In the past few years we had the mad cow and avian diseases and the swine flu. Now we have West Nile.

Mad Cow disease

It started, created a bit of panic, a few people died, everyone was scared, they announced the pandemic, a few doctors tried to find a cure, the TV stations were talking only about it, etc. And that’s kinda it. After a few months everyone forgot about it.

Avian disease

It started, created a bit of panic, a few people died, a few chickens were killed, everyone was scared, they announced the pandemic, a few doctors tried to find a cure, the TV stations were talking only about it, etc. And that’s kinda it. After a few months everyone forgot about it.

Swine Flu

It started, created a bit of panic, a few people died, everyone was scared, they announced the pandemic, a few doctors tried to find a cure, the TV stations were talking only about it, etc. And that’s kinda it. After a few months everyone forgot about it.

Can you spot the difference? Exactly! There is no difference. And I am pretty sure the same will happen to West Nile . Okay, a few people died. I don’t know how and what, but my guess is that it was something else that killed them.

The ingredients are:

1. one logo taken from Ubuntu
2. one design taken from Twitter
3. a lot of nerve

Preparation mode:

You take the logo from Ubuntu, wash it with clear water and you put it in the oven at medium temperature. Leave it there until it changes colour and basic characteristics. Be careful not to burn it! Best served with a bit of salt and butter. It should look like this:

The second part of the recipe is a bit trickier. You have to make it look exactly like Twitter. The best practice here is to copy large parts of CSS code directly from the Twitter homepage. This way you will avoid a lot of trouble and bug tracking. Five minutes in the microwave oven should be enough. Try using a bit of cinnamon. Serve it cold.

The final ingredient is the most important. If you lack nerve, this recipe will fail .

You can view a photo of this delicious dish, or you can taste it live!

Note: I have indeed used their services so I know what I’m talking about.

Some of the following are my own experiences while others are from reviews I’ve seen.

1. Their data centre lacks quality. Sometimes the servers are fast and sometimes slow.
2. They can change from cPanel to Parallels without asking it’s clients or even telling them.
3. If you have a problem you can contact the support team. They will tell you your scripts are faulty. If you insist and bring proof that their servers caused the problem they will ignore you.
4. Sometimes the CEO can personally take a look into your problems. This means he will personally ignore you.
5. If you ask for your money back (after you have proven they caused your problems) you will, again, be ignored.
6. They will never admit it’s their fault.
7. Their services are only for professionals. If you aren’t one you might just fall for what they tell you.
8. I heard the 24 minutes response time is a lie.
9. They can become very rude on Twitter.

Do you have anything else to add to the list?

… I observed the following:

1. The vast majority don’t know how to write properly.
2. A lot offer SEO and blogging tips on wordpress.com or blogger. People also offer tips on how to get easy money over the internet on these services.
3. Most don’t use the MORE tag when posting videos or any other flash content.
4. Blogger is used more than wordpress.com although blogger sucks when it comes to design and functionality.
5. Loads of people use widgets like calendar and categories. As far as I know, these two are considered useless. Also have seen a lot of flash clocks.
6. Some can’t read. On the first page you have a post stating you are not accepting link exchange requests and someone leaves a comment (in romanian on an english blog ) on your latest post (without any link the the post’s topic) while there’s a nice ‘Contact’ link in your blog.
7. The easiest way to make a blog is putting miniclip games on your site and naming your site something-containing-the-word-games. This can be done with or without your own domain. In the case a domain is used then it’s double trouble. You just wasted some money.
8. Most blogs (on blogger and wordpress.com at least) are made in a moment of boredom.
9. The most common description in About pages is “I am me (and no one else)”.
10. Some have captcha + moderation + akismet activated on comments.
11. Right-click protection is so ’95. If I want to steal something from your site, that will not stop me.

Did I miss anything?

I’ve seen that a few blogs I have in Google Reader take around one hour to update. Updating your blog to your readers is called pinging. Of course, you can add as many services you like, but this list is working just fine. To add services you have to go to Settings > Writing and add the following list of sites in the Update Services area:
You can use Filip’s insane ping list, or:

• http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
• http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
• http://bblog.com/ping.php
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
• http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
• http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
• http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

Pretty simple and effective. Found in the WordPress Codex. Bumps go to blogdan, Vlad and ‘mnealui . And a huge thanks to Filip .

Thingler – simple and fast way to create a todo list. very nice and sleek design too.

Mockingbird – create website wireframes. Only one drawback: after it comes out of the beta stage, it will cost.

Cacoo – another wireframe creator, free this time. best I could find out there.

Was it Up? – monitors your site and sends an email if it goes down. another email when it’s back up.

Pick&Zip – tool for downloading whole facebook albums.

Wakoopa – software tracking