My first niece was born on the 5th! Her name is Mia.
I’m an Uncle (again)!
June 14th, 2011Why Facebook will never implement a “dislike” button
May 12th, 2011
As of this writing, the “PETITION FOR FACEBOOK TO INSTALL A DISLIKE BUTTON – the original” group on Facebook has 1,694,672 members. There are also a countless number of other groups demanding Facebook to add a “dislike” button with thousands of members each. Let’s face it – it’s not going to happen.
Why not? Because Facebook would be stupid to add a dislike button. Facebook is a social platform, and things that are better for social interaction are better for Facebook. Friendliness, collaboration, and good relationships with people help Facebook’s reputation. Now imagine how this scenario would play out on Facebook if we had a dislike button:
Robert Wenger is now in a relationship with Amazing Girl.
Oh awesome, right? Well, if there’s a dislike button…
NotSoAmazing Ex-Girlfriend dislikes this. Amazing Girl and 7 others like this.
I think you can probably see where I’m going with this scenario already.
Comment by Amazing Girl: “You’re just jealous that you can’t keep a guy that’s so awesome, you (insert derogatory term here)”
Not good. See what would happen to Facebook’s reputation?
Comment by NotSoAmazing Ex-Girlfriend: “You’re just picking up my leftovers, (even nastier term)”
After these first sparring remarks, you know that my notification box (and those of my friends who liked my relationship status) will get flooded with an hour of incessant updates bringing us the latest news on the next epic flame war in the ever-snowballing amalgamation of confrontational relationships known as Facebook. Would Facebook want themselves to be known as a website that fosters such activity? I would think not.
“Couldn’t the dislike button be used to express sympathy for bad news?” Yes, it could. However, that’s what the comment box is good for – expressing your feelings towards someone or something else. The “Like” button is simply a lazy way of agreeing with something or someone. The amount of likes a person has generally reflects the popularity of the person. People try to get people to like their pictures, their posts, and anything else “like”-able.
Imagine people started basing their popularity on their number of dislikes. Depression? Online feuds? Messed up relationships? Check, check, and check. These results wouldn’t apply to every case, but you always see news of odd situations where someone drives their neighbor’s kid to suicide by bullying them on a social network, or something like that. Facebook can’t afford that kind of press, which means that the feature will never be implemented.
Of course Facebook will have it’s feuds, but adding the dislike button would only make them worse.
Robert Wenger is now single. Robert Wenger dislikes this.
If in doubt, use kittens!
May 11th, 2011
I may not be able to post a regular update for the next couple of days, so I decided that I wanted to post something fun now. But what could I post…
Kittens! So where did I get these pictures of these kittens? They were born to one of our cats. This one particular mother cat tends to have her kittens out of sight (our cats are all outdoor cats) and bring them up to the house only when she’s comfortable with us seeing them. This time, she brought the kittens right up to our back door. That’s quite bold for her considering that we use the back door a lot.
Anyways, I did say pictures (as in plural) of kittens, so let me post the rest!
These pictures were all taken with my phone camera. I was impressed with their quality, as the phone’s camera is supposed to be pretty lousy. Anyways, that’s not the purpose of the post. I’ll get back to computer stuff soon, but kittens are really entertaining.
Have a favorite kitten pictures? Let me see it! Leave the link in the comments.
P.S. – Want more kittens?
Kitten War – Pick which kitten is cuter.
Sites banning other sites from linking to them
May 10th, 2011
I stumbled across this post by Malcolm Coles, and it gave me a laugh. Take a look:
Malcom Coles – Here, in 2011, are 15 sites I’ve not featured before, all of which try to prevent you linking to them (usually restricting the “right” to link to just the homepage or else requiring written consent). YOU’RE ALL IDIOTS. I have, of course, linked to them – click the company name to see the T&Cs.
Some sites Malcolm found that included the restriction are:
- Tottenham Hotspur
- United Parcel Service (UPS)
- Shell
From an SEO standpoint, not allowing other sites to link to yours is laughable, but there is of course a reason why this terminology is still used in legal verbiage. Enter Rishi Lakhani to provide the answer.
So there we have it. According to Rishi, the sites include the restriction based on old fears of their content being stolen by using iFrames.
So, do you think these sites should remove these restrictions from their Terms and Conditions? Leave your opinions in the comments.
Poll: Celebration of Osama’s Death?
May 4th, 2011
Let’s get a show of hands (er, mice) here. Is it right or wrong to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden? When I saw the news and saw that people were celebrating in the streets, I was disappointed. I am as happy as anyone that the man is longer a threat to the people he wanted to attack (namely me and my family), but I don’t think celebrating anyone’s death is a good thing. Then again, I didn’t lose anyone in the September 11th attacks – I wasn’t directly affected as so many Americans were. Maybe some were celebrating the success of our military and intelligence agencies, and maybe others who lost loved ones felt that there was some sort of closure involved in bin Laden’s death. I still don’t agree with it. I see celebrating bin Laden’s death about the same way as I see building a mosque at ground zero. Both acts are uncalled for and are generally in bad taste.
So what do you think? Vote in the poll and leave your comments below.
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