You're twisting my melon, man

I've been looking around Virb a bit more today, and so far I've been really impressed - they've made it easy to use, whilst at the same time it's customizable enough to satisfy advanced users. A few features I've noticed that myspace can't touch...

• Keep your CSS styles and page information seperate, so you're not messing about looking through all your code just to change one bit of information.
  
• Drag & Drop layout editor. Put things where you want them.
• Blog importer. Within 30 seconds, my Yellow Shoes posts were all on my Virb profile.
• Random tagline.
• Text-based ads, at the bottom of the page.
  
• Pretty easy to navigate and find what you want.
• "Remove Customization" button on every page - never have to try and squint to read text again!

These pretty much all just serve to show how crap MySpace actually is!

MySpace: The final crushing blow...

I awarded MySpace today with my coveted Tosspot of the Year Award. After spending many hours designing one of the few legible profiles on the site, and bringing more than a few visitors their way, I feel I can no-longer uphold this relationship built on spite, malice, and greed (and all that coming from MySpace's end of the bargain).

It all started when MySpace decreed it was to use a new "spammer blocking system", which did a grand total of fuck all to stop spammers using MySpace. What it did do though, was stop anyone creating links to legitimate sites in their profiles which even vaguely hinted at being in competition with MySpace. Therefore all links to my blog were in one fell swoop rendered completely and utterly useless.

Being the enterprising young chap that I am, within 10 minutes I'd found a way around their blatant censorship of legitimate users, and put the method onto the internet for others to be able to use. It took MySpace about a month, but eventually they found out what was going on, and blocked my workaround. I lost heart in finding another way around their Nazism, and lost interest in their site.

The final blow came today, when, after sending them an email complaining of their censorship I got this response:

Hi there,



Thank you for sharing your comments and suggestions. We consider them
important and will take them under advisement.



MySpace.com

Well golly, thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to reply to me personally there, MySpace! I sure do feel swell now, and can't wait to get on with using all those fancy new features you've been installing lately (or err... not), that everyone has been asking you for since... oh... the dawn of time. I'm really happy that you consider my comments so important that you'll do absolutely sod all about them.

I shall henceforth be reducing my myspace profile to a page that does nothing but slag myspace off. You're not the only crap social networking site out there MySpace, but you are the crappest, and therefore I crown thee Tosspot of the year. I shall be taking my social networking needs elsewhere, probably the pub, where I shall delight in chasing many monkeys, punching many boxers, and helping many things (amphibian and otherwise) to cross roads in the hope of winning a free ringtone, all the while laughing manically at your expense.

Tossers.

Myspace: the online Nazi party.

Well, it looks like MySpace are up to their old tricks again. They're now blocking links to just about everywhere on the internet that's not within the mySpace.com area code, which means even my redirect script will no-longer work. Fear not. I have another idea but it's ugly. There's no way that mySpace can block links in Flash movies, so you can always make a tiny flash movie, store it somewhere else (even on your googlepages site) that just links to where you need it to.

I have emailed mySpace about this blatant disregard of the ethics and neutrality of the net, and I'm awaiting a reply.

More MySpace Censorship (and how to get around it!)

Whilst Marisa was lurking my MySpace page just now, She found that clicking the link that takes you to my blog here, just takes you straight back to the MySpace homepage. How strange. I thought that perhaps I'd typed the address of my blog in wrong when editing my profile, but when I went back into edit mode, I found that the URL I'd typed in had changed completely to some address at msplinks.com . So I edited my profile back to the original address and saved it again. Only to find the link was changed instantly by MySpace to the same address, which took you back to the MySpace homepage.

So I did a little research. Apparently MySpace started using Msplinks.com to stop spammers leaving comments on your page. Fair enough, but that's no reason to stop me linking to my own blog, even if that blog does exist somewhere outside MySpace's realm of shit advertising. Basically it's just another form of MySpace censorship, and if people are stupid enough to add people who are clearly spammers to their friends list, then they deserve a load of comments spam in my opinion.

But how to get MySpace to link to my blog? Well, it looks like Msplinks.com blocks any links to blogger sites, so the simple answer is to set up a redirect from another site. In my case, I have space at Google Pages, so I set up a fake page there which just included nothing but this script in the body of the page to redirect to my blog:

<script>self.location="URL of your blog here";</script>

Then just link to this page from MySpace instead of your actual blog URL, and you'll be good to go. MySpace, who's the stupid idiots now?

Update: It seems that MySpace have found out about this workaround, and have since blocked it. If MySpace are so serious about censoring it's users, and blocking links to competitors websites (which seems a very childish thing to do), I no longer want to be associated with it. I think I may have found a site that has everything I was looking for in MySpace: Virb, have a look round and see what you think - personally I think it looks a much more friendly, well designed, and less money driven alternative, and I shall be moving there as soon as I've made my profile!

As my volume gently tweaks...

It's amazing how just switching my blog from mySpace to Blogger has restored a sense of equilibrium to my life. I woke up this morning positively bursting with energy. Well, maybe not bursting, but I kinda felt like a kid on Christmas morning, there was a buzz of anticipation in the air, and my sense of karmic flow seems to be heightened. I feel compelled to write in my blog again...

Why changing my blog would do this to me, I don't know, perhaps I feel less dragged down by mySpace's crap design, less constricted by its nazist censorship. Maybe I just get turned on by the fact that I can upload pictures to my blog from within Picasa now. All hail Picasa, I love you dearly.

Maybe I have a feeling of righteousness because people who choose to read my blog from within an RSS reader can now read the whole thing, and not just the first three words, without having to actually get dragged across the internet just to look at some arsebiscuit flash adverts telling them to chase a monkey for a free ringtone. Although yesterday I did notice that mySpace had finally implemented autodetection of their blog Rss feed. Well done myspace, now if you wouldn't mind making the rest of your site good, I might want to use you again. I can't see that happening though.

So with my newfound motivation I think I'm going to re-install windows on my laptop. There's nothing that would destroy my soul more, but it's something I've been putting off for ages, and I'm tired of MSN messenger trying to install itself all the time when I never asked it to, and Photoshop not working.

If I spike my hair up, I look like the nerd everyone hates from Spin City.

I don't know why I didn't move my blog over here sooner. Looking back at my old mySpace blog, it just looks old and nasty in comparison. I really am just a big bag of style and productivity today. Not only did I get myself some nice new trainers to replace the old Vans I've had for 5 years (I'll always remember you...), I also got myself a new job at the stylish Prohibition in Leeds. Swank McSwank.

Now I just have to save up for those million things I want... New phone, trip to Ibiza, Leeds Festival, new laptop, flat...

How do normal people cope????

Victimized by MySpace for being useful.

Why is it, that every time, without fail, I want to post a bulletin, MySpace is 'fixing them', yet other people have no problem posting 15 in a row telling me nothing more than the fact that they're bored?

Does MySpace have built-in usefulness filters - if something is deemed useful to anyone MySpace will block it?? How many times does mySpace need to 'fix' their bulletins? And why were they broken? Probably too many people posting that they were bored. Do you hear me?? If you're bored, and you're on MySpace, don't feel like you have to tell me. I don't care. Really. Here's some interesting alternatives to boredom bulleting you might want to consider (hey, I had to get a bulleted list in there somehow):

• Write a novel.
• Saw someone in half.
• Do naked handstands.

If you do any of these things, you have every right to bulletin me and tell me all about it (And in the case of the last one, if you're a good looking lass, you have my permission to send pictures as well), but unless you have something interesting to say, stay thy hand from ye poste buttone. It's stopping me telling everyone about my naked handstands.

Fuck it, I'm going to go poke someone on Facebook.

News just in: In addition to not letting me post bulletins, MySpace don't want me to write in my blog either. I think I swear too much or something. This is my new blog now. MySpace can go do illigal things with goats for all I care.