Unsightful.com

Look back at the state of technology thirty years ago. Now, imagine yourself thirty years in the future.

What kind of untold, amazing sites are in store for us?

Based on what the New York Times envisions for their own web site, not a hell of a lot is going to change. Today, some visitors have been smacked in the face with a full-page popover ad showing an imaginary NYT site from 2040.

Where’s the fantasy? Where’s the awe-inspiring vision? The mockup looks like a fairly run-of-the-mill Wordpress theme. It’s the same three-column layout that we see on most blogs (like this one) right now. I was expecting an Optimus Maximus and I got a plain old black Logitech keyboard.

Maybe the Times crew knows something I don’t, but I sure hope that in thirty years I’ve come up with an experience for this lowly blog that is a little more compelling and a little less cookie-cutter.

At least they had the balls to use a different font in the header. That as to count for something, right?

[via Technologizer]

It took me a while to understand the point of Twitter, but now that I do I really enjoy it. There are, however, certain individuals whose habits have become more than a little annoying. These are my top five.

1. The Link Dumper. I have no problem with you sharing links on Twitter. If I’m following you, there’s a decent chance I will be interested in the same sites you are. However, that doesn’t mean I followed you hoping that you would share every single URL you find the slightest bit share-worthy.

And please – mix it up a little! Constantly dumping links would go like this in real life:

“Dude, you gotta see this web page.” “Dude, you gotta see this web page.” “Dude…” That kind of crap will get a stapler thrown at you at the office.

2. The blip.fm’er. You know what? I’m glad you’re really into your music. You know what else? If I really wanted to know every song you were listening to RIGHT NOW, I’d probably follow you on Last.fm or Blip.fm itself. Say something between tracks at least.

If a friend of mine called me every three minutes to tell me what song he was listening to, I’d block his phone number and replace all his MP3s with “Afternoon Delight.”

3. The self-promoter. What’s that? You write for a big blog? Hey, great! I actually read your posts fairly regularly. Once in a while, however, it would be nice to see that you like to talk about other things you’ve read, not just your own fabulous post – just so I don’t think you’re a completely self-absorbed prick.

4. The caps locker. Whether you know it or not, most of us are smart enough to tell something has you excited by the words you choose and your punctuation. Perhaps you’ve heard of the exclamation point? You haven’t? It’s two rows up on your keyboard from the caps lock key, and you obviously no where that is.

5. The @spammer. It’s common knowledge that @replies are more likely to get a response than DMs. Still, if you want to @spam me, at least wine and dine me a little first. Make me feel like you actually want to converse, don’t just get up in my face with your unsolicited verbal garbage.

Those are mine…What about yours?

Yesterday was a day in tech news that I hope we don’t have to repeat again any time soon. If I’d seen one more “Apple is buying Twitter,” or “Apple isn’t buying Twitter, but here’s who should/is/might” post, I’m quite sure I would have vomited all over my shoes.

Finally, Ev came out and said it this morning (on The View, of all places). Twitter’s not for sale. Really?

No shit.

In case it hadn’t been made abundantly clear before, Twitter wants deals – plural – not a straight up purchase that will put them under someone else’s control.

They want to be “the platform” for microcommunication and profit from things like NowPublic. They want to profit from access to their data and users, not from grabbing a nice, fat, wad of cash from another big IT company (or publisher). It makes sense to me – then again, I’m no social media analyst.

Twitter has become far too important to settle for a simple sell-off.