Every time I visit this website I loose [sic] my assurance that everything written here is real. But even if it’s not true, I keep on visiting it because it’s interesting. There are many posts which you can’t find anywhere else.

I laughed out loud. How’s that for ironic?

I was tempted to respond:

Every time you visit this website I have complete assurance that everything written by you is not real. But even if it’s true, SpamKarma will keep moderating you because you look like spam. There is spam like yours that can found everywhere else.

But what’s the point of debating my existential uncertainty with an automated email script?

Tags: comment spam, spambot, irony, spamkarma2

I’m just happy that the little corner of the web that comes under my administration these days is largely mine alone to control. Who has the time or energy for pointless hoop-jumping?

Tags: web design, design by committee

But above all else, it just plain pissed people off.

So why (oh why, oh why) are so many bloggers repeating almost exactly the same problems with the Snap Preview Anywhere widget?

I can’t say it any better than Nick Wilson:

Its intrusive, obstructive and unuseful in almost every respect and use case. The fact that so many big blogs are using it, big well respected blogs, does not mean that it’s useful, it just means that they, like most bloggers, have all the self restraint of a magpie in a sparkly things factory.

If I want to see what someone else’s web site looks like I’ll bloody well go there when I’m good and ready. Sheesh, don’t be in so much of a hurry to get rid of me!

For a good laugh, have a look at the testimonials on the Snap Preview Anywhere page. I notice that a number of the testimoners—including one who said “we’d probably pay for the service”—no longer use it on their sites. I wonder how many complaints they received (or how much traffic they lost!) before they woke up and removed it.

Nick Wilson again:

All joking aside, SPA is not helpful, it’s not cool, and it’s not winning you readers — It’s bling, a silly little shiney thing designed specifically to increase awareness of Snap.com — no bad thng, and certainly an shining example of how to use widgets to gain links and attention, but, come on ladies and gentleman, show a little self restraint, show a little consideration for your users.

Now, can you all stop using it please?

Tags: snap preview anywhere, blink tag, blogging, design mistakes, usability, accessibility

My latest distraction is a handy complement to the Snipshot online image editor that I thumbsed-up in June. Gliffy is a tool for making vector diagrams. You know, all that flow-charting / floor-planning / UML-ing / network-diagramming / general-jiggery-pokery that you can do with Visio, OmniGraffle and the like.

There’s a reasonable set of shape templates, all the usual features for editing properties of shapes, and being an online tool, it’s got the collaboration and online publishing features that you’d expect. You can also export diagrams as JPEG, PNG, and very cool SVG.

They don’t have a pricing model as yet, but it appears that there will be a subscription version with all the attachments (including the thing for getting stones out of horses’ hooves) for the corporate presentation-making power user, and a free, ad supported Gliffy with limited feature set for the miserable skinflints like me.

Tags: gliffy, vector diagram, visio, omnigraffle, free software, sharing, collaboration

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use research tool that helps you gather and organize resources (whether bibliography or the full text of articles), and then lets you to annotate, organize, and share the results of your research. It includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store full reference information in author, title, and publication fields and to export that as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software such as del.icio.us or iTunes, like the ability to sort, tag, and search in advanced ways. Using its unique ability to sense when you are viewing a book, article, or other resource on the web, Zotero will—on many major research sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for you in the correct fields.

Will it have the folks at EndNote shaking in their shoes? Probably not. But for many a struggling scholar, the price is certainly right!

Seriously have a look at this thing—it may not be the EndNote-killer but if it’s half as good as they say, it could well be the killer extension for Firefox 2.

Unfortunately I don’t have Firefox 2 setup on the office beast just yet, so I’m leaving right now to install this beauty at home…

[via Linux.com]

Tags: zotero, firefox, research tool, citation, reference, database, endnote