The Doppler Effect » web 2.0

Did You Know?

B. Tan — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:57:36 +0000

I stumbled upon this upon while at the library today. It’s a bit old, but still cool nonetheless.

Keeping tabs on your wallet

B. Tan — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:53:01 +0000

In todays rough economic times, it’s always good to play it on the safe side when it comes to your finances. A little while back, I wrote about Mint, a great way to manage and see you finances across all your accounts and assets. Another favorite of mine, is BillShrink. While it’s credit card recommendation tool is similar to Mint’s, they also have a great tool for figuring out the best cell phone plan based on your current usage.

While both those sites are a great way for you to get a sense of your money, it’s also important to know how companies view your financial situation. By law you are entitled to a free credit report every 12 months. You can get this report from each of the three credit reporting bureaus at sites like annualcreditreport.com. What is lacking from this report however, is what most people are really interested in; that is the actual credit score. A site i found (via the Mint blog), is CreditKarma. Upon (free) registration, you will have access to your actual credit score and see how it compares to other demographics. They also provide a bunch of tools to help you calculate how different factors (such as taking out a loan or applying for another credit card) would immediately impact your score.

Having good credit will only make things easier down the road so these sites are definitely worth a look. For more information on all the credit report and credit rating business along with tons of other useful personal finance information, be sure to check out the Mint blog!

Facebook gets “Twitterized”

B. Tan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:24:14 +0000

So late last week, Facebook released yet another design change to its ever-popular website. As with every change to date, the users unleashed a slew of backlash towards the latest update. Most peoples’ displeasure came in the form of angry status updates (“I hate FB…WTF!!!!” etc.) and the always effective petition groups (How to get the old Facebook Back). Personally, I welcomed most of the changes as improvements; it puzzled me why people opposed everything Facebook did to the site.

Upon further thought, my understanding of how most other people view Facebook, is very ironic. As I’ve previously pointed out, Facebook is a social networking tool. This is where most of misunderstanding is happening on the part of all the Facebook haters. Talking with people about the Facebook changes and taking into consideration previously known statistics, I realized something that should have been much more evident to me sooner. Given the number of photos hosted by Facebook, Facebook is one of the top (if not the top) photo-sharing site on the web. People seem to be viewing Facebook as a photo repository; people primarily view others’ photos (a relatively uninvolved activity). The second most used function seems to be events. Facebook events are a good way to organize things on a limited scale. Again, this is activity requires minimal interaction with others. With these as the primary activities people engage in on Facebook, the backlash against Facebook’s changes are better understood.

Most of the major changes were implemented by Facebook to enhance the social activity of the site. When the News Feed debuted, it provided a simple way to see what your friends were up to. Facebook users however were quick to label it “creepy.” The irony here lies in the fact that people appear uncomfortable with the fact that their activity is viewable by others so easily. Such anxiety completely defeats the purpose of using Facebook as a social tool. The most recent change puts the home page’s focus on status updates, much like Twitter. Facebook actually attempted to buy Twitter at one point, but couldn’t reach a deal; the latest change reflects Facebook’s response to a Twitter-like service. The latest Facebook update orients users around status updates in a conversational fashion. This sort of dialogue is clearly much more social that users merely lurking on the site. People dislike this change because it takes the focus off of what they cared about before: photos and events. This isn’t gone, however. The highlights section on the right side shows is meant specifically for photo albums and events to be shown. It could work better than it does, so there is a legitimate point where the new Facebook haters aren’t entirely wrong.

Ultimately, what Facebook’s mission, and what people actually use Facebook for aren’t quite the same. Overall, the concept of the social web is still very new and I think that fact plays a large role in understanding people’s stances on how Facebook has evolved. Hopefully as people begin to better understand what how they want social media to work for them (learning to use privacy features, moderating self-disclosure, choosing not to participate at all, etc.), there will be less hating on change. The web is the antithesis of static; hating on change just because of change represents a high degree of laziness. It will be interesting to see how Facebook (and other social networking services) continues to evolve as mobile web access becomes more ubiquitous. What’re your thoughts on the new Facebook?

Facebook Haters

B. Tan — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:54:45 +0000

So Facebook finally went live with it’s latest design and as expected, the backlash began right away. Search Facebook Groups for “new Facebook” and you’ll see results such as “I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK (STALKER) Layout” or “The New Facebook Sucks!” or “I Hate the New Facebook”. Looking at most of these groups, it is clear that these people are misunderstanding what Facebook is meant to be.

The most common complaint is that Facebook has become more “stalker”-like. I find this claim invalid because Facebook is foremost a “social networking” website. Facebook in it’s About page says:

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

Facebook provides the means to do exactly what it describes. Furthermore, all the information displayed on Facebook is completely voluntary. You even have complete control over who gets to see what information by tweaking the privacy settings. Beyond this, however, the concept of social media isn’t fully understood by everyone it seems. To that, Common Craft has put together a nice video that helps explain it:

So my point is, Facebook is a site meant to foster interaction, hence the Twitter-like newsfeed and wall. Another complaint I’ve seen is that people were familiar with the old layout and claim the new one leaves them lost. To this notion, people need to realize that change is always occurring. The new layout is better suited to it’s social fuctions. Even so, Facebook gives users the option to filter the new Facebook wall to show only newsfeed items or wall posts or even revert back to the older layout. Personally, I think that the new layout is much better suited to widescreen displays (which are becoming increasingly prevalent) and also, the tabbed profile pages means I don’t have to scroll through endless applications to find a friend’s wall; the user interface is much more consistent now.

All that being said, I know the Hateorade will continue to be poured. What I’m really interested in knowing is how Facebook will fare as the most of the current college students (Facebook’s primary demographic) age I’m nearly 20 and I still find myself on Facebook quite often so we’ll see what happens when I’m 25 or 30. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on Facebook?

Web Apps Galore

B. Tan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:11:17 +0000

It seems nowadays, there is a web application for everything. In a few short years, we’ve seen explosive growth in a movement called Web 2.0. This has resulted in a shift towards spending more and more time in our browsers, and less time in standard desktop applications. With so many new web applications popping up left and right, you will invariably see clones and companies trying to best each other. It can definitely be overwhelming trying to keep track of them all. The following are the web apps that make the cut for me. Those who know me well, know that I am extremely particular about the technology I use so I hope you will find these sites as useful as I have.

I’ll start off with a name everyone recognizes. Google. Aside from Google search, Google provides a number of staggering number of services ranging from Picasa and YouTube, to Google Docs, and Grand Central. However, Google’s shining star (aside from their search of course) is Gmail. In the free webmail arena, Gmail is the clear cut winner, scoring major points for innovative features and UI and also keeping everything free (you have to pay Yahoo for anything “advanced”). Another strength of Gmail is that you can port it for use on your own domain name. Anyone who’s used the webmail interface provided by their web host can appreciate Google Apps. I’m assuming most people have already experienced for themselves the power of Gmail; and since I have enough to say about Gmail to merit its own post, those who are unfamiliar can read up about Gmail at Lifehacker.

Mint Logo

Right in line with the usefulness of Google’s apps, lies a website known as Mint. Mint is a financial tool that allows you to consolidate all your financial information presents it in an easy to understand format. It lists all your transactions across all your credit and debit cards and generates graphs of your spending trends (so you can see your financial mistakes in pie chart form ). Also, Mint keeps track of your interest rates on your credit cards, and bank accounts and suggests offers from other banks to help you save. There are also notifications (via email or SMS) that you can setup for your accounts (ex. have Mint txt you about a low account balance). Mint also recently added a feature for tracking investment portfolios, student loans and mortgages. Naturally, having all this sensitive information in one place is a reason to be wary. However, Mint does not store your personal data and uses bank-grade encryption. If you’re still skeptical, Mint has been featured in the likes of The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Time, BusinessWeek, CNN Money, The NY Times…the list goes on and on (read: Mint is pretty legit). In the future, Mint plans add feature such as bill pay making it an even more powerful tool. Like every good web app, they have demo video which you should definitely check out.

The next app, Dropbox (still in private beta but I have a few invitations available…) is one of those tools that you’ll wonder how you lived without. In my quest for a free iDisk alternative, I found this nifty app that seems to be much better implemented than services such as Box.net and free unlike SugarSync. Another plus is that the developers seem extremely in tune with the user community, in terms of addressing concerns, feature requests and being active on the Dropbox forum. It’s sort of hard to explain exactly how Dropbox operates, so I’ll just let you watch yet another screencast (I promise it’s worth it).

While those are the web apps I use on a daily basis, there are still many helpful apps out there I haven’t mentioned:

http://epassportphoto.com/ – Essentially free and instant passport photos
Pandora – Must have if you like music (who doesn’t?)
Hulu – Free, fast and legal web TV.

As you can tell, I basically live on the internet; computers do everything for me. But hey, what’s wrong with that? I hope you find these web apps useful, or if you know of any better ones I’d love to hear suggestions. Do you have any favorites I missed?

Google’s Knol: The Monetizable Wikipedia

B. Tan — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:20:29 +0000

Via Digg (via TechCrunch)

Today Google has launched Knol, its Wikipedia alternative that holds authors accountable for the articles they write. Each article is created by a team of authors, who receive attribution, and are allowed to take part in a rev-share for AdSense ads on their page.

I’m not entirely convinced that Knol will become that popular. This day in age, being first has a lot to do with a product’s success. While Knol address the one main criticism of Wikipedia, article integrity, that alone doesn’t look like enough to chip away at Wikipedia’s popularity and sheer volume of information. That being said, I do believe that the open editing of Wikipedia has held up better than most would expect. I’ll be interested to see how the perception of Wikipedia changes (particularly in academia) over the next several years.

The new face of Facebook

B. Tan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:38:53 +0000

Everyone’s favorite procrastination tool is due for it’s 2nd major makeover. I’ve been playing with the new version for a little while now and evidence of other social networking sites have made their way into Facebook’s new design. The look and feel is mostly the same; the single largest change is the merging of the newsfeed with the wall reminiscent of Twitter or Pownce. You’ll also notice the ability to clean up your profile by using tabs to organize all your content; applications no longer dominate the page. With these changes, emphasis is being put more on social interaction. While I like the direction Facebook is taking, most Facebook users will probably immediately oppose the change espescially given the fact that the Twitter-like concept of the new Facebook is still largely unfamiliar to most people. I fully expect hundreds of “Petition to change Facebook back to the way it was” groups to pop up.

Below are a few screenshots I took so you can see for yourself before the change is actually launched. Please note that the Facebook Chat bar floating in the middle of the images is just a bug with the method I used to take the screenshots.

Main Page

What do you think of the new Facebook?

YouTube to hand over all user histories and IP addresses!

B. Tan — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:15:48 +0000

Due to a recent judge ruling, google will be forced to turn over every record of ever video watched by youtube users, including user’s names, and IP addresses to Viacom.

Evil Eyes and Shipping

B. Tan — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:36:36 +0000

Yesterday, I was at Lenscrafters looking to check out a pair of these Nike Maxsight sport-tinted contact lenses. I think they would have totally creeped out anyone I would run against next outdoor track season. Except they don’t make them anymore. Does any one know of any similar products?

Also, I recently stumbled upon a website called Track the Pack. It allows you to track your packages, but the reason I like this site is because you can track all your packages, regardless of service, in one place. Plus the all FedEx’s website is hideous anyways (not that the other ones are much better). Another cool feature is the ability to save your packages so you can simply log in later to check your packages’ status as opposed to having to copy-and-paste several tracking numbers each time you want to check. Track the Pack also displays a mini Google map to provide a visual as to where your package is geographically. There’s a spiffy webapp for everything nowadays isn’t there?

The SEO Rapper

B. Tan — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:41:51 +0000

If you’ve ever created your own website and love hip-hop, then you’ll relate to this song by the SEO Rapper: SEO consultant by trade with a rapping alter ego. But I guess the references he makes would only be funny to a select few internet geeks (read: people such as myself). Video after the jump.

SEO Rapper has like 4 other so be sure to check them out.For the less technologically inclined, SEO stands for search engine optimization. Still lost? Google it. I promise the next post won’t be so nerdy.