A Spot of T

There is a move­ment in the blo­gos­phere that is pick­ing up momen­tum – and not a moment too soon, in my opin­ion: The drive to ban music or other audio files from play­ing auto­mat­i­cally when a blog or web­page loads. In fact, Entre­card recently upgraded its qual­ity stan­dards for mem­ber blogs and now bans any blog with “auto­play­ing audio: This includes music that plays auto­mat­i­cally when you visit the page, or short audio ads that come up unannounced.”

For good rea­son.  Aside from the aes­thetic con­sid­er­a­tions, auto­play­ing audio is actu­ally a health and safety haz­ard.  If you don’t believe me, read today’s Post of the Day:  Holy Pop My Eardrums Bat­man!

Joy was hav­ing a great morn­ing.  So great, in fact, that it wasn’t “even funny.”  Well, not until she wrote the Post of the Day, that is.

After a walk on the tread­mill, she felt good enough to walk all the way to the end of her dri­ve­way to retrieve the morn­ing news­pa­per, and was still invig­o­rated enough to have a good romp with her faith­ful com­pan­ion, Mushu.

She decided to make her­self some break­fast and set­tle in for a relax­ing, peace­ful morn­ing of read­ing a few blogs she hadn’t vis­ited in awhile.

And then it hap­pened.  She opened a browser win­dow and encoun­tered extremely loud auto­play­ing music.

You will have to read Holy Pop My Eardrums Bat­man to learn about what hap­pened to Joy — and poor lit­tle Mushu — after the aural assault upon their eardrums.  For­tu­nately, both of them sur­vived and Joy was able to pub­lish the details in her hilar­i­ously engag­ing and unique style.

To her credit, Joy took the “high road” and did not reveal the url of the site that per­pet­u­ated the assault.  Or per­haps she was afraid that if she named names, she might have to enter the blo­gos­pheric wit­ness pro­tec­tion program.

If you are a blog­ger or web­mas­ter who has imple­mented auto­play­ing audio files on your site, I’m con­fi­dent you will remove it after read­ing about Joy’s expe­ri­ence.  Her story will give you an appre­ci­a­tion of the inher­ent dan­gers asso­ci­ated with that prac­tice.  In fact, you might even be inspired to join the Stop Ear Pol­lu­tion move­ment founded by Nate at Come on In, The Web is Fine.  Nate receives an Hon­or­able Men­tion today for his efforts to save all blog­gers from befalling the kind of cat­a­stro­phe that Joy endured.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Joy, on receiv­ing the Post of the Day Award! So glad you lived to tell the tale!

Tech­no­rati Tags: A Spot of T, Come On In the Web is Fine, Entre­card, Post of the Day Award, Stop Ear Pol­lu­tion, The Ris­ing Blogger

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