Subscription Forms

I've had to fill out several web forms over the past few days, and it's as if nobody developing them has ever heard of usability. It was mostly the usual problems - one form required a card number with no spaces, but didn't say - how hard is a regular expression anyway? Another demanded a ridiculously constrained password of 8-10 characters long, using a severe mixture of letters and numbers - at least they didn't force me to use symbols too.

But the one that has made least sense so far was one where it asked me for a username, and a screen name. Ok, that makes sense, you can change your screen name independently of your username. But what I don't get is why don't they let you use the same name for both? For security reasons, apparently - security through username obscurity? Why not use the e-mail address you asked me to type in twice, like all the other sites that use the separate screen name system? I can't, because a username apparently can't contain symbols. So now not only do I have to forget passwords because I'm made to change them every 4 weeks to a password I have never used before, but I have to come up with two names for my account. It's hardly like it's some back-room effort either, it's Nintendo. That's pretty special.

But the best bit had to be when I'd finally finished that form, was then asked for my postal address, and only then told it was only for residents of the USA or Canada.

Or maybe it was when I eventually managed it and found out that all I had for my troubles was some crappy wallpaper for my PC. I thought they would do something with the wifi on the DS to let me download new content or something - they could have even let me link my DS to a credit card and sold me stuff. Seems a wasted opportunity to me.

I have also been getting lots of comment spam linking to random big websites. Anyone know what the point of it is? I thought it might be some kind of URL masquerading, but they all look fine.

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