I read Jakob Nielsen's top ten website mistakes. None of them really impressed me. I've seen it all as an editor, reviewing submissions for Dmoz. What really irks me as just another warm body looking at a site is the lack of contact information on most sites now. Everyone has given into paranoia about privacy and fraud. It is harder and harder to find a way to contact a company or site owner. Often I just wanted to comment about some small thing. No big loss for me. However, in putting up a site I would assume corporations want to be accessible to consumers. What good is all that information if consumers can't give or get feedback or more information should they have questions or problems.

Anyway, I liked this page of Nielsen's site. A guide to About Us pages. You also need to know fresh ideas about having contact information in ways that foil those who want to abuse it. I have done something like that on my own site. But, in my case, I'm not selling anything. Sure, my services but no one has ever asked for those. I have to get out there and get myself working, it doesn't come to me.

Anyway, seems I just typed that... Happy site designing!

Suite101.com: Suite University

The main problem with Suite101 (in my opinion) are those Google banner ads which take up too much front line real estate on their topic pages. Each time you open one of the network of topics you must scroll down to see the real content. Those ads make the site look unprofessional and spammy. In the old days we would have said seedy but spam has surpassed seediness.

Anyway, the best things about Suite are the topics which include fairly good to really good articles, written by people who have a personal interest in that topic. The other really good thing about Suite is just new this past month. They now have free online courses. They were not free before but the site policy has changed. Sure, it's a way to bring in traffic but the courses are there for anyone. I didn't even have to register or login with the site.

You may think the courses are just soupy (lacking in usefulness and meaty content) but they are worth checking out. I'm taking a course about web searching right now, just for the heck of it. I've been searching the web almost 10 years but you never know, I could come across something new and isn't that what it's all about?

If you were 9 you'd be impressed too.

http://www.thatgrrl.ca/dead_evil.htm

My nephew wanted a web page for the game he and a friend are inventing. It's going to be called Dead Evil. Mainly the action is shooting bad creatures in some kind of dark, evil world. At least he will be busy for the summer.

I think I can find him a more gorish looking font. Not sure gorish is a word, root for gore. I don't think he cares a lot about correct spelling though.

I'm making plans for a new site. It will include a site for writers (something I already have a ton of content for) an ASCII art catalogue or dictionary or something or other (my own work and others) and other stuff (to be determined as I go along). I have so many ideas for the design, it's really just a matter of getting some time to do it all.

I just posted this for the Erotica community at Adult BackWash.

Is your life enough of a soap opera or do you embellish it for your blog? Admit it... you've played with a few details, added an inch or taken a mile, here and there. It's all for the cause of the readable blog. We all want readers, feedback, numbers on our traffic counters. Being human is human.

What if you traded in the whole truth thing and went for the complete fiction. I've read blogs that were blatantly fiction. Unashamed to be totally inspired rather than perspired. Is it bad? Is it wrong? Why do you care! It's a blog, not life and death. Have fun, take it as far as you can and see what happens. Experiment and explore and live the fantasy in text.

How far would you go, if you could go? Toss out the politically correct, the inbred values and do anything and everything. What comes to mind first? What taboo will you plunge into? No need to think twice, if you're timid about it go for the anonymous blog. After all, do you really want to meet anyone who would read the stuff you plan to write?

Have fun, keep on blogging. :)