VMG Blog Pages

Friday, October 31, 2008

20 Halloween Costumes That Will Get You Laughed Out of a Party

What follows are 20 samples from the bottom end of the costume spectrum--good for inspiring a healthy mixture of douche-chills and rage. If you're wearing one of these, consider yourself warned: those guys aren't getting up from the bar to come over and shake your hand. They're probably coming over to kick your ass for being a dork.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Google Fucks iGoogle Users Without a Reach Around!

Changes went into effect today for iGoogle users without warning and without the ability to opt out. As I was searching about for answers to that age old question, "What the fuck just happened to my homepage?", I ended up in Google groups. The reaction there wasn't even close to being lukewarm. There were people there that were even more pissed off than I am....if that's possible. Many of the posts were from people who were already wondering aloud who their new homepage and email provider would be. In the time it took me to post my diatribe there were 8 equally venomous posts added.

Based on the moderator's lame-ass post in the thread, it would appear that Google simply doesn't care and they think this is an improvement. Here's what he said...

"We've been gathering input on the new features for several weeks from this group, usability testing, statistical analysis, and survey data. 

All of this feedback is important to us and while we weren't able to respond to all of them, I want to assure you we've been listening. 

The new iGoogle features went through the same development process that all our products do: we prototype them, and put them through a vigorous set of usability tests and experiments to make sure we are doing the right thing for users. The iGoogle features we're launching today went through this exact process and we've made changes along the way based on feedback from users and developers. Specific examples of  the impact of this group: 

* A narrower navigation area on the left side of the page.   

* An option to remove the snippets displayed with feeds.

* Gmail reply added was added as soon as possible. 

Coming soon:
 * Proper links in Gmail  
 * Drag 'n' drop gadgets between tabs 
 * Chat
 * More canvas view gadgets"


-Paul 
iGoogle Guide

As you can tell by Paul's post, foisting this upon the users was a well thought out plan that was approved of by more than one person. Are these people they hired from Redmond? I suggest you stay tuned to watch the fallout from this debacle. The Google haters will be coming out in droves to point out the "Evil" that they have perpetrated....the rest of us just want our damn homepage back the way it was!