Partying in the year of 2010
I realize some younger people might have difficulty figuring out what constitutes proper clubbing nowadays, so I have decided to brief them using my vast experience and keen sense of observation. This is especially applicable to the DC area, but I think most issues apply everywhere.
Step absolute zero, before anything else: buying clothes and accessories Read more
Photo challenge
It’s probably been about a year since I sold my photo equipment and quite a few more since I’ve stopped genuinely putting time into photography. I’ve spent these years observing the world of photography around me (with my ever cynical eye) and I now have something to say.
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Are domains becoming obsolete?
This post will be a bit of speculative philosophical techy meditation, but bear with me please.
There are all sorts of problems with getting a domain nowadays. If someone is not cyber-squatting it, it might just be taken already (for a legit reason) and even if it all works well, it still costs you money. But we’re hanging on to our domains as the one and only solution for remembering websites. Why? Well, because it’s easy to remember www.alexflorescu.com, not that easy to remember 69.89.27.228, although both addresses will take you back here.
Nonetheless, we’ve seen a steady raise in the power and usage of search engines. While the first time I ever connected to the Internet I had a BOOK with websites and then went through years of carefully mastering the art of search engines to ever get anywhere, now I rarely even use bookmarks anymore. I know what the website I’m looking for *is* and I just use Google to get to it. It’s simply more convenient and faster.
I’ve seen a lot of people that don’t even use the address bar anymore. They type everything in the Google search bar that arrives by default on the Firefox homepage. Some of these users do not even acknowledge the existence or role of the address bar; they don’t know what it is, they’ve never used it, if it were removed they would not even notice it.
So then what is the remaining purpose of domains? Why bother when people won’t even remember the domain at all? Oh yes, they will most probably remember the title if anything, but they can use that to get to your website any day by just googling it and it’s the title they remember, not the domain. If these two happen to be different, the title will stick, the domain won’t (I’ve had this happen to me once).
Taking into account the complication and the security issues inherent to domains, I think dropping the whole idea altogether is something that should at least be considered. Of course, then we are faced with the problem of putting all the power to navigate the Internet in the power of a few (if not only ONE) huge corporations. But don’t be naive, we’ve already done that. Now let’s just make the best of it.
Facebook or Spambook?
Facebook has brought the ability to spam to a whole new level. Now when I say spam, I don’t mean Nigerian princes and Viagra, I mean just unsolicited emails about stuff I don’t care about, that I never wanted to get and I can’t stop receiving. It’s incredible! Here, let me explain.
Case study 1:
Let’s say I want to email some twenty people about something important. Last time I tried to do that in GMail, it wouldn’t allow me. Said something about me possibly trying to spam and to use Google Groups instead for such situations. It annoyed me greatly, but I thought it was a good feature to have. I will guess that some other major email services have similar ways of protecting against spammers.
But, then again, there is NOTHING preventing me from sending a message to the almost three hundred friends I have on Facebook right now. Will they all get emails to notify them of those messages? Most probably. If I have a group or event of sorts, then this could be up to hundreds of thousands of messages at the click of a button.
Devil’s advocate objection: It’s not spam if you signed up for it. Being in a group means you’re accepting to get all of that, so Facebook can’t do anything about it, it’s all your fault. Which brings us to the next case study.
Case study 2:
Let’s say groups and events don’t cut it anymore. I mean a group will only be joined by those who care about it, so it’s hard to use it to advertise to people who know nothing about it in the first place. How do you still get your propaganda across? Well using, friends of course. Enter… “promoters”.
I mean, if a group annoys you, you’re just going to leave it. But are you going to remove a friend from your list just because they send you messages? Probably not (note: when I say friend, I mean a real person that you actually know outside of the social networking realm). So here we are with people sending spam to their friends, as a job. The most common case of that I see is promoting for a club. At some point I used to get tens of emails each week, from friends, advertising events at clubs.
This is a list you can’t sign out of. This is a message you can’t filter out. Remove your friend and… well…you’ve removed a friend, it breaks the whole social networking idea. Keep the friend and BOOM, spam all over the place.
So, what now Facebook? Are we going to allow this to keep happening? Or are we planning to do something about it? It comes down to whether you think you will either gain or lose money through this. Since its advertisement going through your channel that you’re not directly making money off of, and it has high potential of annoying your users to the point where they will start removing friends or quitting, I think it doesn’t take too many marketing research models to figure out the answer. But would I know about that, I’m just an engineer.
PS: I’m only picking on Facebook because I’m using it and it’s popular. I think any other social network can be used in a similar manner to propagate unwanted messages. It’s a problem inherent to the business model, but not a problem that can’t be fixed.
DC’s winter (aka How *I* defeated Global Warming)
I see a lot of people wondering what’s going on with all the snow in the world recently and I especially see a lot of questioning faces around me in DC, where we seem to have had some record snowfall this winter. I would have thought the answer to be obvious, but it seems I need to explain it.
I have defeated global warming. As you surely must have heard by now, global warming is something caused exclusively by humans and as of such, what each and everyone of us does, will help. I should announce that in 2008 I changed all the light bulbs in our apartment with super-duper-energy-saving spiraled ones. It seems like a small thing to do, doesn’t it? But these efforts add up, keep that in mind! The TV told you that, so IT MUST BE TRUE! If you didn’t believe it then, now you can be sure. As anyone can easily observe, after two years, global warming is no longer a problem thanks to my diligent and precise efforts.
I know what you’re thinking now.. what would’ve happened if I hadn’t changed those light bulbs? Would there have been any snow at all in DC this winter? Would GW kids have gotten (at least) three snow days this week? Would Santa Claus ever come again? Fortunately, all of this is history now, thanks to a handful of energy efficient light bulbs, in the right place, at the right time.
Thank you, thank you all.
