Heh. Just saw the subject line. :-P
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Homer
<usenet@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:22:25 +0100
<20n2l5-esn.ln1@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>
>> Street-savvy Microsoft tries to pop the pimply face of piracy
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | This isn't Redmond's first assault on young pirates. In February
>> | this year it tried to push its own intellectual property curriculum
>> | in schools with the launch of a clunky social networking style
>> | site, thinly-veiled as a fun forum for teens to get their cultural
>> | kicks.
>> `----
>>
>> http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/07/15/microsoft_young_pirates/
>
> And here it is, in all it's, ahem, "glory":
>
> http://www.mybytes.com
>
> As El Reg puts it; "[mybytes] looks and feels like a middle-aged man
> hopelessly trying to get down with the kids".
>
> Euch! Puppy's anyone?
>
> The ringtones "Top Downloads" section is a sea of zeros.
>
> I think I'll join up ... just to post links to tribeofnoise.com.
>
Blecch. mybytes.com's music mixer is a piece of junk,
from a GUI perspective. To its credit, it *does*
generate noise, but given the loop browser's rather
stupid notion of enumerating "drums1" through "drums26"
instead of categorizing them, nor are they guaranteed to
be in harmony with one another, plus the restriction of
5 tracks, I can't say this is good, and Instant Music
(on the Amiga, though there were probably variants for
Mac and Windows as well) at least could be guaranteed to
generate somewhat harmonious music (mostly because its
songs came preprogrammed with chords).
Surprisingly, the HTML is very readable.
The "free" content is interspersed among the "restricted"
content in the Showcase (though one can sort by table
column). The video works but starts up without any
prompting, and the entire site decides it wants to
make itself animated for no particularly good reason
(check out Polls for a particularly bad instance of
busybusybusy, or hover over the "On the Street Interviews"
microphone to see it "sparkle" in a rather ugly fashion).
An implementation bug showed a blank gray subarea on the
Home page; refreshing didn't fix it. The Story navigator
verges on the ridiculous; can one imagine stepping through
hundreds of stories in random order using only <Prev Next>?
The whole color scheme reminds me of Nickelodeon
(www.nick.com) though Nickeloden actually does it better,
if far far busier, from a color scheme standpoint.
(There's some bugs in Nick's pages, though.)
For its part TribeOfNoise has a somewhat cruder general
presentation scheme which reminds me of portlets, but
also doesn't try quite as hard to have strange mixers
as part of its free area. The video players both work
reasonably well, though I for one am puzzled as to why
the differing GUIS between them. The navigation could
use a clearer "Home" link (turns out the image at the
very far right is that "Home" link, but it's not obvious
that it's an actual link until someone hovers over it --
I suppose it's logical enough but it hides in plain sight).
Attempting to view mp3s kicks one to a login request page,
an annoyance; this could have been mentioned somewhere.
The shop's underlinks are not consistent stylistically
with the main links at the very bottom, a minor blemish.
There is also a blank area in the homepage but unlike
MyBytes, it's either unavoidable (unless they wanted
another portlet) or the same color, so from a visual
standpoint it's not a problem.
The HTML is also very readable.
I like the coloration in general, though some might think
it a bit drab; cream-on-gray text, however, is very readable.
And lastly, the girl on top is rather cute. ;-) For what
it's worth.
All in all, TribeOfNoise has minor flaws but works from
a style perspective; MyBytes.com is flawed and ugly.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Been there, done that, didn't get the T-shirt.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
|
|
