Cynic’s corner or: why I don’t buy it.

Saw this on Last.fm’s blog:

One of the nicest bits of feedback we’ve had here at Last.fm HQ in the past few weeks was a message from two users who had just started a life together. They wrote to say that it all started through common musical interests on Last.fm, which led to them becoming friends online, and, over time, to discover that they were true soulmates. Yes, honestly.

Honestly? Don’t buy it.

I may be an old cynical, with my romantic nerves rugged and my soul tattered, but I’ve seen this too many times. It just happened that they got a way-too-cool-to-pass PR story that *just* coincides perfectly with the way they’ve “been using the idea of a musical soulmate (…) to guide the development of our new neighbours service”. And they don’t put their names, or faces, on it?

Yes, its quite the thing, I think its a PR thing, since they didn’t make it look like a PR thing. But think, if this was a true story, you’d get down their names, or even their Last.fm usernames, with those funky avatars they have. Its not like they have confessed to liking bestiality, and for a few dollars, this story could’ve made much more sense and go much better than an opening paragraph in a blog.

On the other hand, I’ve seen this before. The just too good to be true story, with no names, no real details, just a ‘believe you me, ’tis be ‘onest tale’ hand around the shoulder confidentiality. I worked in this place, where as incentives to the more efficient employees, used to give raffle tickets to the lottery. When asked, the managers used to tell how “once, this girl actually won 10,000 NIS from one of those”. She didn’t, but the story got carried on, even appeared in a couple of articles on the company. It’s a white lie, no real harm done, win-win situation, so to speak. I just don’t buy it any more.

Update: And not two minutes after posting, I read this item in ValleyWag about what Venture Capitalists really think about the start-ups they invest in.

Airing of Grievances

When I click Firefox’s RSS icon, to add the feed to Google Reader, I always get the “Add to Google” page that informs me that “Google offers two different ways to keep up-to-date with your favourite sites”, one is the iGoogle page (which I never used), and one is the GRreader. Only after clicking “Add to Google Reader” do I get subscribed. Why’o’why? beats me.

At its (currently available) best, Google reader, like other GApps is a well-organised mess. Sadly, with my Web habits spanning two computers and 2 operating systems, I have no alternative other than using it for RSS. Perhaps another look at the competition is in place.

Oh, and when did Tweeter become Bitcher? Is this the new-web-order? rational writing in blog, spur-of-the-moment bitching in Tweets?

So where was I?

Ubuntu‘s been up to 4.08, so it’s been there for a while. Haven’t a clue as to their latest theme, since I’m on DWM for the past year. In two months it will be time for the new version, called Insidious Impala, or Intrigued Iguana. It’s gonna be cool, it’s gonna be brown, and there will be fun bugs to those upgrading. In case your X session goes frak, try some text-based lovin’.

The web is much more social these days. “Social” means here “much more stuff to use in order to avoid actual conversation”. Most of those include tagging people as “friends”. Google is probably evil. Microsoft is running out of ideas. Apple is running in all directions now. OpenOffice.org is neither Open, nor office, and not much of an .org.

I have a new niece, a (relatively) new job, and a lot of weird, half-baked ideas. On With The Show, then!

Good golly sweet…

The register with full glory of what codemonkeys’ world really looks like. Amazing stuff.

Also, apologies for the lack of updates during the recent weeks. I’m on the verge, or just beyond the verge of a lot of new things, so bear with me.

Now that’s what I call customer awareness!!

Just a week ago, I vehemently complained about Bloglines new interface non-interfacing with my browser. Well, guess what, not only I was flooded with concerned comments from the good folks over at Bloglines, but I got on a personal email correspondence with one of their developers who went through tons of JS errors to try to identify the problem.
Eventually, not only it wasn’t caused on their side, but they definitely won me all over. In view of the recent Google Reader relaunch, I can already tell that not many people are going to switch from Bloglines, and with this level of service, probably none will.

And that’s progress!

Here is, verbatim, the latest announcement from my ever-trusted online RSS feed reader, Bloglines (the weird spaces in words are in the original):

“You might have noticed a few fancy little changes we’ve made to your feed tree o n the left pane today. You’ll like them even more when you learn what’s behind t he scenes!
We no longer update the entire left pane when the unread or “kept as new” co unts change. Now the counts update in place with a fading yellow indicator. The result is a f aster, more pleasant way to cruise through your feeds, especially for those quick on the hotkeys.”

The result? My left-pane-feed-tree now shows NOTHING. Apparently they forgot to check whether this latest and greatest works on Opera.

Interestingly enough,

The words “intesteriboolint-symmerunabilifanstrech” are a good test of CSS. Some just shove them up the content column.
From the two that survived most of what my filtering criteria are (aka the “It was logical at the time” test of whether I could say that as an excuse when somebody later asks me “what were you thinking”), one lost, but only because it killed my title. (I mean, c’mon.)
So, without much ado, the new template is Simpla.