Archive for the 'Web' CategoryPage 2 of 8

Pownce Beta Impressions Update: Uploads Work!

Published
by
Hung
on July 19, 2007
in Beta and Web
. 0 Comments

Hmm. It looks like they fixed the uploads. Oh, Leah Culver, when will you learn that hotswaps aren’t infallible…

So now Pownce is actually kinda neat. One issue I saw was that one of the MP3s I uploaded (umm, totally a song I wrote and performed myself…) played at like, .01x speed. Weird. Also, I had registered as a “friend” of some people, then removed the friendship (or fanship) and their messages still stayed on my page for a while. Oh well.

Other than that, the site sure is slick. I can see this being a cool way to share neat music with people. It comes with its own mp3 player (which has some bugs), but so does gmail. I like the instant gratification feeling though. Aw hell, it’s fun to use, even if it isn’t a serious replacement for that thing I like to call “electronic mail.”

Pownce: Beta Impressions

Published
by
Hung
on July 18, 2007
in Beta and Web
. 0 Comments

pownce.jpg

I got a Pownce invite today (Thanks Jessica!) and finally got a chance to try out the hot beta. Unfortunately I couldn’t actually get any of my uploads to work…

While the site is pretty nice looking and slick, if the functionality doesn’t work, it’s useless. I think it could actually be somewhat useful for sharing files with a select group of friends. Like “hey, I like this song, check it out” and bam!

Then again, you could do that by email, but email is SOOOOO 1999! Actually, email’s more like 1979, but you get the idea. If only Pownce worked… The worst part is that it’s a beta product, but there’s no way to report a bug besides using (wait for it…) email. How ironic, indeed.

How To Remove Annoying Gawker Internal Links

Published
by
Hung
on July 17, 2007
in Web
. 3 Comments

I like a lot of the blogs on the Gawker network. Kotaku, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and Valleywag are all blogs I read, with Valleywag being the one I must read everyday. One thing that infuriates me, however, is their use of “SEO” tricks to up their pageviews. Almost every article on the Gawker blogs will have links to “Posts tagged as” whatever, which links to a tag list.

I noticed on the actual sites that they change the color of internal link to blend in, and the external links look like links. That’s good, except that I read the blogs in Google Reader. So an article ends up looking like this:

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Holy Crap! 8 of the 12 links on that page are directed to a fucking tag list! First of all, this is incredibly annoying. If a person clicks on a link entitled “Facebook” then maybe clicking on it should take them to FACEBOOK!!!

Second, linking to internal “search results” for SEO purposes is frowned upon by Google. Of course, they’re not just doing this for the SEO, but also for crazy-insane inflated pageview stats.

I was gonna write a greasemonkey script to remove the annoying links, but before I could, I found an existing one. Unfortunately it doesn’t work in Google Reader.

A lot of other blogs are starting to do this, and it’s really starting to annoy me. I’m sure others are annoyed too. Maybe if enough people complain, these sites will ditch the annoying SEO tactics. Maybe we should report their evil ways to Google?

If I do end up giving up reading Valleywag, at least there’s a better (yet less often updated) successor, Uncov. Long live Uncov!

Gmail Loves Threadless!

Published
by
Hung
on July 16, 2007
in T-Shirts and Web
. 0 Comments

gmail-loves-threadless.gif

Whoa! I just read about this from Google Blogoscoped. Apparently Gmail is sponsoring a Threadless t-shirt contest. Threadless usually has cool entities like bands sponsor their contests. This is the first time I’ve heard of a web company, let alone Google do one! I should try and enter a submission. I think the geek points for winning the Gmail Loves Threadless might be somewhere in the infinite range…

GrandCentral Beta: Impressions

Published
by
Hung
on July 15, 2007
in Beta and Web
. 3 Comments

grand-central.gif

So I’ve been getting a lot of invites to random beta things recently. The latest one is GrandCentral, a sort of central hub for your phone number. It was just recently bought by Google, which is sorta neat. GrandCentral says:

GrandCentral doesn’t replace your phones; we just link them together and help them do more. How do we do that? We give people One Number…for Life - a number that’s not tied to a phone or a location - but tied to you.

With GrandCentral, you can be reached with a single number, answer a call at any phone you want, seamlessly switch phones in the middle of a call, and even know whether a call is important before you take it.

This idea is good in theory. My family’s had the same home phone number for like, 20+ years, and if we ever changed that number, a lot of people would instantly lose contact with us, since it’s the only thing point of contact they have. I signed up and chose a number in the 505 area code (they give you a bunch of choices and you pick one).

I change cell phone service a lot, which means I usually just change the number as well. It’s always a hassle to tell everyone when my phone number’s changed. With GrandCentral, I could just change the number that my primary number forwards to.

So far, the service works. I have it currently set up to ring on my cell phone, but you can also have it ring to other places as well. GrandCentral also supports things like spam filtering in case you get a telemarketer call.

I think the service is interesting, but I’m not sure I want to “change” my phone number with a service that’s still in beta. Who knows how long the company will be around? The fact that Google has acquired GrandCentral is a good sign, but I’m still a bit wary of giving people this number since it’d be a hassle to change it again.