Saturday, May 21, 2011

Oddities in web articles

There are some odd things going on in the less groomed areas of the vast garden of web articles. See for example this article, ultra-generically named "Information on e-Book Readers" by a pretty much unidentified writer. Here's a bit:

Usually, these people can never get enough of sites which offer free ebooks at a relatively low price because when book-lovers are replacing a book they already own, they are not after raking up a large tab. Sites such as the ebook library are even catering to the newest form of eBook Readers in the iPod Touch and the iPad. 
With these two devices, ebooks become even more impressive because the screens big enough to fit plenty of pictures or words and allow you to do so much more thanks to their touch screen functionality. They also allow you to do a lot more thanks to the functionality provided by the touch screen. Once the fees are paid, any book, enewspaper or magazine in the site's library can be downloaded for free and it is completely legal.

This is odd writing. Apart from the touch screen functionality being mentioned twice in a row, what is this "ebook Library", where I can apparently find huge amounts of books and newspapers for pennies? And why is it remarkable that it should "cater to" iPod Touch and iPad? (the former of which can hardly be called an ebook reader.) And apart from missing verbs and such, saying that the iPod Touch has a screen "big enough to fit plenty of pictures or words" is pushing the truth to the breaking point.

It gets weirder yet, this article was apparently found good enough by somebody to warrant blatant plagiarizing. He writes exactly the same, only with slightly different words, the most amusing instance is that he calls the iPod Touch "the iPod Bit", I wonder where that came from?
The two latest entries in the digital reading field, the Apple iPod Bit and iPad create ebook reading even more convenient and enjoyable as a result of of their massive screens that are easy on the eyes and the flexibility of the bit screen technology. One new trend that appears to be stoning up ever additional thanks in massive part to shoppers who are wanting to avoid wasting a buck is services that permit you to download an infinite provide of ebooks, eNewspapers and eComics just by paying a monthly, yearly or lifetime fee. 

(Again, I would really like to know where I can find this library.)
"appears to be stoning up ever additional thanks in massive part to shoppers" Uhm, what?

The latter article hails from ArticlesBase.com, which has the, to me, dubious idea of convincing writers to give away their articles widely in the hope of getting recognition. Any site can then use any article from ArticlesBase for free. The reason it seems dubious is that so far every article I've read from that site has been clear hackwork. And of course it does invite it: what gets your name out there the most: one thoughtful article, or 100 quick-and-dirty articles on popular topics?

Oh, by the way, here's an extra fun bit: the first article has an odd link at the end which links to itself for no clear reason. And the way I found that article is that the second article neglected to remove that link when they plagiarized the first article! Oh my goodness!      :-)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kettle. Pot. Black?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Ah! Dadaist poetry, love it!

Porcupine!
Hats-off
Beeee-anca
bee my love
Upwards
Fish
trombone
finally
finale

Anonymous said...

Blech!

Miserere said...

What about the inconsistency of being able to download eBooks for free...once you've paid a fee? :-\

Looks like computer-generated text to me, Eo.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

They do that?
I'm behind the curve there then, didn't know that.