However, I recently discovered something a little bit different.  The makers behind Crush or Flush are offering up an interesting twist on the nearly ubiquitous chat function.  There are the usual promises of letting you meet people without sharing your contact information, not permitting spam, anonymous selection of whom you would and would not like to meet.  The real beauty in their chat system comes in how they handle memberships:

Unlike traditional sites where members can hide behind multiple profiles tied to different e-mail addresses, on Crush or Flush you can only have one profile that is tied to your cell phone number…  During the sign-up process, your cell number is used to verify that you are a real person, and there can only be one profile per number. If someone harasses you or causes a problem, we will block his number and that person will permanently disappear.

So you not only are getting the benefit of getting to meet people who have mutual interest (without disclosure of your personal information), you’re also getting the benefit of knowing that the site’s membership process is making life that much more difficult for creepers and stalkers.  This is good, because the world is far too full of them as it is…

There are a few other bothersome issues, as well. While List After List makes use of the ubiquitous tagging feature (helpful), the overall primary navigation model seems to be lacking. “Lacking” as in “next-to-nonexistent, aside from tags, random browsing, and direct searching”. This is… annoying at best, and problematic at worst. Also, the colour scheme. What is up with the colour scheme? It looks a bit like somebody decided to try mating “2.0” layout sensibilities with 1998 Geocities colour coordination. In a word: painful. (I don’t even want to think what it would be like to visit this site if I were colour-blind.) The final turn-off for me is the preposterous size of the monetizing ads; discretion was certainly not at play here. Are monetizing ads inherently bad? No. Many sites use them, and to great effect. But in this case, we’re talking blatant overkill. It’s the kind of obviousness that makes you wonder whether the site owner is more concerned with offering a useful service and perhaps generating a tidy little sum of passive revenue as a bonus, or whether they are looking to whore out a little bit of service in exchange for a hypothetical cash cow.

It may come across as though I am being unduly harsh, but I honestly believe the site can be improved tremendously in a variety of ways. Rectifying the issues I mentioned above would be a good start. Using web design best practices for the underlying code that drives the site would help as well. A bit of user testing – not just bug-hunting, but actual user testing – would be highly beneficial, along with greater consideration for basic user interface design. It’s a beta service, true, but it doesn’t need to come out of beta until these things are resolved. Hopefully, by then, they’ll have figured out their niche and trimmed the fat to narrow the content down to truly useful, worthwhile, relevant or amusing lists (note: consider peer moderating of lists?). That will be a good start to “making the Web a more useful place, one line at a time”.

I can think of at least one person who may receive one of these for Christmas 2008…

My “local representative” at the time of the petition was one Larry Craig, R-Idaho.

Imagine my surprise to run across this:

Best Republican Sex Scandal of the Summer: Larry Craig

This was, surprisingly, exactly what I needed to read today.

Absolutely brilliant marketing ploy.

This story contains some good examples of how the US, as a nation, has largely descended into hysteria and paranoia (with much help from on high). I’m sorry, but I fail to see anything threatening about the drawing in question. In fact, I even question the father’s comment about it being a “laser”-like doodle – looks more like some sort of Caribbean cruise ship to me. Perhaps this is a Rorschach test in the making…

Also, the whole butt-slapping incident… I’m aggressively against such conduct in schools, because it is true there are often negative ramifications for the people on the receiving end. However, handcuffs and interrogations are excessive. I’m of the opinion that the more appropriate discipline would be the suspension received by the young man who made the mistake of doodling in class.

Finally, this only further supports my desire to yell at the top of my lungs and ask people why they think it is that we have to worry about all these things in this modern age, and how we think it came to be this way in the first place.

3:30 in the morning
Here in front of you
Oh love, what are we to do

Love, do you need me now
‘Cause I’ve let you down
‘Cause I’ve already let you go
And you don’t even know

Oh love, you’ve come from nowhere
And brought me to my knees
And in this place is it hello or good-bye

And I’d kiss your honey lips
Oh, I’d touch your sunlit hair
But these are the weapons that destroy me

Love, do you need me now
‘Cause I’ve let you down
‘Cause I’ve already let you go
And you don’t even know

Love, how I need it now
Love, it won’t let go
I guess you never know
We never know

Love, do you need me now
‘Cause I’ve let you down
‘Cause I’ve already let you go
And you don’t even know

Love, do you need me now
‘Cause I’ve let you down
‘Cause I’ve already let you go
And you don’t even love me anymore
I don’t love anymore…

I’ve almost completed the one for all the places I’ve ever lived, using Platial. Growing up in the military made it a bit more challenging than usual. Currently, it plots 29 points, and there are still more to add. That’s before even starting the map for the places I’ve yet to travel.

There is something to be said for the modern-day gypsy.