Mark Milian

heyniceblog.com 



March 7, 2010

Classmates.com's plan to digitize yearbooks could be an actual business

Classmates.com plans to digitize yearbooks, charge to view online
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/02/classmatescom_to_digitize_yearbooks_offer_online_access.html

(via Instapaper)

For half a decade, as Facebook has become the valedictorian of social networking, Classmates.com has continued to exist. This, I cannot comprehend.

And the company has been able to continuously alert me that it still exists — often through the means of popup ads. How any of this occurs baffles me.

But this idea — to scan and digitize yearbooks and charge for access — is smart. Capitalize on nostalgia. People will pay for memories. People won't pay for people (prostitution excluded).

How this idea eluded Classmates.com for so long, while it was trying to charge for what Facebook was doing better, is beyond me. But here's an opportunity to improve upon yearbooks — by categorizing and organizing them.

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February 21, 2010

Something tells me @gruber did not DM me this


At least, I hope this is a Twitter glitch. (Fortunately, it was.)

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February 18, 2010

Facebook, is there some new swear word I don't know about?


My buddy sent me a note about rock climbing. Above is my wall post response. Followed by Facebook's unenthused warning.

Can anyone tell me if there's some profanity I'm missing here? What are the kids saying these days to describe their sexting and their intercourse and rock 'n roll?

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February 8, 2010

Foursquare's own Fail Whale: The Royal Fail

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January 16, 2010

If you're not watching Conan, now might be a good time to start


I've avoided weighing in on this Conan-Leno NBC debacle, save for a few friendly discussions over beers. There are plenty of people who sit at desks down the hall from or on the floor below me who are much better versed in the ins and outs of the situation to write with authority about it.

But I have to throw a word in just to urge you to watch "The Tonight Show" while it lasts. Not because the ratings will do Conan O'Brien or his job any good now. No, because the show is absolutely hilarious this week and could very well maintain until NBC yanks it off the air.

I had never really watched much late-night TV and still don't (catching occasional rerun on Hulu). I had been a fan of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" a decade or so ago when recurring characters included the Masturbating Bear and other jokes not suitable for a professional broadcast. Back then, the loss of Andy Richter, when he went to pursue a series of failed sitcoms and movie parts, was noticeable but not devastating. Conan held his own.

When I heard Richter would return to the lineup in the move to 11:35, I saw a glimmer of hope to revive a somewhat-underground classic. Unfortunately, the new "Tonight Show" dynamic proved pretty lackluster, with Richter being corralled behind a podium with announcing duties and the occasional one-liner. I checked in from time to time to watch interviews with actors I was interested in or bands that I liked.

This week has been different. I've seen every episode (on Hulu, which probably helps Conan's ratings argument in no way), and I'm sure many others have curiously dropped in since hearing about the late-night shakeup. It seems like now that the hosts have "nothing to lose," as Conan says, the shows have gotten that much funnier.

Sure, the jabs at NBC and Jay Leno and the newly-unemployed jokes are great. But look at that! Andy is on the couch again.

Richter is jumping in during interviews and tag-teaming jokes with Conan. The duo even managed to turn an interview with Rob Lowe, his four-thousandth talk show appearance in all likelihood, into a classic moment on Thursday.

Really, now is the time to watch "The Tonight Show," when it's better than ever, because pretty soon, NBC will scoop in a new dose of stale.

Photo credit: Vtdainfo via Flickr

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January 4, 2010

Googled: "Porn cookies"

"When [Matt Cutts] joined the company in 1999, among his first tasks was to figure out how to block pornography searches, which accounted for one of every four queries. His solution was to assign a lesser weight in the Google algorithm to the words commonly used in porn searches... First he had to figure out the pertinent words. He spent hours poring over porn documents. Then his wife came up with the idea of baking cookies and awarding one "porn cookie" to each engineer who discovered a salacious keyword. Porn search traffic plummeted."
-- "Googled" by Ken Auletta, p56

This book is full of good(gle)ness.

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December 22, 2009

Digg vs. Twitter: Where is @kevinrose most active?

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A picture says a thousand words. This is a screen shot of Digg founder Kevin Rose's site profiles. Image via Charun

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December 16, 2009

Google's site search trick: Learn it, use it, love it

I don't get how there are still so many people unfamiliar with Google's site-specific search. It's such a necessary feature, and often times, Google's search produces better results than the website's own search engine.

If you somehow are still unfamiliar with this trick, here's how it works. Append "site:" and then the domain (no space) followed by your search query. For example:


Google Chrome for Windows apparently has a feature that lets you hit tab from the address bar and get a site search. Can't wait till this comes to the Mac.

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December 13, 2009

Continuous stream: Where Hulu Desktop rocks Boxee

This post was written before Boxee had detailed its beta, which mostly solves this issue. But I think it's still a good philosophical point about passive and active media. Sometimes applications need an autopilot mode.

Boxee has replaced TV. For me, anyway. I have a Mac Mini hooked up to a Panasonic set in my living room and a remote with six buttons to control it.

Boxee, the software, is far from perfect. The developers are smart to call it an alpha. It crashes every other day and has some annoying quirks with adjusting volume.

But unlike Apple TV/Front Row or Hulu Desktop, it gives you access to the wild west (Steve Jobs' less-than-affectionate name for the podcasting world). As you might already know, I love web shows.

Along with everything on Hulu and on my hard drive, I can get streaming channels from Revision 3, Justin.tv, YouTube, Vimeo and, yes, even porn. You won't see that in Apple's or Hulu's walled gardens.

Hulu Desktop has a slightly better interface and a few nice features over Boxee — none of them are enough to convince me to abandon Boxee's pandora's box of content (oh, you can also get Pandora on it). But philosophically, Hulu has done something really smart.

After you finish watching a video on Hulu, the next one in the playlist begins to roll. Like actual television, after one show ends, another begins (after a few minutes of commercials, of course). This is a really important behavior that encourages you to extend your TV time. Oh, well, I really just wanted to watch that one episode, you might say. But this one seems funny, too. I'll let it run.

After finishing a video in Boxee, the app seems to say: Ok, that was fun. So, what should we do now?

When I watch Fail Blog on Boxee, I want to see every video successively, not issue a directive every 20 seconds.

It's a really simple usability choice that has a really profound impact on how people interact with your product.

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December 9, 2009

Glue extension: A case study in pop culture

I found this way too priceless not to share. Searching Google News for more info about the Glue extension for Chrome (Glue is a product recommendation service that has some people in Silicon Valley foaming at the mouth), I noticed these two links side-by-side:

Glue Is Now On Chrome – Technorati Rejoice, Mass Market Yawns?

Kim Kardashian on New Streaked 'Do: "Gluing in Extensions Was Torture!"

It's not funny because both subjects are overhyped and misunderstood. It's funny because the second one, the one that was written based entirely on tweets, got 11 comments. The tech one got three. Barring any other measure of traffic, I think it's safe to say the Kardashian hair thing probably got a lot more hits.

I'm not really sure what else to say, but celebrity gossip is looking like a pretty booming industry right now.

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