VoteChooser.com

A friend of mine shared a web site with me that I find simultaneously fascinating and appalling.

It's called VoteChooser.com and it is basically a 10 question quiz that matches your political ideology against the platforms of the various presidential candidates. It's interesting because this draws in some folks who wouldn't normally think/talk/engage in presidential politics. I gave it a try and found it confirmed what my gut impression was-- so it's at least consistent when you have an opinion or preference already in mind.

On the other hand, I'm appalled that choosing the next leader of our nation can somehow be reduced to something comparable to the latest Quizilla creation ("Which presidential candidate personality type are you??!"). Can something so important really be condensed to just 10 questions?

Makes you think, doesn't it?

The Value of Membership

Note: I'm going to try my best to avoid being snarky in this entry, but I'm writing about a pet peeve of mine-- so I promise you nothing.

You're having a problem-- maybe it's a computer problem, or maybe it's a web page problem, or a problem with some consumer electronics item. Chances are, you pull up Google and perform a quick search on your problem. The first item in the search results looks very promising. Here's another person who's experiencing the same problem you have and they've taken the time to write the problem up on a web site forum. If you're really lucky, someone out there with more expertise than you has come up with a solution and shared it on the WWW.

You click on the link, and read the first entry in the thread. Sure enough, the person is experiencing the identical issue you are! As you scroll down to read the responses, you find that all of the responses are deliberately obscured and that in order to just read them, you *must* join their website first. I don't know about you, but that sort of behavior alienates me almost instantly.

Joining the website is always "free." All I have to do is provide a working email address. No reason for me to be concerned about that, right? After all, I'm sure the people who run this website won't spam my Inbox and/or sell my email address to a third party that would do that. Just because they resort to tactics like posting just enough content to get high rankings in Google, and then deliberately withhold the resolutions to problems to force people to join, there's no reason to think they might toe the line of ethical behavior in other areas.

So much for not being snarky. ;)

I'm going to let you in on one of the secrets that builds positive web site communities. If your content isn't of a proprietary or controversial nature, do NOT force people to jump through hoops to consume it. Let people see the quality of your content; if it's useful to them, they will bookmark your site and return to it in the future. Sooner or later, they will see a thread to which they feel they can make a positive contribution-- that's when you require them to sign up. After all, we want to give people credit for positive contributions, and keep trolls from diminishing the quality of our content by making people accountable for what they post with their account. It's a lot harder to find cynical motives in that scenario.

WWW Wednesday: LaptopLock

Some time ago, I wrote about Lojack for Laptops, a software and service that allows people to recover their stolen laptops. Although that product is available for both PC and Mac, I focused primarily on the Mac OS X version.

In the interest of "equal time," I wanted to post a quick entry about LaptopLock. I haven't had a chance to actually try it out yet, but it appears to be a free software client for Windows PCs that allow you to carry out certain actions if your laptop is ever stolen. Examples would be things like: erasing critical data, sending a message to the person using your laptop, etc. All of this presumes that the computer gets connected to the Internet after it is stolen, of course.

They do not have a version for Mac or Linux at this time, although they do say that if you feel like writing one, they'd be happy to talk with you. If only I had the time and the skillset.

WWW Wednesday

The folks over at Clean Air Partners have redesigned their web site. Those of you with allergies, or who have other interests or concerns about the quality of the air you breathe might want to go check it out.

ISBNSpy

As if I didn't already want to purchase a basic data plan for my cellphone, there's a new web based app that can save me money at the bookstore.

It is called ISBNSpy and it is brilliant in its simplicity. You are in the bookstore and you see a title that interests you. You fire up your cellphone's web browser, go to the ISBNSpy website and enter the ISBN number. The website finds the item on Amazon and let you know if the price is cheaper or more expensive than the book you are holding in your hand.

Good bye, Fizzle (fo' Shizzle)

I rely on RSS a lot.

I keep track of updates on 30+ blogs/websites using RSS, which is a heck of a lot easier than manually checking every site each day to see what has changed. I started off with live bookmarks in Firefox, and that was all right for a while . . . except you could only see the post titles, not the full content. Some bloggers (myself included) don't make great, meaningful use of titles to describe what their entry is about. You need to read the first few sentences to figure out what they are writing about, and then to decide whether you are interested in it or not.

That's when I discovered a Firefox plugin called "Fizzle." (Seems like an odd, inappropriate name to me from a marketing standpoint, but what the heck do I know?) Basically, this plugin turns Firefox into a full blown RSS reader like AmphetaDesk, etc. I was really impressed with it and used it for several months.

Now, all of the sudden, Fizzle seems to choke on Engadget's RSS feed and causes Firefox to crash. Could be something new in Engadget's feed, or maybe something in a recent Firefox update breaks Fizzle. I don't know, and to be honest, I don't exactly have a lot of time and energy to spend investigating and resolving the issue.

So, a few days ago, I switched from Fizzle to Bloglines. I had to figure out how to export all my Live Bookmarks into an OPML file (Firefox has a wonderful little plugin for that too, turns out) that I could import into Bloglines, but other than that, it's been a remarkably smooth transition. I'm still learning some of the shortcut keyboard commands, but at least I can peruse my RSS feeds from any web enabled computer now.