There’s a lot of stuff on the internet. Apparently Google CEO (soon-to-be ex-CEO) Eric Schmidt once said 5 million terabytes. I have no idea how old that estimate is. And really, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the number is, it’s too big for any of us to really comprehend. The bottom line is that the internet is a very, very, very big place. And much of the information on it is fascinating, entertaining, informative, or just plain time-suckingly captivating.
Now, how do we find the good stuff on the internet? By and large, we rely (in some form or another) upon other people to point us in the direction of stuff worth looking at. A friend posts a link on twitter or Facebook. A user posts a video response to a youtube video. Writers (everyone from big-name newspaper columnists to lowly bloggers) mention blogs or articles. Even Google is basically just an algorithm spitting out results based on what people are linking to.
The great thing about the internet is that just about any intelligent creative output a human being can create ends up there in some form or another. Music, movies, essays, stories, whatever—almost all of it is out there somewhere online, free or not, legal or not. The bad thing about the internet is that most people are stupid. So they point you to crap like Rebecca Black’s “Friday” video, which has blown up twitter and youtube and everything else for the past week or so. Continue reading ‘when crap goes viral’
Not too long ago I complained about TV commercials. What form of advertising am I going to complain about today? Internet advertising. Except this time I’m not just the embittered consumer sick of ads ruining his television-viewing experience. This time I’m also the greedy capitalist looking for a few dollars.
When I first moved this blog from wordpress.com to its own domain, I thought, hey, there’s a chance I could make some money on this. Maybe not a lot of money, but hopefully enough to cover the $20 a year I pay for the domain name. (Fortunately, the hosting is free; thanks again to Rob Heath for the help.) And who knows, maybe it’ll be like the lottery, except with a lot more work involved.
But that’s not how it works. The Internet is made for niches. Find a niche, cover it in detail: obsessively catalog everything about your favorite TV show or sports team or video game. Then watch the search engines direct the traffic to you. I get a fair amount of search traffic (compared to what I get from direct traffic and links from facebook, twitter, and other blogs), but it’s an interesting, very scattered mix. Continue reading ‘internet advertising’
I’ve been a Mac fanboy ever since we had a Performa 500-something of other in one of the GT classrooms at my elementary. I just bought my third Mac (not counting the one my family had when I was younger). And sure, they’re expensive, but the money is worth the smug sense of satisfaction and superiority that comes with being a Mac user. (And if there’s one thing I love in life, it’s anything that gives me a smug sense of superiority.) But I have a healthy distaste for their habit of producing crappy mice.
Up until 2005 Apple insisted on shipping single button mice with their computers. Sure, OS X (released on 2001) could support a multi-button mouse, but you wouldn’t get one with your computer. The day after I bought a Powerbook G4 back in 2003, I headed to CompUSA for a mouse. Now, I wouldn’t expect a laptop to come with a mouse, but I should point out that the trackpad had only one button. So you’d have to control-click to right-click.
It really baffles me why Apple would adopt that policy for years and years in the face of innovation from everyone else. The Performa 6116CD that my family bought when I was eight or so had a single-button mouse, and I believe multi-button mice were well established on PCs at the time. I just don’t get it. Continue reading ‘apple’s crappy mice’
The past few years have seen an inundation of different social networking sites. And I admit I was always something of a late adopter on all of them. First there was myspace. Then came facebook. Then came twitter. The last of these three is something of an unusual creature. It’s clearly not a full-out social networking site like facebook or myspace. It’s good for short messages, links, and maybe a few snapshots from your cell phone. It’s not a bad idea per se, although it has its flaws. The biggest problem is that there’s no real consensus (as far as I can tell) on exactly how to use it. Continue reading ‘twitter’
I was on vacation (to Six Flags Over Georgia) a week and a half ago. I saw something I hadn’t seen in quite some time: automatic hand dryers—you know, the annoying machines that blow hot air at your hands but never manage to dry them off. I’m surprised how rare they’ve become. Maybe it’s just because I don’t go into public restrooms to often, but in my childhood it seemed like they were everywhere, despite the fact that you’d just have to wipe your hands off on your clothes to get them dry.
Now, let me say that I have no idea whatsoever whether hand dryers are better for the environment, or whether they are more cost-effective for businesses. What I do know is that hand dryers suck, and paper towels work a hell of a lot better. Every time you try to use a hand dryer, the first push of the button (or activation of the motion sensor) never keeps the dryer on long enough to dry your hands. So you have to push the button again. Also, if you’re slightly OCD like me and you like to use a paper towel to grab the door handle of the bathroom as you exit, you don’t have that choice if there are hand dryers but no paper towels.
Finally, although I admit this is a conjecture, it seems like the newer public bathrooms (the ones with automatic faucets and soap dispensers) have paper towels instead of hand dryers. So presumably, it’s either less costly or greener than hand dryers; or perhaps everyone else is just fed up with hand dryers too.
I hate answering the phone. At least with cell phones I know who’s calling, and, with the sole exception of a wrong number, I can be assured that the person calling wants to speak to me. But the home phone, which is not equipped with Caller ID? The odds are damn near infinitesimal that the call will be for me, and instead I’ll have to relay some stupid message or another. The following exchange just happened: Continue reading ‘answering the phone’
An automatic icemaker is a nice thing to have. I can remember being a kid and having to fill up the ice cube trays at my grandmother’s house; then, once the ice was frozen, I’d have to slam the cubes into the box, and a few ice cubes would be stuck and I’d have to run water over the outside of the tray to loosen it up. Total pain in the ass. But at least the ice cubes were a decent shape. The usual automatic icemaker pops out those frustrating little crescents that always seem to adhere perfectly to the side of whatever glass you’re drinking out of.
I don’t know what the makers of these devices were thinking. Cups almost always have a circular opening. Ice with a circular side will tend to jam up against the side of the cup, acting like a dam for whatever liquid is behind it. So you slide the ice down the glass to your mouth and suck furiously in an attempt to maneuver the liquid out from behind the ice. Or you tilt the glass too far and the ice spills out, possibly getting your drink all over the table or your clothing or your face. Or, when you have only a little bit of drink left, the ice gets stuck at the bottom and you have to shake it to juggle the ice around, again, possibly leading to a spill. Whether you’re having a glass of ice water on a hot day, or a Coke, or a cocktail, it’s incredibly frustrating.
It’d make a lot more sense if the ice cubes were more like the shapes you’d see from a commercial ice dispenser—either actually cubes, or the tubes with a hole in the middle, or small rectangles, or even the small pebble type. All of these types are smaller than the half-moon type, meaning they are much less likely to settle at the rim of the glass and block the beverage. Yet somehow, the shape that is about as idiotic as possible manages to survive.
Not too long ago, facebook came up with the idea of fan pages. People can follow their favorite bands or sports teams or movie stars. Good idea, right? Well, people decided to create fan pages for lots of other things. Most of which are completely and utterly pointless. People think up some observational humor, find a semi-related picture, and then hope it goes viral. But even if it does, what the hell do these people get out of it? Continue reading ‘stupid facebook fan pages’
I’m sure many of y’all got CDs and DVDs for Christmas. Unfortunately, before you could enjoy your new stuff, you had to get the packaging open. Most any media sold these days comes shrink-wrapped, and I don’t mind that. It’s fairly easy to get that stuff off with your fingers, or maybe a pair of scissors if absolutely necessary. But the vast majority of CDs and DVDs (though not all of them) have a strip of tape across the top. This strip can be damn near impossible to remove. Continue reading ‘cds and dvds that are impossible to open’
I want to know what the hell the person who invented fitted sheets was thinking. I’m guessing it was something along the lines of “Let me make a sheet that never stays on a mattress, but let me advertise it as something that will stay on a mattress extremely well.” Fitted sheets are the scourge of my existence. They were specifically designed to do one thing: stay on mattresses. They are spectacularly unsuccessful at this one task. Therefore, they are completely and utterly worthless. Continue reading ‘fitted sheets’