Month: August 2009

 

An Open Letter to Oren Koules

Posted on Raw Charge, this piece responds to remarks made by Tampa Bay Lightning owner Oren Koules after he remarked about blogging on 620 WDAE radio.

August 18, 2009 , , , Tampa Bay Lightning, hockey, Raw Charge Comments Off on An Open Letter to Oren Koules

Next of the Bay: Creative Loafing’s Best of the Bay 2009

It’s a yearly rite. Much like back-to-school shopping, or perhaps August thunderstorms (or even more appropriate, blown-out-of-proportion optimism for local football teams – be they high school, collegiate or professional): the Best of the Bay awards.

The 2009 edition of said-awards is out there right now, with the opportunity to vote through August 31st, 2009. There’s a whole slew of subject matter to vote on, including best and worst local politicians, best restaurants, best local TV personalities, best sports figures and even more risque offerings.

Only catch is that you need to fill 20 of the items on your ballot. Ballots with less won’t be counted…. So look over everything – EVERYTHING – and vote.

August 10, 2009 , , , , Tampa Bay 2 Comments »

Overdue: Deleted my MySpace profile

Late 2004 I had a friend I met through Yahoo chat who only had images through this weird network type thing called MySpace… She had joined the network because of the indie music scene on there and socialized with both real and online friends through there.

This was before their was wider network access to MySpace and therefore I had to join in order to view any member’s profile information or photos. So in early 2005 I joined MySpace…

And hated it the entire time I was involved.

MySpace was like the AOL of social networks to me. Oh, it had a lot of bells and whistles you have seen copied and imitated by other networks… It introduced people to the web in general in a lot of ways (design wise – with customizable profiles where you could change every aspect of your profile with a bit of CSS know-how, which fathered an entire sub-market of web design sites). It was the forefather of other social network sites and catered to the mainstream while it’s “competitor” — Facebook — was aimed specifically at the college crowd and linking college students and alumni.

I connected with a few people on MySpace – old friends, new friends – but generally loathed the experience. MySpace was technologically obsolete, even if it’s vision was advanced. Social networking and it’s strength for marketing and message spread was something only just catching on.

The problem with MySpace was that it did not advance itself like most web properties do — no significant design changes, no huge additions or subtractions. Oh, there was one significant change that helped put it on the outs with me and others: More flash advertising. Videos, interactive applets and other intensive ads that belabored my browser and annoyed my web surfing experience. I don’t want to see a video for “Miss March” when I just want to see the message that was sent to em from an old friend! I just wanna’ log in and get it done.

Why did I stick around four years with MySpace? Friends who aren’t on Facebook (which I joined at the behest of hockey bloggers in 2006 or so, after the network started allowing the general public to join). Family as well. Just appeasing them because there was no way to stay connected to them without a Myspace profile.

But really, it’s over now.

I didn’t like the Web 1.0 design, I hated the crappy design jobs that people employed on personal profile pages, I hated (abhorred, loathed, etc) all the flash bullshit that was lumped onto people’s profiles (tons of youtube videos stacked on top of each other, tons of different photo album bells and whistles in the middle of the profile, etc) as well as the advertisements.

In the end, MySpace felt like a toy that had never had it’s packaging improved. A toy that’s never had it’s design flaws corrected besides the barest of changes. A toy that’s been improved-upon and leaped over by it’s competitors.

A toy that’s lost it’s novelty and wore out my patience early on. I endured. But no longer.

August 6, 2009 , , Social Media, interweb, Personal Comments Off on Overdue: Deleted my MySpace profile

Don’t tweet like a twit

I’ve found myself forced to use Twitter. I’m learning the ropes and all that… And while I’ve learned plenty of do’s and don’t, I have one peeve that people ought to learn regarding Retweets:

When someone Retweets (RT’s) another person’s message (rt @username ) — they can cut down the original message to get under the 140 character length. But if you’re going to add text to the Retweet, do it BEFORE the RT. Otherwise, you make it look like your comment was part of the original message someone posted.

One other thing: if you’re going to follow someone because they cover a certain subject matter, don’t badger that person when they go off-topic and talk about something else. No one, and I mean no one, is on topic 24/7/365.

August 4, 2009 , , , , , interweb Comments Off on Don’t tweet like a twit