OK, nobody’s figured it out yet. Hints so far:
When you figure it out, post the answer here. I will continue the puzzle once someone demonstrates they have it figured out up to this point. Some people are really close…but I think they’re looking at entire words. Think more fine-grained than that.
Bonus question: What’s the weirdest thing you purchased online? I just ordered a 12″ diameter steel hemisphere.
Remember the good ol’ days when Java Developer’s Journal was an actual printed magazine? Wow, have things ever changed at “The World’s Leading Java Resource”:
Although not shown here, when you first visit the page, a giant Flash advertisement obscures most of the screen. Then, after you close that ad, the video on the right starts playing — with sound. It’s like a horrible MySpace page. And I thought blogs were bad.
I’m probably being too generous by saying there are “only” 8 ads…those three links above Ad #3 are probably paid links, as two of the three take you to sites that require registration before you can view the content. Making paid ads look like legitimate content is a dirty trick.
The question is…do all of these advertisements work? Am I stupid for limiting my blog to a single ad? Could I double…triple…quadruple my money?
Check out my blog on Safari: (made possible by browsershots.org, thanks Alex!)
See the little blue “RSS” icon? That’s fascinating, because my blog does not have RSS.
Why not use the feed icon like everybody else?
Calling my Atom feed “RSS” is just plain dumb.
Shout out to Carlos Vella for showing how to change the blog title in WordPress. Here is my new code in header.php:
<title><?php if (is_home()) {
bloginfo('name');
} else {
wp_title('');
}?></title>
Ahh…that’s one less piece of clutter in my theme.
Why would you want a map like this on your blog?
Everyone’s blog traffic looks like that. A bunch of dots blobs scattered across the globe with a void in Africa. Get rid of it.
How about this:
People do not visit your blog for the weather report.
And about that tag cloud…Jeffrey Zeldman called tag clouds the new mullet way back in 2005. (personally, I think goatees are the new mullet, but to each his own…)
Every person with a blog should read Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings. That article contains some really awesome heat maps that show what people actually look at on a web page.
I wonder why we spend so much time agonizing over how to create 3-column CSS layouts when people rarely look at those other columns anyway?
I think Russell Beattie’s Weblog has a fantastic style: clean, beautiful, and easy to read. I modeled my site after his, although I’m certainly no graphic designer.
Unfortunately many blogs look more like this:
Yuk.
Apple hardware design kicks ass:
Largely because they have the balls to remove extraneous features.
Corporate committees are the enemy of simplicity. Committees rarely produce anything inspiring. Instead, we get watered down politically correct pandering slop that tries to please every faction, while delighting nobody.
Your blog belongs to YOU. You do not have to answer to a committee! Be an evil dictator! Delete, purge, CLEAN UP! You can be Steve Jobs in your own little corner of the Internet.
Removing the clutter will make your blog better.
Your challenge is to remove something from your blog theme. Drop a calendar, a tag cloud, a map, a badge…whatever. Just go for simplicity.
(The hypocrisy of the gigantic ad on my own blog is noted…)
Why do people still offer both RSS and Atom links???
More choices do not improve usability — they diminish it.
Pick one and drop the other. Your blog does not need both. I chose to remove RSS, by the way.
All comments on this blog now use gravatars - globally recognized avatars. I think this is a really cool concept, although scanning through historical comments shows hardly anybody with a picture (yet).
Since I modified the comment layout, repeat visitors may have to hold Shift-Reload to force your browser to get the latest CSS and background image.
Now I’m looking for a few brave souls to get their free Gravatar accounts, leave some comments, and check it out!
Do you use Gravatar on your blog?
Drawing stick figure comics may seem like a pathetic cry for help…a desperate plea for MORE LINKS…but the Code To Joy team has taken the art of link groveling to a new level.
For those “on the inside”, Mike has better pictures…far better pictures…deemed inappropriate for the workplace.
Mike: post those pictures!
UPDATE: Oops, I corrected the link to Mike’s blog.
I just added “thought bubble” graphics to my blog comments. Scroll down to see the results.
Check out Comic: Wide-Stanced Programming for another post with a handful of comments.
I have no idea if this works in your browser. I tested on Vista using IE 7 and Firefox 2.0.0.9. It’d be great if people on other operating systems and browsers could let me know how the bubbles render.
I received a very helpful (and FAST) response from the reCAPTCHA team earlier today:
Basically, when you get a reCAPTCHA incorrect on wordpress, the comment is saved but it is marked as spam. When a legitimate user gets the CAPTCHA incorrect, they are redirected to a page that saves their comment and allows them to correct the CAPTCHA. Once we recover the comment, it’s deleted from the database. However, if a spam bot enters the comment, it will not follow the redirect, so sometimes the comment stays in the DB.
Basically, when using reCAPTCHA, any comment you see in the moderation queue was caught by reCAPTCHA — it doesn’t mean that the CAPTCHA is broken.
The only thing I’ll add to this is my observation that WordPress does not always make it clear which “comments” come from the comment form versus trackbacks and pingbacks. So “any comment you see in the moderation queue” MIGHT have come via reCAPTCHA, but it might also have originated via trackbacks. Read on…
Today I turned off email notification for the moderation queue, as the reCAPTCHA FAQ suggests. But this has a side-effect…I also had this option selected in WordPress: “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”.
Damn. This means I’ll no longer see email notifications for those legitimate human comments. So…I went ahead and turned off that, as well.
After changing these settings, I very quickly saw a spam comment make it onto my blog, because (I think) the “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” checkbox is now unselected. I missed my opportunity to moderate the comment (which is actually a trackback), so it went on through.
AFTER the spam makes it through the system, WordPress sends an Email notification. Part of this email contains this phrase:
You can see all trackbacks on this post here:
Aha! Now I know this came from a trackback, not from a normal comment.
I now believe most of the comment spam I’ve been seeing in recent weeks has originated from trackbacks, it’s just that WordPress does not always make it easy to tell if the comments are coming from trackbacks or the comment form. reCAPTCHA does a very good job with the comment form, but does not address trackback or pingback spam in any way.
I really, really like reCAPTCHA. It is very effective and the people on their team are always helpful and promptly answer questions. Having reCAPTCHA in place saves me significant time. It’s also damn cool that they are harnessing people power to digitize books. Watching Luis von Ahn’s Google Tech Talk was the reason I tried reCAPTCHA in the first place. It is an incredibly clever idea that any geek can appreciate.
I used Akismet in the past, and wading through thousands of spams in the Akismet queue grew very burdensome. Furthermore, it occasionally marked valid comments as spam — definitely more often than once every 6 months — so I never felt comfortable ignoring the spams.
Maybe WordPress needs to improve its moderation queue? Some ideas:
Trackbacks and pingbacks are now off. Comments — from people — are open and encouraged. Spammers, you suck.