Your favorite band's website sucks. I can't count the number of times I've wanted to share a band's great new tracks with friends over email and had to give them detailed instructions on how to navigate the flash popup (ok, first click on the band's launch panel, then look in the popup for something marked "sounds" then click that and click the stream button...what? you don't have the latest flash?), or if I love a band's music, I can't seem to find their tour dates even though I know they're on the road. Merlin drops the five golden rules for bands that do too good of a job keeping their fans from their music.
posted by mathowie on Dec 6, 2004 - 81 comments

For Sale: FuckedCompany.com. What do think the person who buys it will do with the site?
posted by mathowie on Sep 11, 2000 - 9 comments

This Salon article on the state of web sites aimed at women asks some interesting questions. Women-centric sites set out in 1997 and 1998 to start a revolution, and instead we have relationship quizzes, diet plans, TV reviews, and horoscopes. What went wrong? Are women really interested in these things? Did the sites start out edgy and adapt to the audience? Would anyone expect online magazine/lifestyle properties to be much different than their offline counterparts? I also wonder what anyone that has ever seen and/or used iVilliage, Oxygen, and Women.com think of each site's content? Is it enlightening, or pure fluff?
posted by mathowie on Aug 31, 2000 - 12 comments

Yet Another Domain Name Dispute Develops (YADNDD): chunkymunky.com gets a Cease & Desist from chunkymonkey.com. One is a windows software site, the other a fan site about a cartoon character. Is there any cause for confusion on the part of users wanting to visit either site (actually, one would have to misspell "monkey" in order to get to the windows site)? Should the chunkymunky.com site owner have taken down his/her site? Who is going to protect domain owners from future things like this happening?
posted by mathowie on May 23, 2000 - 21 comments

The finalists for the SXSW web competition have been announced. I'm sad to see that a site I urged the owner to enter, evolt.org, did not make the cut in the online community category. I'll be pulling for a couple cool sites I like and read regularly when I'm at SXSW next month. Do you see any favorites on the finalist list?
posted by mathowie on Feb 5, 2000 - 1 comment

Here's a gross mis-use of the web: 800-357-7766.com. This mail order company is spamming the airwaves with commercials for their goofy 'tap lights,' and at the end of each commerical, they advertise their website with this unwieldy address. For less than $50, the company could have bought 'taplights.com' and directed customers there, but instead they force people to write down an address that goes against all the reasons why we have the domain registry in the first place. Why don't they just give our their IP address instead? It's about as useful as their phone number domain name.
posted by mathowie on Dec 25, 1999 - 0 comments

Thanks to the scarcity of good domain names, we're stuck with stupid ideas like piiq.com. Here's their deal: you put the letter 'p' and 'q' around anything you want, and their site will come up, like pbookq.com, ptoysq.com, and pfoodq.com. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
posted by mathowie on Nov 28, 1999 - 1 comment