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well, you just have to put up with these people, that's life.
jakedean wrote:
Honestly, I tried to be optimistic about Leapfrog's debut. But what I liked about Spymac 2 when I joined, and then shortly thereafter version 3, slowly diminished after each release. Spymac to me had a soul, a personality, or in the least bit, a themed environment. I may be a minority, but that's what drew me into the community. It was the twist on things that, like Apple itself, was just a little bit different.
With Leapfrog, I'm left feeling like the innovation is there for innovation's sake. So many new ideas are there that the community becomes unfamiliar. I go to sites like digg and flickr for their services, but at the end of the day, I go home to Spymac where I know my way around and can use it to facilitate my own ideas and agenda- not fiddle around with assigning tags to photos and videos that I'll only view once. Don't get me wrong- the technology is great and highly beneficial to its purpose, but Spymac never felt like the place to pioneer it. The WOS was tasteful and great, but in my opinion this seems like a little too much. The soul seems to be gone.
Nevertheless, I'll be here enjoying the classic forums in the meantime, and still supporting Mr. April's endeavors.
I really think that spymac and leapfrog should just be sister sites so that there is a mac community and a social community but have the designs differentiate.
That wasn't a flame, and you know it. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. I was willing to participate in this community, but if I cant even reply to a comment what is the point?
-Live video and audio recording - You just need a webcam or microphone
-Unlimited space for all your uploads
-Available in 18 different regionalized languages
-Video-chat with other members right through the site
-Most popular uploaders get daily payouts of ad revenue
-Fast CSS design - built for future customization
-Embed videos, videochat links, pictures, people, everything - wherever you want
-FileSucker lets you upload up to 5 files at once, and lets you record audio and record video from any page -- including your blog, MySpace or other sites
.. and much more!
And the users response:
troubler62
Quote:
Um... frankly... you've got to be kidding me. Please tell me I'm dreaming, and you just didn't do what I thought you did. Is the front page just a joke, or did someone actually redesign that?
It seems Spymac is on it's last legs, with only a few hardcore members left.
If you've just got access to the site, please tell me what you think.
I've been crisited by certain members for writing a bad review of spymac - but it looks like the majority of spymac users agree with what I've been saying.
You say nothings changed about Spymac (it being a mac rumours orientated website) but it has, what was unique about Spymac was it's excellent news, but now it's gone, does this mean Kirstie and the rest of the news team doesn't have a job?
It's ashame that it's come to this at least in older version (however bad they might have been) it had dignity as a mac orientated website - but i just don't get what spymac is.
Lets go through the features:
Videos - Is exactly the same as Youtube
Pictures - Is exactly the same as flickr
Webcams - This feature has potential! - See I'm not all negative
Audio - Is exactly the same as odeo
People - Is exactly the same as Myspace, Bebo, Facebook
Blogs - Bloggers, Vox, Myspace
Forums - At least for the moment this feature is unique (mac orientated disscusion)
Collections - Every social networking website has this as well as services such as vox
You - Just a flashy profile page which nearly every website has
File Sucker - Like any uploading features - Spymac's original idea of an online hard disk was amazing - but everyone does this now - with much better services
So what exactly is different about spymac?
You say the 'people' but a). from my experience their are a group of people here who are negative and not polite, b) this is not going to attract new members.
the_evil_genious_187 wrote:
Maybe you should include some positive comments. That way your "review" might not seem so biased.
please feel free to do so if you wish - but here were not governed by anyone - therefore we can be as biased as we like.
Aren't journalist supposed to provide unbiased reports? regardless if you agree with them or not.
It is important to note that the opinions posted in the forums are the views of individuals and not of iVirtua or any other member of staff.
Technically, anything a journalist writes is not journalism, and it is a bit of journalism what he his doing...
Wikipedia wrote:
Journalism is a discipline of collecting, verifying, reporting and analyzing information gathered regarding current events, including trends, issues and people. Those who practice journalism are known as journalists.
Most journalists are biased in some way; but hey, keep on topic, please. Remember you are on your second warning "the_evil_genious_187" and replying to any post above that is off topic would be considered breaking the rules; just to keep things tidy. Thanks.
On to Spymac Leapfrog now: Although the design goes aganist alot of design donstitutions and also it does look a mess and does not W3C validate, and hasnt changed since this "beta" the_evil_genious_187 I really think that having all the multimedia on the front page is wrong.
Go to wayback machine look at spymac 3. Personality, with is unique SPYmac style, and graphics, its unique features and terminology, and the mac news and posts on the front page. No mroe forum posts and community involvement on the front page nore articles and news. Its one big youtube thing with pictures. It doesnt even have rounded edges, any more AJAX or drag and drop (which I thought the hands were for!) so you can hardly call it Web 2.0.
Ok, the features are good, but not for Spymac. Call it leapfrog! just leapfrog.com (its actually preschool product manufacturer lol) not spymac.com as its a totally different thing; no spymac personality or original use, and uniqueness.
So now they have taken away the SPY and the MAC in the SPYMAC.
More Quotes of interest from spymac
Quote:
Please do not make the media center the front page of spymac. At least not until ALL of it's features are up, running and relatively bug free (and maybe until we have templates as well). I know it's the new thing and you want to show it off and have people try it out but IMNSHO I think the news page should be the front page. People that are interested in media options will find it well enough, but those that aren't won't get bombarded by images they dont' want to see. It's a whole lot easier to not read words that you're not interested than to not see pictures that are a bit in your face. I think everyone will be happier with this option.
Quote:
This has to be a joke--please tell me this is a bad dream. Ever since version 3 went offline, things have been getting worse. Spymac seems to have majorly lost its way. We're constantly bombarded with new releases that are underwhelming at the very least (might I bring up the Spymac 4 blunder). The community was booming at version 3 and has been going downhill since that transition. I've personally been unimpressed with Spymac for at least a year and a half. The only reason I renewed my Club membership was to keep my email but I probably won't be doing that in September when my account expires. We give you money and this is what you do? Thank God the forums still look the same for the time being.
Quote:
its because its too messy, there is no order as to go to different categories, for example pictures...
The fact that you say it is temporary gives some me some relief...
its too busy, too messy, I don't have a pattern to follow... I can't navigate in it because its too messy and keeps me away from wanting to check it more.
Unfortunately leapfrog isn't temporary, maybe it will be better when the forums are in the new design and news is too, but even then the design will still be really bad, and user built templates I can see being buggy. Its also not a community as there is no member of the month on the front page, no recent posts of course, and no users viewing this page.
Quote:
suggestion: Take it down until it is ready! and also work out what you what you want it to be, have focus.
Theres our USP
Quote:
I was actually really surprised at Leapfrog. Over the past couple years, I've kind of strayed from Spymac, but always stopped by the shoutbox to say hi to old friends. Now that Leapfrog is out, i find myself participating a lot more and really enjoying all that it has to offer.
Most of the people who joined Spymac did so to discuss all things Macintosh, so when they go to spymac.com, they should be greeted with Mac news, etc. The whole "Leapfrog" thing should be secondary. It's great to have such focus on the members, but we can't forget why we're all here to begin with.
The only other option I see is to make Leapfrog a separate site, minus the Spymac name. As it stands now, it's basically a mashup of youtube and myspace, so the whole "Spymac" name doesn't really make any sense.
I don't mind the overall design too much, but it could definitely use a little more work. I do like the fact that it's color coordinated, so when you have a bunch of images on one screen, you can immediately tell if it's a video or picture. That alone makes it really easy to navigate, but I would also like to see an option to have a bunch of smaller images on one page, similar to what the Spymac gallery was like back in v2.
Overall, I applaud your hard work. When I first joined in 2003, I would spend countless hours on this website. Now that it's Leapfrog, I can see myself spending countless more. Thanks everyone.
Its a good site, but not in terms of spymac.
Last edited by Editorial Team on Mon Jan 08, 2007 1:02 pm; edited 3 times in total
Technically, anything a journalist writes is not journalism, and it is a bit of journalism what he his doing...
I just don't get that statement.
Quote:
Most journalists are biased in some way; but hey, keep on topic, please. Remember you are on your second warning "the_evil_genious_187" and replying to any post above that is off topic would be considered breaking the rules; just to keep things tidy. Thanks.
Umm well I hate to disagree, a journalists duty is to provide the facts and provide both sides of the story. You would never find the BBC reporting on a story without giving both sides the chance to respond.
Regarding the warnings. We both know they are unjust and the censoring of my posts are due to the fact you have no response.
You know I might just write a little review of iVirtua, with screen shots and both sides of the story.
Technically, anything a journalist writes is not journalism, and it is a bit of journalism what he his doing...
I just don't get that statement.
You have a journalist. He writes something. What he writes is not necessarily journalism.
Quote:
Umm well I hate to disagree, a journalists duty is to provide the facts and provide both sides of the story. You would never find the BBC reporting on a story without giving both sides the chance to respond.
A post by an iVirtua user does not have the same validity of the BBC which does have a duty. A poster here could be a journalist but does not have the same duty, can be bias. What about crics?
Feel free to post in the iVirtua Views, Future Versions Suggestions and Help Centre if you feel you need to; but this topic is for the discussion of Spymacs latest instalment, Leapfrog and what it means for spymac, only. It is not about the technical sides of things nor any "flaming".
Last edited by Editorial Team on Mon Jan 08, 2007 12:38 pm; edited 2 times in total
[EDIT LUCAS MCCARTNEY: Some topic that are considered Flaming and topics that are off topic (from various posters) have been removed in this topic above this post to make it more readable]
Feel free to post in the iVirtua Views, Future Versions Suggestions and Help Centre if you feel you need to.
I thought I'd do a review of the Spymac Leapfrog Firefox toolbar,
First of all the search feature is nice, it allows you to search through all the different sections of Leapfrog (excluding blogs/forum) at the moment.
The one criticism I would make is that in the Search Function drop down box is a little big and looks a little ugly, but apart from that everything works fine.
If I was to add a feature to the toolbar it would be that you can upload directly from the browser window and not just to be redirected to the spymac leapfrog upload page.
Below is a screen shot of the toolbar:
Last edited by William Tildesley on Tue Aug 28, 2007 3:04 pm; edited 1 time in total
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I really think that having all the multimedia on the front page is wrong.
