Inspired by that episode of Family Guy (the one where Peter becomes a news reader), today’s mini-topic is what really grinds your gears? A chance for you to have a gripe about things online or offline that have gotten to you recently. You know you want to….

PayPerPlay, Audio Advertising:

Imagine a scenario where you go onto a blog, and start being advertised to before you’ve even properly focused on the page. Well, a new project called PayPerPlay could be just the thing to make it happen. There aim is to pay publishers for playing 5 second audio ads to visitors.

grind-gears.jpgWhilst it might be a fun distraction if used sparingly, I can see a lot of bloggers trying this out later. All that remains for me to say is that I’ll either be turning off my sound system, or (more likely) blocking the source of these ads from day one. And if everyone turns off their speakers, then ad money goes down the drain.

Blog Comment Spam:

It seems that the creator of a well-known trackback submission application has been at it again, this time with comments. The Blog Comment Poster looks to emulate a browser, and completely bypass the Wordpress checks that stop comment spam, including popular anti-spam solutions like Askimet.

Whilst PayPerPlay could be described as an annoyance, this particular creation could be a lot more worrying. If automated solutions start to mimmick humans well enough, how do we filter them out? Will it be time for bloggers to shift to a universal authentication system in the future, such as OpenID?

Stanford MBAs that can’t hack it:

Yes, that’s right, AGLOCO. They finally admitted defeat (who hadn’t seen that coming for months?), but the management from day one, along with the manner of their demise, was quite frankly pathetic. If there really were a bunch of Stanford MBA Graduates behind it, then Stanford better start being a bit more selective!

Just a few recent events that grind my gears. What about you?