Change

Blip Changes
 
The change is not subtle, as promised. Such drastic change is never going to be well received as people simply do not like change. My first impression is ‘I hate it, bring the old Blip back’. But, I have decided to be objective and write my thoughts down;
 
Log-in screen – an immediate improvement. At least I could find the sign in button, which was something that Blip seemed to struggle with in the past.
 
First screen – all that white was always going to be a problem. But why? Yes, it is too bright, but that is just something that has to be gotten used to. Forcing myself to be objective and logical, it is a problem. The edge of every image with white clouds in the sky gets lost. If the background was even just a few shades of grey darker, then this problem would go away.
 
Larger thumbs – and more of them, an improvement. But, you have to scroll down to see them all or continue onto the next page. Why not get rid of ‘places’ and ‘tags’, reduce the size of the search button, and move the other four selections onto the top bar. Now close up the images and slide them up to the bar and bingo, not only have you fitted all the thumbs onto one page, but you got rid of all the white.
 
Places – This feature will never get used by me. In order to write something about this and tags, I had to at least press them once and I am sorry I did. Where’s Bandung, where’s Jakarta! Yes, I can hear you; there is only one member in Bandung and he is not important enough to feature a city. Sorry Chocolatelover, same goes for Jakarta babe. Of course there are Thousands of members in Shanghai and Tokyo, there must be, as those cities are featured.
 
An opportunity for your software development team was missed here, to do something very neat and original, adding a personal touch to the site; pick up on the IP address of the user and add the nearest city to the top left space of the list, plus a couple more major cities from the region, then the feature might get used. A bit like you have done for Edinburgh and Glasgow.
 
Forcing myself to stop being a whinger and be objective, the map feature never got used before, mainly because it was useless and slow. This time it is better, but still of no use to me. But let’s have a go at finding Bandung then. Typed into the search window and as I suspected it might, took me to a page of images that mention Bandung. I was surprised to find so many, none of which were mine. Strange as I tag all my images to help the search feature.
 
Another programming opportunity missed; if I am on the ‘places’ page, you could safely assume that If I did a search, that I am actually looking for a place. I am finding it extremely difficult to stay away from whinge mode, so forcing myself to be objective, let’s move on. Let’s get back to places and find Bandung. Gosh! Ten flags, I don’t believe it. I’ll save this and come back to it. Where’s the save button! You mean I have to select a city thousands of miles away, zoom out, scroll half way across the globe and then about eight clicks to zoom back in! Oh yes, I’ll be using this six times a day.
 
Tags – I have been religiously using tags in the hope that it might help with searches. It never did, the search facility was always worse than useless, but I’ll check that out later. First of all, I had to press Blipfoto to get back to the first page before I could find tags. Kind of defeats the object of being a short cut, don’t you think!
 
And here we are, sixteen tags. I’m a bugger, so let’s have a go at some bug tags. Where do I write my tag! Sorry, you totally missed the point of tags, it is not just a Facebook buzzword you know.
 
Activities – There will be loads of new stuff here I am sure – BlipBlog! Is that it, bloody Blip Blog!
 
Browse – apart from ‘add new entry’ this is the last feature. Not really sure what this is all about. Is it some kind of random thing. As a left brained person, this does not work for me. I want to start at the latest and work my way back.
 
Mostly, I want to have a look at the top rated images of the day, namely spotlight. I also like to go through the top shots of the month, the favourites. Next, I would check out the newcomers and the popular sections and occasionally the all-time greats. NOTHING! ALL GONE! Forget about objectivity, THIS SUCKS! At least I won’t be spending hours every day on Blip, so thank you Blip central for that.
 
Well, after all this aimless meandering, let’s see if there are any comments on my latest. Pfft! Gotta go back to the front page again, what a pain. Oooh look, hearts are displayed, finally something positive to write.
 
I tried to be objective and positive, but now I am positively fuming and now my object is to find a replacement for Blip. I will give it a month or so and see if it grows on me, but to be honest, I might as well join Fluckr.
 
In words that our uber modern software support team will understand - unlike.
 
Dave