Yo subscribe to WebRampage via RSS feeds or email. That way you'll get all the updates and everything.

Did anyone notice the Hotmail inbox redesign? I didn’t really see a buzz about this on the web. Gmail adds some stupid, ugly emotions and everyone starts talking about it. Some people probably even jacked off to it. Its just hilarious. Microsoft haters!

I’m not going to talk good about Hotmail anyway. First of all, I would like to say that Hotmail just totally fucked itself up with the new design. I wouldn’t call it ugly. I wouldn’t call it nice either. It just doesn’t look right. The old design was better in my opinion.

Well who cares about looks? Usability and functionality is more important, right? But guess what? I can’t fucking write emails on the “new” Hotmail. I just can’t type in the textbox. I’m using FF3 on Ubuntu. It works fine on IE6 though. Maybe its because of Ubuntu.

And why does it always ask me to upgrade my browser when I got to Hotmail? Did I mention that I’m using FF3? I think I did. And…most Hotmail users hate the new look.

Wow, I can’t believe this is happening. Microsoft can’t afford to screw up right now. They’re gonna lose a lot of their market share because this. I don’t even know what to say. I’m starting to get pissed at Microsoft. I don’t wanna use Gmail. Fuck!

Why do I get the feeling that this redesign thing was rushed out? Reminds me of Vista when it was first released for some reason. Microsoft, please take your time with IE8. Please.

Few questions for you

What do you think of Hotmail’s new look? Do you use Hotmail? Do you use Gmail (more)? Are you having the same problems as me on Hotmail? Do you think you’ll stop using Hotmail because of this? Anything else that you would like to add?

Google Knol. Remember that little fella? Well its an epic failure. To be honest, the concept sucks! Google does have some neat stuff, but how on earth did they think of Knol?

Anyone can write a knol and publish it, right? Now that’s good. People are sharing their knowledge. But, the problem is that its not very user-friendly. Its not the type of site you would go to if you needed some info.

I searched for “SEO” there and it came up with 976 knols. Fuck me! 976! Would you go through all of them and see which one has the best info? I wouldn’t. And it would be like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles if you wanted to get the best knol about SEO.

What’s the difference between a blog post and Knol? I don’t see a difference. Wikipedia on the other hand is a place where people come togather and share what they know. Its just one big page full of info. Everything is in there. You don’t need to dig through hundreds of page to find what you need. Its all infront of you.

And do you think people who write Knols are doing it because they wanna share their knowledge? No. Well maybe some. Most of us are doing it for backlinks and traffic. Its a bit spammy to be honest. But, that doesn’t mean you won’t find some quality content here and there.

I don’t think Knol will be popular. Right now, the average joe doesn’t even know about it. And most of the geeks forgot about it. Its pretty much dead from the beginning. Well who cares if its an epic failure? We can still use it for SEO “purposes”.

What makes a site “social”?

I would say a place where people can share what they like, discover interesting stuff and communicate with friends. And also, democracy! But, does Digg have what it takes to really be a social bookmarking/news site? Hell no!

Domination!

Well maybe I’m wrong if you consider a place which is being dominated (and possibly gamed) by a handful of users to be social. I’m not going to mention names, but you know who they are. Like seriously how is it fair if 90% of the time, the front page has the submissions of those few diggers (more like “diggtators”).

Not a fair fight

Okay lets look at Digg as a… sport. We should agree that some people might be better than others. We should be all cool with that. But, what if those people are using things like steroids! Now that’s what’s happening over at Digg. Top diggers are using scripts.

Maybe you don’t believe me about the script part. I’ll show you an example. MrBabyMan, the born-to-be-digg’s-slave was proved using scripts here, here, and here. Plus its not just MrBabyMan, most (actually all) top diggers use scripts too. Just go to their profile and check how many things were dugg within the last few minutes.

Same old sites hit the front over and over again

More domination! Not only users are dominating, but sites are too. That’s just freakin’ unfair! Plus its also bad for Digg. How so? Digg is supposed to be a social news site, right? Its not good if you get the news from only a handful of sources. Its a bit like having Fox News as the only news channel in the world. Uh oh!

Well you might say that those sites are popular and they have a lot of followers and so, they get a lot of diggs. And you’re right. But, its not that. There’s something weird. There’s like something stopping smaller sites from hitting the front page.

One top digger (who wanted to stay anonymous) said, “Sites which have never gotten front page before have a hard time. Like REALLY hard” and also agreed by saying “that’s the theory” when I asked if the rumours about mods burying things were true.

Digg has double standards

Yeah that’s right, folks. Digg has double standards! Remember how Digg has been banning people for using scripts. Well the people they’re hunting down are the average diggers. But, what about top diggers like MrBabyMan? He has been proved to use scripts (and got like bitch slapped about it in public).

This other top digger dugg 15 submissions in a minute. Its obvious that he’s using a script. I don’t wanna mention his name because… I’m nice. Well I mentioned MrBabyMan because by now everyone knows what he’s been upto.

So, what is Digg?

I don’t know. I guess a place where people worship (aka digg) the top diggers and so does the staff. But, still a place with a bit of good content.

I would really love to see Digg be a better place. I know that Digg’s trying their best, but seriously, they should treat everyone equally!

Are “social sites” like music? Yes, I’m asking YOU.

By social sites, I mean social networks, social news, social bookmarking, micro-blogging, etc. I’ve been thinking and that question just popped up. Well lets try to find an answer.

When a song gets pretty popular, what do we do? We play it on the radio, listen to over and over again, tell our friends about it and listen to it a few more times. The band (or the singer) is glad that everything’s going perfectly and the album was a great success. But, what happens after a few weeks or maybe months? Doesn’t the song feel overplayed? Don’t we get sick and tired of it? Don’t we start to hate the song? Don’t we just move on?

Are you starting to figure out why I’m comparing these? I personally would say that social sites are a lot like music. They’re both fads. But, know what? Music is actually a lot better than social sites. I don’t know if I can call music a fad because we do move on after a song (or the album) gets overplayed, but we also go back to it after some time. Whether its months, years or decades.

But, what about social sites? Do you think we will ever go back to an old site? Do you think you’ll ever go back to a site that was once popular years ago? Do you think we’ll start using it again because it once had cool features? Music lives forever. Want an example? How about Led Zepplin?

Remember MySpace? Friendster? Do you think you’ll go back to use them? They were once really, really popular. Well MySpace still is, but Facebook took over. Plus I would say that Facebook is also going a bit dead. Like when it first went popular, people at school were talking about and were like going crazy about it. Now, no one even mentions it. They still use it, but its not that cool anymore.

Sucks to be a social site. They’re like toys. You play with it, get bored, throw it away and start playing with a new one.

Image by Janneke Hikspoors.

I cannot believe it! Barack Obama is spamming Twitter! Oh man. I now see why Fox News was comparing Obama to Osama. Oh I feel bad for Fox now. No one believed them. I didn’t believe them!

Okay lets cut the drama queen (should be drama king, right?) crap now. But, I did notice something weird about Obama’s twitter. He is following way too many people. We’re not talking about a few hundred or even a few thousand here. We’re looking at a 5-digit number. 76K!

Man is that normal? Is the guy working on his campaign or just following people on Twitter? I guess he got hooked or something. Oh man I’m going to jerk-mode now. But, seriously 76K is a lot. And he’s got only 73K followers.

You wanna know how he followed back so many people? He’s using a script which automatically follows you back once you start following him. Just add him and then look at the list of your followers). But, he doesn’t actually respond to your tweets (and he’s not even interested in them). Twitter’s servers are constantly having “technical difficulties” (aka downtimes). I wonder if Obama’s account caused all of this. Probably not.

So, is he actually “follow spamming“? Well I personally wouldn’t say that. Maybe it technically falls under follow spam, but he doesn’t mean to. He’s just trying to keep people updated about his campaign. I don’t like the fact that he’s using a program to automatically follow people back, but it was probably the nuthead running his account’s idea. Well that’s a different thing.

We all get spam and find a ton of them on the web. So, we kind of go into our anti-spam/ninja-killer mode whenever we see something that looks a bit like it. We don’t really think about it and see if it really is spam. We don’t look at people’s true intentions. Well look at the definitions!

So, next time think about it and check if it really is spam. And if it is, then rape that fucker spammer. Until then subscribe to my blog via RSS or email if you liked this post (at least a tiny bit).