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Saturday, March 04, 2006

Stupid newspaper tricks

Newspapers make me register if I want to read their content. Fine. I do so—a lot. My word-hunting means I look at hundreds of articles from hundreds of newspapers around the world every day.

I use real sign-up information. I figure I’m reading their news, they can find out where I live. Very little spam results. The spam that does is easily traceable to specific newspapers, since I use a unique email address for each sign-up. I can block it if I need to.

A lot of newspapers use canned or corporate sign-up pages. Many, many of them have this question:

How dumb is it that there are no “I read it on the Internet” options?

dude…
http://www.bugmenot.com/

No shit. Bug Me Not is more trouble than it’s worth. Half the time it doesn’t have logins, half the time it does have them they don’t work. It’s easier to register once, save the password in my browser, and never have to fool with it again for any given web site.
i dunno.. works pretty good for me.

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This is the personal weblog of Grant Barrett, editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, a collection of words from the fringes of English. More about this site...

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