sugarenia.com

I hear a lot of buzz lately around a new service called Mento, which you can preview in Mento.info. It’s supposed to be an easy way to share links with friends, a task most of us do it almost daily (damn you).

Being the nerd I am, the first thing I noticed was the nice - and unusual - design of the site. Behold:

It’s pretty simple actually. Black and white and a splash of light blue here and there. Nice sense of contrast and hierarchy though.

But what I love is the way the site makes your eyes travel from one point to another, making you following their intended hierarchy either you want it or not. Even if the headers are not all lined up and make your eyes wander, the placement is smart enough to make it look like a snake road, leading you eventually to the nice and simple beta registration form.

Couldn’t get any simpler and more effective. Me loves.

What I could do without: the custom font of the main headers, which are images actually. Bah. Why not use a simple font to match the “Want to join” header at the bottom?

mento, web design

Daily ranting #454:

I use to access news sharing site Newsvine a lot, searching for Pathfinder Tech worthy Mac related articles.

I used to have its Tech section URL stored conveniently in my browser’s history, being at http://newsvine.com/tech.

These days, something didn’t click. Today I realized what: this URL wouldn’t get me to the Tech section anymore. I had to click again on the menu to find the correct technology section.

  

What’s this? Did I found a blind spot of the Internet?

They dropped the ‘tech’ alias for ‘technology’, so now I have to visit http://newsvine.com/technology.

  

It’s Technology, but according to the menu it’s Tech!

Why now? Who knows.

newsvine

Today at work I was playing with Slideshare, among other web services. And I found something:

     

     Post on wall

Bangs head against wall. Repeatedly.

I don’t care if this is some kind of ready-made code, spurted out from some CMS. It just sucks. Huge time.

Plus, dear Slideshare developers, add a way for me to construct the embed code for a slideshow just by using its URL, please.

slideshare, xhtml, semantic, css, api

I didn’t really get too much into Friendfeed until recently - eventhough I have my Twitterrific on (and checking) all of my home computing time, I never thought that *everything* my net pals do would be interesting enough for me to watch obsessively.

So I decided to give Twhirl and Alert Thingy, the two major AIR FriendFeed apps, a go the other day. And boy I was confused, and disappointed, and pissed.

First of all, Alert Thingy just won’t work for me. It will load but it won’t connect, it just sits there stuck in a “connecting” state. I updated my Adobe AIR, I restarted, I did everything I could but it wouldn’t get unstuck. So long, much-hyped-about Alert Thingy.

Twhirl, well… Twhirl Twhirl. Aren’t you a looker (not). Well, it works, but, meeeeeh… *any attempt of proper argumenting ends here - I just don’t like the way it looks*

Then I was prompted to MySocial 24×7, which is a Firefox extension for keeping an eye on Friendfeed. I never use Firefox but I installed to check it out, and there it was. A nice little subtle extension, with likes and comments right from the sidebar, with a pretty and cosy interface and, well, right where you usually socialize: in your browser. I loved it. Plus, it works in Firefox 3.

So I won’t be a cool kid and won’t use AIR applications, for the time being. I’m perfectly fine with most apps in my Mac, and AIR applications are just so off its usual interface it’s off-putting. I’ll stick to extensions and native applications, thank you very much, kthnxbai.

P.S. Please notice that I don’t actually use Firefox for my day-to-day browsing, Safari is my browser of choice. But MySocial 24×7 is a cool extension, nevertheless. Just don’t install it on your work PC, huge time waster!

twhirl, alert thingy, friendfeed, mysocial 24×7, adobe air

To edit a comment, you must click on the author name in the Manage Comments page.

Quite a cryptic way of denoting edit functionality.

Why didn’t they use a simple link, like the Unapprove / Spam ones?

wordpress, wordpress 2.5, admin, theme