phil ringnalda

I just got a bit of really poorly aimed spam at the address I use in my blogs, as did the rest of the blogging world, apparently.

It seems that the folks at port41.com believe they have a “Blogger Beater” which they would like me to test. Well, anyone who is reading this probably already knows that I have a fair amount of fondness for Blogger, so they already had one strike before I got past the subject line. In fact, I had already checked out their “CONTENjecT” system (yes, you’re right, the name is really stupid), and dismissed it as a really bad idea.

Here’s how it works: imagine a Blogger clone that doesn’t do ftp, and doesn’t provide you with space on their server. Instead, they give you a line of Javascript to include in any page you like, which then loads your blog from their server. (Stop laughing, and get back in your chairs!). So, your weblog is completely inaccessible to any browser or device that doesn’t support Javascript, or has Javascript disabled. Strike two. I use more Javascript than I should, but at least I’m not foolish enough to make my entire page completely inaccessible without Javascript. Who do they think I am, the Olympics?

Then, for browsers that do support Javascript, you better hope they have far better uptime than any other provider of free, ad-supported services ever has had before, since when they are down (or even just inaccessible from any of your readers’ locations), the entire page will hang while it waits for their server to respond or time out. I just took a look at their demo, which shows you how it will look in your page: “Inside this red box is exactly how your CONTENjecT Publisher will look when it is placed on your page.” That’s what I’m afraid of, since the inside of the red box at this moment is a blank area about 1/16th of an inch high.

Apparently the server is up, but not returning what it should, since it didn’t take long to display nothing. Strike three, and you are out.

I hate to break it to you, guys, but your product is terrible, the design is fatally flawed, and the idea of spamming me to push it was a really poor choice. <edit> Even better: I didn’t look at which of my blogs they crawled to harvest my email address. It was archives.blogspot.com, my page of tips for using Blogger. Yeah, I’d love to move that to a lame alternate platform. Almost as bright as spamming Blogger’s owner to move the “make your Blog*Spot blog ad-free” page over. Brilliant! (In the tradition of mathowie’s Critical IP campaign, a link to this post with text like port41, port41.com, or port 41 should help to seal their fate.)</edit>