Google have ruined feedburner August 14, 2008
A once great service, I’ve been noticing recently many more errors from feedburner. I see sites with one day, 2000 subscribers, the next N/A (0) subscribers. Kerplunc’s sites subscriber counts are bouncing up and down every day, and sometimes vanish all together.
Get it sorted!
Why digg sucks August 12, 2008
I’ve tried numerous times now to get into the whole digg scene. I tried for interesting articles, for promotion, for something to do. However, each time I leave the site within just a few days, ever more determined never to return, but why?
Whenever I visit the site, I only seem to find three types of content on the front page: regurgitated news articles, ridiculous lists and the occasional funny image or video. Let me just run through and put to shame each one separately:
1. Regurgitated News: these I hate the most. News articles on digg. If I want to know about tech/web, I visit Tech Crunch or Mashable (more social stuff). If I want to know about the world I check BBC News, guardian.co.uk or Times Online. The one place I don’t go for news: digg.
2. Ridiculous lists: rarely useful and always well dugg are the lists. “Here’s 5000000000 links I put together but had nothing to do with now digg me and now them zomg wow!” is what I see. Of course, some of these link lists are useful, I particularly like the ones on Design Reviver. Others such as Specky Boy simply annoy me with the huge, and rather pointless, lists of sites to go to. This is what digg should be for, the individual sites, not links to links. If you want link lists, search up tags on del.icio.us (with the old, far better name).
3. Funny stuff: OK, funny stuff can be good, and it can lighten the mood on an otherwise crappy day, but on digg? No no. For funny stuff I go to sites such as I Can Has Cheezburger or College Humor and the like (although, I rarely do, since they’re full of rubbish). Nope, digg is not for this either.
So what exactly do I think digg should be used for? Well, it’s a system where people vote on websites, and what are people looking for? In reality, none of the above, because they already know of it all. We need links to simply awesome sites! New websites, new projects, new ideas, new games, new tools, new things to do on the web, things pushing boundaries, anything that isn’t another silly link list, funny video/image or a useless regurgitated news article.
For now, I remain glued to the excellent StumbleUpon, which, while it does annoyingly have some of the three pointless-waste-of-time-links, most of the content is excellent.
More on the patriotic thing July 21, 2008
I arrived in Northern Ireland a few hours ago, and what do I see on the houses as we drive to where we’re staying: the British flag. Hurrah! Why can’t the UK be like that!
Back in the UK July 15, 2008
And where’s the flag, where’s our proud, wonderful British flag? Where is the patriotism? I arrive at Gatwick airport, like all airports, it’s not a ‘nice’ place, but unlike the American airports, there’s no flag, there’s no patriotic symbols, there is absolutely nothing telling me I’m actually back in England.
Is Britain not proud of its own heritage? No. That sucks.
About
Hey! I'm Nick Barrett and this is Pointless Ramblings. I work as a freelance web design/developer, student and co-founder of Kerplunc. Read more »
Links
I no longer use del.icio.us, because it's unorganized. I use bookmarks, an app by me, for me! Of course, anyone can use it too though. It's unfinished, to work it you'll need a Kerplunc Account, register one here.
When I get around to making such a thing, latest links will magically reappear :)
Gaia Online
Have a guess at my password and hijack the admin capability of this blog: here :)