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It's tough buying computer hardware that meets the standards of an environmental organisation. It's even harder when one of the organisations you'd assume are green through and through turn out to be one of the worst in the world.
That's why we're asking Apple to make things a little greener...
Take yourself to http://www.greenpeace.org/apple and ask Steve yourself
(and don't forget to tag references to this campaign with greenmyapple )
I know a few things about blogging. I've run blogs, commented on blogs, marketed with blogs and well, blogged. I read a lot of blogs, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone in the blogosphere point to a MySpace blog and say 'look at this'
Maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong crowd. After all, my page has a space for blog entries and I'm going to fill it in...
OK, so the actual blogging interface is fairly straightforward. There's a wysiwyg editor (and an option to view the source) I've got a few gripes about this. Even though MySpace think I'm in New York, and I told the software I'm in the UK it's offered my a west coast timezone as the default. Maybe that's where the servers are.
There's no option to do things like setup track backs or publish an RSS feed. This is, in essence an online diary where people can leave comments. It's miles behind the tool I'm writing this on (Moveable Type).
What's worse is that my blog hasn't picked up on my heavily pimped homepage (hardly surprising when you think about how that was done). On the other hand it does have an interface where I can chop and change how it looks with pointing, clicking and learning how to specify colours in hex
It seems like whatever MySpace has got going for it - it's not the blogging.
OK, Now I exist in MySpace it's time to make things look good. Real good.
Lets see how I get on
Visting http://www.MySpace.com/corporateantihero I discover that the page looks, well, corporate. I am pleased to note that I am still in my own extended network though.
I decide to browse some other profiles for inspiration. I start with my one friend, Tom, and helpfully he's left a link to a tutorial. This takes me to
http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=812799
which does indeed look useful. One thing gets my attention though - "Although these codes are meant for those who are more experienced with coding, they can easily be learned and applied by anyone who should read my FAQ"
Hmm. Is the world really full of teenagers desperately learning how to write CSS?
Pretty soon though following the links on Mack's page takes me off the MySpace site and onto another one. It gives me a 404. A bit of clicking later and I am confronted with the horrible truth.
If you want to make your page look good you have to write a whole stylesheet worth of stuff into your About Me text.
I cannot believe how much they managed to sell this for.
Still, the corporateantihero doesn't have time to spend on much of this stuff. Mack's black and grey template is stylish enough for me. I take it. The W3C validator tells me my profile page contains a staggering 168 errors, and looking at them I suspect a lot of them are nothing to do with the stuff I've just cut and pasted from Mack.
Still, site pimped it's time to start blogging.
For a variety of work related reasons it has fallen to me to head into the realms of MySpace and find out what all the fuss is about. In order to do this I'll be using Internet Explorer, since some early investigations revealed that it's not too keen on Firefox. Lets see how I get on
First impressions are that I've seen much nicer looking sites than this. Never mind the clutter and the need for some serious IA work - it's just primitive. A flat undifferentiated layout that does nothing to please the eye or make life easy for the brain. It's like we never left 1999. Still, onwards.
Signing Up
Signing up presents me with a fairly straightforward form, albeit one that insists I enter a postcode before I can be let in. Presumably this means I can now be shown geo-targetted adverts. Still, once in I'm asked to upload a photo of myself.
Photo supplied I'm then taken to a page where I can invite other people to join myspace. By this stage I've been sent an email to confirm my account (with my password in plain text). I click the confirm link and am taken to a page which tells me 'you have to be logged in to do that'. I login and am presumably confirmed - but I haven't been told so at any stage.
Back in my other browser window I try and invite someone else to myspace and get the message 'Invalid friend ID'. I decide to carry on regardless. To carry on, I try logging out and logging in.
I get a server error
I hit refresh
'You must be logged in to do that'
I login
I get an error
I try the confirm process again
I am shown the 'invalid ID' message again
I press home
I seem to be logged in
Surely this isn't what the cool kids are all doing these days...
First Impressions
I've built nicer looking portals than this
The top third of my laptop screen is taken up with advertising. Below the fold is a prompt asking me to pick my 'myspace name'. I ask for 'corporateantihero'. You can see the results at
http://www.myspace.com/corporateantihero
Looking at this I am delighted to learn that 'Martin is in your extended network' and that Tom from MySpace is my friend. I am also single (wrong) and don't want kids (wrong). Clearly something has to be changed. It is not even remotely obvious what or where...
I click 'home' and am releaved to learn that from here I can now edit my profile and do various other things. I set about editing and discover that I can use HTML (but not script tags). When I update my profile I get the wussiest little 'profile updated' message - someone really needs to show these guys the 'yellow fade' from basecamp.
On viewing my profile again I discover that I now have described my musical tastes but am still single. Back to the edit process where I find some well hidden tabbed browsing options. Filling in these I discover that even though I told the system I was in the UK the postcode I provided (12345) has been mapped to New York. I can specify my height (starting at 1cm) and whether I'm here for dating, serioius relationships or whatever.
I am 1 cm tall and here for friends.
I fill in (or mostly don't fill in) the rest of the profile. I do try and add some music to my profile - which takes me off into myspacemusic. I add a song called 'white girls' by the instantly forgettable 'Five O clock heros' and am reminded of this cartoon
After adding the song I am again told that this is an invalid profile. I click back a lot and manage to get back to my (updated) profile page.
My first big question about MySpace is...
How did something so broken get so popular?
