I’m taking a little break here at the office. Been up since 4:30am (odd for me since I rarely get jetlag…ah well…) and have been working straight through except for a break for breakfast, sweaty walk to the office, and a break for lunch though not REALLY as break as it was more of a business lunch (but not a power lunch…this is not the 80’s and I’m not a yuppie…).
Anyway, I’ve been working on a presentation and a bunch of e-mails and the office is soooo quiet and even more so since I’m in a separate little cubicle like place and that combined with my area being a bit warm (not that the office isn’t…damn “cool biz”…) a steady stream of white noise from the cabinet of servers on the other side of the cubicle wall and my slight jet lag and my productivity was dropping like a rock. So I put a drop of that “insane crazy feels like I’ve rubbed menthol in my eyes but feels kinda good afterwards as if it was some weird sort of ‘good pain’-esque masochistic thing” eyedrop in each eye and thought I’d read up on a few of the travel blogs and such that I try to keep up with for a bit to clear my mind.
During that time I ran into this article. It’s Time Magazines 5 Worst Web Sites.
I wouldn’t have really cared except they seemed to have gotten a few things right :) And the article seemed pretty strongly opinionated for Time. Anyway, it’s at least worth a look.
To save you the time though if you just want to know, the sites are:
I’m not too familiar with Evite. I’ve used it when other people send me invites but I’ve never used it to send invites myself. So I can’t really say one way or the other.
eHarmony always seemed a bit…smarmy to me. Yeah yeah…scientific matching. But as this article also states…if I’m going to sit through and answer 400 some questions, they better not tell me that I’m not a good match or I’m not ready for a relationship. And sure it’s wedding oriented but really…I’ve yet to meet one couple who have met via eHarmony and succeeded in a relationship. I know a few people who met online and even got married but never through this site. And I know that the fact that it started as a christian matchmaking site should’t put me off but….it kinda does….especially with their stance on the gay community and the founder’s past (there’s a short little editorial-esque article here). Oh, and it’s pretty pricey too…. Ah well. If nothing else, the couples in the commercials all seem super duper non-offensively really really nice in that “boy do I loooooooove reruns of Mad About You!” way…. *shiver*….
Meez is just a dumb little idea to make money. Yes yes. I made a Meez. It was fun for 10 minutes. But…as a money making company? I can’t see it succeeding. But it DID get mentioned here so I guess they’re relatively popular? Dunno.
MySpace. Yes…what a horribly designed site. For being the most popular social networking site in the US, the user interface is horrible and unintuitive, the web site runs at a crawl, I swear there are bugs everywhere, and from what I have heard it’s just a security nightmare waiting to happen. It’s as if the entire site was designed by a bunch of HS kids learning web programming for the first time. For godsakes…they MUST have cash and such coming in from advertising. DO something. Update the thing. Clean it up. As it is, it looks like it was made back when the web was still young.
…yes…I have a MySpace site. No, I barely use it. Why? Because of all the above. Most of the time I get frustrated and leave or worse yet, I find that I have a message from a friend and I can’t even get to it because the site is so incredibly slow… Bah.
Ahhh and Second Life. Media’s little darling. I played with Second Life a long time ago when it was in beta. The concept was really really cool. Even back then I immediately thought “Oh my god…it’s the metaverse from Niel Stephenson’s Snow Crash!!!!” They even did a contest to make amusement park rides and such and people were flying around making really cool things in 3D. There were oriental castles and cool architecture. People were friendly and there were some cool skins and such being created all the time. I DID run into a really creepy virtual nude photography session thingy…..but yeah…the concept was really neat.
Then I soon realized that there was nothing to do. Nothing. As cool as the metaverse was in the book, this place was kinda empty. It was like a graphical chat room when I did find someone or a group of people. But really, if we’re just talking, do I REALLY need to SEE you (or at least an avatar of you)? It would be different if I were “jacked in” like in Neuromancer or even if I was wearing some sort of virtual reality helmet unit thing. Then at least you can sort of “walk around” and experience it a bit better. But on the screen, going to Banana Republic just isn’t the same as going to the real place….
There are some serious server issues too. Each area is a server and I think each server can only hold a few hundred people or so. Wired Magazine did an article recently saying that Second Life was a ghost town despite all of the hype. Many companies like Coke logged on to make these impressive ads/sites/tourist spots in Second Life but no one is there. I’m sure there are people playing it but it seems a few people got all the attention and it made SL seem bigger than it really is.
Of all the sites listed, I have a small hope for SL that it will become the “metaverse” that I thought was so damn cool when I first read Snow Crash. Will we ever get to the point of being able to jack into the system? Even get to the point of wearing VR glasses and actually experience this in a real 3D environment? Don’t know. And even if we do, by then I don’t know if I’d really want to get a plug implated in me…. But it’ll be cool (^_^)
Unfortunately if there was one site that will live on forever, it’ll probably be MySpace. Blah. Oh…and I HATE how bands are getting rid of their websites in favor of MySpace. Come on!!! Don’t buy into the hype! Or at least keep the web site! Bad Religion did this recently and it made me very sad. Their old web site had tons of content and such. Now all they have is their MySpace page and content is lacking to say the least… Boooo.
Hmm…I’ve deviated from the main topic. Anyway, just thought it was interesting.
Right. Back to work.
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