23 Oct 2003 | Don Schenck said...

I know imitation is the sincerest blah blah but that sucks. Kinda like Brad Pitt stealing my charming good looks.

*cough*

23 Oct 2003 | dayvin said...

Outstanding copywriting:

What are you not doing?
We are not a full web services agency. It's not possible to mastering your work if you spread your energy on everything. It doesnt' mean that we haven't any knowledge in these domains. We've got partners. Thus we are no database engineers, no search engines submitters, no spammers, no media buyers, no copywriters, no translators, no print designers. But we synchronise.

We are working for the internet since 1994.

And finaly we could also do some redesign for you.

23 Oct 2003 | Benjy said...

We enhance the confort and learning curve of online users to achieve better results

The yellow highlighing on their site just makes the typos that much more prominent!

23 Oct 2003 | Martin Mes said...

the sprit of our copywriting (they could definitely use some help)

That's a good one, JF! ;-)

23 Oct 2003 | JF said...

Spirit... Yeah... I mean there are places where they took our copy word for word, but in most places you can tell they took it and then modified it slightly to try to make it their own. "Spirit" seems to define that best.

23 Oct 2003 | p8 said...

I'm still trying to understand their first sentence:
"Our job tries to understand what's happening in your customer's minds when they are using your website."

23 Oct 2003 | paul said...

looks like it's a day of ripoffs. funny how this looks really similar to this.

23 Oct 2003 | Mike said...

Yeah Paul, was it really necessary for 230 to steal this guy's web designs? I mean he worked so hard on 'em ;)

I (luckily) got a chance to view the site before he took it down at about 12:50pm eastern. I emailed him too.

I got a kick out of the fact that since they don't have any clients, they couldn't steal your nifty Show Clients display: none switcher thingie lol.

You guys rock.

Mike

23 Oct 2003 | Mike said...

Instead of emailing that guy at loserneed, I just subscribed to their email list with this addy:

[email protected]

I think it'll do the trick :)

23 Oct 2003 | Scrivs said...

Ouch. I really don't know what else to say.

23 Oct 2003 | Berto said...

I submitted it to http://www.pirated-sites.com.

23 Oct 2003 | Sonia said...

Ugh, my gut feels horrible seeing that (though I did laugh here and there). Chaulk up some more content - Aaarrgh!

23 Oct 2003 | Michael Spina said...

Recommandations will help you with our pragmatic advices and efficient solutions.

Ugh. Some of their copy reads like they ran it through a Japanese translator and back again.

23 Oct 2003 | Matthew Oliphant said...

My personal stuff is, of course, crap. But if I ever look too much like anyone else please tell me! I don't want the utter embarrassment/ridicule that these people feel/deserve!

Gah! If you are going to promote yourself as a design company why not just pretend you work at 37Signals. Much less rework of content. ;)

24 Oct 2003 | Watchdog said...

JF - check out the source code of this site: www.optimalusability.com. Looks like you've got fans in every corner of the world...

24 Oct 2003 | a different Jay said...

And don't bother trying to comment on one of their posts at Optimal Usability - won't stick. Nice.

25 Oct 2003 | Tubes said...

working link to optimalusability.com

25 Oct 2003 | Tubes said...

25 Oct 2003 | Tubes said...

Also, userneed.com seems to have taken down their site: all that's there now is a placeholder page.

26 Oct 2003 | Grumpy said...

Userneed has shut down most of their site (except for a splash page). Fortunately, Google still has a cached copy that you can view. You can run, but you can't hide!

26 Oct 2003 | Brad Pineau said...

The google cached copy is updated to the new splash screen now.

27 Oct 2003 | ditto said...

granted, they ripped you off. but it's not like 37 signals has a claim to an original logo. tech tv could say the same: http://www.techtv.com.

27 Oct 2003 | encinar said...

Couldn't see the pirated version and I am sorry you feel bad about it.
However I find piracy in web design is a controversial issue. If good web design is making efficient use of standards, when you design (or should I say find) a new efficient design solution for something... shouldn't good designers copy your efficient solution? wouldn't that help the emergence of good design throughout the entire web?

27 Oct 2003 | Sonia said...

encinar,

You are confusing 'design' with the likes of 'markup' and 'structure'.

Just have a look at the CSS Zen Garden to get an idea of what I am talking about - all the same markup and structure, vastly different design and style.

Copy rip off needs not even be discussed.

Designing efficiently, according to standards and semantically correct *ahem* can have many different faces. Doing it as well as 37signals and many others that often get ripped off isn't so easy... (off I go to improve the code of my own site...)

30 Oct 2003 | wowjippie said...

I'd thought I try to check whether they were now developing another site or whether they just replaced the site somewhere. Sometimes it pays to just try /test/ etc, and, sure enough:

http://www.userneed.com/beta/

30 Oct 2003 | jb said...

blatantly copied i mean there is no excuse on earth that would save the/those people invloved.

Well you can see they are amateurs when they use dw reload page code which was for ns4 browsers.
Oh by the way font tags are all over the place.

05 Nov 2003 | tommy said...

i got logo on this site