Re:Facebook is one of my pigeonholing tools
on
FBML Essentials
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Hi. I'm here as an ambassador from the general public. For some people technology is a tool, not a lifestyle. Some people like posting pictures of last nights party for their friends to see. Some people think Twitter has a legitimate use (it doesn't but it's still fun sometimes). Some people blog because they enjoy it and don't care if they have thousands of readers. It's all just a way of communicating and, in some cases, archiving part of your life. It's fun to look back at my old personal blog. It's fun to look at old pictures from college on Facebook. Is getting over excited about these things silly? Of course it is, but people like what they like and these "social networking" tools let people do what they like.
Asking why people stay in touch with friends via Facebook rather than calling them on the phone is like asking why someone would install Linux when their computer already came with Windows. What seems silly and a complete waste of time to some has value to others.
Do you honestly believe that most people under 40 get most of their TV online? I think you need to take a step back and reacquaint yourself with the general population again.
Is this really a freedom that people are clamoring for? Not people here on/. but the general public. How maybe people would just get edgy about buying a PC that might not play nice with their computer at work and then get mad that Best Buy has tacked on a $40 "OS installation and setup fee" when they decided to play it safe and get Windows anyway?
Most people don't want to think about their OS and the alternatives don't offer them any added value. People want to be able to use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. People want to be able to get to the web version of their work email (which tends to look weird when they don't use IE)
The people who want to use some flavor of *nix know how to install it (or can learn). The people who want OSX will buy a Mac. The number of people who will get bent out of shape for having to pay the "Windows Tax" because they didn't want to build a machine themselves is too small for the market to care.
Microsoft doesn't need to be "cool". Most people will NEVER buy an operating system. People will get the version of Windows that comes on the next computer they buy.
The VAST majority of people who think that Vista sucks think that because the technical people in their life have told them that it sucks. Windows needs to be "just fine". As long as Windows 7 gets a collective thumbs up from the technical community, the average user won't think twice about buying a new computer with Windows 7 on it and those in charge of budgets at companies will be less apprehensive to approve an OS upgrade.
Only a select population of geeks care about who did it first. The rest of the world just cares about who did it well and who brought it to major public attention.
Sure, lots of browsers had tabs before Firefox. None of these browsers were used by non-tech people.
It's one thing to have a good idea. It's a whole different thing to get everybody to use it.
In the same vain, you could have each attempt have some sort of increasingly intensive client side processing task. This could be used for charitable means (like protein folding or the likes). A user who makes 5 mistakes on their password wouldn't notice much of difference (but many users logging in would produce some good processing power) and a bot trying to dictionary attack would get so hung up on increasingly more intensive processing tasks that it would become useless.
Ok, sure, Eddie Van Halen (Jonathan Ive) is making all the music and providing the real artistic genius behind the band. But David Lee Roth (Steve Jobs) made everybody listen to it.
Don't discredit the value of man with a vision and a big mouth.
I understand what MS is trying to do with Silverlight. There's clearly a market for Flash type stuff. People know how to code in.NET. Let's let people use.NET to make functional and pretty things!
The problem is that all the people who make things pretty are already allied with Adobe. Technologies like Flash and Silverlight are only valuable if there are artists making it look cool. There are certainly some great looking Silverlight apps, but I worry that it lacks the critical mass of design support to make it a viable competitor.
Are you really arguing that plain text is the most efficient way of expressing all ideas? Are you really saying there is no communication value to sound and images?
Sure there are a lot of people misusing multimedia, but does that make it an invalid form of communication? Try to show some knowledge of usability outside your own personal preference.
Why can't the web stick to something simple? 95% of the sites I use, would be fine with just plain simple HTML 2.0. Instead, we've got javascript, CSS, XHTML, and other buzzwords. Which in the end, take control of how a web page looks from the user's hand.
I like to read text, on a monitor, green on black (or white on black). I would like to format a web page the way I want to see it.
The vast majority of the web (that this user likes to view) is simple formatted text. There is no reason for this to constantly evolve onwards and onwards.
Face it, you are the minority. Hell, most people here on Slashdot are the minority. First off, CSS, XHTML, and Javascript aren't buzzwords. They are technologies (AJAX is a buzzword... but it's still pretty cool). If a web page doesn't control how it looks who is? The user? Listen closely... MOST PEOPLE LIKE THINGS THAT LOOK NICE AND DO COOL THINGS. THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO WANT TO READ MONO-COLOR TEXT FOR ALL INFORMATION OUT THERE IS VERY MINIMAL. If you don't need any of it, browse without stylesheets, images, and javascript turned on.
The Amish get by just fine without electricity and things like that, but they don't try to fool themselves into thinking that nobody should have it, just because they don't want it.
If this is his motivation for releasing songs one at a time, this seems like a great move on his part. He's encouraging people people to pay for music (and only the music they want) simply because it's a better way to get it.
Giving your fans a reason to buy your music rather than steal it? Sounds like a solid move as an artist.
Google's bot did what it was supposed to do, it posted someone else's news with all the information provided to it by it's source (in this case, the source lacked a date).
The financial sites that picked this up and ran it as their own information have a responsibility to CHECK THEIR FACTS and ESTABLISH THE CREDIBILITY OF THEIR SOURCES. This is a result of an overzealous pursuit of a scoop.
The problem arises when people who just want to be designers need to do web design and people who want to just be developers need to do web development.
The web is about form AND function. Yes, there are great sites the look like crap. Yes, there are cool looking sites that don't do anything. The goal is to make people want to use your creation. Good looks and good functionality are tools for that. Use them both!
Digital download cards. My band is planning to release our next EP entirely digitally. Because of this need to sell a physical product at shows, we will be selling digital download cards (like gift cards) to buy the music from our site.
The new fan receives something tangible and the benefit of full album artwork. The band gets cash in their hands on the spot with a decreased cost of physical overhead.
I think the problem with Silverlight is that it appeals too much to developers and not enough to designers. Where Flash really shines is when the fancy creative types get a hold of it (it comes with CS Studio...) and use it to great great looking works of art.
The realm that Silverlight is entering is one that makes it's value from visual pizaz. To win over the masses, MS needs to attract designers to Silverlight along with developers.
I agree that Radiohead is a poor measure of the success of "free" music distribution. They are a popular band with a tech savvy fanbase (they are the undisputed #1 artist on last.fm). They also rose to this level of success through traditional means (label support, brick and mortar sales, etc). They have done a great job of adapting to new technology and using their status to try (and succeed) at new ways of getting music to fans.....
BUT for this model to work with new artists there needs to be a huge shift in the way people think about getting their music. My band has made our music available for free and I've even seeded some torrent sites with our first demo, but at local shows kids still want to walk out with something physical when they buy music from you. We're planning on doing a digital release of our next EP and selling download cards (like gift cards) at shows that provide a code that lets you download the songs and album art from our site. This way there is a physical product to sell at shows but almost no duplication cost.
If people want a bands music there will be a lot of eyeballs on any place where they can go to get it for free. The music industry needs to adapt to this. There's money to be made if they don't fight it. There's still value in labels. They have connections to the rest of the industry and can make it easier to other means of revenue (movies, video games, commercials, larger festivals) and can connect you to the right people to help make your music (better studios, producers, etc) and advertise your music (magazine ads, national promotion, online ads, etc). Sure, maybe you could do most of that stuff DIY, but at some point having the roladex of an established label (be it major or indie) is very beneficial.
Ok, I just don't get why Cuil is getting all this attention. It doesn't do anything revolutionary enough to get people (this includes non-geeks that make up the VAST majority of the search market) to use anything but what they were using yesterday for search.
Yes, it looks nice. Yes, it's got a hip image. But it has nothing that will put a dent in any of the major search engines usage.
I'd call it a flash in the pan if it was bright enough for anybody to see.
I love my gadgets as much as the next geek, but it's nice to rely on nothing but a solid pair or shoes and an old pair of shorts. I can't buy or upgrade myself into being faster or running further, it's just me and the road.
It's a good way to balance out all the use of technology in my life.
One of the key things that has made the iPhone a non option for people in the market for a $400 phone (outside of gadget geeks) is its lack of Exchange support. The primary market for smart phones is still business users and the primary platform for email/scheduling in business is Exchange (I'm sure many of you have examples where this is not the case and I'm sure many of you get by with IMAP forwarding of your Exchange email, but in the vast majority of organizations Exchange = email/calendar). Most business users don't want to fiddle and hack. They want it to work. Now.
Version 2 of the iPhone software (which will be released to v1 iPhones, too) is supposed to have great Exchange integration. I think this will be a HUGE selling point for iPhones as it will become a viable tool in the market that it is priced in.
(I for one won't hook up Exchange to my iPhone unless my company wants to help pay the bill... but that's just me)
Slashdot Mirror
Hi. I'm here as an ambassador from the general public. For some people technology is a tool, not a lifestyle. Some people like posting pictures of last nights party for their friends to see. Some people think Twitter has a legitimate use (it doesn't but it's still fun sometimes). Some people blog because they enjoy it and don't care if they have thousands of readers. It's all just a way of communicating and, in some cases, archiving part of your life. It's fun to look back at my old personal blog. It's fun to look at old pictures from college on Facebook. Is getting over excited about these things silly? Of course it is, but people like what they like and these "social networking" tools let people do what they like.
Asking why people stay in touch with friends via Facebook rather than calling them on the phone is like asking why someone would install Linux when their computer already came with Windows. What seems silly and a complete waste of time to some has value to others.
So, in collaboration with marine biologist Frank Fish of West Chester University in Pennsylvania, who specialises in...
A guy named Frank Fish decided to be a marine biologist? How original.
Do you honestly believe that most people under 40 get most of their TV online? I think you need to take a step back and reacquaint yourself with the general population again.
Is this really a freedom that people are clamoring for? Not people here on /. but the general public. How maybe people would just get edgy about buying a PC that might not play nice with their computer at work and then get mad that Best Buy has tacked on a $40 "OS installation and setup fee" when they decided to play it safe and get Windows anyway?
Most people don't want to think about their OS and the alternatives don't offer them any added value. People want to be able to use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. People want to be able to get to the web version of their work email (which tends to look weird when they don't use IE)
The people who want to use some flavor of *nix know how to install it (or can learn). The people who want OSX will buy a Mac. The number of people who will get bent out of shape for having to pay the "Windows Tax" because they didn't want to build a machine themselves is too small for the market to care.
Microsoft doesn't need to be "cool". Most people will NEVER buy an operating system. People will get the version of Windows that comes on the next computer they buy.
The VAST majority of people who think that Vista sucks think that because the technical people in their life have told them that it sucks. Windows needs to be "just fine". As long as Windows 7 gets a collective thumbs up from the technical community, the average user won't think twice about buying a new computer with Windows 7 on it and those in charge of budgets at companies will be less apprehensive to approve an OS upgrade.
Only a select population of geeks care about who did it first. The rest of the world just cares about who did it well and who brought it to major public attention.
Sure, lots of browsers had tabs before Firefox. None of these browsers were used by non-tech people.
It's one thing to have a good idea. It's a whole different thing to get everybody to use it.
In the same vain, you could have each attempt have some sort of increasingly intensive client side processing task. This could be used for charitable means (like protein folding or the likes). A user who makes 5 mistakes on their password wouldn't notice much of difference (but many users logging in would produce some good processing power) and a bot trying to dictionary attack would get so hung up on increasingly more intensive processing tasks that it would become useless.
Ok, sure, Eddie Van Halen (Jonathan Ive) is making all the music and providing the real artistic genius behind the band. But David Lee Roth (Steve Jobs) made everybody listen to it.
Don't discredit the value of man with a vision and a big mouth.
I understand what MS is trying to do with Silverlight. There's clearly a market for Flash type stuff. People know how to code in .NET. Let's let people use .NET to make functional and pretty things!
The problem is that all the people who make things pretty are already allied with Adobe. Technologies like Flash and Silverlight are only valuable if there are artists making it look cool. There are certainly some great looking Silverlight apps, but I worry that it lacks the critical mass of design support to make it a viable competitor.
is... The people who "know" that we have a soul can't prove anything. The people who can "prove" we have a soul don't know anything.
Are you really arguing that plain text is the most efficient way of expressing all ideas? Are you really saying there is no communication value to sound and images?
Sure there are a lot of people misusing multimedia, but does that make it an invalid form of communication? Try to show some knowledge of usability outside your own personal preference.
Why can't the web stick to something simple? 95% of the sites I use, would be fine with just plain simple HTML 2.0. Instead, we've got javascript, CSS, XHTML, and other buzzwords. Which in the end, take control of how a web page looks from the user's hand.
I like to read text, on a monitor, green on black (or white on black). I would like to format a web page the way I want to see it.
The vast majority of the web (that this user likes to view) is simple formatted text. There is no reason for this to constantly evolve onwards and onwards.
Face it, you are the minority. Hell, most people here on Slashdot are the minority. First off, CSS, XHTML, and Javascript aren't buzzwords. They are technologies (AJAX is a buzzword... but it's still pretty cool). If a web page doesn't control how it looks who is? The user? Listen closely... MOST PEOPLE LIKE THINGS THAT LOOK NICE AND DO COOL THINGS. THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO WANT TO READ MONO-COLOR TEXT FOR ALL INFORMATION OUT THERE IS VERY MINIMAL. If you don't need any of it, browse without stylesheets, images, and javascript turned on.
The Amish get by just fine without electricity and things like that, but they don't try to fool themselves into thinking that nobody should have it, just because they don't want it.
If this is his motivation for releasing songs one at a time, this seems like a great move on his part. He's encouraging people people to pay for music (and only the music they want) simply because it's a better way to get it.
Giving your fans a reason to buy your music rather than steal it? Sounds like a solid move as an artist.
A quick summary:
Nobody wants free poop.
Thousands of years ago, before we scientifically understood everything, ...
Oh crap! Now that we understand everything all the scientists will be out of a job! God help us!
Google's bot did what it was supposed to do, it posted someone else's news with all the information provided to it by it's source (in this case, the source lacked a date).
The financial sites that picked this up and ran it as their own information have a responsibility to CHECK THEIR FACTS and ESTABLISH THE CREDIBILITY OF THEIR SOURCES. This is a result of an overzealous pursuit of a scoop.
Pshhh.... I was going to create life, too but instead I just stayed home and played Spore.
The problem arises when people who just want to be designers need to do web design and people who want to just be developers need to do web development.
The web is about form AND function. Yes, there are great sites the look like crap. Yes, there are cool looking sites that don't do anything. The goal is to make people want to use your creation. Good looks and good functionality are tools for that. Use them both!
Digital download cards. My band is planning to release our next EP entirely digitally. Because of this need to sell a physical product at shows, we will be selling digital download cards (like gift cards) to buy the music from our site.
The new fan receives something tangible and the benefit of full album artwork. The band gets cash in their hands on the spot with a decreased cost of physical overhead.
Everybody
I think the problem with Silverlight is that it appeals too much to developers and not enough to designers. Where Flash really shines is when the fancy creative types get a hold of it (it comes with CS Studio...) and use it to great great looking works of art.
The realm that Silverlight is entering is one that makes it's value from visual pizaz. To win over the masses, MS needs to attract designers to Silverlight along with developers.
The scroll wheel interface from the iPod/iPod nano form factor seems to lend itself to the resergance of... rotary dial!
I agree that Radiohead is a poor measure of the success of "free" music distribution. They are a popular band with a tech savvy fanbase (they are the undisputed #1 artist on last.fm). They also rose to this level of success through traditional means (label support, brick and mortar sales, etc). They have done a great job of adapting to new technology and using their status to try (and succeed) at new ways of getting music to fans.....
BUT for this model to work with new artists there needs to be a huge shift in the way people think about getting their music. My band has made our music available for free and I've even seeded some torrent sites with our first demo, but at local shows kids still want to walk out with something physical when they buy music from you. We're planning on doing a digital release of our next EP and selling download cards (like gift cards) at shows that provide a code that lets you download the songs and album art from our site. This way there is a physical product to sell at shows but almost no duplication cost.
If people want a bands music there will be a lot of eyeballs on any place where they can go to get it for free. The music industry needs to adapt to this. There's money to be made if they don't fight it. There's still value in labels. They have connections to the rest of the industry and can make it easier to other means of revenue (movies, video games, commercials, larger festivals) and can connect you to the right people to help make your music (better studios, producers, etc) and advertise your music (magazine ads, national promotion, online ads, etc). Sure, maybe you could do most of that stuff DIY, but at some point having the roladex of an established label (be it major or indie) is very beneficial.
Ok, I just don't get why Cuil is getting all this attention. It doesn't do anything revolutionary enough to get people (this includes non-geeks that make up the VAST majority of the search market) to use anything but what they were using yesterday for search.
Yes, it looks nice. Yes, it's got a hip image. But it has nothing that will put a dent in any of the major search engines usage.
I'd call it a flash in the pan if it was bright enough for anybody to see.
I love my gadgets as much as the next geek, but it's nice to rely on nothing but a solid pair or shoes and an old pair of shorts. I can't buy or upgrade myself into being faster or running further, it's just me and the road.
It's a good way to balance out all the use of technology in my life.
One of the key things that has made the iPhone a non option for people in the market for a $400 phone (outside of gadget geeks) is its lack of Exchange support. The primary market for smart phones is still business users and the primary platform for email/scheduling in business is Exchange (I'm sure many of you have examples where this is not the case and I'm sure many of you get by with IMAP forwarding of your Exchange email, but in the vast majority of organizations Exchange = email/calendar). Most business users don't want to fiddle and hack. They want it to work. Now.
Version 2 of the iPhone software (which will be released to v1 iPhones, too) is supposed to have great Exchange integration. I think this will be a HUGE selling point for iPhones as it will become a viable tool in the market that it is priced in.
(I for one won't hook up Exchange to my iPhone unless my company wants to help pay the bill... but that's just me)