A few years ago, the beginning of 2005 to be precise, I created some Sanrio character templates. These templates are meant for those who want a nice looking and easy to maintain homepage. I’m talking about three characters: Hello Kitty, Chococat and Badtz-Maru. I myself am a huge fan of Chococat. But in the end, the Hello Kitty templates turned out best. Of course, I can always make more

I never uploaded these templates in the past because I was busy with a whole bunch of other things. I came across these templates last week and have put them aside, to upload this week. Of course, these templates will be free. Not only because I won’t charge a bunch of money for a simple template, but also because the images are copyrighted by Sanrio. So I only claim copyright on the code used in the templates, not so much the images itself.

In 2006, I asked my friend Josh whether or not he had a blog of his own. Then he told me he did not have a blog. But he did have a Facebook. Facebook was then quite new to me. In The Netherlands, no one knew Facebook back then. No, in The Netherlands, you had two options: MySpace and Hyves.

I have a MySpace, and I don’t like it. So I don’t use it anymore. I have tried using it for a month or two. Most people on there are just looking for attention. They take pictures of themselves in weird positions, then upload them and say: “don’t comment on this!”, when in fact they do want you to comment (nicely) on it. I also get kinda frustrated with the new ‘talent’ on MySpace trying to gather new fans. So yes, bands and the like will add you and ask for you to check out their music. That’s fine, but I don’t have the time to do that nor am I interested. Also, compared to some other networking sites, MySpace doesn’t have anything fun to do.

Then there’s Hyves. Hyves is a Dutch networking website. And people have been inviting me from the very beginning. And I have been ignoring those invites since the beginning. I do not like Hyves. Hyves soon turned into a complete hype. I avoid websites like that where everyone just signs up ‘because everyone else has one’. Also, as far as I’ve seen it (yes I have seen a profile page from a friend), you can’t do a whole lot on there. It’s like a Dutch MySpace. So now you have two crappy Dutch networking sites. Because MySpace recently added a Dutch site as well. I will never register a Hyves for myself. So anyone trying to invite me, please stop. I won’t be using it anyway, so why sign up.

Another Dutch website is MeetYourMessenger, which I discovered purely because of stupid invites in my inbox. I run SNW. And people on there -in general- do not know me. Yet they are trying to add me on profile sites. What’s up with that? And everytime someone invites me, I get new mail from *all* the people that are still waiting for me to sign up.

You must know IMVU? Well, people seem to enjoy it to invite people for that as well. I hardly have time to play Sims or Simcity. Then how am I supposed to play an online (chat) game thingy with ‘friends’.

Please just stop inviting me over there, on any networking website. If I’ve said no, it means no!

So, back to Facebook then. I have been using Facebook for two years now. And since January, I haven’t really done anything on it. It has a lot of fun things to do. And I even got my friends to join in as well. Mainly because I had photos of Seth on there. But we could do trivia, pet (fluff)friends, give gifts, maintain an aquarium or a small planet, do quizes, upload a many photos as you like. There isn’t much you can’t do on there. And that’s what made it so much fun.

The (fluff)friends thing was a lot of fun. You could get a pet and invite others on Facebook to get one as well. It was like a Tamagotchi, but on Facebook. Pet him, feed him, get friends for him. By petting others (fluff)friends, you would receive ‘munny’. With that munny, you can buy food, decorations, habitats and more.

The thing is, it got very tricky for some people if they wanted to make more munny. You could do surveys and then you would receive munny for that survey. However, the surveys are usually only for US/Canada/UK people. If you do not live there, you can either get 100 munny a week (if you collect it of course, not automatically). Or you can’t get anything at all in some cases.

If you pet your friends daily. And let’s say 20 of your friends have (fluff)friends, you will receive 5 munny per (fluff)friend. You will make 100 munny a day. That’s nice. You can get nice things for your (fluff)friends that way.

Since January or so, they’ve introduced ‘gold’. You need gold in order to buy certain (usually the pretty, fun) decorations and habitats. The only way to obtain gold is to grab your credit card or your PayPal account. For $1 you will get 10 gold. I actually liked (fluff)friends, until they introduced this. They have been adding loads of new things, but most of them require gold in stead of munny. To me, the fun I had with (fluff)friends is gone. I am not going to spend money on something I could make myself! Of course, I can make things myself, but there’s no option to use your own habitats in any way.

There are also some other reasons why I won’t be using Facebook a lot anymore. I have some friends on Facebook. But I also have people on there, that just follow my every move, because they want to know what I’ve done, what I’m doing and what I’m going to do. They do not keep track of me for themselves. No, they do this to inform other people. People that have lost contact with me and obviously still need to know what’s happening in *my* life. Because of that, uploading photos now isn’t an option anymore. I now only allow a handful of people to view the photos I still have there. And I might delete all the photos soon. I know I can block and remove certain people. But that might give it away about me knowing, about them. And I don’t want that.

I hate the fact that I can’t unsubscribe from e-mails sent from certain of the networking sites. Either there is no way to unsubscribe because they don’t have that option. Or you just can’t unsubscribe because the system doesn’t work properly.

My point of this whole blog post baically is, that I am tired of all the social networking sites at this very moment. I even don’t like using Facebook anymore. I might be using it in the future again. I don’t know yet. I won’t delete my account. But I am moving important things to my personal websites. Some things will be available for the public, some things won’t.

My birthday was last week. I’ve been in need of a new HDD for months already. With all the projects I have and maintain, I really need more space. I have four other HDD’s (400GB, 200GB, 120GB and 40GB) right now. This new one will be my fifth and will replace the 40GB HDD. That one then will be used for backups and stuff. The delivery will take place this week. And I’m so happy, I’m so happy, I’m so happyyyyy!

So yesterday I purchased three new domains. I can’t tell you which domains I’m talking about just yet. The project I’m working on, is still a secret. But you won’t have to wait a very long time

I can tell you one thing right now, it’s an ‘extension’ of a project I already started a few years ago. And I can probably use the domains very fast. Now all I have to do is develop and design a few more websites for those domains

Last week (Tuesday) I went to London, because I was invited at EA to get a sneak peek of Spore. I will be writing 3 articles about this event. And you will be able to read those on SporeNetwork (English), SporeNetwerk (Dutch) and Junior’s (Dutch).

I didn’t get much of a chance to go downtown. But we did travel there and I got a few pics. I will upload these pics soon on this site.

I’ve already informed you in previous blogposts (here and here), that we finally launched the SNWeblogs. And I also told you about the people who started blogging on these new blogs. Well, it’s time for a third post. Because four more people have started blogging!

The first was Rakki. Rakki has been a team member since 2004. And he started blogging about SNWeblogs and his new car! This blog is in Dutch. Click here to visit Rakki’s blog!

Paul was the second blogger. Paul already started a new (Sims) blog called River’s Hill. It’s a Dutch blog about the Sims in his neighborhood. But Paul was one of those people who really wanted a SNWeblog. And now he has one! Visit Paul here. His SNWeblog is in English, so our foreign visitors should be able to understand it

The third blogger of part 3 is Seth. Yup, my son. He started blogging too! :p Of course, we maintain his blog. He can’t even talk, let alone type. He will some day. He’s blogged in Dutch about his plush toy rattle called ‘Mr. Flower’. Clicky clicky for ‘Mr. Flower’, errr, Seth

The fourth and last blogger in part 3 is Tamara. Tamara isn’t exactly a team member, but she is an active member. And she’s been on SNW since 2004, which is quite some time! Tamara has blogged an introduction about her work as a volunteer at a veterinarian. She also blogged about her going to the hospital. This blog is also in Dutch. Do pay her a visit though!

Junior is also one I’d like to mention in this blog post. Junior started blogging in the summer of 2006, so he’s not new at all. But he has added a large (new) blogging section about ‘The Sims 2 FreeTime’ on this blog, all because of an event in Amsterdam in January! It is in Dutch, but I still think it may be worth the look. You can always take a look at the photos (especially his wall of fame!) Junior will try to (mo)blog more often about certain events in the future.

So basically everyone (except a few) have started blogging! That’s some good news! Let’s hope everyone can keep this up