Transfer... done!

Yay, just moved my WordPress blog to Blogger! Thank you, Blog2Blog programmer(s)!

I may start posting a little more often, now...

The decline of Twitter and Facebook

I believe that within 2 years, Facebook and Twitter will have a lower standard of being. The reason is not because of them, but because of their users.

It's the life cycle of a user-intensive website. This is how it normally goes:

1. Small Beginnings. The website pops up as a result of the ingenuity of the human race- how inspiring. Google started as a college side-job.


2. Attention. As the website obtains new users (whether it be in Beta Invitation or not), news sources and blogs start noticing. This happened very fast for Twitter thanks to websites like Mashable.


3. More Attention. Now, not just websites are taking in the fresh breeze, but now a few brand names and celebrities are getting into the hubub. There may even be a mention of the website in a TV show or movie (there must be a hundred songs with/about MySpace).


4. Semi-World Domination. As a result of the mainstream media framing the website in immortality, John Doe took notice, and now he wants in on all the fun. At this point there may be over 200 million people wanting in. Then comes...


5. Total World Domination! At this point, the website is a full-on cooperation. Now the CEO gets to sit down and watch the money flow in. From here, they'll either start buying smaller companies or attempting to eliminate them through their own service. Google is a prime example with Gmail, Maps, Reader, Blogger, and Shopping. Yahoo! even more so, but I'm not about to type up a list of about 95 services. It is at this point that the corporation may be looked down upon as evil


6. The Decline. Now, problems that have been budding since stage 3-4 are full-blown flowers about to explode with pollen all over your shiny new car. Now, 97% of the time, the explosion in site traffic causes minorities and stereotypically strange people to join the website. On MySpace, this is the emos, pedophiles, and ghetto people with little-to-no grammar and typing abilities. I will guarantee this will happen to Facebook sometime next year, and in 2 years for Twitter (it hasn't gone full mainstream yet). So for those that think "man, Facebook is infinitely better than MySpace," prepare to be horrified once you start seeing emo MySpace pictures (see blog post photo) popping up on people's profiles.

...and here's some side-notes:

I don't believe this is going to happen to the blogging world. Blog posts take a long time to type up and require work to maintain, while the typical MySpace addict doesn't have the patience nor the work ethic. As you may notice, as the years go by, the world around us seems to slow down while people want things done fast. That's why we have email, text messaging, Google, YouTube, and now, Twitter.

Notice the patterns:

Before, people were happy listening to the radio. All of a sudden society demanded faster ways of hearing what they wanted, so in came the vynil disks. Then, they wanted to hear what they want on the go, so up came high quality transistor radios and decades later, the Walkman. But that wasn't enough, so in came the more widespread portable casette player and eventually, the all holy CD. Yet, there was still more to be left desired, so the mp3 player came into play. And nowadays, we're transitioning to portable media players like the iPod touch, where you can listen to music while you book a flight or find the nearest Chinese takeout place is.

People want things faster, smaller, newer, and revolutionary in one way or another. Facebook and Twitter are growing because of these factors.

Kinda derpessing how websites become notorious for certain things (like myspace pictures). I belive Twitter's form of this will be the strange usernames people give themselves (twitter.com/omgiluvdavidsomuch), and the constant posting of tweets (100+ per day).

I am highly concerned for modern civilization as it pertains to social media...

By the way, never trust someone with X's in their username. Never.

How to: make a blog post people will actually read

I'm no expert, but there are a number of things that I make sure I put into my blog posts that I think everyone should for the sake of art's sake. Most of these don't actually make your post better, but it makes the reader (you) possibly continue reading.

Order your paragraphs. I've been taught to order from least to most important, but that doesn't work well for me. I prefer starting with an engaging argument to get someone interested, then go from least to most. The reader may just be more inclined to agree with you this way, and if they don't, oh well. By the way, in this specific blog post, I'm not really trying any specific order (then again, most of my blog posts are kinda like this).

Appearance. Make your blog look different from all the others. Don't just stick with the pack, but flow to the side of it in style. This blog is awkwardly different. Black/dark background, a creative layout, pop-up blue and white text, and no big fancy header image; just the blog name. Good for bandwidth, good for getting noticed. And this isn't even a custom theme (WordPress demands money for that, which is why I'm thinking about going to Blogger). However, this isn't necessarily the reason I chose this theme. I chose it because it's easy on the eyes. Looking at a white background is like staring at a light bulb. Oh, and I also learned that blue light increases electromagnetivity, preserves food better, is the most-liked color in the world, and actually increases mental activity (higher IQ scores).

Links are cool. There's a certain science to them that are interesting to the reader. They're interactive, leading to more learned information, and as soon as a page loads, the reader sees the pretty color it comes in. In my blog's case, it's very blue, almost pleads to get clicked on. Links aren't just good for information, but they also make for good paragraph emphasis.

When posting a link, don't just lay out the full address; nobody wants to read things that don't make sense like "http://blahblahblah.co.az.de.us/foobar/1337/crap.aspx". Just wastes space. Make sure that you integrate it into text. In addition, make sure that the words you decide to use for the link are interesting. Don't do "I have a pet gerbil, here" or "Never scare a black dude, man!!!" (by the way, the latter is my video). One is flat out boring, and the other makes the reader just jump to the link and not read the information. A sweet spot would be to select interesting 2-3 words for linking. For example, "despite the fact that Kanye West's single Homecoming wasn't nearly a hit, I still find it better than Stronger".

Also, when posting a blog post, one of the most vital yet simple attension-getters would be images. I'm not saying to plaster your posts with pictures of iPhones and T-Mobile G1's. I'm just asking for one image on the side that describes at least the first half of your post. As you can see, 90% of my blog posts do this, and the reason that not all of them is because I don't want much emphasis on them; they're just there so I can say I have it there. Now, when choosing an image, it isn't smart to just pull a rabbit out of the magical hat known as Google. For one thing, the reader may have alredy seen the image if they were searching for information about rabbits, and found your post because of it. Oh, and by the way, it's illegal. To be on the safe (and prettier) side of the fence, go to Flicker's Creative Commons section, more specifically the Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike liscensed images, which basically means that you'll use the image in addition to giving credit to the person who took the image, which I do through linking the image to the page I found it from. They're more origional, are normally done with higher quality cameras, and support the Creative Commons "movement".

That's all I got for my fellow bloggers for now. I bet you a cookie I'll remember 3 more things not here already about 15 minutes after I click the Publish button.

Ciao

~del_rio

Random thought: An iPhone app that does it all

[by the way, this post was typed in an iPod, so forgive me of any typos]

Well, I was doing my routine iPod internet checking, going from Google Reader for my feeds, WeatherBug for the forecast, checking my mail for new messages, MySpace and Facebook for my social life, and Twitterific for everything else, in addition to anything else I may need to do. As productive as Apple's flagship touchscreen products are, one can't help but feel a little dragged-down by having to open another app every few minutes. Additionally, there are times one simply wants their information at a glance, with more than just the time and date on-screen. This is where my concept app takes over.

I challenge the App development community to program the all-in-one app for the all-in-one device. I'd like to be able to take my iPod out of my pocket, unlock it and see the time, the date, the stock market, my to-do list when it's going to rain, my RSS feeds, and my latest @replies, hopefully all cached in case there's no WiFi. I don't need every functionality in the book, just what I look at the most.

Lucky for you programmers, the power of the Internet is on your side, and the majority of this can be done through web feeds that do much of the work for you (The Weather Channel, Yahoo! Stocks, the Twitter API, ect.)

Now the big problem is the UI of the entire App. How will so much information be placed in such a small screen? One concept would be similar to that of the Home Screen, allowing you to slide your finger to go page by page of overflowing love. Of couse, you can always use the blah-inducing arbitrary touch menu. Or how about a number of user-selected screens with a toolbar at the top of the screen allowing you to navigate to your information? To be honest I see a number of flaws in all of these interfaces.

If I were programming this App, I'd go for the overgrown Safari web page way, which allows you to move around in a seemingly endless territory that allows for vertical and horizontal movement. Use two fingers to pinch-zoom in and out of your floating information. Double-tap on (for example) the the current temperature and chance of rain to zoom directly into it, and expanding the information to a 5 day forecast. Press a button on the bottom-left of the screen to go into editing mode, where the user can change the location of thee little info widgets.

Tips for programmers, graphic designers, and web designers alike

I felt like doing some random output tonight, so here it is- an unscheduled, undeveloped mess of a blog post:

Well, there are many ways to make things look good to people's eyes. Smooth, sharp pixels, crisp layout, Jessica Alba, that type of stuff. Every now and then, you'll come across a website that has an unusually professional or easy to use feel to it that makes it seem a lot better than it may actually be. Examples of this include Vimeo,

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm getting a Mac!

Well, not exactly, but hey, the title sparked your interest, didn't it? Thought so. Anywho's:

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself hating Apple products as I usually do. Hating on Macs, hating on iPods, and hating on two of my friends who have iPhone 3Gs. Every now and then I find myself thinking, wow, I'm probably just jealous that Apple users got money . However, these thoughts vanquish the moment I hear some pompous Apple fanboy saying "You're just hatin' because you can't afford a Mac! Just go away to your sad little PC, ya' looser!" It's people like that that get under my skin, almost causing me to slap 'em in the face. Luckily, I'm a civil person, and I just state the fact that you can get a computer just as decent as a Mac for half the price. But who am I to say this? And what does this say about the operating system itself? In all reality, the only Mac I've ever owned was a screwy PowerPC-based refurb.

So I thought, hey, if I install OS X onto my PC somehow, I'd be able to see how it is to own a Mac, without the fancy $600 aluminum case. If performance is good, I'd prove that PCs are much more cost-efficient, and after using it for a month or so, I'd also be able to determine how good OS X really is. I'll be killing two birds with one stone... sorta.

After a few days [when Apple announced their new MacBooks], I got the initiative to sought for a way to get Leopard on my fairly low-end AMD machine. I found hacked-up operating systems aplenty, and I had no idea what to do. So then I thought there's only one easy solution; just search where you're going to download it from anyway!, so I ventured to everybody's favorite downloading site, the infamous Pie-rating Bay and searched "OS X Leopard" and found iATKOS, and I was happy. Then I did some research, and found that there's an infinite number of OSx86 systems to download. Here's a short list of what I've found:

iATKOS
iDeneb
iPC
Kalyway
Leo4Allv5
JaS
pc_EFI

...the list will go on and on. So I settled on iDeneb. Not sure of the reason, but I did. So far, I'm two days into the download and I've only been able to get through 40% of the full ISO. Slowly but surely, the 4.4 gig file will finish after going through a constant of 15kb/s download.

In the meantime, I've been able to split my hard drive into two partitions, with the Leopard partition [drive X:/] having 20GB of playing room.

Updates on my future Hackintosh coming soon!

Ciao!

The Future: My Take

Every now and then around New Year's, you hear a lot of TV shows talking about what the world will be like in 20, 50, and 100 years from now. However, a great number of them have things that seem way out-of-this world, utilizing technology that is yet to be invented. Luckily, there are people like me that have ideas that make more sense to the common human:

In the more developed areas in the United States of tomorrow [let's just call it the Mañana], suburbanized areas will be efficient in every aspect. Though not very common at the moment, Solar will become one of the most prominent differences. As I type, scientists and universities everywhere are looking for ways to make solar panels, thinner, lighter, cheaper, and more efficient. One company, Nanosolar, has exactly that, making use of a couple of $7M silicon printing machines and a modest workforce. Eventually, we'll have solar panels that cost less than shingles on a roof, and hopefully, they'll look good, too.

Another thing that will be common is energy generators powered by waste. There are already ways developed to do this (and a couple of actual toilets in Japan that does it), but there's yet to be a full line of manufactured Eco-Toilets. Oh, and don't worry about how clean your water is; you'll have your own personal filter that assures you that all you'll drink is pure H2O [check it out for yourself].

Moving onto cars. In the Mañana, combustion engine-based cars will be a minority on the road, with just about every auto maker moving onto Electric vehicles. These cars will probably take advantage of every energy-generating opportunity it can find. Solar roofs, the typical hybrid's brake friction thing, and maybe a little wind power generator under the hood, all going straight to a super-dense battery pack (may be Lithium-Ion, though maybe we'll be using something else by then). Oh, and chances are, you may not even have to use any of those features for everyday driving, with the help of a little power inlet on the side. Gas stations will become power stations with gas on the side and an upper-class cafe a few steps away. By the way, in case you didn't know, General Motors is working toward this vision, and it won't be as far off as you think [check it].

Oh, and Hydrogen/Fuel Cell vehicles will be around, but pure electric will become the preference (frankly, I don't see such a flammable substance to be a viable green solution).

Also in the Mañana, communication will be pinnacle. You'll be in a world where the Internet is free, and all around you (though sadly, it'll be more government controlled, like China). The way this'll be done is through a new technology called WiMAX. It takes a while to explain the system [which is much simpler that it seems], but in a nutshell, it's high-speed WiFi spread over a 30-mile radius per hotspot. An organization called XOHM [composed of Sprint, Nokia, Google, Intel, Motorola, and many more] are working on bringing this technology to every metropolitan area it can get it's hands on [link].

Through this newfound ubiquitous connectivity to the Internet, you'll be able to check up on all of all your friends, send medical data to your doctor (i.e., a medical status update server), and listen to your library through your home-based personal server.

As for nanotechnology, we're yet to see if the world will be ready for it, so I'm not going to really talk about it.

In the future, third wold countries will be living kind of like us Americans are right now. Some areas are nice, some are still dumps, and hey, even the cars will be the same (we'll have no use for gas cars, so they'll all be transported to the slums of Yemen).

Oh, and you know how people are paranoid about the eventual overcoming of super-intelligent computers? Well don't worry, it won't happen. Seriously, there's always a way to manually shut down a computer, whether it's a button or a giant lever-based plug.

Unfortunately, the society of tomorrow is grim. I don't mean to sound old, but as generations go by, the ethical values of humans decline. To prove my point, look at the 60s. Movies were a place that you can take the entire family, and not have to worry about sexual references or bad language. The most popular song of the decade (and still the best-selling single of all time) was The Twist, and some people found that to be risqué. Today, you see movies like Cloverfield, about a sudden invasion of a giant creature wreaking havoc throughout Manhattan, destroying everything in it's path. The top song this summer was I Kissed A Girl from Katy Perry, and the most popular song in the last few years being Low by Flo Rida and T-Pain. One can only guess how obscure the wold will get.

So there you have it; A porthole into the future. A land where technology is everywhere, and people are ruder and less ethical than ever before. If you have any additional input, leave a comment below.

Ciao!
~uH