Routine Order

Cupid had been kind to me, but the kindness was conditional. My “date” has left me high and dry after the first two dates, leaving me at the mercy of online dating services. I picked a couple based on their online dating reviews and much hilarity ensued Read on for details…

I had written about cheap date ideas in this connection before. That date went well, we went to a mall and window shopped, had ice cream, saw a movie and it actually turned out to be not so cheap, but what the heck, it was fun, nevertheless.

So its been two weeks since I went out with someone, in spite of giving online dating services a shot. You won’t believe the kind of stuff that happens online. I thought I had a date, and ended up with what can mildly be described as an “Escort” service - if you see what I am talking about. My first mistake was that I let on too much information about myself. Including my phone number. Big mistake. I also let the online wooing drag on too long. She was nice and polite and we were chatting and stuff. It was when it came to setting up a face-to-face meeting that she was kind of reserved. Then she told me we could meet at her place. You NEVER do that - you always want to meet someone in a public place. These are just a few of the tips for online dating that I found handy. Then she called me - well, only thing is, it was she who called me, but someone who knew her - promising to set up that first meeting “at my convenience” at my place. I ran, like hell. I got a couple more calls from the same number but I knew better than to pick them up, of course.

I will save myself the trouble of writing about the disadvantages of online dating since someone else already has. The first one - trading off honesty for attractiveness is the one you really have to account for. I try not to embellish my profile with half-truths and lies, but it is a difficult thing to do - everyone else seems to be the coolest person you ever would meet! Anyways, “True” and “Engage”, both of which are free signups from the reviews site seem promising. I got a couple of responses, but you know how it is - once bitten, twice shy. I just have to take it easy, and be on guard.

I unsubscribed from Gizmodo and Engadget today. While I don’t expect this to change the internet, I wish it did.

Let me try and explain why I unsubscribed in the hope that you see my point, and you too unsubscribe:

1. They are not blogs any more

   They are more like dedicated newspapers that cover the latest shiny “bling” on the street.

2. They suffer from article diarrhea

   The number of posts they put out is ridiculous. Part of what I trust the people who write the blogs I read is to use their judgement to reduce the amount of data I have to sift through. Human filters, that is what blog authors are, or should be. A good blog will only have good stuff - common sense, really.

3. The blogs are incredibly sexist

   Some, if not most of the posts on either blog are offensively sexist - and I not even female. How do you justify the use of words like “broad”, “chick”, etc, and the gross sexual language that is seen from time to time.

In short, I used to read the blogs, but now, I find that I can use less than 5% of the posts I see on these blogs. Somewhere in the past few months, they went from being interesting to plain irritating - writing about all kinds of junk in impolite, unprofessional language. Maybe that is what keeps most of their readers happy, but sadly, I don’t belong to that section of the population that likes it. I gain very little useful information, news, tips or insight.

And I am not alone, this post from kottke.org reports on a former editor of gizmodo who winds up a rant about gizmodo with “..because you wanted a new chromed robot turd to put in your pocket.” That’s precisely the kind of language I have come to expect from the “editors” of these blogs(more evidence that these are not blogs but tech-pornographic newsletters).

So off you go engadget and gizmodo - find some other feed reader to infest.

The Economist list of the top books of the year 2006 is interesting in itself, but what really got my gut was the following description of Richard Dawkins‘ latest book, “The God Delusion,” — as a wavering agnostic myself, maybe I should grab the book, and give it a half-chance of swaying me either way. Maybe it will just end up as another book on my Amazon wishlist, that stays there forever. Lucky are those that get gifts.

The God Delusion
By Richard Dawkins. Houghton Mifflin; 416 pages; $27. Bantam; £20

Atheists will love Richard Dawkins’s incisive logic and rapier wit and theists will find few better tests of the robustness of their faith. Even agnostics, who claim to have no opinion on God, may be persuaded that their position is untenable waffle.

BookSwim promises an online book rental service that works like Netflix does. I am wondering if it will get off the ground, as much as whether it will be successful.

1. Books have a much lesser audience these days
2. There are a lot more books than Movies released every year
3. Readers have pretty specific tastes, especially when it comes to non-fiction — where a person might want to read books on something that might sound obscure to me
4. Books might just cost more than DVDs in some case - think hundreds of dollars
5. Books have a limited re-usable life after which they get dog-eared, torn, ripped etc
6. Unethical customers might tear out a page - making the book un-reusable
7. Libraries are still alive and kicking
8. It takes 3 hours to watch a movie, around 3 days to read a book - so subscribers get less “value” per dollar with books, for the same subscription amount - how much cheaper will bookswim be, and how will hey manage it?

Considering all these factors it is difficult to see how they will make any profit, given the no-late-fees, free-postage deal they are offering. The site is set to launch this first quarter of 2007, but it looks like they are still looking for financers. There is a brochure touching upon why bookswim is an appealing idea, but it is superficial in some respects.

Thanks to the distant librarian who brought this in my field of view. The site he links to has some commetary too.

I’ll have to wait and see what rates and benefits they offer before signing up - owning a good book is still pretty high on my list of priorities, so renting a book does not seem too attractive - if I like the book, I’ll probably end up buying it, so it would be neat if bookswim offered the possibility of renting-to-own, for a small additional price.

The Consumerist asks for tips on organizing their site better. I stopped by from my feedreader to leave a comment, and guess what, you need to login to comment! (And finding how to create a login is not intuitive).

That is unacceptable to me, and I bet to a lot of people. We all know that comment spam is a problem. Combating it by making it more difficult for folks to leave comments is a lame approach, one which would be justified only if that were the only way to prevent comment spam. Fortunately, that is not the case now. Use Akismet — use a nuclear weapon to toast the spamming vermin! The consumerist, more than any other blog should know that collective power equals nuclear weaponry! Seriously, what you lose when you turn down one valid commenter is worth a lot more that what you gain by using Akismet for free. No brainer.

Now for answering the question they ask:

1. Add a search form
2. Use the Sidebar for displaying a list of tags, or categories, or something that enables better navigation.
3. Cut down on the number of front page posts so that people actually see the fat footer, or add a link on the top to the fat footer.
4. Use some plugin like the Ultimate Tag Warrior to make tagging easy - and if possible enable us to add tags.
5. Whatever you do, add a page in the “About” links that details how best to find the info that I am looking for, in simple terms.

The current archives are 100% useless. Who would want to read old posts, purely by their date? Even if I do remember that the consumerist wrote about some company in the past, what are the chances I remember the date that appeared on? So what would I do to find the post? Search on google, and then there is the possibility that I wander away to some other site that seems like a better answer!

Think as someone who lands there for the first time would -
she reads a post, and is impressed. Next, she wants to find out what you have to say about Foo Bar corporation. She looks up an down, looks in the archives, can’t find a way to search, and flails about for a while. Then she throws up her hands and goes away.

Or, she arrives at the site, likes what she sees and wants to read more about something. Thing is, there is no way she can continue reading except down the page - with tags, or categories, or lists of relevant related posts, she’ll probably stay a while, and who knows, maybe click an ad or two.

The sidebar is currently dedicated to ads! Agreed, ads float your boat, and are probably a major reason why you blog, but they should be secondary to my interests. Why? Because I am the consumer - the dude you put your weight behind (and who is the weight behind you!)

I guess the tool used dictates the ease with which the information can be organized, so use something like WordPress or something that is fully featured and that you are good at modifying.
Good Luck!

LoudLaunch is a budding site, much like Pay Per Post or Review Me that rewards bloggers for blogging reviews about their sponsors. So far, so good.

So what do I think about it? Please note that my opinion does not count, in any way, and that I am not getting paid or anything like that.

I think it won’t succeed. The first reason is that they don’t clearly mention how the bloggers will get paid. They say:

If your blog and interests are aligned with an advertiser’s campaign then you can do your own research and write about them in exchange for pay—not in exchange for a pre-determined outcome but for a fair assessment.

So you expect good bloggers to sign up on uncertain terms? What the heck is “fair assessment” is that based on click-throughs or pageviews or conversions, or just the fact that the review has been posted, and has stayed up for a week/month? You need to be crystal clear if you want someone to put their reputation and resdership behind your business!!

Things like stupid answers in the FAQ don’t help either. Here’s one:

Q. How do I get paid?
A. No, we only use Paypal.

Huh?

I love doing reviews, for free.

Firefox updated itself earlier today.

As you can see the message that appears is perfectly useless. We all have known for ages that Firefox has tabbed browsing, and that it is extensible. In fact, that is the reason I started using Firefox. Remember, this is the message shown after an update, so the person who sees the message has been using Firefox for a while. I can understand if the message appears immediately after Firefox is installed and run for the first time, but after updating?

It would be more helpful if the message stated:

• The version number of the version I updated to
• New features in the updated version
• Why there was an updated, what bugs, if any, needed to be fixed, requiring an update
• In simple English, why the update was required, if there are any other reasons