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Monday, May 01, 2006

Lowdown on wheelchair symbol in comments

Per Blogger today:


Today we’re very happy to add an audio verification alongside every word verification in Blogger. Now almost everyone will be able to create blogs, post comments, and prove to our spam classifier that they’re not a robot.

If you cannot see a word verification image, or if you just want to change things up a bit, click the accessibility icon next to the text field to hear a series of digits. Just type what you hear (in Javascript browsers we set the form field focus automatically) and you’ll be good to go.

If you’re having trouble hearing the audio, try the tips in this help article. We’ve found that the QuickTime plug-in works well for playing the required WAV file. Also, the digits will be spoken in your preferred language. Go to our choose language page to set yours if you haven’t already.

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Right now, the numbers are harder to hear than their "letters" are to read.

Not much of a post tonight. I'm really tired - especially my eyes.

My coffee "date" went very well and we're going try for weekly. He's new here and I have some friends I think he'd fit well with and would like. The boys and Jim's wife were all there so for a little while we had a group.

Anybody out there know anything about leetspeak? Our local news ran a feature on it. Some kind of computer language for teens and one more thing for parents to fret about. It uses numbers for some letters i.e. leets = l33ts (or something like that).

Just curious - all you computer geniuses out there.

Mollie - you don't want to know the SF/Padres score.

Talk to you tomorrow.

9 comments:

Janice Seagraves said...

Hi Ann,

I heard something about that on the news today. It's just another way for kids to get something past their parents. And now the parents can have fits over this.

Janice~

Sothis said...

Check out
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030110.html
It's basically a simple crypto/shorthand language people use to obfuscate what they are saying to the uninitiated. Once you learn the basic substitutions, it's simple to understand.

Rowan Dawn said...

What the heck is with all the background noise? Its hard to hear because of that, not for lack of quicktime. Whatever.

I just keep it shut off. when it took me 3 tries to post a comment on my own blog I had had enough. If I get spam I just delete them. It only takes me half a minute.

Anonymous said...

Leet speak has been around for at least a decade. We use it as more of a sarcastic/joking tone of voice, since people don't always catch sarcasm/joking in text based mediums. We also use the smiley of inoffensiveness. Most kids seem to grow out of their l33tness by the time they hit college and learn linux fanboy talking points instead.

-A said...

I noticed the wheelchair symbol - but I'm think on my (usually) dial-up connection it would take too long to load, leaving me (or anyone else) more frustrated than before. And, have you notice some of the word verifications have gotten really long and wavy lately.

As a barely-not-a-teenager anymore, I'm fairly familiar with all the different computer slang stuff. You have to be when friends send you text messages without vowels and numbers thrown in for letter.

Unknown said...

hey granny - thanks for letting us know.. I didn't try to figure it out.

VMC said...

Never heard of leetspeak! There's always something to learn, isn't there?

I'm going to try the voice thingy when I post this

Missy said...

Like Caitlin, been dealing with this for years.

Here's another nice page on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

Most folks joke around with it, not really meaning anyting with it except to make fun of people who think they're elite hackers ("1337 hax0r").

Granny said...

Janice and I receive the same t.v. stations from Fresno so we were no doubt watching the same thing at the same time.

We agree - slow news day for the locals.