Indistinguishable from Jesse » Porn

Great definition of porn

Jesse Ruderman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 07:21:08 +0000

"Porn" for the purposes of this study was defined as "any picture or video you suddenly lose interest in after masturbating."

-- David Wong

Art vs porn

Jesse Ruderman — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:50:58 +0000

Mom: Why do people look at porn?

Me: That's hard to explain. Why do people play video games, or watch sunsets?

Mom: I don't know why people like video games, but sunsets are beautiful and natural.

Me: Naked women are beautiful and natural.

My mom is always asking me to stop mentioning porn on my blog, saying it might drive away potential girlfriends. But on Christmas, she almost encouraged me to hang one of Diana Kos's nude paintings in my apartment. I'm so confused that I don't even know whether to mark that link as NSFW.

Jakob Nielsen on unethical advertising

Jesse Ruderman — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:29:50 +0000

Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical.

Can you guess which eye-attracting ad design element Jakob Nielsen considers unethical?

Plain text
Faces
Cleavage and other "private" body parts
Similarity in design to page content

(Read Jakob's article for the answer.)

Googlebombing “leave”?

Jesse Ruderman — Sun, 13 May 2007 23:39:57 +0000

A Google search for "leave" still reflects the time when most porn sites had "age verification" on their front pages. "Age verification" often took the form of the text "You must be 18 to enter" followed by "Enter" and "Leave" links. The "Leave" link would often lead to a site appropriate for young kids or to a sex-education site.

Even today, when few new sites follow this practice, "Leave No Trace" and "Leave It To Beaver" are beaten by Yahoo, Google, Scarleteen, and Disney.

I wondered why Google's algorithm continued to make this possible despite tweaks to prevent Googlebombs such as "miserable failure". I came across this comment by Google engineer Matt Cutts:

[The algorithm change] really does have a very limited scope and doesn’t affect a large fraction of queries. The intent of the algorithm is to minimize the impact of “true” Googlebombs, which occur when someone is causing someone else’s page to rank for stuff that they wouldn’t want to rank for themselves. The algorithm could detect phrases such as [leave] as a Googlebomb in future iterations, but it doesn’t right now and I don’t think that Disney would care much either way.

Googlebombs were slightly embarrassing, but I imagine that abandoning link text would have hurt search quality a lot. I'm impressed that Google was able to come up with an algorithmic way to distinguish Googlebombs from other link text.

Enigma

Jesse Ruderman — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:38:02 +0000

I've been a fan of Enigma, especially the songs "Mea Culpa" and "Sadeness (part II)", for over a year. Today, I found out that "Sadeness" is part of a three-part movement (along with a song called "Find Love") and listened to the other parts for the first time.

Wow. I didn't know it was possible for music to be pornographic.

Porn browser wars?

Jesse Ruderman — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:01:57 +0000

Like Robert Accettura, I frequently get emails from strangers asking for Gmail invites, help with Firefox problems, or JavaScript code. But this one caught me by surprise:

From: Juliano
To: Jesse Ruderman
Date: Dec 27, 2006 8:45 AM
Subject: HI....... porn?? Firefox or Opera????

Hello,

The dillema I am facing is. I love surfing porn. I am with Windows Internet Explorer 6 and have had a NIGHTmare surfing porn with it. I dont need the stress, so need some advice.

People have recommended Firefox, as you have. But I am also hearing now that Opera is best. So I am confused, and yet feel URGENT need to actualize one of the other. For sanity sake.

Can you help?

Julian