project leads take note) Buffy Stuff I saw somewhere online that Faith is coming back for 5 end of season episodes At last 2 post 30 year old Buffy fans have admitted privately to me that they watch the show.  It's ok people -- Joss is an outstanding writer and the humor is wonderful.  I was wrong about Dawn breathing fire being new -- that's last season -- Thanks Deb ! Can you believe that there is an honest to god Buffy paper magazine? Copyright and RIAA WebRadio seems to be dying: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956730.html Napster is more dead than ever (big shocker there) Web Development www.rackspace.com remains outstanding ! (had to plug a great company) Windows Yet another Windows crash last night.  Would you believe I found over 1.3 gigabytes of temp files on just 1 drive. I loathe and despise Microsoft more than ever for their shoddy engineering practices I got the CDs for Redhat 7.3 recently so my desktop Linux workstation will be updated and going back into daily use in a week or two Another bad security flaw in Windows: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-956729.html Other Short Items Eszter is looking for help with cool PC gadgets -- got suggestions?   6:43:53 PM  Google It!  comment []

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Harping on Font Resizing Again .... I am going to harp on this point again.  And I'll even give an example of why you want to make your blog "size friendly" not a "size bitch".  Here's another reason why you want to do this: You don't know where and how I'm reading!!! After reading Russ's blog about how he's running again and dieting, I finally got off my lazy developer ass and picked up some new free weights (I'm not a big machine fan having had my first real exercise experience being with free weights and apparently being a creature of habit).  I now have a working but somewhat pathetic wi-fi system so I have wireless access up to my third floor where the exercise equipment is.  So, how do I lift weights, you ask?  With a laptop open and reading blogs while I do curls, etc.  What I do is this: Position the laptop near my free weights on a table dedicated to this. Set my fonts to the largest possible i.e. View => Text Size => Largest Go to my blog. Run down my blog roll link by link accessing blogs. If the blog text comes up large enough to read from a distance, I read it.  If not?  I just backup and try the next. So, while I somewhat applaud the position that Paolo takes that he's a designer and should be able to set his fonts however he chooses, I take the position that "I'm a reader and I'll read what I can see".  And, as someone who not only has read the ADA, but also has built ADA compliant websites for use by disabled folk, I think it's (pun intended) shortsighted to assume that because you like 10 point Times Roman, everyone will.  We're not talking about complex layouts here ... It's just words in a row going left to right, top to bottom.  Keep your sidebar and design elements however you want them -- all I really care about is the text flow (most sidebar links aren't all that followed at least based on my off the cuff, simple ass research). Coming tomorrow ... A list of "size friendly" blogs I read and "size bitch" blogs I skipped right over. 9:08:32 AM  Google It!  comment []

Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Hi.... You're Dumb.  Have a Nice Day The idiocy that is all too often found in automated systems that companies implement never fails to amaze me.  Afternic, a web site which lets you resell domain names, just sent me the email below.  Among other problems, here's what I see as huge issues: Didn't tell me which name Didn't tell me how to put it back Didn't give me a link to do anything -- even just go to their site. Sheeesh.  IMHO, they are dumb.  19 lashes with a wet noodle for this VP of Engineering. -----Original Message----- From: Afternic.com [mailto:escrow@afternic.com] Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2002 5:19 PM To: Scott Johnson Subject: Your Auctions Dear Scott, Because of inactivity, Afternic has de-listed 1 of your names for sale. There is no charge to place de-listed names back on sale at Afternic, and you may do so immediately. Afternic has insituted this program to ensure that all information on domain name sales is up-to-date and accurate. Thank you for your assistance in improving our data quality. Best Regards, Afternic 6:01:52 AM  Google It!  comment []

Monday, June 17, 2002

Kuro5hin is Broke: But Am I All that Surprised? One of my favorite sites, but not one I actually visit often, is broke and needs cash.  Rusty's story on this.  Well worth reading.  A great piece of work. Comments and Why I am Not Surprised NOTE: No matter how I write this you are about 95% likely to think either: Scott's just an idiot Scott's being pissy to a great site. Neither of these is accurate to any degree.  There is a fundamental disconnect between users of sites and designers of sites.  This disconnect turns me, as an advertiser, away at the door.  This story shows how far we differ from designers -- and I am both a *nix guy and a programmer and a regular reader of sites like this. ==> Read Story <== 2:02:13 PM  Google It!  comment []

Monday, June 10, 2002

Yo!  Crucial -- ASP = Active Server Pages! I've been buying memory from www.crucial.com as long as I can remember them existing (96??? 97???  Back to when they just had a phone number???  A long time.).  They usually have a great web site but today it failed for me on two counts.  One was understandable and one was just plain stupid.  Here were the problems: They didn't list my computer.  The great thing about Crucial is you don't have to know a DIMM from a SIMM.  You tell them your computer manufacturer, category and model and they look it up.  It's never been wrong for me -- and I've bought a lot of RAM.  Perhaps Compaq didn't make very many Compaq Deskpro EXMs or maybe Crucial didn't like their color.  Sigh.  They broke my expectations with a promise to me.  And they did it in a way that indicates that they are kind of clue free.  When I couldn't find my computer, I looked a bit more closely at the home page and saw this: I figured great!  It may be 5:17 am in the U.S. but this is a big company, they sell globally, I'm online via IM to Norway.  I'll just click.  And I got this: BUZZ!!!! Do not pass go.  Do not collect $200.  Do not get that sale.  Your customer just decided to go somewhere else.  Seriously, here's what went through my head. Don't they know how to program ASP scripts to check if the experts are available?  Before giving me that option?  And then change the text to something like this: "We're sorry, our experts are currently busy.  Would you like us to email you when an expert is available to answer your memory questions?" If a customer needs to use an online expert, it's probably about 90% certain that they do it after the normal site interaction method fails.  In this case you are already doing poorly with customer.  So don't you want to get it perfect?  Not just right but perfect.  I did what the rest of us do: www.google.com and started looking for another option.  Will I ever come back and try again?  Not sure.  I'll now have found another vendor since I need to buy RAM and, if they are good, will I try again?  It really depends on whether or not the new vendor works out.  And if you run a web site and you don't think that customer affiliations can be this tenuous now adays, I disagree.  Everything I know about consumer psychology tells me this is true.  When we have a successful vendor, we do tend to be loyal (me and PC Connection) -- until they fail us in a way that kills their usefulness to us.  For me, what made Crucial wonderful, was that I didn't need to know the difference between DIMMs and SIMMs.  When that failed today since they didn't even list my machine (come on ... Compaq is #1 or #2 every single year -- what's going on).  Sure I recently had a problem with PC Connection but that problem was just annoying but didn't kill their usefulness to me.  They're still a great company -- and, to me -- an even better one than I knew. Just as a closing note, I added a new category, Web Critic, so all these types of web site related commentary can be accessed as one.  http://scott.blogs.at/categories/webCritic/.  Want to subscribe to just these items then use this RSS url: http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/categories/webcritic/rss.xml 5:48:03 AM  Google It!  comment []