Monthly Archives: November 2009

My Friend

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Earlier this week one of my best friends passed away. I hadn’t spoken with him in ages since he attended a different college. I checked his Facebook to see what he was up to, and I learned he had passed away. It’s unbelievable, surreal. Same age as me, still young, had a whole life to live, and then he was gone. I had only met him two years back. He was a great guy. Someone you’d rarely get the opportunity to know. It’s not often I can meet someone with his character. There are so many people with pretenses, fake people. He was the most real, the most down to earth. I remember meeting him for the first time, going to his dorm room, shaking hands and everything. I can remember what he looked like, his mannerisms, his voice. He was generous, talented, intelligent and had the greatest sense of humor. He was always smiling and upbeat, and he would always lift your spirits. We’d always be in his room, joking around, talking about random things. I went to a baseball game with him, I was hoping that I’d get a chance to play golf with him. It’s saddening and frightening to realize that somebody I had known so well is gone. I’m left with vague feelings of dread and unhappiness I can’t seem to shake.

Phases Of Internet Development

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With each transition the new overshadows, but does not entirely eliminate the old.

Yahoo!

First it was the portal. The internet was small, there wasn’t much information and people wanted to see everything that was the internet. Thus portals were created. They pretty much contained all there was to see.

Google

But the internet grew and portals became unwieldy. Search engines became necessary to sort through all the content portals could no longer contain. This marked a decline in portals.

Facebook

People are now tired of searching the internet all alone, and want to know that other people are also surfing and whatnot. Social networking sites are overlaid on existing websites to create a social, interactive component.

As for search engines, there is still so much that can be done to improve them. While the above are trends that encompass the entire internet, there are also trends within each of these individual categories.

Search engines are ever so slowly undergoing a transition. They are becoming smarter in the sense that they understand what you are searching for. Now you can type “weather”, for example, and Google won’t just give you results, but it will display the actual weather in your area based on your IP. Wolfram|Alpha is an example of an attempt to create search engines that provide accurate answers to what you are looking for. But the weather example is just the most basic example of what could be carried out on an even grander scale.

Why will this happen? While there’s lots of great content online, there’s also far too much garbage and with SEO, the system can be gamed. This means users are not getting what they want. For common queries, expect to see search engines generating their own results that dominate the page, rather than having third party results as is currently the case.

Website Relation Web

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Create a web application to determine the degrees of separation between two websites using data from Quantcast.com. Type in two website URLs. The program will then input those into Quantcast, and using the Audience Also Likes output, input those for both websites until there is a common website.

Super chill unrelated song. Amazingly smooth voice.

Motorola DROID Commercial

Web Application Design

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Prices are significantly lower than I had anticipated. What I thought would cost $10,000 to get designed costs at most only $5,000. That’s definitely a good thing for me. I’m going to throw all of the money I’ve earned into a game of pitch and toss into the web application concept. If all else fails I’m fairly confident I can still sell that for break even or profit.

That said, if the first one is successful, then I’ll probably get the next concept coded. I don’t care much for this one, so I don’t care if the concept is taken.

Basically it will be like Hot Or Not, except it will be slightly more “scientific”. There will only be head shot photos, and even those must be arranged onto a grid by the user. Because it eliminates all the other variables like clothing, posture, etc. it won’t skew the attractiveness results, and places the focus squarely on the face. I’m not sure what type of ranking system to use yet either, but that will come. But the experiment has to pay for itself at least, so it’ll also have dating website functionality.

So tired. So incredibly tired. Head’s hurting and I’m feeling short of breath. I hope I’m not coming down with the flu. This would be an awful time. Organic chemistry test, web application to design and get coded, money that doesn’t make its way into my pocket by itself. With the hope that one day, I’ll have a day where (I can be fairly young 22?) and sit in my backyard without a care in the world. That would be great.