The decline of Twitter and Facebook

ths is gonna b facebk in less then 2 YEARZ!!!1!

I believe that within 2 years, Facebook and Twitter will have a lower standard of being. The reason is not because of them, but because of their users.

It’s the life cycle of a user-intensive website. This is how it normally goes:

1. Small Beginnings. The website pops up as a result of the ingenuity of the human race- how inspiring. Google started as a college side-job.
2. Attention. As the website obtains new users (whether it be in Beta Invitation or not), news sources and blogs start noticing. This happened very fast for Twitter thanks to websites like Mashable.
3. More Attention. Now, not just websites are taking in the fresh breeze, but now a few brand names and celebrities are getting into the hubub. There may even be a mention of the website in a TV show or movie (there must be a hundred songs with/about MySpace).
4. Semi-World Domination. As a result of the mainstream media framing the website in immortality, John Doe took notice, and now he wants in on all the fun. At this point there may be over 200 million people wanting in. Then comes…
5. Total World Domination! At this point, the website is a full-on cooperation. Now the CEO gets to sit down and watch the money flow in. From here, they’ll either start buying smaller companies or attempting to eliminate them through their own service. Google is a prime example with Gmail, Maps, Reader, Blogger, and Shopping. Yahoo! even more so, but I’m not about to type up a list of about 95 services. It is at this point that the corporation may be looked down upon as evil
6. The Decline. Now, problems that have been budding since stage 3-4 are full-blown flowers about to explode with pollen all over your shiny new car. Now, 97% of the time, the explosion in site traffic causes minorities and stereotypically strange people to join the website. On MySpace, this is the emos, pedophiles, and ghetto people with little-to-no grammar and typing abilities. I will guarantee this will happen to Facebook sometime next year, and in 2 years for Twitter (it hasn’t gone full mainstream yet). So for those that think “man, Facebook is infinitely better than MySpace,” prepare to be horrified once you start seeing emo MySpace pictures (see blog post photo) popping up on people’s profiles.

…and here’s some side-notes:

I don’t believe this is going to happen to the blogging world. Blog posts take a long time to type up and require work to maintain, while the typical MySpace addict doesn’t have the patience nor the work ethic. As you may notice, as the years go by, the world around us seems to slow down while people want things done fast. That’s why we have email, text messaging, Google, YouTube, and now, Twitter.

Notice the patterns:

Before, people were happy listening to the radio. All of a sudden society demanded faster ways of hearing what they wanted, so in came the vynil disks. Then, they wanted to hear what they want on the go, so up came high quality transistor radios and decades later, the Walkman. But that wasn’t enough, so in came the more widespread portable casette player and eventually, the all holy CD.  Yet, there was still more to be left desired, so the mp3 player came into play. And nowadays, we’re transitioning to portable media players like the iPod touch, where you can listen to music while you book a flight or find the nearest Chinese takeout place is.

People want things faster, smaller, newer, and revolutionary in one way or another. Facebook and Twitter are growing because of  these factors.

Kinda derpessing how websites become notorious for certain things (like myspace pictures). I belive Twitter’s form of this will be the strange usernames people give themselves (twitter.com/omgiluvdavidsomuch), and the constant posting of tweets (100+ per day).

I am highly concerned for modern civilization as it pertains to social media…

By the way, never trust someone with X’s in their username; they are the very source of my fear.

Website spotlight: 1TB of online storage at your disposal with Oosah

A person like me needs space. Mental space, physical space, and especially, virtual space. My pathetially small 75GB hard drive is almost full, with less than 6GB of space left, and that’s because I’ve been insessively deleting items the past months after getting multiple “not enough hard drive space” dialog boxes. So I started uploading a few of my useless things to my 110mb.com account, which provides me with 5GB of space and a 99% uptime. I’ve never had a problem with them (though a few of my friends have had problems registering and managing thier account), but it’s sad to know that it can only take so much information.

But a couple of days ago, I found a nice little website called Oosah.com. This little site provides users with a full terrabyte of server space for the grand ol’ price of 0 Rupies (this translates to $0 in the US). Wow, that’s like…. 13.6533333 times the ammount of storage my computer can carry [shout-out to Google for doing the calculation]!

However, there are a few drawbacks. At this point in time, you are not allowed to upload executables or documents, and you’re only allowed to upload mp3s less than 9MB in size. [UPDATE: Oosah increased the mp3 limit to 50MB per file!]

But here’s some good news- You can upload images and video to your heart’s content, and even connect to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa to manage files through there.

So go ahead. Go to the site, register, and love it. I double-dog dare you.
Ciao!

~uH

Media exaggeration will kill us all

…one commercial at a time.

Have you ever noticed that what we know and love is greatly decided by the media?

For example NBC/Universal, Sony BMG, and Warner Brothers control what you listen to for the most part. If one of these companies decide to take some guy off the streets and to a studio on Monday, he’ll be sure to hit Billboard by Thursday. Kinda sad, but we’re not complaining.

Hey, wait a minute…. Obama’s on a trip to a 3rd world country! MSNBC’s even showing the speech live! …Wait a minute, I recall O’Reilly talking about McCain’s trip to the same country last week… heh. This is a prime example of media bias. MSNBC’s far left while Fox News hangs around as the only large right-wing news source. I’d say that CNN is pretty neutral, though I see a bit more left than right when Glen Beck isn’t on. Seriously, if we don’t watch the speeches in their entirety, we’ll become victim of paraphrased, filtered information. A humerous example of this can be found here.

Oh, here’s a prime example of media exaggeration. The iPhone. Apple announces it, the crowd goes wild, they sell millions. Then Apple announces the iPhone 3G. The crowd goes wild. 1 million gets sold in about 2 days [by the way, the sudden boost in sales was because Apple started selling the iPhone 3G in over 20 other countries]. But wait a minute… the Nokia N800 was launched about half a year earlier, and that didn’t get on the news. Then Nokia brought out the N810, and still no media coverage. And whatever happened to all of the touch screen phones that HTC has manufactured over the last year or so? Sure, they sell like hotcakes, but it’s not like any non-geek recognizes them. Pft, I’d be suprised if you, the reader, knew why the Samsung Omnia and HTC Touch Diamond [as well as the just-released Touch Pro and upcomming Touch HD] beats the iPhone in just about every aspect.

My closing statement is this: Read up before you speak up. Check the specs, the Wiki articles, and the C-SPAN press releases.

What I desire in a portable media player [PMP]

As you can see in my blog posts, I have a pretty decent number of gripes about media players like the iPod touch, SanDisk Sansa, and Creative ZEN. They all have their strengths, but the weaknesses are massive to me. So in case there’s a product researcher, Zune designer, or just a curious mind out there looking for what a computer hacking graphic designer sees to be the perfect PMP, I’m making this blog post just for you.

Let’s start with the ideal size. Some are as small as Hillary’s chances of getting elected [@] while others are as big as the wallpapers I make [@]. I think the perfect PMP should be in the cutting edge of mediocrity [for the record, I got that phrase from The King of Queens]. My recomended size would be somewhere in between this sizeasy comparison. But keeping in mind that compact PMPs are also a necessity to human survival, here’s my idea of what a small PMP should look like: [@]

Everybody loves having lots of space on their media player! Personally, I don’t settle for a capacity that I can get with a $25 USB drive, such as my 4GB flash drive. And as of late, I’ve been seeing 8GBs going for $30, so I’ve been raising standards. I’d go for something around 16GB if it’s going to be on the smaller, more portable size, and at least 30-40GB if it’s going to be a full-sized PMP such as the iPod touch and Zune 30. To clarify, large/full-sized PMPs should use hard disk storage instead of flash. Hard disk is faster with a higher capacity, as well as being very cost effective. Sure, flash memory is much safer and more durrable, but I’m not going to be dropping my PMP from a 2 story building. Hey, even if I do, chances are that the screen is going to break over the drive being ruined (and supposing that the drive does die, I still make monthly backups of my portable sorage devices).

Moving on, let’s talk about the screen. To me, the screen’s size doesn’t matter nearly as much as the resolution. The higher the pixel density, the better. So without stating any screen size, I’ll go on and state that a small media player should have a QVGA screen (240×320 pixels). For large PMPs, QVGA also works fine, though I’ll much prefer an WVGA-loaded (600×420) PMP if available.

As for other “bonus” features, I guess I wouldn’t mind a touch screen (still not a big fan of them, though). Radio would be nice if I can’t find anything good in my playlist. Mass storage would be awesome. WiFi would be equally awesome. Having an SD or CF slot would be one of the most important features in any media player to me. I hate being limmited to manufacturers specs (which is the root of my hate for Apple), which also brings me to the desire for a skinnable interface, or at least a customizable background image.

Supposing that someone actually made a full-sized media player to the specs I want, it would cost about $300-350, though I find the ideal price for a large PMP is from $100-300. As for small PMPs, I’ll go wtih $75-150; anything more is outrageous.

The closest thing to the ideal large PMP to me would be the Zune 80. The size is decent, it has 80GB space, a QVGA screen (though it should be WVGA for the screen dimensions), radio, WiFi, decent UI, among other features like free etching, all for $250 direct from manufacturer [$240 at Newegg; $200 at craigslist], . Unfortunately, the Zune 80 lacks the expansion slot (among a few minor features) to be perfect. The iPod touch has most of this, though only holds a max 32GB for $430 [the lowest price I found on the Interwebs] and is just as closed up as the Zune.

As for small PMPs, I can’t bring you a verdict. I’m yet to see a defiatively great one, though I wouldn’t mind if Apple took a gander at this iPod mini concept ;D

Blog milestone! I just hit the big one-oh-oh-oh!

That’s right, this blog has just turned 1,000! Erm, not in years old, but in hits. Unless you can hack your way into people’s webcams, you probably can’t tell that I’m dancing while typing this…..! [just did a back-flip]

Anyway, now that I hit the 1K, I’m thinking about renaming the blog from the obvious “uH’s Blog” to something more creative. Who knows? Chances are, by the time you read this, I’ve already changed the name.

So with that said,

Ciao!

And here’s to another 1,000 hits!

$60 cell phone bills are so yesterday’s news! Keep your bills low with Skype and 3G

I’ve always had this theory that everything man-made in this world can be reinvented in a radically new way. For example, LCD replacing analog TVs, digital cameras replacing Polaroids, and the Tesla Roadster and Chevy Volt replacing conventional gas vehicles. And yet, there’s still so much to be reinvented!

Anyway, over the last few days, I’ve been applying my un-named theory to “reinventing” my finances by trying to replace my cell phone and allowing for easier synchronization with how I live. So after lots of research, I’ve found a nice setup that is beneficial to anybody. Besides, it’s about time I get rid of my old Razr and unreliable but economic T-Mobile phone service.

Imagine this: Instead of using your normal cell phone service and your antique camera phone to call, using a plan less than $50/mo that grants you unlimited minutes with free long distance, a network that covers almost the entire US, voice, text, video, and on occasion, games on a cell phone that’s essentially better than the iPhone (and costs less). Oh, and and you’ll be Sounds good to me. Probably sounds good to you. So why are we all just listening to it instead of actually living it?

Okay, so it doesn’t sound easy to get together. That’s because it isn’t easy. So here we go:

 Step one: Get Skype. If you already have one, good for you! Now register for their paid service Skype Pro; It’ll allow you to call land lines and cell phones in the US and Canada (if you happen to live in the States) and get a number of other features (like voice mail) as well as some nice discounts. Once you get that, get SkypeIn, which gives you you’re own personal phone number at the area code of your choice so people can call you at local rates. Both of these services combined cost $8/month, and that’s before Skype Pro discounts (60% off SkypeIn service).

Step two: Get the Nokia N800. If you already have one, then you’re my new best friend. It has a touch screen, full web browser (Firefox core), mp3 player, stereo speakers, a Linux-based OS, WiFi, a webcam, and tons of other features. Oh yeah, and it has Skype. This phone is essentially another iPhone, but tons cheaper ($225 at Amazon) and it came out about 5 months prior to Apple’s pride and joy. The only problem is that you can’t get it in a bundle with a cell phone carrier.

Step three: Get a 3G/4G carrier. AT&T has a 3G that covers much of the US for ~$35 ($40 after fees), though I’d wait a couple of months before signing any contracts. Why? Because Sprint, Nokia, Google, Samsung, and other notable companies are making a combined effort to create a Next-Generation network that’ll connect the US to the internet like never before! Think of it as a WiFi hotspot that spreads to the entire city. This project is called XOHM (pronounced “zom”), and it’s network will be ready for use by the end of this year, delivering speeds from 800kbps to 4mbps, depending on signal strength.

But let’s just say that you go with AT&T’s current 3G PDA Personal service, paying $42 per month. Now you are connected to the internet almost everywhere you go! It’s a good thing you’re using the best deal in internet tablets to date, and that phone works with Skype, too! So now, you’re paying around $48 per month for unlimited minutes nationwide on the strongest network in the world (and dirt cheap international calls). Oh, and you can call through your Skype account both on your cell phone and your PC or notebook. Definitely worth investing in, no?

By the way, because you’ll be using Skype 99% of the time with this system, you can get a cheaper home phone service. You can get rid of it, but then you won’t have anyone to call when an emergency arises (i.e., 911). So yeah, this setup is going to save me more than $350 after one year of use.

Can I get an Amen?

Amen!