Why Are Web 2.0 Sites Compressing Avatars?

I have a bone to pick with these web 2.0 sites and services. It may not be a huge bone but it’s an annoying one at the very least. Many of these sites and services allow members to customize their profile by uploading an image also known as an avatar. These images are usually .PNG, .GIF, or .JPG files. There is often a maximum dimensions rule as well as a maximum file size rule in place.

I don’t understand why these sites and services have to turn my images into pieces of crap. Most of my avatars that I have created in photoshop look great, until they are uploaded to one of these sites such as MyBlogLog or Technorati. Let’s go through a few Before And After pictures to try and illustrate my point. The first image will be the image as it should be seen, straight out of photoshop saved at maximum quality. The second image is what is seen after uploading the file to the service in question.

First up, Technorati avatars in JPG format.

Before Technorati After Technorati

Now lets take a look at MyBlogLog avatars in .GIF format.

Before MyBlogLog After MyBlogLog

In case you can’t see the differences notice how the second image always looks worst after it’s uploaded to the service in question. The image goes through some sort of compression and the end result is a crappy looking avatar. I have tried changing the images to .PNG and .GIF formats, saving them at the maximum quality level but the compression just rips these images apart.

Why do these sites and services have to compress these tiny images? Why can’t I as a user have a nice looking avatar without compression? I mean, take a look at that example for MyBlogLog, it looks like total crap. I urge you companies to turn that compression crap off. I think the file size limit along with the dimension limit is enough to restrain insane avatars from overtaking your hard drive space. There is no need to compress.

I wonder if I am the only one who has noticed this? Please let me know what you think.

Easy To Use Contact Forms Via Kontactr

One thing that every website should have is a contact form. Leaving yourself open to communication is one of the best things you can do when running a website. WordPress and other solutions don’t provide a contact form out of the box , which is why Kontactr comes in real handy.

Synopses:

Kontactr is a free service that does one thing, and does it well, and that is, providing users an easy to use contact form that can be placed anywhere on your site simply by copying and then pasting the code. Using Kontactr only consists of three steps with the third step being optional.

Create an Account
You will have your own contact form once you have created your account.

Post the Link
Start giving your contact form’s link to people instead of you email address.

More Tools
Login to your account for buttons, widgets and more…

Kontactr’s forms contain the following features:

CAPTCHA Protection

Customizable code for Embedding the form

Codes for Buttons and Links to your form

The Review:

After you login to your account with Kontactr, you’ll be taken to your profile which contains a link to your Kontactr form page. For example, here is a link to my contact page http://kontactr.com/user/Jeffro2pt0 You have two choices. You can either point users to your contact form on the Kontactr site, or you can embed the form onto your own site.

There are a few ways in which you can embed the Kontactr service into your site. The first way is by embedding a widget which contains the appropriate code for your form. Using this method allows you the most control over the look and feel of your contact form. Another way to implement Kontactr is by using the Ajax powered widget. The embed code for the Ajax widget is only 3 lines and it provides the fancy web 2.0 effects that we have come to love. *The only downside to using the Ajax powered widget is that it doesn’t allow you to control any of the text or layout of the form.

If you don’t feel like embedding code into your site’s template, you have a choice of using three different links which will point to your contact form. Two of the links are graphical buttons while the last one is a textual link.

When you receive an email from Kontactr, the subject line will read Kontactr: (Subject that the user put in) This is how you can differentiate between normal emails and emails sent through the Kontactr service. One of the best features of Kontactr is the ability to use the same form link on multiple sites. If you decide to use the form on multiple sites, you’ll be glad to know that the Referrer url will be added to the footer of each email. This allows you to figure out which site and which form was used.

I can’t tell you how effective their CAPTCHA technique is since I have only used the service for a few days but I have yet to receive any spam through my own contact form. Those who are blind will not be able to use this service as it doesn’t provide an audio version of the CAPTCHA images. On a side note, the CAPTCHA images are CASE-SENSITIVE so be sure to remember than when your using one of these forms.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I have to say that using Kontactr is a piece of cake. I don’t know how much simpler they could of made the service without actually doing everything for you. I am currently using Kontactr for my contact form and if you want to see a live example, check out https://jeffc.me/contact-me/ Go ahead and send a message to me if you’d like, perhaps commenting on this article or the service itself. If your in need of a contact form, yet you don’t want to upload specific plugins or files to generate one, this is the service you need to use!

Target Equals Blank Or No

Browsing around the web, I came across a post on Problogger.net which discusses a topic that I have been wondering about for quite some time. That is, Should links open in a new window or not? The question is an interesting one and after tallying up the totals, Problogger discovered that about %54 of their commentary preferred links to open in new windows versus the %46 that believes users should be able to decide as to what sort of behavior the link performs.

Over the years, I have been trained to always implement the target=”blank” component of a link as it allowed browsers to visit that page without having to leave my own. I generally don’t use the target statement if the link is for something within the same site. After reading that post and the associated commentary, I am beginning to rethink my linking strategy.

Considering IE 7, Opera and Firefox, not sure about Safari all support tabbed browsing, I would have to think that surfers are using tabs more than they are using new/seperate windows. So if I were to place the target attribute into a link, chances are, that link will open up in a new tab vs a new window but I don’t have any stats to back this statement up, it’s only my opinion.

Because of the advent of tabs, I think I will still maintain my linking strategy. If the link is for something within the site, it shouldn’t open in a new tab or new window. However, if the link is to some place other than my own site, I am going to force that link to open in a new window/tab.

Free Stock Photos Via PhotoGen

Still paying for your photos and images? Forget royalty-free – try totally-FREE. Photogen stock photos are now FREE for commercial and personal use. The Photogen FREE stock photo gallery is constantly being updated with new photos and images. This should be an instant hit with website theme creators and template developers as other sites charge an arm and a leg to use their stock photography.

Here are a few links to the most popular images found within the service:

http://www.photogen.com/free-photos/free-stock-photo-1186.html

http://www.photogen.com/free-photos/free-stock-photo-1027.html

http://www.photogen.com/free-photos/free-stock-photo-210.html

http://www.photogen.com/free-photos/free-stock-photo-195.html

http://www.photogen.com/free-photos/free-stock-photo-1159.html

Thanks to Ray Cheung for the scoop

SEO At Word Camp

Word Camp is over with for 2007 but during the conference, one of the talking points of discussion revolved around SEO. Some of the tips that were highlighted during this meeting include:

Don’t put blog at root of domain

What if you want something besides a blog?
People link to a main pageand a main blog page so you get extra links

Name Directory Blog (not wordpress)

Case you change
If you upgrade.

SEO Tips

various keyword tools: AdWords, Overture/Yahoo

Use a variant of the word in post slug verses title.

use categories that are good keywords

dashes are best
next best is underscores
no spaces are worst

Keep it simple, and search engines will like it.
Don’t change your site, its not worth the hassle.
Use alt tags on your images, 3-4 relevant words
Don’t forget image search and video search.
Full sentence verses a few words? the scoring algorithms don’t mind unless it actually notices the spam.
Question marks or Hashmarks? They get truncated.

Check out all of the other great tips that were covered at the conference by visiting the WordCamp Info Blog.

The Day The Internet Crashed

This video clip is hilarious.

Everyday Weekender

This post is a bit off topic but I wanted to let everyone know about a blog I discovered called Everyday Weekender. Everyday Weekender is a blog devoted to those who love to celebrate the weekend. Those who work regular 9-5 jobs will appreciate the content spread amongst this site which consists of cottage living, food, and do it yourself activities which are a ton of fun. While your at your cubicle, at least take a visit to this blog to stare at the header image which is as relaxing as can be. If your interested in owning a cottage or want to know more about cottage style living, this is the blog for you. On a side note, if you would like to increase your page rank, please visit this link

Jaiku Lifestream or Feed Aggregator?

I was browsing the official Jaiku channel where users can voice their opinions, suggestions, and offer direct feedback concerning the Jaiku service. TheGirlInTheCafe published an interesting thought,

I wonder if it is worrying that 90% of the posts on Jaiku seems to come from imported feeds. That would turn it into a feed aggregator.

Excellent observation if I must say so myself. One of Jaikus biggest selling points is that it offers the ability to take your online presence and display it on one page, AKA, LifeStreaming. Users can import feeds from various sites that they are associated with onto their Jaiku page. When one of those sites are updated, the update is published not only on the users Jaiku page, but it can also be viewed on the Jaiku homepage.

Feed updates that are displayed on the Jaiku explore page as a direct result of your online activities are viewed as an acceptable use of Jaiku. In fact, this is generally how the service is supposed to be used. However, what is beginning to happen is that the Jaiku explore page is starting to become bombarded with a ton of feed posts which have nothing to do with the actual user. These types of posts are taking over the front page, leaving very little room for displaying actual messages through the Jaiku service.

There are two things I foresee Jaiku doing to alleviate this problem. (A) Jaiku could only show member Jaikus on the Explore page. (B) Jaiku could simply add a tab to the Explore page which will only show users Jaikus without showing any other information.

Seems simple enough to me and I have to agree, that Jaiku is starting to look more like a feed aggregator than a Lifestream service. Let me know how you would solve this problem.

CrazyBall – My Favorite Fair Game

I may run this blog, but I am human and occasionally I venture out into the sunlight to perform in social activities. I know it’s hard to believe but honestly, its true. Friday evening, the lady friend and I took a trip to Strongsville Ohio, to check out the Strongsville Home Days carnival. The fair occurs at the same time each year and is used primarily as a way to celebrate the cities history as well as it’s culture. Where I reside, there are a number of cities which have a similar festival, but its generally referred to as Home Days. The fair consists of rides, carny food, and my personal favorite, games.

This year, I discovered my favorite carnival game was back and this time, I was ready. My favorite game, Crazy Ball is addicting, just like gambling. The game board looks sort of like a wrestling ring but instead of using a mat in the middle, there is a game board which has 30 circular indentations. Each indentation is a specific gamepiece which is either a solid color or a striped color. There are 15 different colors/striped colors to bet on and each one appears twice on the game board.

This particular game only costs a quarter to play but you can bet on as many colors as you want each round or you can place multiple bets on the same color. The game owner then hands a ball to one of the participants of the game which is usually a child. Once everyone has placed their bets, the ball thrower tosses the ball into the ring. The ball rolls around until it reaches a dead stop onto one of the indentations. Once the square that the ball landed on has been confirmed, the game owners go around the table to collect the bets as well as to see if anyone placed a bet on the winning color. Winners get to choose from any prize hanging from the top of tent.

After witnessing the way I played this game, my girlfriend has told me that she is going to make sure that I stay far away from casinos. I must of spent a total of $11-15 on this game, which adds up to a lot of quarters. Once I was on my last $5.00 bill, my girfriend picked the color orange, and we FINALLY ended up winning. She chose a stuffed animal and in the end was quite happy to not be spending any more money on the game. Last year, I spent so much money on this particular carny game and lossed so many times that the owner finally told me to pick a prize as I bascially spent more than enough money over what the damn prizes cost.

At any rate, I just wanted to share this experience with you. I know this blog generally centers around topics dealing with the web, and web 2.0 and all of that jazz, but I’m a real person doing real things. With that being said, I wanted to know if anyone else has seen a game like this pop up at their local carnival?

The WordCamp Report

If you are a WordPress user, you are definitely going to want to bookmark this site. The WordCamp Report is specifically reporting on everything going on at WordCamp. I can’t attend because I live in Ohio but the WordCamp Report blog should keep me informed as if I were there. Special thanks to the blogs authors, Patrick Havens and Charles Stricklin for keeping those who couldn’t attend up to date.

Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff

The Musings Of Jeff Chandler