Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

social marketing posts

Filed under: Humor, Fugly Friday

Fugly Friday - Twitter design disasters

Nowadays, what with the internet and all, you can pretty much pick up "good" (read: adequate) design for free and all over the place. There are templates for EZ, no-bake websites to beat the band. But Twitter's oddball format doesn't lend itself to much more than a blurb in terms of customization. That doesn't mean people won't maximize that space.

There are also folks butchering the design, but maybe it's not their fault. Twitter isn't really designed to be designed -- the profiles are mere vanity. You're looking at them when you tweet, and relying on people to visit them and give you a 3 second verdict to follow or unfollow (coming to NBC this Fall).

Here's a few interesting specimens we found:
  • HotTweeps - Nothing says quality like improper use of Photoshop's magic wand.
  • shawnshewchuk - Whoa dude, your logo is like, totally huge.
  • DavidLetterman - Even if Dave approved of Twitter, he'd disapprove of the animated GIF in the profile pic. Careful he doesn't sue the Worldwide Pants off of you.
  • Now here's YGrab, who AAAAH, my eyes! Who says you can't mix orange and blue? Over and over. No repeating backgrounds, ever!
  • Here's one of zillions of those "gonna put all my info in the rail" designs. Be selective, people.
  • Maybe this isn't a design thing, maybe it's just a thing where we haven't been typing in all caps on the internet for about a decade, but this guy needs to cut it out.
  • If it's self-indulgence you wish to see, but you're burnt on celeb tweets, may we suggest Twouchebags? Aside from being a great name for a band or bar, it's a good resource for, well, people whose behaviors might make cause them to be labeled something rhyming with Twouchebags.

Finally there's the leeches and remoras of the Twitter landscape, all those "get a zillion followers and die rich!" sites. Funny this is, most of them don't show their Twitter account names ON their site. Inspired Magazine has a pretty funny roundup of these jokers.

Filed under: Business, Developer, News, Windows, Productivity, Commercial

$500 of project management software for $5

ontime 5 bucksAxosoft is conducting an experiment in social marketing, so here's to it: they are giving away their OnTime 2006 app for a mere $5 donation to the American Red Cross. Even if you're no fan of the ARC (I know some people aren't, they have their reasons), this is a pretty sweet deal. We're talking software that sells for $500 discounted 99%. So what? OnTime is a respectable bug tracking and project management tool, with all the requisite reports and tracking tools, some cool email alerts, and a web UI version. Those portal pages are gold when dealing with outside contractors or clients, I tell ya. Give the demo video a look and see if the $5 is sweet enough for your taste. Get busy though, because the offer only lasts until February 24, and is only available via blog links. Thanks to Kevin who sent this in.

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio

Joystiq

TUAW

Daily Finance

Autoblog

Urlesque

Engadget

WoW

Switched.com

FanHouse