Dear friends and MySpace

Sunday 05.06.2007 11:35PM

Dear friends,

I am leaving MySpace. I have grown tired of it for a variety of reasons since I first signed up. I probably do not really need to go into these reasons, everyone knows them. For some reason, MySpace is the most universally reviled - yet still incredibly popular - web sites.

When I came across Virb (from the people behind Purevolume) I was pretty impressed. The link I found billed it as a “social network geared towards designers”, which is somewhat misleading. The site is open to everyone and has all the features (and more) that you would expect from a social networking site. It has an easy, built-in customization tool that lets you change the font and colors of your profile, as well as the layout, with drag-and-drop ease. The appeal to designers is the advanced customization, which lets you use your own HTML and CSS, making the possibilities endless.

I think the absolute best feature that Virb has going for it is the “Remove customization” link at the top of every page. Yes, if you do not like the custom look that someone has come up with, you can turn it off and view the profile in its default simplicity. The site remembers when you do this, so every time you return to that profile, it will look the same.

Some other cool features: include your Flickr photos automatically, import your blog posts automatically from RSS feeds, determine whose announcements you do or do not see, and the only ads currently are text ads at the bottom of the page.

Overall it's quite a beautiful application and if you're into the social networking thing, I would recommend ditching MySpace for Virb. You can find me at Virb.com/gregorlove.

- - - - -

Dear MySpace,

It's been real, and it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun.

I remember when I joined back in 2004, that I thought your design looked outdated, but for whatever reason it did not really bother me. You were relatively small then; maybe I just thought you would grow out of it. Grow you did, but very few improvements came along. With how poorly and non-intuitively you function, I am really surprised you have gained so much popularity over the years. It's baffling.

Anyway, I'm leaving. Your ads are nauseating. Your design is atrocious and has not improved whatsoever. Call me a CSS snob, but tables are for tabular data, not design and positioning. Your security holes have allowed spammers to run rampant among the users. You randomly fail to function and, from what I can tell as a geek, you're most likely a series of hacks strung together instead of one cohesive, stable application. You have destroyed my luck for 10 lifetimes due to all the bulletins I did not re-post, despite their warnings.

Farewell, and good luck competing with Virb.

Tagged: myspace / virb
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Halloweenspace

Sunday 10.29.2006 12:24PM

Ok, so apparently nobody is very interested in the 30-day trial topic.

This should be a bit entertaining, at least:

Last night for a Halloween party I went as Myspace. Simple costume: use a Sharpie to make a t-shirt that says “Gregor is in your extended network” on the front and “Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred.” on the back. Then carry around labels for people to write comments on and stick them to me.

Of course, going as Myspace, it was only appropriate to take some “Myspace shots” in costume. You can see all of them on my flickr.

Comments that were left on me

“gRegor, you're such a dork!” - Sheryl
“gRegor has the best Halloween costume ever!” - Lauren
“gRegor. So hot right now. gRegor.” - Ron
“Thanks for the add” - Shawn (complete with annoying flower and glitter)
“This is the coolest site I've ever seen!” - Sally
“Gregor it was a wonderful weekend!” - Bradford (aka Hugh Hefner)
“Why don't you return my calls anymore?” - Bradford again
“Gregor is a l33t h4x0R and teh coolest!1!” - Ian
“I'm with stupid” (with arrow pointing to my crotch) - Carrie (who I just met that night; nice gal!)
“Exit only” (with arrow pointing to my butt) - Carrie (“making nice” after her first comment)

Currently Watching Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (Widescreen Edition) starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter

Tagged: life / fun / friends / halloween / myspace
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Avoiding Myspace Trouble

Monday 09.25.2006 11:58PM

There is a technique being used on Myspace to spread spam by taking advantage of the trusted nature of your friends list. When you receive a bulletin from a friend, you will probably not think twice before clicking any links in the message - particularly if it's something like “check out these photos I took”. The page that loads when you click the link takes advantage of the fact that you are logged into Myspace and quietly posts a bulletin from your account. Usually it will be the exact same bulletin you just read. As you might expect, this message will spread quickly as more users continue to click the links (expecting photos from their friends) and thus send the bulletins to even more people, unknowingly.

First things first
Check to make sure you are not currently a victim of this. Log in to your Myspace account, go to Mail -> Bulletin -> Show Bulletins I've Posted. If there are any bulletins in the list that you did not explicitly post, delete them.

Next, if you are still using Internet Explorer as your web browser, just stop it already. :-] Get Firefox. It's free, and far better. No it will not automatically protect you from the technique described above, but it's an important start and by the end of this post it will be helping protect you better.

What to look for
Do not open links directly if you are not sure it is a trusted site. Move your mouse over the link and the status bar at the bottom of the browser will show you the full link. If it's not a site that you know and trust, you should not open it while logged in to Myspace. You can copy the link and either log out of Myspace before opening it, or open it in a different web browser (such as Internet Explorer - since you're using Firefox now, right?) Either way, the important thing is that you are not logged in to Myspace with the browser you open the link in. This way, if it is a spam-sending link, you will not fall victim to it. If the linked page prompts you to log in to Myspace, do not do it. Never login unless the site in the address bar is http://www.myspace.com or http://login.myspace.com.

A few other points
Lately these attacks have been using Adobe Flash. If the link ends in “.swf” you definitely should not open it; that's a link to a Flash file and is almost guaranteed to be malicious. Make sure that you have the most recent version of the Flash plugin (v9). Firefox users should also probably get the Flashblock extension (added bonus: blocks obnoxious animated ads online).

Hopefully this has been helpful. Spread the word to your other Myspace friends so they don't fall victim to spammers. :-]

Currently Watching What About Bob? starring

Tagged: geek / myspace
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