Zenning!

Today, I headed to Extreme Tracking to get a stats tracker for this blog of mine. Yes, I am one of those who can never have enough of stats; I want more!

I have been an Extreme Tracking user since almost a decade now (no I am not that old, I just started out young on the web).

But as I headed for registration, I got this message:

Unfortunately we closed down our sales in Pakistan.

Say what!?

Since when did that happen? And why would an online firm, that deals with tracking website stats and provides free tracking services, would block its ’sales’ in any country?

It’s obvious that they blocked me from registering by tracking my IP address. I thought about emailing them and asking why they have blocked users from Pakistan to register for an Extreme Tracker? But first, I wanted to register, and so I did … by using a proxy server.

Once I passed their ‘IP’ check and entered their registration page, look what I found:

Wow! Now here, they not only have given ‘Islamabad’ as a choice in city selection, but I was also able successfully signup by choosing ‘Islamabad’, without getting told that I am not allowed or something.

The question remains though that why have they blocked Pakistani users from getting a website tracker with them?

Is it because they are a Netherlands based firm (as seen from their given address in the first screenshot), and thus the cartoon controversy and the movie on Islam controversy, is playing a part here?

Aah … that’s probably it! Or am I just being paranoid?

Right when you thought that command prompts were a thing of the past for normal computer users, here comes PodiPodi that adds another dimension to user interactivity on websites; through command-prompt-esque interaction on websites!

Here’s the official description from the site:

PodiPodi is an experimental project in Interaction Design born with the aim to give web designers a way to enhance their websites with two new levels of interaction:

1. an additional fast and easy to use user interface for your visitors, inspired by Enso from Humanized Inc.
2. a bunch of new useful services for your website

All you have to do is Press Shift+Space on a PodiPodi-enabled website!

And lo and behold, a command-prompt-esque interface will pop up (dark gray with a blinking cursor) on the top portion of the visible website area:

Now go on and type commands to interact with the site. Type help and you will get a list of the supported commands:

PodiPodi is all JQuery based. So it will fit into any site.

It’s an interesting concept. Although, initially, I couldn’t see any point in providing such type of interactivity on a website, unless nostalgic is what they want the visitors to feel. But looking at it from another angle, websites are not really keyboard-enabled.

Unless we are filling out a web form or have no problem in tabbing our way through, mouse is generally the only way that we interact with websites.

But the concept of PodiPodi will provide keyboard-enabled navigation of websites.

Now that’s cool! I am sure that more such interaction concepts are going to pop up soon.

Go PodiPodi.