I have pretty good eyesight, and that font is just too damn small... and to top it off, they have the font in absolute sizes so you can't change it. Just like Apple... *starts Opera so he can read the article*
Well, what I'm saying is, based on the email I got from them, they can't help it. According to them, if they don't use those ads they go under, because the people buying advertising space believe that those are the most effective ads, as opposed to the most annoying, which they actually are.
I won't post the email, or the reply here, but essentially I complained about their flash ads that obscure the page I'm trying to read, and the HTTP-Refresh ads that completely break the back button. I told them that these ads frustrated and disgusted me, and that I wouldn't buy products from these ads no matter what they were selling, and that I thought Salon would benefit from a different style of advertisement.
The response I got was wonderfully pleasant, and explained how Salon was going in the hole, financially, and the only way they can make money is to take whatever the advertising companies tell them to put up, and these annoying (and in my opinion, ineffective) ads are the ones they're paying big bucks for now. I sent a reply thanking him for his prompt and curteous response, and told him I hoped the advertisers wised up - these things are hurting both the companies advertised for, and Salon. So that's my point. It's the advertising agencies, not the sites hosting the ads, that need a clue-stick. They need to realize that annoying the user is not going to help, and it's much better to use the power of the internet to deliver subtle ads for things people really want (like Google's AdWords - you always get something related to what you're searching for). That's all.
That has to be one of the most confusing, unhelpful web pages I've ever seen. It's too many small, unconnected blurbs of different color all splashed on the page at once, without any logic as to what box is related to what other box. I noticed the links at the top, but at that point I was to disgusted to keep browsing.
Um, like the ADC (Apple Display Connector) which simply packs together a USB cable, power cable, and DVI cable into one bundle, but requires special graphics cards and more importantly, a $150 adapter to separate them out for use on non-Apple computers? They're not even compatible with old Macs (and by "old" I mean the G4 Cube).
First, we have the XBox, which runs off the Win2K kernel (can hardly be called Windows, but it started out as Windows), and the Dreamcast, which ran Windows CS, and despite WinCE being a terrible OS, I've never seen a Dreamcast crash.
You mean an error message in the XDK (XBox Development Kit)? So? It's the dev kit. It's there so they can get bugs out. While I've seen XBox dev kits crash on development builds of games, I've never seen a consumer XBox crash on a consumer gamer. I've crashed a GameCube twice with Metroid Prime, however.
I could tell what some of the letters were by context within a word. Nice try. In specific, this guy wrote what looked to me like a v (or something) but the computer correctly recognized it as a g. Weird.
Wait, why is this even funny? I mean, it's non-text doodles, then you're telling the handwriting recognition engine to convert them to text. It's not even "ha, ha, look at the silly mistakes the computer made". It's exactly what you'd expect any handwriting recognition algorithm to do when given that image. So where's the humor?
Seriously, though, they had a demo of this thing at my school, and it was really impressive. They turned on the debug mode for us where the handwriting engine would show in realtime what it thought the words were, and which words were parts of which sentences, etc. I couldn't even read this guy's handwriting, and the Tablet was humming right along, perfectly matching what he was writing, even as he wrote at an angle or on a curve! My Palm can't do that...
The best way for bands to handle promotion and distribution, in my opinion, is to do it themselves. Sell CDs on their website, and use word of mouth to get their name out. This has happened with a lot of local bands here in Pittsburgh, like the excellent Miroslav.
Once you find a local band you like, check out their website to see who else THEY like in the local music scene (and who their reviewers suggest). Almost like CDNow's "If you like band X then you might like...." thing.
Once our album is out, I'm planning on marketing my band, The Girls, in a similar way - get linked from local bands' sites, get mentioned as another band that Pitchfork Media hates, and so on. I'm also planning to give away all our tracks, and then allow people to "tip" us (as well as buying CDs, but that's sort of an experiment... while I'd really like that to be a viable business model for entertainment, I don't know if it will actually work...
Hey, that gets me thinking (and I'm sorry for rambling), but what do people think is the best thing for a band to do on their website? Give away everything, then sell CDs/T-shirts/Buttons and have a "tip jar", or to have a few teaser songs on the site to entice people to order the CD?
And often times, if flash is used correctly, things like navigation bars can end up as a much smaller download than if they were implemented with images, making it better for people with slow connections.
It was meant to be used by field chaplains serving in Croatia, so they had it translate Croatian. They figured it would be a good test, and the chaplains weren't doing anything where a mistranslation would kill someone.
Big ISPs like AOL should email everyone on their network pointing out that their service would be much faster and cheaper if people didn't buy penis-enlarging pills from spams... maybe that'd entice the stupid people from buying from spam. I mean, if they send around emails to people in hopes that Bill Gates will pay them $50 for each forward, then wouldn't they respond to "Don't listen to spam ads, and things will be cheaper/faster"?
They're not just doing a straight port.... control schemes have to be reworked (they were finely tuned for the awkward XBox controller), multiplayer has to be expanded and refined, additional levels and features need to be added, and most of all, MOD TOOLS NEED TO BE ADDED. That's right, Bungie has always planned on shipping mod tools with the game, although there are, as always no promises.
Yeah, you heard me. The version of Halo that is currectly being sold in little green boxes was developed, from scratch, for XBox and only XBox. The version you saw at MacWorldNY98, was a modification of the Myth RTS engine, and was totally thrown away when Bungie got bought by Microsoft, because they wanted to build a new engine that was designed for Halo, not an RTS. Thus, the XBox version of Halo is the true version of Halo, and it must be ported to be able to be played on PC/Mac. It's not like they had a fully-finished game running on their G4 towers, got bought by MS, coded in some XBox stuff, and released it. The stuff shown at MacWorldNY and e3 by by Bungie before they got bought was barely functioning - scripted animations, nothing more. Most of the real development of Halo has been for XBox and only XBox. Not that I LIKE this, mind you, it's just the Tru7h.
Among many reasons I dislike Warcraft III, the top has to be the unit voices. I mean, Starcraft/Warcraft was bad anough, but these guys say longer phrases, more annoying phrases, and in more annoying voices. And they say them every time they get clicked. After about a month of it I kicked my roommate out because he wouldn't turn the damn voices off. Why couldn't they leave it a little more subtle?
The unit AI is the best I've seen in an RTS yet. For instance, when your peasants are done building, they will go and do something useful like chop lumber or mine gold. This eliminates a great deal of micro management.
That's pretty sad if that's actually "impressive AI".
At least with Starcraft and Diablo 2, I remember tons of patches that kept trying to rebalance units... they didn't have the balance right when the game launched and they never got it right.
Good thing that Winamp3 is coming out, and it has video support. Not as good as WMP yet, but at least it's Winamp! They've also got support for something called Nullsoft Streaming Video... possibly a bid to enter the Real/WMP/Quicktime battle (if you can even call it that)? Maybe it has something to do with AOL's new toy.
I still don't get it... what's so great about the iTools... you have iMovie, which is just like Windows Movie Maker or Ulead Video Studio or any other movie creation app that gets bundled with video-capable hardware... you get iPhoto, which is nothing special, I'm not even sure what iDVD is, if it's just a DVD player I can't imagine why that's special, and then the much-lauded iTunes, which to me seems exactly like musicmatch jukebox, (which comes with everything) though I still prefer Winamp for all my audio needs... really, what's so "killer" about these apps? They seem pretty commonplace to me.
Hmm. That's tricky, but I'd say it wouldn't be impersonation because you're not modifying their site at all - you're just sending people to their site. Impersonating law enforcement would be registering a domain like www.fbi.com (hypothetical, I didn't even check to see if this exists) and then making your own FBI lookalike page, but with different content. I don't think redirection can be called impersonation.
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I have pretty good eyesight, and that font is just too damn small... and to top it off, they have the font in absolute sizes so you can't change it. Just like Apple... *starts Opera so he can read the article*
By all rights you don't need to call him a web designer... I didn't know that sort of person existed (and got paid for it) anymore.
Maybe it's UT2003's midget player models...
Well, what I'm saying is, based on the email I got from them, they can't help it. According to them, if they don't use those ads they go under, because the people buying advertising space believe that those are the most effective ads, as opposed to the most annoying, which they actually are.
I won't post the email, or the reply here, but essentially I complained about their flash ads that obscure the page I'm trying to read, and the HTTP-Refresh ads that completely break the back button. I told them that these ads frustrated and disgusted me, and that I wouldn't buy products from these ads no matter what they were selling, and that I thought Salon would benefit from a different style of advertisement.
The response I got was wonderfully pleasant, and explained how Salon was going in the hole, financially, and the only way they can make money is to take whatever the advertising companies tell them to put up, and these annoying (and in my opinion, ineffective) ads are the ones they're paying big bucks for now. I sent a reply thanking him for his prompt and curteous response, and told him I hoped the advertisers wised up - these things are hurting both the companies advertised for, and Salon. So that's my point. It's the advertising agencies, not the sites hosting the ads, that need a clue-stick. They need to realize that annoying the user is not going to help, and it's much better to use the power of the internet to deliver subtle ads for things people really want (like Google's AdWords - you always get something related to what you're searching for). That's all.
Zephyr has been around for quite a while now, and I know a lot of people who still prefer it over AIM...
That has to be one of the most confusing, unhelpful web pages I've ever seen. It's too many small, unconnected blurbs of different color all splashed on the page at once, without any logic as to what box is related to what other box. I noticed the links at the top, but at that point I was to disgusted to keep browsing.
Um, like the ADC (Apple Display Connector) which simply packs together a USB cable, power cable, and DVI cable into one bundle, but requires special graphics cards and more importantly, a $150 adapter to separate them out for use on non-Apple computers? They're not even compatible with old Macs (and by "old" I mean the G4 Cube).
All it is is an alternate style-sheet included with the download... just a few K.
First, we have the XBox, which runs off the Win2K kernel (can hardly be called Windows, but it started out as Windows), and the Dreamcast, which ran Windows CS, and despite WinCE being a terrible OS, I've never seen a Dreamcast crash.
You mean an error message in the XDK (XBox Development Kit)? So? It's the dev kit. It's there so they can get bugs out. While I've seen XBox dev kits crash on development builds of games, I've never seen a consumer XBox crash on a consumer gamer. I've crashed a GameCube twice with Metroid Prime, however.
Just more FUD, people. Move along.
I could tell what some of the letters were by context within a word. Nice try. In specific, this guy wrote what looked to me like a v (or something) but the computer correctly recognized it as a g. Weird.
Wait, why is this even funny? I mean, it's non-text doodles, then you're telling the handwriting recognition engine to convert them to text. It's not even "ha, ha, look at the silly mistakes the computer made". It's exactly what you'd expect any handwriting recognition algorithm to do when given that image. So where's the humor?
Seriously, though, they had a demo of this thing at my school, and it was really impressive. They turned on the debug mode for us where the handwriting engine would show in realtime what it thought the words were, and which words were parts of which sentences, etc. I couldn't even read this guy's handwriting, and the Tablet was humming right along, perfectly matching what he was writing, even as he wrote at an angle or on a curve! My Palm can't do that...
Once you find a local band you like, check out their website to see who else THEY like in the local music scene (and who their reviewers suggest). Almost like CDNow's "If you like band X then you might like ...." thing.
Once our album is out, I'm planning on marketing my band, The Girls, in a similar way - get linked from local bands' sites, get mentioned as another band that Pitchfork Media hates, and so on. I'm also planning to give away all our tracks, and then allow people to "tip" us (as well as buying CDs, but that's sort of an experiment... while I'd really like that to be a viable business model for entertainment, I don't know if it will actually work...
Hey, that gets me thinking (and I'm sorry for rambling), but what do people think is the best thing for a band to do on their website? Give away everything, then sell CDs/T-shirts/Buttons and have a "tip jar", or to have a few teaser songs on the site to entice people to order the CD?
And often times, if flash is used correctly, things like navigation bars can end up as a much smaller download than if they were implemented with images, making it better for people with slow connections.
It was meant to be used by field chaplains serving in Croatia, so they had it translate Croatian. They figured it would be a good test, and the chaplains weren't doing anything where a mistranslation would kill someone.
Big ISPs like AOL should email everyone on their network pointing out that their service would be much faster and cheaper if people didn't buy penis-enlarging pills from spams... maybe that'd entice the stupid people from buying from spam. I mean, if they send around emails to people in hopes that Bill Gates will pay them $50 for each forward, then wouldn't they respond to "Don't listen to spam ads, and things will be cheaper/faster"?
They're not just doing a straight port.... control schemes have to be reworked (they were finely tuned for the awkward XBox controller), multiplayer has to be expanded and refined, additional levels and features need to be added, and most of all, MOD TOOLS NEED TO BE ADDED. That's right, Bungie has always planned on shipping mod tools with the game, although there are, as always no promises.
Yeah, you heard me. The version of Halo that is currectly being sold in little green boxes was developed, from scratch, for XBox and only XBox. The version you saw at MacWorldNY98, was a modification of the Myth RTS engine, and was totally thrown away when Bungie got bought by Microsoft, because they wanted to build a new engine that was designed for Halo, not an RTS. Thus, the XBox version of Halo is the true version of Halo, and it must be ported to be able to be played on PC/Mac. It's not like they had a fully-finished game running on their G4 towers, got bought by MS, coded in some XBox stuff, and released it. The stuff shown at MacWorldNY and e3 by by Bungie before they got bought was barely functioning - scripted animations, nothing more. Most of the real development of Halo has been for XBox and only XBox. Not that I LIKE this, mind you, it's just the Tru7h.
Among many reasons I dislike Warcraft III, the top has to be the unit voices. I mean, Starcraft/Warcraft was bad anough, but these guys say longer phrases, more annoying phrases, and in more annoying voices. And they say them every time they get clicked. After about a month of it I kicked my roommate out because he wouldn't turn the damn voices off. Why couldn't they leave it a little more subtle?
The unit AI is the best I've seen in an RTS yet. For instance, when your peasants are done building, they will go and do something useful like chop lumber or mine gold. This eliminates a great deal of micro management.
That's pretty sad if that's actually "impressive AI".
At least with Starcraft and Diablo 2, I remember tons of patches that kept trying to rebalance units... they didn't have the balance right when the game launched and they never got it right.
Good thing that Winamp3 is coming out, and it has video support. Not as good as WMP yet, but at least it's Winamp! They've also got support for something called Nullsoft Streaming Video... possibly a bid to enter the Real/WMP/Quicktime battle (if you can even call it that)? Maybe it has something to do with AOL's new toy.
I still don't get it... what's so great about the iTools... you have iMovie, which is just like Windows Movie Maker or Ulead Video Studio or any other movie creation app that gets bundled with video-capable hardware... you get iPhoto, which is nothing special, I'm not even sure what iDVD is, if it's just a DVD player I can't imagine why that's special, and then the much-lauded iTunes, which to me seems exactly like musicmatch jukebox, (which comes with everything) though I still prefer Winamp for all my audio needs... really, what's so "killer" about these apps? They seem pretty commonplace to me.
Hmm. That's tricky, but I'd say it wouldn't be impersonation because you're not modifying their site at all - you're just sending people to their site. Impersonating law enforcement would be registering a domain like www.fbi.com (hypothetical, I didn't even check to see if this exists) and then making your own FBI lookalike page, but with different content. I don't think redirection can be called impersonation.