It's not uncommon to read about companies who should know better making dumb mistakes with their user base.  Facebook is a perfect example, so much so I don't even need to dig up a link.  What is really dumb, is a site devoted to covering "2.0" news makes the same mistakes: DownloadSquad.

I started noticing today that the DownloadSquad RSS feed is sending some articles in a "click to read more" format.  This annoys me, and I drop feeds that play these games (looking at you penny arcade).  I went to leave a comment on the latest feed to let them know I wasn't impressed, and noticed the comment form changed.  I you don't want to get an account (and I don't) you'll have to leave a comment then confirm your email by getting a confirmation link in your inbox.  Don't like that either - what ever happened to anonymous comments?  Not that I ever leave anonymous comments, but the forced "we need your real email" act has me thinking I need to use disposable email more often.

But the icing on the cake was when I returned to the blog, I saw I had a "profile" on the site.  Indeed I am BlogSmith user #555222 - joined on Jan 5th 2007!  I searched my email to confirm I never signed up for the site and it appears to have matched me to other comments by email address to create my profile.  Looking back at the confirmation email, I see at the bottom a message "For future reference, you may avoid these confirmations by using your e-mail and password" following by an obviously computer generated password.

The real annoyance I have here is not a privacy issue (after all, my contact link below is my real email) - it's the impression that I have a BlogSmith account and am a user of the service - almost like I'm endorsing the product.  Well, to make sure there is no confusion, I think BlogSmith sucks. (I'm making it a link so google understands I associate the words "BlogSmith" and "Sucks" together, the same way eStarling sucks.).

Ice Cube on SilverLight:

I recently bought Guitar Hero 3 (GH3) for the Wii.  This is my first time playing any of the guitar hero games and I can let other "real" guitar players know your six string skill give no edge in the game.  Like most simple button mashing games, GH3 is very addictive.  With a second guitar the fun rises as everyone gets into the action - even my daughters Rachel (7) and Hannah (4).

Below is some video I recorded the first night they played GH3.  Since then they have improved quite a bit, Rachel has passed 28 songs on "easy" - which if you've never played before easy isn't as easy as it sounds!

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Because I've been lax on posting lately, I'm going to re-purpose a comment I left on Charles Petzold's blog.

In reply to Kindle Me Elmo:

I am not impressed.  $400 is overpriced, DRM is there just for device lock in (Load a PDF on Kindle!?! I must be mad!), and pay a fee just to read blogs?  "Wireless" doesn't mean WiFi either, it means a cell phone tower.

Those that read blogs think this is the future, those that read books know that paper is king.  A note to amazon, one of those two groups buy a whole lot more books than the other.

When it comes to reading for pleasure nothing beats a book in your hand.  I'm not going to "curl up" with an ebook reader and a Steven King novel (nor will I do so when "Turning" is published).  I buy most of my books from used book stores (but not programming books Chuck! well... honestly, only because they are way out of date by the time they hit the used book store) and the cost is at most $5.  Less if you count the credit I get back when I return them.

This is not to say I'm anti-ebook - quite the opposite, I can see myself using such a device often for reference.  I own a huge number of books on programming and find myself needing to reference a book at home while I'm at work.  Here  Kindle would shine, I could just call up the book on the reader and jump to the section I needed.  I'm sure you don't need to be a code monkey to have the same need.

Here is what I would like to see: First kill that keyboard on Kindle - why is it needed?  Books are already well indexed (both by an index and a table of contents) and full text searching a book is often pointless (sorry Google).  the navigation should be pretty simple (iPod like if you will) and that saves some space to either make the screen bigger or just have a smaller device.  WiFi cards fit on an SD memory card now, so add WiFi and an app to configure advanced things like rss feeds and such.  Oh, and not every device needs to have a web browser.

Next, sell paper books with "kindle cards" or some such device so that I get a version I can load on the reader with the paper book.  I like the idea of the kindle version being sent to me on physical media, eases the "back it all up!" fear of buying digital content.

Last, provide a desktop app "kindle converter" that lets me convert any document format to kindle - pdf, word, help files, even websites.  You allow MSDN or WikiPedia to be loaded on kindle and you have created a huge desire for this reader.  Why don't I suggest a non-DRM format?  Well, though I would like it I still want to see the DRM option for authors who fear it could be copied without it.  I know that is not a solid argument - any DRM is cracked within moments of it's release - but this matters to some authors so I'm willing to accept it if it means I'll have their books available.

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Seriously.  This is now a good thing, like how bad now means good.  Or so I'm told.  My new twitter account.  If you don't know what that is, I envy you - don't click it.  Forget you ever saw this post.

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Study in sepia happiness!

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She actually kicked the ball! Yay!

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Yay! Moving!

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Stepping in time.