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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Topicability of the Purple Star

The topicability of the purple star ... in the titles of lenses. Well it was just another Wednesday morning for me until I ventured into the SquidU Forum to find that yikes, my Stuffed Cabbage lens was a hot topic of discussion in that a star symbol had been inserted into the title of the lens after the title of "Stuffed Cabbage."

stuffed cabbage google search


stuffed cabbage lens title with former star symbol
To help you determine how you would like to weigh in on the debate about showing special characters in lens titles, I have included a snapshot of the Stuffed Cabbage lens with the open shadowed star design that I currently employ on my twitter profile. Thus far, I have heard no comments one way or the other on the appearance of the stars on my twitter profile. So, I can't weigh in with the scientific evidence about that.

However, a few lensmasters have mentioned that browsers other than FireFox do not recognize this special shadowed open star! Hmmm -- must fix that!

stuffed cabbage lens title with an asterisk
OK -- so this snapshot above of my Stuffed Cabbage lens uses a special character star that I believe should image correctly in browsers other than FireFox. It doesn't quite have the impact of the other star and it is definitely not purple -- haven't figured that one out.

Well, the purple stars are being handed out now at a rate of 21 per week -- we will be close to one hundred lenses I think by the end of this week. I've got ONLY one purple star while there are lensmasters with 2 purple stars and quite possibly some of these lensmasters may earn a third purple star in the near future. I'm holding my breathe for a second one although I did NOT nominate any of my lenses this week.

So, what do you think? Like any of these stars in the titles? Actually, thinking about it ... I know I did happen to see a registration mark or a copyright mark on a lens title for a trademarked product. I think those special characters should be allowed to be used!

By the way! You wouldn't believe how many other lensmasters started employing the asterisk in their lenses titles. Good to see so many jumping on the star bandwagon.

7 comments:

Jaguar Julie said...

UPDATE: Oh dear! I have been so busy this past week multitasking that I missed seeing some unusual lens titles.

I just made it a point to take a look at the Top 100 lenses on Squidoo -- in order to better understand the discussions in the forum. It would appear that the original intent to have a star showing in a lens title to distinguish it as a PURPLE STAR lens has been taken to a new level!

There are lenses now sporting more than one of the special character stars. It can be interpreted as a means of setting that lens title off from the others. In fact, there is even one lens with more than 2 special character stars that hasn't even earned a purple star.

Joan Adams said...

Where have I been? I missed all of this! Gotta get to the forum more often for sure!

Jaguar Julie said...

Joan, yes -- you and me both! Need to take time to keep on top of the happenings. We need virtual assistants! As another lensmaster has pointed out to me, we have a 'stargate' issue -- 'purple stargate' and we are not talking about star wars or star trek. ;)

Unknown said...

"Stargate"? Love it!

Jaguar Julie said...

Well, I'm hoping that there is a politically-correct answer to this "stargate" in that there are so many special characters or symbols that have the ability to appear in titles: © ® £ ™ ~ @ # $ % ^ & ( ) ? < > " + = \ | to just name a few. Should those also be not allowed? I've changed my 'star' to an asterisk * to be a bit more politically-correct.

Seedplanter said...

Hey Julie,
After your second DM (or was it #3?), the URl worked. Hurray. I'm here. Like Joan, I've missed some of these discussions. Grandbabies, work, gardening, housework, lenses...life.
Too much going on.

Jaguar Julie said...

Hey Bonnie, I double-checked the URL that I sent you and it was originally correct -- somehow the 'l' at the end got left off when you tried it. Glad you finally made it through. I try to be politically correct, but don't always seem to be successful. Have to try harder! ;)