While that sounds good at first glance, after a closer look all they are doing is cluttering up websites, slowing them down, and ultimately using us to further control the web.  It’s a harsh truth to realize and some people will refuse to believe that social websites are a growing plague on the internet.  There is TOO MUCH voting going on.  With facebook’s release, web developers have NO CHOICE but to add the button.  How could we possibly ignore 400+ million users of possible exposure?

To Facebook this is a big deal to spread their empire, but to me it’s just another friggin button that I need to consider adding.  If you think about it, it’s no different from any of the other buttons!  They all do the same thing.

The tech websites HAVE to cover it because it’s a facebook announcement.  ReadWriteWeb, Arstechnica, TechCrunch have to create their top 5 articles on what “LIKE” means for the web because they can’t ignore the 400lb gorilla.  The seemingly limitless web is being controlled by a select few websites and there is nothing you can do but accept it and try to make the best of it as you can.

I did NOT want to add the facebook button to FantasySP, but I have no choice and neither do you if you want more traffic.  We are at their mercy.

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3+ years ago, 98% of the online digital music user base blindly and without question bought music from iTunes with Apple DRM so they could play in only Apple products. Smart business decision by Apple. ::cough:: monopoly, illegal business activities ::cough:: Of course the customers didn’t care because they had no choice. Not only that, but consumers are nothing but stupid, uninformed, lazy sheep.

Other services were out that offered music DRM free. Allofmp3.com was the first commercial music service that was DRM free and you could select the bitrate of your choice. Absolutely brilliant and ahead of its time. Of course they were sued and forced out of business (surprise, surprise). Nevertheless, it showed the way mp3 music is meant to be distributed. I never thought a major retail outlet would ever offer DRM free at reasonable prices.

Then came Amazon.com online music library. When I heard the news that they would be opening an online music library with no DRM at 99 cents a song I was completely amazed. How in the world did Amazon pull that off and get music labels to agree to it? What businessman had the ability to convince music labels this was the wave of the future?

Meanwhile iTunes still had DRM.

Amazon changed the game so much that it FORCED Apple to provide a DRM free alternative to customers, albeit at a cost to the consumer. Prices were over 99 cents for DRM free music on iTunes and no one seemed too outraged about it.

Meanwhile I thought to myself, only a fucking moron would ever buy anything from iTunes. I still believe that and have always thought that. I implore everyone to buy their music from Amazon whenever possible.

While I may have gone off-topic (can you blame me?), I want to come back to my original point of this article. To thank Scott Ambrose Reilly, because to me, he is the person we can thank for DRM free music today.

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Much to my surprise they actually praised the show.  TheBigLead apparently loves the new Ben and says:

What a travesty that there are only nine episodes left.

There is no sarcasm here either folks, they were saying that line with a straight face.  It’s absolutely stunning that a character can be villain for 4 seasons, then in the span of 2 or 3 episodes viewers see Ben become a good guy and they think nothing of it.  AMAZING.

I’m not going to waste my time to say all the reasons why Lost was completely ruined into a pile of dogshit.  Suffice it to say that there is not one character on the show who maintained his character through 5 seasons.  I guess when you like a show so much, you ignore all of the negative aspects of it.  Exactly like being a sports fan.  You say things like “your team got unlucky, the refs made bad calls, next year will be our year, Sanchise, etc etc”.

So in the end The Big Lead, you’re  just proving what it’s like to be a typical biased sports fan.

All I ask is that you watch season 1 of Lost again.  Look at the tone of the show and the direction they are going with the characters.  Take note of the eerie feeling you get while watching, what was once a great show. . .LOST.

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Typically when you want to buy or download an application for your iTouch or iPhone, you head over to the app store icon and browse around.  Once you find something, click ‘install’ or ‘buy’.  These apps are then placed on the main screen and can be opened whenever you’d like.  While this may sound super easy, it also causes problems.

Apple controls each application that is approved or disapproved.  Sometimes it takes them up to a month to approve an application.  Other times they deny applications because it might infringe on their built in phone features.  Such as the case with the Google Voice app.  However, the biggest problem is the fact that each phone brand needs to have their own framework for applications.  There is the Google Android, the Blackberry, and iPhone which require each application to be developed specifically for that phone.  To make matters even worse, there are rumors that the reason Apple does not have flash support on their phone is because they were afraid developers would use that instead of their SDK to develop applications.   There has to be a better way?

What we need is an open source way to develop applications to work on any mobile phone with a browser.  It turns out we already have that folks, and your using the protocol right now, HTTP.  There are a few developers out there who hate using Apple’s SDK to build an app when creating a mobile site will work just fine. Sean of GetClicky is one of them.  The truth is that websites create applications to work in the browser, then have to recode them to work for each cell phone SDK.  What was built for the web browser, should remain in the web browser!

There are plenty of examples of mobile sites that work across every single cell phone platform.  Why bother spending time learning Apple’s SDK to offer things that can be easily implemented with regular HTML?  Plus HTML5 coming up in the next few years to add an even richer interface experience.  Each cell brand should have their own unique call requests to gain access to the phone’s contact list, dialing, and anything else they might need.  If cell brands are concerned that they won’t make money this way, why not have developers pay to gain access to some areas of the phone?

In the end, the death of all mobile app stores are exactly what we need.

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It’s unfortunate that no industry leaders have stepped up to say how much their site blows the big ones. (Or perhaps I’ve missed them?) I implore everyone to post any site that rips on Mashable in the comments section below.

Now, onto my top 5 reasons . . .

1. It takes Over 30 Seconds to Load

For those of you unfortunate enough to have been linked to a Mashable story (my apologies), you’ll notice that it takes a LONG time to load.  Precisely 38.98 seconds according to Google Chrome’s developer tools.

Speed Kills. As in kill me now.

Keep in mind that I am using the fastest browser possible at rendering javascript and web pages in general.  Also keep in mind that my internet connection is Optimum Online Ultra, which is 101mbps and my CPU is a quad core.  If my computer has trouble rendering this website, then I fear for our little ones.

2. Mashable Loves Advertisements

In case you haven’t noticed, Mashable has 15 advertisements on their homepage.  I have never come across a website with more advertisements than this, and I hardly even leave my house folks.  I’ve tried!…(To find a similar banner ridden site.)  Basically what Mashable is telling people is that it’s perfectly fine to have this many advertisements and completely kill the end user’s experience.

According to their traffic numbers and apparent influence on the modern web, you don’t give a shit.

3.  They Report Funny Videos Too, LOLZ

If you thought all Mashable did was work hard to uncover stories about Google’s security breach in Gmail and the drama in China, then you are sadly mistaken.  Lucky for us all that they are able to uncover recent gems such as “Ninjas Perform Most Deadly Nexus One Unboxing Of All Time” or “Hilarious FarmVille Parody Ad Tells It Like It Is [VIDEO]” and, of course, “Nosy Boyfriend or Girlfriend? There’s an App for That“.

This is the hard hitting journalism we expect from a website that reports the latest trends and news from social networking and social media sites.

4. Digg, Tweet, And Facebook THAT ONE!

Just when you thought the advertisements on Mashable were the worst thing about, they totally redeem themselves by including a Tweet button, Digg button, and Facebook button.  Not those small crappy ones either, Ohhh no.  We are talking those oversized ones that take up way too much room than they should.  But just in case that didn’t get in your way, as a backup plan they have a “share” button and an “email” button just underneath.  And, JUST TO BE ON THE SAFE side, they included a “Become a fan of Mashable on facebook” widget and a “Google Connect widget” on the right column of their site.

Mashable, Just Trying to Spread their plague.

That’s Mashable for ya, going the extra mile every time.  All for us.

5.  Google is Happy, Internet Explorer is Sad

You may find yourself reading an article and all of a sudden you encounter some ridiculous smiley face.  It’s like when I mention things like Apple or Google these faces randomly appear so you know what your supposed to think about them.  What the fuck.  How did the faces start popping up here?!?!  Vista , iPhone , Mashable .

Though I have to admit, it totally works when I mentioned their site.

—-

And please people, for the love of all that is holy.  If you absolutely HAVE to go to their site, use their mobile version instead.

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