Oh the Internet. Has there ever been an invention so useful and beautiful as it? Obviously, we all use the Internet for more reasons than one. It has everything one needs! Shopping, ratings, information, time-killers, the Internet has it all! Despite these wonderful things, there are still some aspects of the Internet that make us gnash our teeth out of rage. You all know what I'm talking about, those tiny little things that drive you insane.
5. Youtube speech bubbles
remember when Youtube videos were exactly what they are broadcast as; videos? Yea, me neither. For some reason, one of the CEOs of Youtube decided it would be a bright idea to allow its users to upload speech bubbles into otherwise good videos. Now, I find it impossible to watch a video without getting spammed with these little boxes asking me to subscribe to the uploader or to visit his site! It wouldn't be so bad if these bubbles weren't blocking the video I'm trying to enjoy...
4. Websites without back and forward arrows
Do you ever get on a site and see something really interesting on the side of the screen? When you do, go ahead and click it, why not, you can always just click the back arrow to return to the previous screen right? Right?! Not the case in those bear traps of websites that don't allow you to return to the previous screen. Its made even worse if it was a diamond in the rough, a website that was truly fascinating, yet unknown. And now, due to the lack of the back arrow, your little treasure is lost forever.
3. CAPTCHAS
For those of you who don't know what CAPTCHAS are, I'm sure you have encountered them. They are the squiggly and indecipherable words you must enter so that the computer knows you are not a machine. Although they do serve a purpose, why must they be so difficult to read? Also, as if CAPTCHAS of real words wasn't enough, I started encountering random jumbles of letters that left me screaming out of frustration after my 14th attempt at deciphering them.
2. Pop-up adds
I think we can all agree that these things are the spawn of Satan. If you have never seen a pop-up add, you have probably never used the Internet. Well, if you haven't seen over a hundred pop-up adds you have probably never used the Internet. I understand that some sites need these things to produce revenue so that they don't have to be shut down, but why must pop-up adds be some terrible to deal with? I'm pretty sure my hatred of these things doesn't need to be explained. I especially hate those ninja pop-up adds. You know, the ones that show up out of nowhere when you try to click on something, and then all of a sudden you are finding out how you can claim your free Ipad. You add a loud, annoying voice, some blaring music, and some flashing lights, and you are truly in for a hellacious experience.
Now for the most annoying part of the Internet, I'm sure the suspense is killing you. But don't worry, because I'm never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down.
1. Rickrolling
Dear God. I honestly don't think that anything in this world has ever driven me crazier than the voice of Rick Astley. I'm sure at one point in time I might had been able to enjoy "Never Gonna Give You Up," but ever since the phenomena that erupted in 2008, I can't stand to even hear the words stranger and love in the same sentence. Granted, rickrolling has definitely slowed down in more recent years, but catching that one random video that still pulls of this torture brings back flashbacks from the dark years.
Showing posts with label websites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label websites. Show all posts
Monday, April 25, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Facebook: The Anti Social Network
Do you remember when you made your first Facebook account? I'll be honest, it's not the clearest memory I have, but I'm willing to bet that I was as happy as a dog with a new chew toy. Facebook revolutionized the social aspect of our lives. No longer do we have to resort to gossip or talking directly to friends to stay updated on everyone's lives. That knowledge is now just a few clicks away. As Facebook continues to grow, however, this revolution is beginning to hurt many aspects of the average user's life.
Yea, it's much easier to communicate and catch up on Facebook than in real life right? That is what makes it so great right? Both of these points are true, and are responsible for the ever growing phenomenon that is Facebook. Yet, both of these points have changed the relationships we hold with our friends and family. It's obvious that face to face conversations and real time interactions are much more intimate than a Facebook chat or wall post. Although many of us undoubtedly know this, we still make little to no attempts to meet up with each other and share personal time. I mean, honestly, why should we? Facebooking is so much easier and can be done from the comfort of your own home and requires little effort, so social outings with those that you are closest with have ceased to exist.
If you really think about it, Facebook lacks many of the key components of human interaction. Personally, my Facebook chats, wall posts, and inbox messages are much different than how I would react in a real time conversation. They all lack emotional expressions, and instead of being forced to quickly think of a response like in real time, I am able to think about what I want to say, weigh the consequences, and decide upon the best response. This isn't how humans were meant to interact! A Facebook conversation isn't a real conversation; it is an empty shell of a conversation lacking the main aspect that allows attachment to develop between individuals, emotion.
Robin Dunbar wrote an article for the New York Times about the decline of friendships without face to face interaction. You can find the page here, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26dunbar.html?_r=l&nl=todaysheadlines, but essentially Dunbar states that the average human is only capable of maintaining around 150 meaningful relationships, and that our emotional attachment declines with any given person by about 15 percent every year if we don't have face to face contact. The average user has more "friends" than the maximum possibility of 150, which shows that we allow random strangers into our lives (if you don't believe me, look through your friends list and see how many people you know well enough to consider a friend). Also, since Facebook allows us to cut real time interactions with some of our closer acquaintances while still being able to communicate with them, we are under the illusion that these people are still some of our closest friends. This sounds pretty anti-social to me.
Now I'm not saying everyone should go out and delete their Facebook accounts right away, far from it. I support Facebook and what it does for us. What I am saying is that we should not fall prey to the illusion Facebook offers us. It is not the equivalent of real human interaction, but a replacemen. So maybe you should call up that old friend sometime, go out to lunch or just simply meet up to spend some time with them. If not, who knows, you just might lose their friendship.
Friday, April 8, 2011
The 10 Most Innovative Web Companies
The web has completely changed how people interact, how business is done and basically the day-to-day life. To be influential in this economy, it is almost imperative to operate an efficient and consumer-friendly website. If you expect to be a top company without a website, you are bound to be missing a large percentage of the market share. These top 10 companies have created websites that have taken off at extraordinary paces and have many other companies following in their footsteps.
1. Twitter
In 2009, when Twitter began, they had around 20 million users and today they have more than 200 million! When the company first began, they were unsure of how they were going to collect money. They allowed users to sign up for free with no extra charges added. When the economy began to take an upturn, Twitter created ads that companies could buy that would cost them around $100,000 to purchase.
2. Google
Google has seemed to stay at the top of their game ever since they entered the web economy. They have been ever expanding ever since creating the Google website with all different things that users can "play" with. With all of these applications that users were freely allowed to use and view, it was also unsure for Google how they were actually going to make their money in the beginning. Google then created AdSense and AdWords for companies to be able to advertise and show up in their search results. In addition, Google also created Google Instant which has a 98% adoption rate. There are approximately 2 million searches a second and 3 billion per day.
3. Zynga
Zynga is the company that created the FarmVille game for Facebook. With their 400 million dollar return from the game, they decided to create CityVille which was released in January. After only a month, CityVille had 100 million users, making it the number one app on Facebook. Presently, the Zynga companies net worth is estimated to be $7 to $9 billion. At the rate that this company is going, they can only see the bright future ahead.
4. Netflix
Netflix began by their mail-in DVD business. In order to block out the competition, Netflix began streaming services in the United States and in Canada. From 2010, it is estimated that Netflix profited approximately $2.2 billion in revenues. Netflix has more than 20 million subscribers which has in turn basically over-run BlockBuster.
5. Foursquare
Defending its competitive position, growing exponentially, and making check-ins a must-use marketing tool for major brands. Astronaut Douglas Wheelock earned the NASA Explorer Badge when he checked in while orbiting the Earth; a story that reflect Foursquare's meteoric rise. The company now hosts around 7.5 million users, a 50% increase from September 2010.
1. Twitter
In 2009, when Twitter began, they had around 20 million users and today they have more than 200 million! When the company first began, they were unsure of how they were going to collect money. They allowed users to sign up for free with no extra charges added. When the economy began to take an upturn, Twitter created ads that companies could buy that would cost them around $100,000 to purchase.
2. Google
Google has seemed to stay at the top of their game ever since they entered the web economy. They have been ever expanding ever since creating the Google website with all different things that users can "play" with. With all of these applications that users were freely allowed to use and view, it was also unsure for Google how they were actually going to make their money in the beginning. Google then created AdSense and AdWords for companies to be able to advertise and show up in their search results. In addition, Google also created Google Instant which has a 98% adoption rate. There are approximately 2 million searches a second and 3 billion per day.
3. Zynga
Zynga is the company that created the FarmVille game for Facebook. With their 400 million dollar return from the game, they decided to create CityVille which was released in January. After only a month, CityVille had 100 million users, making it the number one app on Facebook. Presently, the Zynga companies net worth is estimated to be $7 to $9 billion. At the rate that this company is going, they can only see the bright future ahead.
4. Netflix
Netflix began by their mail-in DVD business. In order to block out the competition, Netflix began streaming services in the United States and in Canada. From 2010, it is estimated that Netflix profited approximately $2.2 billion in revenues. Netflix has more than 20 million subscribers which has in turn basically over-run BlockBuster.
5. Foursquare
Defending its competitive position, growing exponentially, and making check-ins a must-use marketing tool for major brands. Astronaut Douglas Wheelock earned the NASA Explorer Badge when he checked in while orbiting the Earth; a story that reflect Foursquare's meteoric rise. The company now hosts around 7.5 million users, a 50% increase from September 2010.
Most significantly, the company has steamed ahead in the face of growing competition from Gowalla, Google Latitude, Loopt, and especially Facebook Places. It launched a brand new version of the service in March, unveiled an innovative merchant platform, and has some half billion check-ins in the last year alone.
6. Tumblr
For turning stray thoughts into big business. The New York based almost Twitter except without the "how many characters you can use" restriction, is drawing around 30,000 new members each day. More impressively, around 4 billion page views per month. In November, it scored between $25 million and $30 million from investors, bringing its total past $40 million.
7. Crimson Hexagon
For developing a revolutionary way to monitor and measure Twitter chatter. Crimson Hexagon began at Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science but has grown into the prime analytics tool for HP, Microsoft, and CNN, which use the website to gauge public perceptions.
The company monitors the Web, tracking and learning the specifics of what people are saying in social media in real-time. Beyond the positive-or-negative analysis of keyword and semantic searches and with as much as 97 percent accuracy.
8. Stocktwits
Created the CNBC of the digital age. On this site, live streams are pulled from Facebook and Twitter; recently acquired service Abnormal Returns culls the best financial news stories from the Internet; weekly Webinars and video market recaps are offered; and StockTwits.tv features original programming around the clock. In other words, StockTwits has become an indispensible real-time financial tool for the social media age. It also boasts more than 300,000 monthly unique hits.
9. Microsoft
Reinvented their search market competition with Bing, the only REAL Google challenger left. Thanks to strategic partnerships with Kayak, Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook, Bing has begun nipping away at Google's market share and kept competition from becoming a monopoly. Earlier this month, Bing became the second most-popular search engine worldwide.
10. Conaco Productions
Kept Conan relevant long after he was yanked off the air. Even after his unfortunate departure from NBC, Conan O'Brien kept his brand red-hot thanks to a squad of 8 full-time Team Coco Digital staffers running his social media like pros.
The millions of views on YouTube, hundreds of thousands of fans on Facebook, and millions of followers on Twitter. To hype his TBS show's November debut, Conan's team also started a 24-hour live webcast of the production, built fan pages on Flickr and Tumblr and launched a bright orange Conan blimp, which spotters could check into on Foursquare.
Monday, March 7, 2011
4 Online Job Search Sites Every College Graduate Should Use
I am soon to graduate from the University of Mississippi with a degree in Criminal Justice. Throughout these four years of college, I have learned everything from time management, exceptional organization skills, to public speaking. Now that I have a few new skills to prepare me for the rest of my life, what am I supposed to do now? This is when we start looking for careers, my fellow grads. Once we have acquired a sheet of paper worth thousands of dollars (also known as a DIPLOMA), we can now utilize the internet to surf the cyber world for full time jobs to pay off that framed sheet of paper.
I am here to show you four websites and applications that can jump-start us into any field of work we want! Sounds much easier than physically removing ourselves from our college town, flying to a city, and literally filling out applications, right?
1. First, let me introduce you to Indeed.com. As most job hunting websites, it allows you to choose a keyword or title to help narrow a search to your needs, as well as a blank to choose your city of choice. I especially liked Indeed because the initial search is so simple and not as "busy." Many sites post advertisements and ads all over the initial page, but to my favoring, this one does not.
Since I am in the particular mood for warm weather, I am choosing to search by city: Miami, Florida. The results brought up several options in which I could review. Initially, the site lists the titles of each position. If I choose to, I can narrow my search more. Some of the options Indeed allows you to choose from are salary ranges, titles, company name, location, job type, and by employer. This allows you to find the ideal job for the ideal candidate, the Ole Miss graduate!
2. Speaking of graduate, let's look at a website that is more closely related to our level of schooling. This leads us to Monster College. This site is an example to what I was referring to earlier when I was describing the "busy" initial page. There are links everywhere, images galore, and of course there is a picture of a college graduate, smiling ever so happily because he has used this website to find a job to pay for his ever so extensive student loan debt.
This site, however, does offer several more options for the job seeker. This site allows you to post a resume for employers to review. It also has a template section to help you build a resume (if you have yet to build one this far into you college career...). The tab labeled Career Advice allows you to view chat forums, article pertaining to job hunting, quizzes, as well as submit your own forum relating to your brutal experience job hunting. I highly recommend this site for anyone who is prepared to start from scratch throughout their search. My only advice, do not to what Michael Scott did in The Office, when he searched Monsters.com.
3. The third site a college graduate should consider visiting is USA Jobs. This is operated by the government, and allows you to search jobs that are directly related to the Federal Government. This site is recommended for anyone who will pass a drug screening, and wants a job that looks nice on a resume for the next time one chooses to find a new job.
This site has a Student and Recent Grads link as well. Following this link takes you to another page that allows you to also choose keywords, choose a location, as well as something new. This new slot allows you to search all student jobs, student temporary employment, student career experience, federal career intern, summer, or other student. This may help you if you are open to settling for anything other than a full time position. You may also create an account on this website that also allows your resume to be reviewable, as well as receive notifications for position openings.
4. Lastly, I have stumbled onto a website that goes well for anyone wanting to work in athletics. TeamWork Online allows you to search jobs with several different teams, venues, or leagues in which you may choose. Listed are also career fairs, new job listings, as well as sports news so you are prepared for a potential interview question perhaps.
Setting up an account with TeamWork Online is free as well. You can receive periodic e-mails listing job openings, as well as notifications when anything on your profile matches a job opening. I decided to see what this site was more about in depth. Since I am from Memphis, I chose the Memphis Grizzles tab leading me the Grizzlies website. Keep in mind that selecting a team does lead you away from TeamWork Online and to the sport's official website. From there, I am already on the Grizzlies job opening section where I can review how well my very expensive Degree does not match any of the openings with my favorite sports team.
Perhaps it as this point where I can go back to any of the other websites and search for jobs that I may be better qualified for. Even better, I can sit back on my weekends, and instead of searching for job openings, I may just buy tickets to Grizzlies game and be ready to pass a drug test for my Federal job.
I am here to show you four websites and applications that can jump-start us into any field of work we want! Sounds much easier than physically removing ourselves from our college town, flying to a city, and literally filling out applications, right?
1. First, let me introduce you to Indeed.com. As most job hunting websites, it allows you to choose a keyword or title to help narrow a search to your needs, as well as a blank to choose your city of choice. I especially liked Indeed because the initial search is so simple and not as "busy." Many sites post advertisements and ads all over the initial page, but to my favoring, this one does not.
Since I am in the particular mood for warm weather, I am choosing to search by city: Miami, Florida. The results brought up several options in which I could review. Initially, the site lists the titles of each position. If I choose to, I can narrow my search more. Some of the options Indeed allows you to choose from are salary ranges, titles, company name, location, job type, and by employer. This allows you to find the ideal job for the ideal candidate, the Ole Miss graduate!
2. Speaking of graduate, let's look at a website that is more closely related to our level of schooling. This leads us to Monster College. This site is an example to what I was referring to earlier when I was describing the "busy" initial page. There are links everywhere, images galore, and of course there is a picture of a college graduate, smiling ever so happily because he has used this website to find a job to pay for his ever so extensive student loan debt.
This site, however, does offer several more options for the job seeker. This site allows you to post a resume for employers to review. It also has a template section to help you build a resume (if you have yet to build one this far into you college career...). The tab labeled Career Advice allows you to view chat forums, article pertaining to job hunting, quizzes, as well as submit your own forum relating to your brutal experience job hunting. I highly recommend this site for anyone who is prepared to start from scratch throughout their search. My only advice, do not to what Michael Scott did in The Office, when he searched Monsters.com.
3. The third site a college graduate should consider visiting is USA Jobs. This is operated by the government, and allows you to search jobs that are directly related to the Federal Government. This site is recommended for anyone who will pass a drug screening, and wants a job that looks nice on a resume for the next time one chooses to find a new job.
This site has a Student and Recent Grads link as well. Following this link takes you to another page that allows you to also choose keywords, choose a location, as well as something new. This new slot allows you to search all student jobs, student temporary employment, student career experience, federal career intern, summer, or other student. This may help you if you are open to settling for anything other than a full time position. You may also create an account on this website that also allows your resume to be reviewable, as well as receive notifications for position openings.
4. Lastly, I have stumbled onto a website that goes well for anyone wanting to work in athletics. TeamWork Online allows you to search jobs with several different teams, venues, or leagues in which you may choose. Listed are also career fairs, new job listings, as well as sports news so you are prepared for a potential interview question perhaps.
Setting up an account with TeamWork Online is free as well. You can receive periodic e-mails listing job openings, as well as notifications when anything on your profile matches a job opening. I decided to see what this site was more about in depth. Since I am from Memphis, I chose the Memphis Grizzles tab leading me the Grizzlies website. Keep in mind that selecting a team does lead you away from TeamWork Online and to the sport's official website. From there, I am already on the Grizzlies job opening section where I can review how well my very expensive Degree does not match any of the openings with my favorite sports team.
Perhaps it as this point where I can go back to any of the other websites and search for jobs that I may be better qualified for. Even better, I can sit back on my weekends, and instead of searching for job openings, I may just buy tickets to Grizzlies game and be ready to pass a drug test for my Federal job.
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