⚠️ I follow and comment on NSFW stuff. There’s no way to mark a profile as NSFW, yet, so I thought I should let you know.

36m UK. Fanboy, gaymer, Digg (and Reddit?) refugee, ADHDer, occasional writer/designer/editor, lefty (handedness), and lefty (political).

  • 0 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 11th, 2023
  • meejle@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•No JS, No CSS, No HTML: online "clubs" celebrate plainer websitesEnglish
    25·
    10 days ago

    I think it’ll happen, but I don’t think it’s happening yet.

    The unease is already there (“the internet used to be a place”/“why isn’t the internet fun any more?” sentiments and #OldWeb #SlowWeb hashtags), but I don’t think people are ready to do anything about it.

    I’m only one guy, with a small internet following, but I recently had a go at launching a small “Gaymers” webring (well, a simplified version of one). I promoted it on my socials, I laid out why I think it’s a good idea, I paid to “Blaze” it on Tumblr – I even emailed some like-minded creators directly.

    I rewrote the webpage multiple times, to try to make it more persuasive and more concise. I added a contact form in case people felt uncomfortable emailing me. I loosened the rules to allow commercial websites, as long as they were still independent. I worked hard on the widget and incorporated feedback (made it respect prefers-reduced-motion and made a static version for sites where animation would feel out of place).

    I got some good feedback; lots of people said it was interesting, and a good idea. But literally no one joined or expressed any interest in joining. 🤷‍♂️

    I’m going to have one more go at promoting it next time I’ve got money to spare, but I’ll most likely end up quietly deleting it along with any evidence it existed, because a webring of one is fucking embarrassing. 💀

    I guess if you build it, they will not necessarily come lmao

  • meejle@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Microsoft Tests Removing Its Name From Bing Search BoxEnglish
    31·
    20 days ago

    They know they already have a Bing logo they could use, right? 🤔

    Not that this is out of character for Microsoft. Office became Office 365, which became Microsoft 365… unless you search for it online, because then all three names show up.

    A Bing search result that says, "Microsoft 365. https://www.office.com/. Office 365 login"

    Likewise, Bing Chat became Copilot… but then the main Office launcher became Microsoft 365 Copilot, so there are two Copilot apps on people’s PCs and it’s not immediately clear what the difference is. (This joins the two OneNote apps and two Outlook apps.)

    And, they finally finished retiring the MSN brand and changed everything over to “Microsoft Start” (not to be confused with the iconic “Start” button 😬)… only to make a new MSN logo and change it all back.

    Meanwhile, there’s a Bing app for Android that has an almost identical feature set to Edge, but different branding and a different UI. There’s also an MSN app, which… has almost an identical feature set as the other two apps, but a slightly different UI to the Bing app. 😭

  • meejle@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Welcome to the web we lostEnglish
    4·
    26 days ago

    I’ve been thinking a lot about webrings lately. Now that Google is basically cutting off traffic from the indie web.

    I feel like everyone’s kinda having the same idea at the same time, which gives me some hope, but… it’s difficult enough to find a ring to join, that I think most people will give up?

    I don’t know what I think the solution is. Centralising it and having a big, user-friendly “webring platform” is just inviting more enshittification. But the handful of webring directories I’ve found are really lacking.

    Does anyone have any suggestions? Or, does anyone want to team up and make, like, a Gaymers Webring? (That’s pretty much what I’m looking for.)

    ETA: I’ve built one. DM me if you’re interested!