Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Good Wordpress theme are hard to find now that the market it deluged with sponsored-link bearing crap. A search for “wordpress themes” in Google brings up advertisements to the max, most of which seem to be created by color-blind SEOs looking to get link-love and a buck with Google. Still, there are truly great new themes being made, you just have to be able to separate them from the noise.

Why? I want to add something to the WP Theme Community, which is my selection of the best themes. This post is intended to cut down on the noise.

It looks like Wordpress’ default theme should have. Simple, with three columns, nice blue colors, and big text. It’s also got the Kubrick inspired top header image for your customization or monetization delight.

The thing that got me about this one is the brilliant use the left and right column whitespace to put up a patterned background / extra-wide border.

Iceburgg, dogg. The one thing that can be said about this cute, blue, cold, colorful theme is that it suits–and only suits–a winter season. If you were to use this as your general theme, you should probably customize and genericize all the graphics to taste.

The only thing I don’t like about gridlock is the large, grey right hand column, which seems out of place with the rest of the theme. Overall it has a very magazine-style text-based approach that works well.

Unique, this theme is thick. It’s got Web 2.0 written all over it, with big regions of text and color. The innovation is in the massive right-sidebar and header which wrap the content with text, rather than widgets or images.

Yep it’s the same theme directory again, but this one gets a nod for its well-done colorspace and menu bar. The image overlay hovers are beautiful, and the blue colors make it look as good as Windows Aero.

Bartelme, again, shows us how it’s done. I thought I’d end this list with BIG BANG, and here it is. This is the theme that powered his site until he recently redesigned it into a sleeker, sharper look. If you like wide, you can’t get wider than this. And, it’s professional–this guy’s a web designer by trade!

Users of the Digg-gaming startup Subvert & Profit have been hit with bans. The number of users affected, according to a blog post titled Alas, it had to happen some time may be as low as 1% of the total S&P user base:

“It appears that Digg finally found a small segment of our userbase and has banned them. In the last 24 hours, we’ve heard from 8 out of our 1000+ users. This low number is encouraging, since it means that this was just a small slip on our part.”

The bans occur after bragging that “not a single user has been banned” and “stories have been promoted for 2 weeks now.” Banned users will experience the following messages when they try to access their Digg account:

Sorry – bad IP address

Invalid User Provided

Trading, buying, exchanging, donating, or otherwise manipulating individual diggs is a violation of section 3.9 of the Digg TOS, where you agree not to use Digg:

with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the ‘digg count’, blog count, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg’s services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services.

An easy way for Digg to check if you’ve been to Subvert and Profit would be for them to sign up with the service themselves, pick an internal URL that requires you to be logged in, and then when you visit Digg and are signed in, write that URL somewhere on the page for a brief instant, check to see if the link color is active or visited. If the link is visited, you’re tagged as a member of Subvert and Profit and banned, thanks to this well known CSS + JS privacy exploit.

It will be interesting to see how this arms race plays out, with S&V offering increasingly sophisticated cloaking technology, and Digg prying deeper and deeper into its users’ personal histories.

I don’t know why at all, but tonight I’m getting buckets of the weirdest kinds of AIM spam. The first comes from taytay20061994, who claims to be some kind of marketer wanting to give away DVD players for Sony:

(10:22:50 PM) taytay20061994: hey
(10:23:04 PM) liten fugl: Hello
(10:23:55 PM) taytay20061994: how are you?
(10:24:27 PM) liten fugl: I’m well.
(10:25:36 PM) liten fugl: Who are you?
(10:26:40 PM) taytay20061994: im rico i work for sony and i was wondering if you were interested in winning a free dvd player
(10:26:57 PM) liten fugl: I don’t need a DVD player, thanks.
(10:27:05 PM) liten fugl: I have … three right now.
(10:29:13 PM) taytay20061994: oh well what about winning a free one?
(10:30:06 PM) liten fugl: of the three that I have I only use two. Another would just take up space.
(10:33:18 PM) taytay20061994: well could i interest you in a cd player?
(10:34:42 PM) liten fugl: DVD players play CDs
(10:34:50 PM) liten fugl: I’m not sure why you want to target me for this
(10:35:05 PM) liten fugl: I’m not a great candidate for wanting something free.
(10:35:41 PM) taytay20061994: well do you know of anyone who has this service on aol instant messenger who would be interested?
(10:35:53 PM) liten fugl: No, most people I know don’t like spam.
(10:36:18 PM) taytay20061994: im sorry but i am not spam
(10:36:27 PM) taytay20061994: i am an honest seller
(10:36:47 PM) taytay20061994: and i will not take your information and use it against you
(10:37:41 PM) taytay20061994: are you still there?

The next one from, sangerlang offers to sell me female mexican companionship:

(10:46:53 PM) SaNgErlAng: are you interested in mexicans?
(10:47:10 PM) liten fugl: As much as I am interested in the Finnish
(10:48:26 PM) SaNgErlAng: excuse me can you please say that again in different words please?
(10:50:16 PM) liten fugl: I like mexicans and americans equally, but, what an odd question!
(10:52:54 PM) SaNgErlAng: do you want a mexican or not?
(10:53:22 PM) liten fugl: One person cannot possess another person as mere chattel. The notion is obnoxious!
(10:54:07 PM) SaNgErlAng: your a lezbo
(10:54:21 PM) liten fugl: I’m a guy, I’m not sure that is possible.
(10:54:42 PM) SaNgErlAng: it is your book
(10:54:59 PM) liten fugl: What’s my book? I haven’t published any books.
(10:57:39 PM) SaNgErlAng: your stupid
(10:58:05 PM) SaNgErlAng: IM SORRY YOU DONT HAVE BALLS
(10:58:22 PM) liten fugl: I think you have me confused with someone else!

I don’t know where these people get my AIM address from (although it’s all over the web, I suppose), or why they think I want what they have to sell. I am positive that these two people are not the same, since their vocabulary is significantly different. The first is a spammer, the second is … well even I can’t make out what he/she is!