A blog about nothing, using a lot of words

We value using lots of words to describe things that are very simple, jumping to conclusions, and spouting unfounded nonsense.  Hairlip reading style and misinformation is typical.

The new AOL Search, it’s just a skin over Google

In matching the AOL.com Beta 3, our companies Match -> Emulate -> Plagiarize – > strategy seems to be to copy the industry leaders, beg them to brand our name onto their products, and then hope it saves our dying ass. We have supplied a quick scenario for you:

AOL: “Google, O’ great search engine (in a tiny humble voice) please let us put your logo on our site so we look like we aren’t dying.”

Google: “Very well then, you bloated, maggot filled dross, the bell will soon toll for you. But until then, feel free to place your logo on our site and claim it as your own search. Everyone kisses up to us, but that doesn’t mean they are us, it just means they exist off of our nut crust.”

To give them credit, this is what search should have never been like. Yeah, Google allowed AOL to leech off its teets , and the Google logo IS larger (uh oh), but then again, AOL is just trying to turn their hourglass upside down, and besides, the 1 billion they spent on this just prevents it’s useless male CEOs from taking limo rides to shop at Frederick’s of Hollywood for lingerie and assorted female clothing.

To give the search team some credit they’ve already improved the page with the sign in screen. When you go to sign in on the gadget (That’s a term for Boxley, which is just an Internet Explorer skin) it keeps you on the page, Google does redirect to Google Accounts, which is an expected page load that makes me say “Me hates it” (I have a little Gollum in me from the last time we made love in his Misty Mountain hovel).

Working on that same concept is the menu. While it’s basically the same as Google there is no “I’m feeling lucky”, because, again this is just an AOL logo on a stripped down Google site; not the real deal (the amount of nut crust they will give us is limited). The last thing I need to do is Google search for “she is going out with other males”, hit “I’m feeling lucky” and hit a website about Sex swings so you can have sex like a spider monkey (for example) – plus I never use that feature.

Also the button to search is at the end of the text box, so if I’m copying and pasting into the text field I can keep going left -> right without moving backwards (Total quirk I know). This is especially helpful for developmentally challenged individuals.

AOL places #1

On the 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

1. America Online (1989-2006)

How do we loathe AOL? Let us count the ways. Since America Online emerged from the belly of a BBS called Quantum “PC-Link” in 1989, users have suffered through awful software, inaccessible dial-up numbers, rapacious marketing, in-your-face advertising, questionable billing practices, inexcusably poor customer service, and enough spam to last a lifetime. And all the while, AOL remained more expensive than its major competitors. This lethal combination earned the world’s biggest ISP the top spot on our list of bottom feeders.

Impeach Bush – Trust Digg?

 

When it comes down to it, some people aren’t happy about the way things are going with <insert subject here> however leveraging the power of the masses is something that frankly scares me when it comes to proliferating information. For example lets use everyones favorite topic “The Bush Administration”.

After 5 years in the military I’ve seen some stuff overseas that frankly never gets brought up on digg…kids going to the bathroom on the side of the road, families living in storage sheds, or trading a family heirloom lamp for a battery powered flashlight in a country that can’t buy batteries but because the light is brighter (what?). I even gagged on a penis in exchange for some suntan lotion.

It was an old man too, very leathery. Anyway, but that’s besides the point.

Firedoodle

 

” When you install Firedoodle, you add a whiteboard to every web page you visit using the Firefox Browser. This is great for reviews, jotting ideas, or just goofing off.”

This has got to be the coolest thing on earth. How many times have I been to a website where I only want to remember that one mangina picture (but can’t remember where it was). How many times I’ve been to a website and I wanted to remember a mangina that I wanted to drool at later. Definitely a killer app.

Shame AOL Explorer didn’t have anything like this.

Except for that fact that, AOL Explorer is just a skin on IE, and not really a separate program.

OpenID everyone is dishing, no one is eating, and this article sucks

 

 

The following are several random quotes taken from other blogs about OpenID (aka filler material).

“I took my OpenID credentials and went surfing – first stop, AOL. I landed on an AOL login screen and didn’t see anything about OpenID, so I tried plugging my OpenID URI into the screen name field – authentication failed. AOL has no idea what I am trying to do.”

“These applications are all becoming OpenID providers as opposed to OpenID consumers. Funny thing is that most of these announcements pointed to the same list of applications that support OpenID as consumers – but not one of them decided to join that list themselves.”

“So here I present, for the benefit of us all, my criteria in terms of what constitutes OpenID support:

1. Your application becomes a full consumer of OpenID
2. You application allows users to link their existing accounts to their OpenID
3. Your application allows users to *replace* their existing accounts with their OpenID
4. Your application has no signup barrier other than requesting an OpenID and password
5. You are *optionally* a provider of OpenID, if your user explicitly enables it (not sure why you want to be in the identity management business)

Much nicer isn’t it? So please, pretty please, lets hold off on the web-wide mexican wave until we have 1 through to 5 sorted.”

Nik Cubrilovic posted about OpenID having too many providers, yet not enough consumers.

Here is my whole article below:

As a OpenID provider I think this is something that we as a company we should be thinking about if not already implementing. Just some brief statements from the article…

Although I say this for every technology I come across on the internets. I also forgot to mention that AOL is going to take a big corn filled poop, very soon.