When my lovely Gabi and I first returned from our Peace Corps service in Togo, West Africa... and this was 1993, mind you... we couldn't wait to go to the grocery store. Especially Gabi. She'd been having dreams of Doritos, don't you know. Three years we'd been in Togo, often eating in little roadside buvets drinking warm beer and eating fried bread or cassava that was sometimes scrumptious and sometimes just foul with rancid oil. Or rice with various sauces ~ again, some amazingly good and some just god-awful.
So we got back and my goodness, we really wanted that good-ol-bad-for-you American junk food.
It's one of my most vivid memories of our return. We drove to Coborns and Gabi went to get some Doritos while I dashed off to find something else. She took a long time, so I started looking for her. I rounded the corner and found her standing in the center of the looong snack aisle, shoulders slouched and jaw slack, a look of being completely overwhelmed on her face. She was nearly crying. All she wanted was one little bag of Doritos and here was an entire aisle of brands, flavors, big bags, small bags, full-fat, low-fat... and good-god there were pretzels too.
I get a similar sort of feeling when I look at widget options.
Creativity is wonderful. I am glad there is so much of it. But, wow, if we could harness the enthusiasm for quizzes and comments and discussion communities found on the web and turn that instead toward diplomacy... why, we might even get peace in the Middle East.
Still, I enjoy the wealth of ideas and the possibilities for customizing your space. It's cool. It made me want to add one more item to the article 20 Usability Tips for Your Blog. The author suggested limiting the focus of your blog. I'd include limiting the number of gizmos and widgets. Have a rotating collection, sure, but too much at one time just overwhelms the senses.
That said, some of these widgets are incredibly useful. I've been using site meter, clustrmap, as well as Blogger's subscriber widget and search bar for some time. I like all these tools immensely. There's nothing like looking on clustrmap and wondering who in New Zealand has been reading me.
I added a recent comments widget, but I put it at the bottom of the page. That probably breaks every rule of blog promotion, but it felt better to me all the same. I also added click comments. I have some shy readers, I know, who have said in phone calls or e-mail that they like what they read on my blog but they just don't feel comfortable leaving comments. Perhaps they're not sure what to say. I like the "thumbs up" feel of click comments, and am hoping that will make these readers (you know who you are) more comfortable giving feedback.
Lastly, thanks Things staff, for the listing of copyright free and Creative Commons licensed photos. It can be hard sometimes to find pics to add to my pages ~ and I do like to include them because I know they improve the look and readability of the blog.
The one tool I want to find (hoping that Blogger supports it) is the "read more" link. I do sometimes write long entries and it would be better to have the blog not look so text-heavy. Any suggestions?
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