badice.com – musings for the masses
Cheah Chu Yeow has posted something interesting about the new Orkut service/community from Google. People are putting their ability to invite people up for sale on eBay. I don’t understand it, some people will do anything for a buck.
On the topic of Orkut I am mostly bored with it. I don’t see much potential for it just like I didn’t see any potential with Friendster. I’ll give it a few more weeks just to see what happens.
Certain individuals have been nagging me to get my class schedule updated, so, I updated it. You can look at my class list here.
Well Google has opened their own little community which operates a lot like Friendster except Google’s service is by invite only. What is the name of this new service you ask, Orkut. First off, what kind of crappy name is that? Orkut!? Sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings… Secondly, what is Google’s drive behind all of this? To me (and others) it seems that Google may be trying to capture more demographic information on their users, which is a little sly, but information is king nowadays. Everyone wants to know who their customer is so they can better suit them, the problem is that they aren’t better suiting anyone except themselves. 55% of all businesses lose their best customers within 5 yrs. of their first purchase and since it is more costly to get a new customer than it is to keep an exsisting one I don’t see why any company would allow this statistic to come up. Service people, that’s all it takes. Why are places like Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom’s still in business? You can find nearly the same clothes at other places but both of those stores cater to a niche, the service niche. They are the most helpful people in the world and customers want that, over anything else.
In other news, I have my first exams coming up, stressful times, let me tell ya. Managerial Accounting will probably give me the most trouble as it is the most difficult to follow and the teacher is very cocky and likes to trick the class. So studying will be a priority over the next few weeks….
Well, the weather gets nice and then nasty, over and over. We are supposed to get more snow sometime this weekend and into next week… The only bad thing is that the air is so dry that your lips get chapped as soon as you step outside.
TGIF! I need to study, badly. I have three tests very soon and a programming assignment due Monday. Too much stuff in too little time… I really want to do some serious work on my truck and get it mint condition but $$$ is always a factor.
Simon Willison has done it again with another great article on More Usable Web Forms. There are some really good pointers and tricks to help a webmaster make his form easier for the user to understand and fill out. Simon is right about the <label> tag, I had no idea it even exsisted….
It is a windy, cold, miserable day up here…. The temp is 38 but with the wind blowing at 45mph it feels like 25. It’s horrible. Hopefully it will warm up but that possibility will probably not happen anytime this week as it is supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow and Wednesday. But like I have always said, the weathermen are just guessing so who knows what we’ll get.
I will post my new class and work schedule as soon as I get a chance because I know oh so many of you are interested.
I really like the new ALA article on the Perfect 404. Everyone hates the “Page Not Found” errors and this article gives designers and web developers tips on how to make their sites’ 404 errors easier to get out of. This is definitely worth a read and should be taken into serious consideration when designing your next site. I am redoing all of my error pages, not just 404 error pages, so that they respond to user input just like in the article.
I have a whole lot of nothing to add… I didn’t do much of anything this weekend except homework and sitting around.
I should have a few reviews up at http://www.webdevreviews.com very soon as I am finished writing one and almost done with the second.
This week really shouldn’t have to start tomorrow. I am not prepared to go back into my programming class and have Java “evangilism” shoved down my throat again… But, I guess I’ll just have to take it.
So I am sitting in my ISQS class right now bored out of my mind! All this guy goes on about is Structured programming and Object Oriented Programming and how OOP is better. No, that’s you’re opinion bud, just because you say Object Oriented programming is better doesn’t make it so. Yes, I know, OOP is great for somethings but procedural programming is just as good. I am very tired of listening to teachers preach their philosophy of programming when in all truth they are just repeating what they have been told with no real world experience.
Jeremy has posted a great little snippet about “Geek Dress Code”… Read it here. Great find Jeremy!
Well there is no school today so I get to spend my day at work, doing the same ‘ole, same ‘ole. I haven’t really updated lately and that’s my fault but I should be back to my normal postings soon.
School has so far gone well; I like almost all of my clases (except for Managerial Accounting), so this semester should be pretty good. Why do I not like Managerial Accounting you ask? Well for one the teacher thinks that accountants are gods or something and should be treated as such. He was bold enough to say that accounting is the only true “profession” in a business school, everything else is an occupation. Whatever, just because you can add, subtract, divide and multiply doesn’t make you any more special than anyone else, get off your high horse.
My Marketing class is going to be great! The professor in there is really cool and likes to have fun. The first question he asked (that we didn’t have to answer) when we walked in was “Do you roll your toiletpaper or crumple it when you use it?”. Everyone laughed and stated that we will actually be reviewing a study that was done about that very thing.