The Spammy Rabbit Hole

The other day I had an idea to create an ad-supported, competitive trivia site that rewarded top players with prizes. Naturally, I googled the idea first.

To my dismay, there were plenty of results. Clearly not an original idea. Curious to see who beat me to it, I clicked on the first site.



Looks pretty phony, with cheapo Web 2.0 design and specious pull quotes at the bottom, right? So I clicked on the next site:



Pretty similar, no? This site lists "cpaquiz.com" in the footer as the owner. Navigating to cpaquiz.com, one finds this:



One of those weird domains with a stock photo and some links related to the URL. Odd. So I clicked on the third result in my original search, only to find a third nearly identical site.



This one lists "jv interactive" at the bottom as the copyright holder. JV Interactive's site is equally fishy, with silly stock photos and generic copy.



I couldn't help but feeling as if I'd been led into some sort of spammy rabbit hole. All of these dubious companies and websites, somehow conspiring together to accomplish...something. Keep reading...

New SF Public Library Site

When I first used the SF Public Library's website in December, I was shocked at the hideous design and ill thought-out user experience. In a city chock-a-block with web designers and programmers, you'd think their government sites would be a cut above. So I was overjoyed last week when the library debuted its new site, below.


It's designed for higher resolution screens, has much better use of color, and the log-in process is no longer buried at the bottom. It's good to know public institutions aren't content with crappy sites. Keep reading...