Top Un-Recommended Websites - 2007 List

Everyone posts lists of recommended websites, so I thought I'd do something a little different, and present you with a list of websites I don't recommend. These are sites which, for one or more (often more) reasons, I don't like. Most of these are fairly popular websites, and I'll list them in order of decreasing popularity, based on Alexa popularity numbers. In the list below, the number in parenthesis after the site name represents (according to Alexa) the site's popularity. Example, MySpace is the sixth most popular website in the world, so it has a (6) after it.

MySpace.com (6)
I've written in other places why this is such a horrible website. My main beefs with this site are:

• Horrible design: it functions like it was designed by a first year programming student
• Horrible design: it looks like it was scribbled by a toddler
• Atrocious advertisements which no one (and especially not children/teenagers) should be subjected to*.

BeliefNet.com (7,197)
I've only spent a few minutes on this site. At a quick glance, it appears to be a site whose purpose is to make everyone feel good about what they believe, regardless of what they believe. Which goes along with our society's horribly irrational version of a "pluralistic viewpoint". But since I try not to be irrational most of the time, I don't buy it.

But that's NOT why I don't recommend this site. I don't recommend for a couple other reasons. One is, they do that annoying thing where, when you click on a link, instead of getting the page you wanted, you get an advertisement, and a "click here to skip this ad" link. But even worse than that, the advertisement page has a javascript error in it, which means if you are a developer, and have a debugger active, the page just continually pops up error messages over and over and over and over again, making it impossible to navigate away.

But even that isn't the REAL reason I don't recommend this site. I spent a total of five minutes on BeliefNet. And in that time, I accidentally clicked advertisements TWICE. You know what this means? It means that they have placed advertisements inappropriately close to navigation items (like menus, scrollbars, etc). And what does that mean? It means they are probably making oodles of money off accidental clicks.

I don't approve sites that engage in that sort of questionable behavior.

And, by the way, if you are one of those poor companies that is spending advertising budget money on space at BeliefNet, I would seriously re-evaluate whether you want to put your money into accidental clicks!

KidsInMind.com (81,884)
This is a movie review website which is designed to help parents decide whether or not they should take their children to see a particular movie. I used to recommend this site, until one day (for some reason) I disabled my popup-blocker, and discovered that this site regularly harrasses the visitor with pop-under advertisements. Very annoying. In addition, they do that annoying thing where, when you click on a link, instead of getting the page you wanted, you get an advertisement, and a "click here to skip this ad" link.

Aside from the fact that this is just plain annoying, there's also the fact that the "skip" link often doesn't work.

Dove.org (522,709)
This is another movie review site. This site, instead of just giving information about the kind of content a movie has, will make a "recommendation" about whether you should watch it. If you want to know why I don't recommend this site, which "appears" to have Christian morals, just go to Google and search for "Dove Foundation Telemarketer" and you will discover that this organization is involved in fairly questionable telemarketing tactics. Let's just say I've been contacted by them on more than one occasion, and was thoroughly unimpressed by their tactics**.

* advertisements regularly featured on MySpace include the "It's Okay To Look" and "It's not Okay To Stare" ad campaigns, both of which are ads for an online dating service, and seem designed to encourage teenage boys to ogle (ie, stare at) scantily clad women. In addition, I've seen a "flash game" advertisement in which the player is encouraged to "kill his friend's mother".

** My run-in with the Dove Foundation: An Informational Call, Dove Foundation Follow-up

Home For A Short Time...

Well, I'm back home (briefly!) This morning I need to do some laundry, take a trip to the dump, and some shopping (kind of weird to be doing grocery shopping during the summer...normally, since I'm just home on the weekends, I have enough stuff in my cupboards to make it through the summer...but this whole thing of bringing my own food to camp with me is just one more preparation that I need to do each weekend.)

Then this afternoon (or evening - I'm not sure which) I'm taking some of our youth group teens to the movies. I'm looking forward to that! Of course, those turkeys (ha ha...I'm just kidding, in case you read this Erica, Lindsay and Alex!) have already seen the movie, but I guess I can forgive them for that. ;)

For anyone who is interested, here is a hike report: Blueberry Mountain Hike Report. I was going to hike this with Brian and his family, but I got to camp and found out that it was actually part of the camp activities, so I ended up doing it Monday morning with campers, instead of Thursday afternoon with Brian and crew. I was kind of sad I didn't get to see the Kingfield crew, but at least I did get to see them this summer when I went to the Kingfield Pops concert!

It was nice to see Miss Kay (Karolyne) who was a counselor at Blueberry Mtn, and who I hadn't seen in quite a while. It was also nice this week to meet "Uncle Dave", and pray with him each morning for the camp, the staff, and the campers.

Tomorrow morning I'm at Carthage, and then I head to Camp Berea!

Oh! One more thing I forgot to mention - the missionary speaker at camp was Lura Bodwell, who worked with the Fulani people in Nigeria. This was particularly interesting to me because Rita Salls worked with the Fulani in Niger. And...Lura knew Rita. It was really nice to chat with her, both about missions in Africa and about the things we were going to be teaching - there were several times during the week that our lessons overlapped, or talking with her helped me figure out some ideas about how I wanted to teach a particular lesson.

Teamwork is such a great thing!

Okay, and one more thing...a couple of the campers told me that they have older brothers/sisters whose math teacher is...Mr. Twitchell!

A Little Bit About My Week at Fairhaven Camp

Well, I got back last night from Fairhaven. It was an interesting week. It's an entirely different experience from the other camps I go to. Partly because I get to spend so little time with the campers. Partly because such a large percentage of the campers don't really know much about the Bible.

And, on top of my gallbladder stuff, there was a bug going around at camp, which everyone was coming down with...and I got it. So I spent a good part of Thursday in bed, and missed being able to go on their hike/cookout with them, and didn't get to do chapel with them.

I think being sick caused my gallbladder to act up a little bit...I wasn't in pain, exactly, but it was kind of like my gallbladder was saying to me: Hey Doug! I'm still here!

But on Friday I was feeling better, and was able to go to the beach with them, which was loads of fun. Especially building a sand castle, complete with moat, welcome center and gift shop, outlying villages, and (of course!) an outhouse!

Anyway, we had two or three salvation decisions this week among the teens, and except for Wednesday night, the teens were quite attentive in chapel, and fun to teach. (Wednesday night they played Capture The Flag, but only got to play for about twenty minutes, so they still had a lot of adrenaline rushing through their systems, and were nearly impossible to teach!)

Fat Free Mayonnaise, Fat Free Cheese

Well, last night Jeorge created his very own blog (which you can find here: Jeorge The Dodo's Blog), so this morning it's my turn.

I know, I already have a blog. But I'm going to be updating this one instead of the old one. If you want to read stuff from my old blog, you can find it here: Doug's Random Thoughts.

So, to start off my new blog, I thought I'd tell you something I learned this week. As you may or may not know, I have been diagnosed with gallstones, so while I'm traveling from camp to camp this summer as a camp pastor, I have to be very careful with my diet.

So here's what I've learned:

1. Fat Free Mayonnaise is disgusting.


2. If you put lots of vegetables (onions, peppers, tomatoes) in your sandwich, these cover the disgustingness of the mayonnaise, and it actually is quite edible.


3. Fat Free Cheese is disgusting.


4. If you put lots of vegetables (onions, peppers, tomatoes) in your sandwich, Fat Free Cheese is still disgusting.

My personal opinion is that Fat Free Cheese is utterly beyond all hope of redemption, and should be consigned immediately to the fires of hell, where it will melt for all of eternity.

But that's just my opinion!