Dary101

Box.net

March 3, 2006 at 10:35 pm (All, Internet)

There is this cool little nifty website which allows you to store files on the web. It is called Box and is located at Box.net. You can then access them from anywhere in the World! You can also let your friends look at them and use them. I haven’t used it yet but I am going to have  a look.

Free accounts get 1GB of space and a 5MB file limit.

Altough, for $5 a month, you can get 5GB of space and unlimited filesizes. Also, on the $5 you have the ability to create groups and the such. But for $10 a month you can get 15GB and unlimited file sizes and unlimited groups. On paid accounts you can also post files to blogs. On all accounts you can share your files privately with friends on any machine.

You can create, compress and rename folders and you can upload a file either through a normal upload form or a Java-powered drag and drop. I think a few updates will be coming to this program quite soon.

Sign up Here!

I will blog again tommorow! Early Night.
Dary101

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12 Ways to annoy Web Visitors

March 3, 2006 at 9:59 pm (All, Internet)

Some rather clever(!) webmasters have come up with many ways of irritating the visitor to their site. Here we sum up our top 12 favourite irritants. We find that the best way for any budding webmaster to gain maximum irritation they should combine as many of these as possible. {Original Source: Silicon Cloud}

1) Pop-Ups – This tried and tested technique is a sure fire way to annoy or irritate any potential visitor to your site. This can be made more effective by using more than one pop-up per page view or to absolutely maximise the irritant level this technique should be using in conjuction with the Pop-Under (see item 2).

2) Pop-Under – Potentially more irritating than the pop-up, the skilled annoyer can utilise this technique to great effect. Utilised well, especially by using this technique when a visitor is trying to leave your site will guarantee annoyance and that the visitor will never return. Particularly successful if multiple instances are used.

3) Ban Right Clicks – This is a particularly effective technique to annoy the net-savvy visitor to your site. not only are you preventing the user from stealing your valuable content by preventing them from using right-click, save. but the intrepid annoyer is also preventing people from using the right mouse button to: – Use the ‘forward’ and ‘back’ buttons. – Open any links in a new window (or tab – firefox users) – Bookmark the page so they can visit again – Print the page (IE users)

4) Music – Forcing people to listen to your choice of music is one of the professional annoyers most deadly weapon. Used well this technique can guarantee that the hapless vistor to your site will leave quickly never to return. For a really top-level ‘grade A’ annoyance put the music on ‘loop’ and place the controls to stop the music somewhere difficult to find preferably at the bottom of the site. This technique can be enhanced even further by combining with the obscure plug-in (see item 10)

5) Fixed Screen Widths – The experienced annoyer will be familiar with this technique. It’s a simple yet effective way of ensuring that visitors leave your site. Quickly. All you have to do is determine how wide your web-page should be displayed. Choosing a width wider than a standad screen resolution and forcing the visitor to scroll left and right to read the text is a surefire way to irritate ay potential visitor.

6) Slow Loading Tables – Most web-browsers wait until they have downloaded all elements in a table before displaying it. This information can be used by the annoyer to great effect. By placing some slow-to-load code such as a ‘hit-counter’ or even better embed a music player (item 4) or the obscure plug-in (item 10) into the table you can ensure that even the fastest web-server will appear dog-slow.

7) Unnecessary Questions – Ensure that the subscription form to your ezine or newletter spam contains at least 36 questions more than needed. Why stop at the username and email address when you can ask them for information such as their mailing address and at least 3 different phone numbers (home, work and mobile). By adding other pointless questions such as age, sex, hobbies, religion and inside leg measurement is a surefire way to prevent people ordering your product or subscribing to your mailing list.

8) Splash Pages – WHY!! There’s simply no need for them. They add nothing to the page. As soon as one appears you can guarantee that the visitor is doing one of two things. 1) Heading for the ‘back’ button as quickly as their little mouse can make it. 2) Desperately trying to find the elusive ‘skip flash intro’ button. Ensure maximum irritant levels by making the page as slow-loading as possible and by using the obscure plugin (item10).

9) Grabbing the Browser – Visitor’s to your site will really get frustrated if you insist on resizing their browser window and disabling some of the menu features such as navigation and bookmarks. Go for maximum annoyance levels by adding some code that checks to see if the browser containing your page is the selected window, if it’s not then start flashing the taskbar and demand attention.

10) The Obscure Plugin – This is one is one of the most effective ways of driving people from your site and one that every professional irritator should be armed with. Particular attention should be paid to ensuring that the plug-in is as large as possible and that it add’s nothing to the content of the site. Bonus irritant points can be scored by rendering the page un-viewable until the hapless visitor to your site has downloaded and installed the plug-in. The level of irritant for the visitor can be increased further by ensuring that the plug-in tries to install other useless features such as Yahoo and Google toolbars during the install. Also by carefully choosing a plug-in that is practically impossible to uninstall without a degree in computer science will put your visitor into a four-letter outburst and vow never to return to your site.

11) The IE only page – We’re on the home straight now. With the increasing level of Firefox or alternative browser users, you can restrict the visitor count to your site and rid yourself of all that potential traffic by alientating them and making your site Internet Explorer viewable only. With one simple tactic you can chop a 15% (allegedly) of your site’s traffic. Simple, effective, beautiful.

12) The Dark Page – This is a favorite of old, but still an effective was to annoy any visitor to your site. It’s also arguably one of the simplest to implement. First you start by picking a really dark color for the page background. Often we find that a simple ‘black’ is very effective. Then step 2, deliberately pick a text color that makes the content practically impossible to read. We find that a bright red, green or yellow text on the black background has the fastest ‘turnaround’ time for a visitor hitting the ‘back’ button. This method of keeping your web-server from having to do much work can be further enhanced with a couple of minor tweaks to this tried and trusted technique. For instance you can pick a background picuture such as a starfield that will make the page impossible to read. Alternatively pick a text color that is only a few shades different from the background color ensuring that the viewer has to squint really hard at the screen in order to read your valuable content.

So that’s it. Our list of the most effective way to strip traffic from your site. Variations on a theme are always good. We suggest that you try and combine some of these tactics for the most effective way to annoy your visitor and make them leave your site. (Don’t forget to use the exit pop-under). Take care now and happy annoying…

{Original Source: Silicon Cloud}

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