So ever since I found out about jyte on Wednesday or so, I've been intrigued by the simplicity of the system for keeping up with who said what and who agreed with them. There's also a "cred" feature, whereby users can enhance the credibility of other users (currently manifested in the radius of a purple dot).
There are several reasons this system appeals to me:
1.) I can post ideas that are too short for a blog:
2.) I can get stupid and/or brilliant ideas off my mind and let other people worry about the implementation:
3.) I can quickly gauge the state of public opinion, albeit in a small, skewed sample:
4.) It's a great demonstration of the potential of OpenID for social networks, prediction markets, and all that. You can make claims about other users (for good or ill):
So basically, I've staked my claim on some of the dumbest things said on the web in the last few days. More than anyone else in fact; the only users with nearly as many claims as me are the ones who launched the site in the first place.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Friday, January 19, 2007
Stupid Canadian Banks
I guess you take certain risks in any gambling endeavor. Nowadays the problem tends to be that somebody twists the arm of your online payment processor, preventing you from taking your winnings and walking away.
What's lame is, even if I believe the legislation trying to curtail online gaming is intended to protect us, it's actually gonna cost me more to play now. Whereas online I can play entire tournaments for $5, now the minimum legal buy-in is usually $50 or more. Likewise, the smallest cash games are $2-$5 limit, which requires a bankroll out of my range to play profitably. Even with optimal strategy, you're gonna go broke without enough set aside to handle the swings, and I don't know how to build one without micro-stakes games, especially playing no limit.
I've got the skills to be a winning player, but they're buried under the miasma of confused strategies that've stuck from the dozen or so books I've read on the subject. It's the same problem I have with programming: I spend all my time trying to learn the latest trend or language, and never get around to writing any actual code. That, and the fact that every time I have a need for a program, sombeody has already written it.
I guess the world has enough poker players, programmers, and especially bloggers. I'll figure out something useful to do with myself one of these days.
What's lame is, even if I believe the legislation trying to curtail online gaming is intended to protect us, it's actually gonna cost me more to play now. Whereas online I can play entire tournaments for $5, now the minimum legal buy-in is usually $50 or more. Likewise, the smallest cash games are $2-$5 limit, which requires a bankroll out of my range to play profitably. Even with optimal strategy, you're gonna go broke without enough set aside to handle the swings, and I don't know how to build one without micro-stakes games, especially playing no limit.
I've got the skills to be a winning player, but they're buried under the miasma of confused strategies that've stuck from the dozen or so books I've read on the subject. It's the same problem I have with programming: I spend all my time trying to learn the latest trend or language, and never get around to writing any actual code. That, and the fact that every time I have a need for a program, sombeody has already written it.
I guess the world has enough poker players, programmers, and especially bloggers. I'll figure out something useful to do with myself one of these days.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
I Stand Self-corrected
I think I jinxed Blogger by bragging about google so much in the last post or two. Turns out it's been having a rough week, but I'm optimistic. I'll take the blame for jinxing them this time. Hopefully the effect will be limited.
They're in the process of making all their services communicate with each other, which, to most people, will elicit a loud yawn. It uses zend or something, which is like xxxml. That is, really, really, really, extensible markup language.
I get really excited about these interoperating initiatives because the code I'm paid to work with, sadly, is the total opposite. Think decades of urgent deadlines and no budget for documentation; a handful of developers and virtually no separate end users, and you can tell why I get jealous.
They're in the process of making all their services communicate with each other, which, to most people, will elicit a loud yawn. It uses zend or something, which is like xxxml. That is, really, really, really, extensible markup language.
I get really excited about these interoperating initiatives because the code I'm paid to work with, sadly, is the total opposite. Think decades of urgent deadlines and no budget for documentation; a handful of developers and virtually no separate end users, and you can tell why I get jealous.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Thriller, even scarier.
(If you don't see a youtube embedded video thingy, click here. I'm not sure the Facebook-imported version is up to the challenge yet.)
It starts off slow, but the chorus is priceless (~10 min. in). I haven't laughed that hard at legos since the Brick Testament.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Build a Beta Mousetrap...
So apparently google has officially assimilated blogger.com, which means the first order of business is to make it into a beta version. It's interesting to see a label that originally was not involved with marketing become a mark of some distinction. Consumers seem to be more interested and trusting of beta versions than full releases, presumably largely due to the goodwill of the big G.
Rarely do you see these apologetic labels change connotation for the better. Terms such as pre-owned, and virtual, smart, and lite/diet/free have steadily declined in popular appeal (where popularity is defined by my extrapolation to other people's heads as I sit alone except for the company of my senile computers). That's not to say that marketers have given them up altogether. It's just that even the [whatever the opposite of savvy is] of consumers have wised up.
Beta, on the other hand, is a term originally used to describe a system or product that was only barely ready, or to apologize and disclaim any responsibility for its shortcomings. Funny thing is, the new standard for beta software is head and shoulders over similar programs that have been around for years. Google maps was in beta for the Silicon Vally equivalent of a metric eon. Gmail, which caused an immediate and frantic redesign of every other web-based email client, proudly displays its beta status, as if to say, "you ain't seen nothin' yet."
A less obvious but likely more fundamental shift is the realization on an institutional level that software is a service and not a product. Certain technical metaphysicists like your humble narrator have been screaming this at varying volumes for varying lengths of time. One powerful symptom is the shying away (by the smarter companies) of the "n.0" release strategy. AOL went from 4.0 to 11.0 in the span of a year without adding (arguably) any substantial value to their product. The idea was that if you saw your buddies using version 5.0 and you were stuck on 4.1.9, that you were missing out, and should pay to upgrade to the new product.
Unfortunately, that strategy puts incentives on companies to add features rather than improve the overall product quality (or to use an about-to-jump-the-proverbial-shark buzzword, the "user experience"). Naming names would be too easy, but the end result is fragmented versions of the software requiring either separate maintenance and support strategies for each version or the abandonment of users of the older version ("forced obsolescence").
What seems to be happening is that loyalty to software vendors doesn't run deep enough to support the chunky release-fix-EOL-rerelease model. Consumers, aside from the revered but routinely screwed early adopters, expect a product to work the first time they buy it, and don't enjoy paying to have initial defects fixed. Thinking of software as a product degrades one of its best advantages, i.e., its softness: if I can't count on what I buy today working six months from now, then I have better uses for my money.
The software-as-service approach, however, makes just about everybody happier, or at least more accountable. That doesn't mean I favor exclusive, long-term contracts with larger vendors. Businesses who bought into, say, Microsoft's enterprise licenses had to wait along with the rest of us for every delay in Longhorn/Vista. I'm no economist, but it would seem to me that the ROI would tend to drop when the investment doesn't return, for example, anything.
Anyway, back to the Greek letters. With very little marketing, google has risen from (or trickled down, depending on your perspective) from a favorite tool of geeks to the only serious game in town. Whereas ask.com has to put pathetic spots in prime time TV, google seems to be doing find by word of mouth.
The reason for this, I think, is that Google grew from a community of users, who were passionately interested in research and the organization, dissemination, and preservation of information. Several of their current and emerging services started as internal tools, so there was never any desire to cut corners. Improvements are constant, but rarely disruptive. Likewise, google advertisements are ubiquitous, but so non-intrusive (in most cases) that they aren't resented.
The difference, I guess, comes down to reputation. Plenty of the big vendors have made numerous promises that were filled too late or not at all. Google, on the other hand, consistently delivers, and continues to improve smoothly. Of course, it helps to have a network-centric software engine, where there's only one instance to worry about and no legacy constraints.
I'm going to stop writing now, and leave you with a new batch of Bushisms.
Rarely do you see these apologetic labels change connotation for the better. Terms such as pre-owned, and virtual, smart, and lite/diet/free have steadily declined in popular appeal (where popularity is defined by my extrapolation to other people's heads as I sit alone except for the company of my senile computers). That's not to say that marketers have given them up altogether. It's just that even the [whatever the opposite of savvy is] of consumers have wised up.
Beta, on the other hand, is a term originally used to describe a system or product that was only barely ready, or to apologize and disclaim any responsibility for its shortcomings. Funny thing is, the new standard for beta software is head and shoulders over similar programs that have been around for years. Google maps was in beta for the Silicon Vally equivalent of a metric eon. Gmail, which caused an immediate and frantic redesign of every other web-based email client, proudly displays its beta status, as if to say, "you ain't seen nothin' yet."
A less obvious but likely more fundamental shift is the realization on an institutional level that software is a service and not a product. Certain technical metaphysicists like your humble narrator have been screaming this at varying volumes for varying lengths of time. One powerful symptom is the shying away (by the smarter companies) of the "n.0" release strategy. AOL went from 4.0 to 11.0 in the span of a year without adding (arguably) any substantial value to their product. The idea was that if you saw your buddies using version 5.0 and you were stuck on 4.1.9, that you were missing out, and should pay to upgrade to the new product.
Unfortunately, that strategy puts incentives on companies to add features rather than improve the overall product quality (or to use an about-to-jump-the-proverbial-shark buzzword, the "user experience"). Naming names would be too easy, but the end result is fragmented versions of the software requiring either separate maintenance and support strategies for each version or the abandonment of users of the older version ("forced obsolescence").
What seems to be happening is that loyalty to software vendors doesn't run deep enough to support the chunky release-fix-EOL-rerelease model. Consumers, aside from the revered but routinely screwed early adopters, expect a product to work the first time they buy it, and don't enjoy paying to have initial defects fixed. Thinking of software as a product degrades one of its best advantages, i.e., its softness: if I can't count on what I buy today working six months from now, then I have better uses for my money.
The software-as-service approach, however, makes just about everybody happier, or at least more accountable. That doesn't mean I favor exclusive, long-term contracts with larger vendors. Businesses who bought into, say, Microsoft's enterprise licenses had to wait along with the rest of us for every delay in Longhorn/Vista. I'm no economist, but it would seem to me that the ROI would tend to drop when the investment doesn't return, for example, anything.
Anyway, back to the Greek letters. With very little marketing, google has risen from (or trickled down, depending on your perspective) from a favorite tool of geeks to the only serious game in town. Whereas ask.com has to put pathetic spots in prime time TV, google seems to be doing find by word of mouth.
The reason for this, I think, is that Google grew from a community of users, who were passionately interested in research and the organization, dissemination, and preservation of information. Several of their current and emerging services started as internal tools, so there was never any desire to cut corners. Improvements are constant, but rarely disruptive. Likewise, google advertisements are ubiquitous, but so non-intrusive (in most cases) that they aren't resented.
The difference, I guess, comes down to reputation. Plenty of the big vendors have made numerous promises that were filled too late or not at all. Google, on the other hand, consistently delivers, and continues to improve smoothly. Of course, it helps to have a network-centric software engine, where there's only one instance to worry about and no legacy constraints.
I'm going to stop writing now, and leave you with a new batch of Bushisms.
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