Time Magazine’s “25 Sites We Can’t Live Without”

On Monday, Time wrote about the “25 Sites We Can’t Live Without.” Meh. Don’t count me in that we. Amazon? Really? I think if something happened to Amazon, I could still live. I prefer Google “Products” search these days (although the old name Froogle was much better). Some of the choices I definitely agree with (IMDB, eBay, Craig’s List, Wikipedia), but other sites get the WTF Face: Yahoo? CitySearch? It’s not 1998 anymore. Freakin’ Netflix?? As a service, it’s great. But as a site-I-can’t-live-without…?

At least Flickr is on the list. Flickr is one site that continually delights me. As of late, I’m digging the maps section, an area where people geo-tag their photos and drop them on the map where the photos were taken, or close to it. The maps interface is a bit clumsy right now, from a usability perspective, but I have faith that they’ll improve it, as they have everything else on the site. I love the limited amount of quality products Flickr has for sale, too — like Qoop photobooks. I ordered one last year, and it was professional-looking, inexpensive, and shipped fast. And it makes a really great personal gift. They give their members credit by not making the commerce options the focal point of the homepage, or any other page for that matter. In fact, while there’s a block of info about products on the homepage by default, members can click to close the commercial message. When you refresh the page, poof! It’s gone. How many websites today will let you control the money-making aspects of the site?

Hmm. Maybe this should have been a post about the “25 parts of Flickr I can’t live without.” I haven’t even started on my favorite groups yet.

 

Why WordPress kind of blows

My previous blogs have all been Blogger-based, but my current job has me using WordPress, so I figured I’d start this blog with WordPress. So far, not so good.

1. The image editor is not at all intuitive. How do I insert an image into the body copy and have a runaround/margin so that the image isn’t bleeding into/interfering with the text?

2. There’s no built-in font editor. You can change the color, change text to bold or itals, but there’s no way to change the font, except for editing the code.

3. I’m using Firefox (and the whole world will use Firefox in the future too, I promise) and maybe that’s part of the problem. I will never ever go back to IE. But randomly when writing a post via WordPress in Firefox, I get an editing toolbar and sometimes I don’t. No rhyme, no reason, just annoyance.

4. Sometimes I can copy/paste from Word into the Write Post box and it’ll retain all the formatting properties. AND SOMETIMES IT WON’T! At least be consistently annoying.

5. “Snapshots” seem to be the default — little preview screens appear when you hover over a link on the blog. It’s an innovation that that’s better in theory than practice. It’s like the Rovion of linking.

This is just my not-so-eloquent way of saying that I realize the fonts and images and spacing of the previous posts are all effed up. Trying to figure it all out.

 

MOG

I want to like MOG, I really do. The music-based social networking site, its name a derivation of “music blog,” has a welcoming and homey aesthetic. If MySpace is a cheesy pop-music arena concert, then MOG is an intimate indie-rock show.

The site’s personality starts with the playful copy (a rotating top-nav tagline says things like “a musical nudist colony” and “where the hokey pokey ‘is’ what it’s all about”). The primary design elements are curvy and earthy brown. Once you register, you can wiki it up and create your own MOG. But the extent of customization is limited—you can move around and delete widgets and change your skins, but widgets only fit into certain spaces within the three-column layout and skin selection is limited, unless you want to go through the trouble of creating your own.

Unlike many social networking sites, you can add a Mogger as your friend (“My trusted Mogs”) without that person necessarily adding you (“Mogs that trust me”). Trust is based on knowing a Mogger, or simply finding their writing and/or taste in music interesting.

Founder David Hyman is MOG’s Tom. He’s your default friend when you sign up, and he acts as the site’s emcee, the community’s leader. He impels conversation, warns about updates and interrupted service, keeps users apprised of new features—he even invites Moggers to parties. He is also the face of apology when something goes wrong. (A few weeks ago, when Facebook Platform was unveiled, an industry-shaking move that opened up Facebook to outside developers, MOG had a hard time adapting. MOG was unprepared for a load increase of over 3000%, and the site slowed to a crawl as a result.) Hyman (even with such an unfortunate name) is genuinely likable, someone whom you want to pat and say “there, there” to when something goes wrong.

MOG’s motor is the Mog-O-Matic software, which scans a user’s hard drive for music files and tracks members’ collections. Mog-O-Matic keeps dibs on music files added and how often files are played, extracting the data into site widgets for other members to see. To me, this is the boon and bane of MOG.

Without Mog-O-Matic, the site’s recommendation engine—a primary component of MOG’s appeal—wouldn’t exist. Music lovers would discover each other through what they say they listen to, and not what they actually do listen to. But it’s all a little too Big Brother for me. And I’m sure I’m not the only: Who wants that kind of virtual invasion? Who wants to intentionally install tracking software, regardless of its innocuous purpose?

But I think even beyond that, the concept of MOG is fundamentally flawed: It tracks songs played on your computer. What self-respecting music lover uses their computer as their primary music player? And if you’re going to argue that you’d install it on your work computer, where you listen to music all day long, I’ll call bullshit. Do you keep your music collection on your work computer? Do you even have install privileges on your work computer?

In spite of these limitations, MOG has created an endearing music community. And even if it never achieves a MySpace-size fan base, there’s always room for a warm nook for audiophiles on the web.