More after the jump...

*sigh* Where do I even begin with this. Clearly there are some valid uses for the "click here for more" feature, but 99% of the time (no exaggeration) it's just yet another heavy-handed way to generate more page hits. I'm not even going to bother pointing out specific examples of this because they're everywhere, and almost always only have an extra picture or two, or maybe the last few lines of text that were cut off from the post on the front page. All these are things that could make it on the front page with some better laid out posts or maybe an actual editor (oh noes).
This wouldn't get to me as much as it does if there was a good reason for not having all the content of a post right there on the front page, but the times when blogs actually post original content such as interviews that actually require lots of space, are far in between. And even then wouldn't you really want more readers to see your original content, rather than the 34th post in a 92-posts long blog circle-referencing ouroboros of redundance? OK, I know your blog is about technology and gadgets, but do you really feel the need to be the one-stop shop for everything in that domain? And that by not actually linking to the original piece of information, but by linking to your affiliates blog (that gives you plenty of traffic when you post redundant crap, so you have to scratch their back a bit too, ya know?), which in turn is a mangled quote trying to be witty, but glosses over all the relevant details (you might find them after the jump though, argh) apart from whatever the poster could glean of info from his 50 second long research of the news on, you guessed it, yet another blog, which though he's almost quoting verbatim he still has to link, because by all that is holy it would be Just. Too. Much. Effort. to actually educate himself on the subject at hand (god forbid!) and actually contribute something of value to his readers (preposterous!) rather than being yet another node of shit in the page-hits uber alles web of cross-linking and vapid content.
Rambling now. Need coffee.
*sigh* :(

PS: The Neverending Story rocks

Kotaku sucks

It's no secret; I hate the steaming pile that is Kotaku. And so it's only appropriate that my first post should be about them, as their garish logo is pictured right next to the entry of shit in the (admittedly twisted) encyclopedia of my mind.
I present to you exhibit A (I can already see we're going to run out of letters, fast); Their shitty video player. One would think that a blog, the poster-child of Web 2.0, would embrace new technologies such as embedded flash videos and take full advantage of the features they offer. Such as, oh I don't know, embedded playback maybe. It's right there in the name; Embedded.
But this is clearly too much to ask in terms of usability for Kotaku, they present the reader with a play button and other controls in the bottom of the frame, something which clearly shows that by golly this right here be one of them newfangled interwebs videos. And if you hover your mouse over the frame, another friendly play button presents itself, which one of course could make the mistake of assuming would actually play the damn video. But no, unlike pretty much every video hosting site, something which looks like an embedded video is in fact not. It is instead a link that takes you to the relevant posts dedicated .html page. There is no way to play the apparently embedded video apart from, uh, not.
Awesome. For every reader of theirs that reads the front page and wants to watch a single video, they have now successfully doubled the amount of ad-hits, for no apparent usability or convenience to the reader. Do they expect people to watch videos in one window while still continue reading their front page in another? And if you for some sadistic reason want to expose yourself to more than one of their guaranteed content-less and inane videos, you now triple their amount of hits (and so on).
Great job Kotaku, you're at the forefront of shitty ad-hits-milking tactics, and stand as an example for blogs everywhere. I salute you!