My OperaNemesis of the Internet!
Monday, May 17, 2010 11:10:58 PM
Shitoogle & Microballs!
The Internet's arch nemesis in open-source media. For both legal (completely free) and illegal (paid or fraud) open-source developers and hosts, these two corporates have been long detested for their blatant, uncharacteristic, over-powerful and Hitler-style dictatorship.
Now, I won't be stating the historical reasoning behind it as I don't know it, but will share my rebellion against them and let you know why. Let's start with some of the programs from these two companies that I use and talk about the positives and negatives.
Email:
Send and receiving, reading and clarify of emails are pretty much the same. Though, one annoying factor in both of these two clients is SPAM blocking/control. Microballs' spam filtering has improved a long way since I first started using the Internet back in 2001 and am glad it has. But 10 years is way too long and I feel I have wasted a lot of my time searching through spam for certain email. On the other hand, Shitoogle has a much better system and blocks almost all (99%) spam, even those that you report as Spam, unlike Microballs which continues to send you spam from the same domain.
A secondary, but not so annoying factor which I dislike in both systems is the use of Ads. I've went through many programs and browsers to block Ads, whether it be pop-ups or not (before finally settling on Opera) and I find it a nuisance. I don't mind seeing Ads on websites, but hate to see it while I am reading an email. It's almost like an invasion of privacy, though it may not be direct. The problem particularly about the Ads are the placement. Microballs does a good job of placing it on the right side in a clear, distinct box, but unfortunately, and even though they use text ads in a small area, Shitoogle places it right above the control panel... Again, a nuisance.
Furthermore, both clients via Opera have the worst redirection systems. If Shitoogle is used too much, it won't let you have access unless you restart the browser or wait a couple of hours. I've had to use another browser just to evade this. In comparison, Microballs fails to even load the page unless you use another link and and it doesn't even process the "sign out" all the way. It just leaves me with: "Couldn't sign you out."
Browser:
I don't think I should stress how crap the browser Internet Explorer X (insert browser number) is compared to others. No matter what OS I use, cold start (use after idle state), warm start (use after closing other programs or while running programs), or even running the program following the start of the computer, it does not improve the speed and takes approximately 10 seconds to load the home page. About 9 seconds slower than any other browser I have used, excluding Netscape which is even slower (by the way, why do people still use AOL? Just because of "You've Got Mail."?!).
Internet Explorer not only fails in start loads, but in between loads to another site via tabbing or another window. Just to get the tab to load and click the address bar, it takes over 5 seconds. I swear, a browser shouldn't take this much time to load. Anyhow, judging from what I have seen with XP, Vista, Windows 7, use of Netscape, Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, I can conclude that in terms of loading and browsing, the program is one of the slowest. I can only say one good thing though. On network computers (school, library, etc), it loads slightly faster than personal computers. Go figure, no wonder they are the most popular/known.
As for Shitoogle's browser, Chrome. It is by far much faster than IE. It loads faster on any starts and even tabbing. But even it has issues. Being a browser which took ideas from Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer (luckily, not the speed management), it fails in some aspects. Stability. User-friendliness, and other things which are present in Opera that isn't changing my mind to switch (I hear, some Opera users have switched to Chrome?).
On my very first attempt using Chrome I encountered a crash (on a school network computer). User-friendliness is very important factor for me and Chrome doesn't suffice. There is no menu, just address bar, and the options/preferences section is so small and simple-looking that I couldn't find what I intended to do when I went there. I'm a step by step, following the instructions guy, so I like going through subsections and menus, but Chrome just had one page (preferences) which didn't explain much. Furthermore, I didn't understand Chrome's password management.
As for why I am talking about Chrome's functions but not Internet Explorer's? Simple reason: Speed. Internet Explorer fails to load, thus slowing down functionality, so talking about or even comparing is useless. Returning to Chrome... It doesn't look appealing either, even with the skins. And the Speed Dial is similar to Internet Explorer's "history" and Safari's Speed Dial on "Most Visited." I don't even know if you can even edit it or how. With Opera it's simple. If you right click things, you can see other things... At least on a Windows PC.
What else do these two corporate giants have both? Blogs? I guess they do.
Microballs' blog is obsolete... No one uses it any more, and who ever does are those people who keep in touch via MSN which is where the blog comes from. Due to other blog companies like wordpress, tumblr, and nucleus, people have been using less of the blog until it got really unpopular. Similarly, Shitoogle's blog comes from the purchase of blogger, commonly known as blogspot. It was extremely popular when it got started and was used all the time by all forms of people and still remains quite popular. Unfortunately, it wasn't changed in any form and lost a lot of people due to other blogs like wordpress and livejournal. Nevertheless, and to be fair, even blogs like wordpress and livejournal are loosing people (because of paid systems). My Opera and Nucleus CMS, which I like a lot and promote are great open-source, free programs and can be customised virtually limitless. My Opera lets you upload pictures and has a separate links page, while anyone with CSS and html knowledge can modify and update their Nucleus blog endlessly as long as html, css, and other open-source options exist.
In conclusion, thanks to open-source programs like Nucleus CMS, My Opera (though it isn't open-source per se, it is just free of charge, but you can modify the skin), and semi-open-source like wordpress and livejournal, and many others, which are slowly developing, someday it might be able to topple corporate giants like Yapoo, Shitoogle, and Microballs.
Unregistered user # Saturday, October 9, 2010 8:46:03 PM