Archive for September 17th, 2007
Pagii: Php Powerhouse!
I have to say I almost creamed in my pants at this, I was expecting something that completely sucked. Pagii is classifying itself as a new ’social site’, but I wouldn’t quite call it that just yet. Instead, I’m going to call it a “website designing site on crack hit with a stupid stick”. And I mean this is the best possible way.
First, the interface rocks. It’s all click and drag (or double click) functions from a sliding sidebar. Text, speech bubbles, shapes (with text inside), video and ‘insert html code’ are all included with click and drag functionality. 
No need to remember HTML or screw around with finding the image. You upload, you apply and it’s there. Once the item is there you can drag it around the screen, stretch it by clicking the corners and even rotate it (I love this, takes the blockyness out of sites, yay!). Users can also ‘layer’ content to give it a 3D feel. Content such as images can also be clicked and using PHP shown their full size so users can see the whole image. It’s very easy to set up and I’m sure a child could master it in under 20 minutes.
You’re able to create more pages by simply clicking the ‘Add Page’ button. Users are given a ton of templates depending on what they plan on putting on the page (photo, diary, profile, video, etc) or they can start fresh and just have at it however they like. All pages are linked using a menu that pops down from the top of the page when hovered over, which saves a lot of time for people that are used to creating navigation pages (and most people suck at it, such as myself). This keeps it simple and consistent throughout all Pagii sites.
As far as the ’social site’ part goes. I don’t think it’s prepared for that. All I can tell is that they have a comment widget and a messaging system. Aside from that, the only flaw I find with it is that non-members of the site are unable to view the member’s sites. I hope that fix that soon. Though I love this site for it’s uniqueness in allowing people to create useful sites like this so easily.
Be sure to check out my Pagii page, it’s purdy ^.^
Canada: Big friendly police state?
The issue has arisen lately of certain government officials probing where they shouldn’t be. As you can read in the article below, they’re attempting to make it possible for law enforcement to obtain names, addresses, phone numbers, SIM card numbers, email addresses, and IP addresses of customers from ISP without a warrant deeming it “lawful access”. Because of many ISP being loyal to their customers (unlike many of their relatives south of the border) this has proven to be a problem in the past when companies try to convict uses of illegal activity online. 
Now I’m not saying that police should be completely cut out of the internet, I’m saying they should have limited access. Unless they’re keeping track of somebody with a criminal record or are suspected of doing something highly illegal with proof to back it up (I’m talking kiddie porn and bombs here, not an elderly old lady maybe-perhaps-almost downloading the latest Britney Spears song) then they shouldn’t have access to anybody’s internet information. If you want to harass some random Joe Blow, then you should have to get a warrant and get told your an idiot by the courts.
The real kicker to all this is that they weren’t planning releasing news of this to the public. Unlike their previous attempts to enforce this, only a “handpicked, secret group” were selected for the consultation about this. Very sneaking guys. Assholes. Stuff like that won’t fly, the power of the internet is stronger than your government secrets. When something as large as this starts happening you have to inform people in the masses that their information is going to be distributed. If this message doesn’t come from the government itself, it would be wise of the ISPs to let their customers know of the policy changes immediately.
I’m not doing anything illegal, but by damn if I want some overweight, donut eating, egocentric street cop having unfiltered access to my information. We can’t even trust the pigs to clean up the drug problem in high schools, I’ll be damned if I’m handing over my IP anytime soon.
More Reading:
The police state that never happened by Jesse Brown @ CBC Radio
BloggerWave breaks out
The big news on ‘the street’ the past few days has been Bloggerwave. Bloggers are paid to simply talk about something. Now from what I’m able to tell here, they pay for simply reviewing/talking about a product or service. 
I haven’t seen anywhere that it says the review of every product has to be good. That was my selling point.
I’m completely for living up to the saying “bad publicity is still publicity” if that’s what the companies want. I’m assuming it’s not though. In either case, I’ll gladly focus some attention on a given product or service and give it my opinions (especially if they’re paying for what I thinking about it) as long as they’re not telling me exactly what to say like PayPerPost services. So no need to ’sell out’.
Bloggerwave looks like an awesome way for bloggers to get some cash. And from what I can tell they let you check out interesting products. I’m sure I would have checked out Bloggerwave even if I wasn’t getting paid to do it, and I saw that Coke Zero’s new social site was on the list as well. Contrary to my previous statements about bad reviews, that might not be needed if they give us good stuff like this to review.
It’s also super-easy to set up and get started. If you check out the image with this post, you can see that with this program you can earn a good amount of money for just blogging. I think this Bloggerwave service can be really good and I recommend other bloggers to try it out and see how well it works.