Okay, is Digg digging it’s grave? I’ve been a Digg user for a while, but lately I’ve been moving towardd Reddit a bit. Digg seems to have too many shortcomings to be worth it. Let’s compare them.

DIGG

• Great design (+1).
• Easy to use (+1).
• Innovator in the field (+1).
• Bigger userbase (+1).
• The system just feels right (+1).
• Annoying immature users (-1).
• Flawed voting system gives senior users more control (-1).
• Stupid mandatory categories make it hard to post things in the right place (-1).
• Tons of stupid stuff gets dugg to the top, while the more important stuff has a tendancy to be burried into oblivion (-1).

REDDIT

• Design isn’t…right (-1).
• A little less user-friendly than digg (-1).
• The average user seems more intelligent (+1).
• Less stupid stuff is posted (+1).
• Great code of conduct makes the site less out-of-hand (+1).
• Reddit tries to find the sort of thing you like, potentially improving the whole “Digg-concept” by a lot (+1).
• The developers seem to care more about the site doing what it should…instead of having it be “fun” (+1).

TOTALS: Digg=1, Reddit=3

Okay, this scheme of rating may not be totally accurate, but it does point out some important flaws. Seriously, I think Reddit is showing promise, and I’m starting to move over from Digg. I’ll probably continue to use both, but I’ll focuse on Reddit more. I don’t want stupid pictures of motorized rollerblades (yes, that did show up once), I want the best of the blogosphere. By “the best of the blogosphere”, I mean blogs like Engadget, not “what I had for lunch today blogs”.

Reddit is not without it’s flaws. I’m not a big fan of some aspects of it’s design (I prefer a dedicated “Digg Page” to a top-frame thing like Reddit has, and the buttons they have for blogs need more work. I like Digg better in those aspects, but Reddit is improving. Anything to escape a lot of the garbage cluttering-up Digg.

You’ve used Imageshack before, haven’t you? You probably have images you want to post on a blog or forum all the time. It’s a great concept though, predictably, it hasn’t worked out well.

Have you noticed how sluggish Imageshack has become? On my 800k-1mb connection, Imageshack usually takes three minutes to load. Then it takes an exhorbitant amount of time to upload my image. To top that all off, the uploaded images load slowly when you hotlink them. Seems as if they need to drop some cash on new servers.

There are alternatives, like TinyPic, though they have some annoyances as well. Tinypic is lightning-fast, but they have two useful features missing. One, TinyPic needs a transloader function like Imageshack’s. Two, TinyPic needs to offer a field with just the image URL. They give you the preformatted garbage that you have to re-edit. If i’m using the image on my blog, I just need the URL, not BBCode or their prefab HTML.

There aren’t many good image hosts out there. We need more. We need good ones. Imageshack/Tinypic are neccessary evils (got to combat that Digg effect ) for now.

Arrrg! I’ve reached the least fun part of beta testing–having your progress halted by a bug. After making a bit of progress in Pirates of the Caribbean Online, I hit a bug with the game. Mr. Gibbs is refusing to recognize me. After doing two quest-things for him, he’s just sitting there saying “What do you want?”. I’m probably going to have to start over again if I want to continue with the storyline.

I guess I’ll just do more freeform gameplay until the game is released, then start over. Even after hours of playing, I’ve barely dented the main storyline. Disney’s VR Studio sure knows how to make a game that lasts…

Great, now my younger brothers are going to continue with the game and do all the cool stuff before me.

YES! I was searching through GameSpot.com for more info on Pirates of the Caribbean Online (which I’m beta testing). Guess what? I won’t have to pay for it! Muahahaha! I was afraid that I’d have to stop playing once the beta ended, but disney plans to have both a free ad-supported version and a premium version with more features and no ads. That’s good, since I can’t afford to pay a subscription.

Beta-ing the game is a lot of fun, though there are plenty of problems. Lots of crashes, unsolid decks on ships, and the like. I may have to start the game all over again after the latest problem. I went and did a quest thingy and came back to Mr. Gibbs, but he seems to think I didn’t do the quest. Arrg! Sometimes the game brings down my whole system when it closes as well. THe game will be a lot of fun once all these annyoing problems are ironed out.

Yeah! I got in on the beta for the Pirates of the Caribbean Online game. It looks like it’s shaping up pretty good, though it shows the fact that it’s a beta very visibly. There’s a ton of bugs, glitches, and random crashes. It’s fun when it’s not crashing (or hanging, or lagging, or not letting you do stuff because of a random glitch).

The graphic quality is amazing, and the voice acting is great. The sound effects are spectacular. The game currently lags frequentlty, but I expect improvements soon. This is going to be one fun game (it will be released on May 25th, I believe).

In case you were wondering, I’m the guy behind the NPC holding the bag of money.

Haven’t had time to look at it yet, but Digg has just released a Digg API. Also available is a Flash Toolkit. I wonder what you can do with the API. I’ll have to take a look later.

Why pay someone to make business cards for you when you can do it yourself? All you need is Adobe Photoshop, a printer, and some cardstock (available at Staples or similar stores). This tutorial will teach you how to make a basic business card. This is by no means the only way, and you can alter the design any way you want. Just do whatever you think will look best. Let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »

Yeah, yeah. Don’t use tables. Blah blah blah. Use CSS and all that. CSS can be a pain at times (especially if you want it to work in Internet Explorer…), but it works really well…when it works. Really, if you’re making a new layout, use CSS. Here are some really cool CSS-based layouts. Inspire yourself.

• MediaTemple - This web host has a really cool and professional layout. They’ve got a black header with shiny black “plastic” tabs. Drop-down menus come out from the tabs and the links in them are highlighted with a cool rounded-blue image. See for yourself.
• Ars Technica - “The Art of Technology” is this tech blog’s tagline. Their layout is even better than their tagline. The header is a nice red, with navigational tabs along the bottom. Below that, it looks like the designer is a fan of cubism. Everything is in a box. It works well though, and is surprisingly well organized.
• DHTMLSite - A spartan layout with a navigation bar at the top. The logo is right at the top of the left-hand column. Even though the layout is lightweight, it still looks crowded.
• Wordpress.org - Not to be confused with Wordpress.com (the blog host), this is the site where you download the real Wordpress software (which is grwat by the way). The layout is reminiscent of a newspaper, being a light white-grey with black text and horizontal lines. Nice and uncluttered, it still looks great.
• Good-Tutorials - Their layout changes too often, unfortunately (a couple of times a year it seems). The current one is well designed, featuring blue gradients, tan, and white very well. Uncluttered and well though-out, it’s pretty good for a tutorial site.
• The Leaky Cauldron - Prepare to be blown away. This layout is all CSS and images. Easily edging out the Table-based Mugglenet.com which has a black background too), this is easily the best-designed Harry Potter site. That’s not an easy goal either, there are some amazing lesser-known ones. The Leaky Cauldron is the biggest HP site on the web (getting over 100,000 unique visitors a day). The layout is amazing, and AJAX is used quite well.
• Feedo Style - ORANGE! Amazingly it’s not that hard on the eyes, andi t’s not that dreaded “Safety Orange” either. Horizontal navigation, one-column content, not too bad. The diagonal-line-gradient on the background is a nice touch as well.
• Digital Web Magazine - Nice and clean. Blues, tan, white, etc. There’s a refreshing lack of advertisements as well.
• PotterCast - Considering it’s a sub-site of the Leaky Cauldron, I’d expect no less. Probably the best layout I’ve seen on a podcast site so far, it looks very unique (without being totally off-the-wall).
• YouTube - Airy (read: no visible lines around the edges), it looks very much like a Google site (despite not starting out as one).
• PC World - Hmmm. Reminds be of Ars Technica a little… It looks different in several ways though. It’s a bit heavy, clocking in at 74 settings on 56k and 12 on a T1. Reds, greays, and white again. It’s very dynamic, and much more cluttered than Ars Technica.
• Digg - Digg… Take a look at it yourself. The header’s the main part, and the lower segments are just divided by lines and padding. The header conveys an amazing array of information and navigation.

Microsoft has stated that computer manufacturers will no longer be allowed to preinstall Windows XP on new computers after Jan 1, 2008. It’ll be Vista or nothing (or you could buy a non OEM version of XP online, I suppose). Dell is already getting ready to abandon XP. How long until XP is no longer supported? Hopefully I’ll have a Mac by then.

The nominees for this year’s Webby Awards have been posted. In the overabundance of categories, we have some good sites this year. Digg, Del.icio.us, and Flickr have all been nominated under the “Best Practices” category, and Gamespot under “Games-Related”. There’re plenty more. There’s no way I’m about to read through all of them. There are hundreds!