Archive
or not – Featured Post Update
Well, it seems that my Featured Post – How it all started got someone’s attention at the online magazine. There is nothing bugging me today! 
They were nice enough to give my rant a mention in one of their own updates to members.
There are things about Qondio that need improvement, and we don’t mind people posting rants (such as this one),
Yes, the name of the online magazine is Qondio.
They took notice and I’m pleased with the recent changes they’ve made to the site which encourages members to screen the articles and have them published in a timely manner.
Just to make sure that it really was working I decided to screen some articles this morning but there was only one. It was published quickly and there were no others to screen.
However, I checked back and a new one had been added. I screened this article and I was happy to see that it received 9 screenings and was published within an hour of the member submitting it. Much better than what was happening before.
I’m looking forward to seeing what other improvements they will have when Qondio V3.0 is released.
I would also like to thank Qondio because if it wasn’t for what was going on there I may have never started this blog. When I joined the challenge I wrote an article for Qondio encouraging others to start their own blog and join the WordPress Challenge.
One member did join me in the challenge and that is Barb19 – Passionate About Pets. Check out her latest post.
Following the recent Weekly Photo Challenge – Refuge, and my entry, I thought you might be interested in the whole story, together with progress photographs of the little rescued baby koala – and the happy ending!
There is nothing bugging me today!
p.s. If you haven’t already done so, check out the RandomBlog2011 Challenge.
Quote for today
Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Related Articles
© 2010-2011 Things in life I find annoying
or not – Suzy gets to rant today!
Since I am trying to keep the negative thoughts away and instead spend precious time with my daughter, I’ve decided to let Suzy Malloy have the space today.
There’s nothing bugging me today!
Merry Christmas
A rant about poor website design
By Suzy Molloy
I’ve been comparing sales pages, sign up and squeeze pages recently.
Whilst there are some great quality designs out there nothing screams amateur as much as:
**poorly designed websites. You know the type, they load half off screen, or use blue text on a black background
**improper use of flash (Oh look I’ve just done my primary school flash animation project so I’ll include it here)
**pixelated graphics. Grainy and out of focus looking like they were stolen from newspapers.
**Images and graphics which don’t match or relate to the text copy. Don’t type “click the box that says BUY ME and then include a box graphic which says ADD TO CART”
My tips to better website page design:
**Proper use of white-space and use of dot points to highlight features makes it much easier to read.
**Properly formatted headings and subtitles. No meta-tags, or a page which says title instead of naming the page, not only looks unprofessional but you are wasting an important SEO opportunity here.
**Attention to detail – Proof read for errors and try your site in a variety of browser types.
Seriously plain text websites can look more professional than using the wrong graphics and images. I don’t want to get started here but just because you found an image online does not mean that it is free for you to use. Double check usage rights, copyright and keep yourself on the right side of the law.
I recommend you use a template for a design starting point. Even seasoned marketers and web designers make use of the good ones.
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© 2010-2011 Things in life I find annoying
or not – Yahoo Trying To Unload Delicious, Not Shut It Down
This is an update to yesterday’s posting Is Yahoo Shutting Down Delicious?
Boy, was I pleased when I saw that headline this morning as I signed into my Delicious account. You can read it here:
Yahoo Trying To Unload Delicious, Not Shut It Down
Nothing could make me happier. But now I have to go back to StumbleUpon and move those bookmarks over to Delicious. There’s only a few so it shouldn’t take me too long.
Lucky for me, I had problems with my Internet connection yesterday and I wasn’t online and doing a lot of bookmarking.
So something good came from not being able to get access to the Internet. Less work for me today.
This morning, it’s not about what’s bugging me today but
what’s putting a smile on my face.
© 2010-2011 Things in life I find annoying
Is Yahoo Shutting Down Delicious?
[Update: Yes]
This is what’s bugging me today.
I really just started using it a couple of months ago after signing up with them years ago.
I have 300 hundred bookmarks, 400 tags, and I have made sure to tag properly, create tag bundles, and subscriptions to make things easier to find and tag.
And then this happens. The first item when I signed into Delicious this morning, is the headline:
Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Yes]
I was stunned. I finally start using it, and organizing everything, and now I have to find something else.
I haven’t seen anything on when they are shutting it down, but I’ve already made a backup of my bookmarks, so I don’t lose them.
Then I departed on a mission to find an alternative to Delicious.
Then, right in my lap, arrives an article with the 10 Alternatives To Delicious.com Bookmarking.
I thought okay, here it is, some writer was quick and put something out already.
Ran down the list, checked out some of them, decide upon StumbleUpon and proceeded to download and install on my FireFox browser.
Everything was going smoothly, registered at the site, set up a basic profile, started finding my way around, checked out the toolbar in my browser. And I said yeh, I could work with this. I was set, had a new bookmarking service, I could stop using Delicious.
Well, that’s what I thought, until I went to use one of my neat little shortcuts that I do with the right-click button on my mouse and it wasn’t there! arrrgh.
I use it all the time. This little FireFox add-on, Text2Link, lets me highlight any word or sentence, right-click and search Google and I’ve set it up so it opens in a new tab. I use this all day long and it was gone. Instead StumbleUpon was there. I had StumbleUpon in my toolbar, I don’t need it in the right-click and I haven’t found a way to get rid of it yet.
I checked a few other programs, and managed to change some options and I got my Google search back, but it’s not there all the time – instead StumbleUpon is and other features are missing. This has changed my whole routine. It’s no longer a simple click.
Looks like I’m on the hunt again for another bookmarking service. arrrgh!
StumbleUpon just won’t do it for me! It’s going to be uninstalled quickly. I want my right-click back!
This is what’s bugging me today!
© 2010-2011 Things in life I find annoying
Article Screening & Rating
I belong to a web site where articles need to be screened and rated by members before they are published. While the article is in the screening room, the author’s name isn’t visible but the country it is directed at is. If it is directed at the global community there is no flag, otherwise a small image of an American, Canadian, Australian, etc flag appears next to the article name.
There are members who publish articles daily, weekly and sometimes occasionally. Some of these members never screen articles, and if they do, it seems that they only screen the articles their friends have posted. I have no proof of this, but just something I’ve observed.
Now, I don’t know if it’s the same people, because the screening is anonymous, but there are members who pick and choose the articles they will read. If the article has an American flag on it, it goes through the screening process fairly quickly. If it’s designated as global or another country, it can sit in the room for hours, sometimes days.
A fellow member published one yesterday as American and it went through the screening process in 7 hours. It actually had 3 screenings, within about 5 minutes of it being posted. Yet others will sometimes sit for hours before even one person will take the time to screen it and rate it.
At this time, there are 8 articles that need screening, 2 global, 3 American, 1 Philippines, 1 New Zealand and 1 Indian, they were all screened by someone at 353am, but at 637am, someone went in and screened just one of those articles and it has an American flag.
Selective screening. I detest people who behave in this manner. What makes them think they are better than others?
One article was posted on Dec. 14 at 10:05PM,, marked from New Zealand and discussing the tragedy at the mine. It finally cleared the screening room on Dec 16th at 3:53AM. Almost 30 hours, yet the American flagged one cleared yesterday in 7 hours, it was posted after this one. The odd thing about this article from New Zealand is that it had only needed one additional screening since Dec 15th at 5:18PM. Lets list it out so you can get a better picture of the times.
- Dec 14th at 10:05PM – posted to screening room
- Dec 15th at 5:18PM – needed just one more screening
- Dec 16th at 3:53AM – finally published
Why are these things happening?
I have my own little story about what happened with one of my articles, but then some are holding a grudge, so I’ve decided to report on this one. I hadn’t planned to cover this article, it’s just what I’ve observed.
Because I like seeing the good in people, I did not want to believe that members are doing this to other members.
This is as good a place as any to say this. So here goes!
If you want to play games, go ahead. You don’t want to screen, just run around following people, go ahead.
FYI Since returning to the web site just over two months ago, I have read, screened, rated over 1250 articles, including the archives! This doesn’t count the many I couldn’t rate or had no wish to comment on.
When I went into the screening room, I read and rated every article. I also provided feedback when necessary.
What’s that equal? About 500 per month average?
Well, no more. There is no requirement to screen at the site before posting articles, so maybe I will do like the rest of them.
Now I know I am only one person, but like I showed you in the example above, just one person is all that’s needed sometimes to finally get your article published.
This is what’s bugging me today!
© 2010-2011 Things in life I find annoying
ClassyRose
I am not an angry person. Please click on the picture to read why I started this Blog.
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