Why is MyFace so Popular?

Link to a blog about why MySpace is so popular in spite of it's horrible UI. I have been wondering a similar thing about Xanga recently. I don't get why so many people us Xanga when it's interface is so horrible. Even some of my programmer friends use it. Of all people they should know better. Anyways, the conversation that is in the comments section discusses a lot of interesting ideas. I don't really know if I really agree with it all, but something to think about.

What Should I Do Next?

Criteria for deciding how much planning/research is optimal:

• Payoff varies widely among different options.
• Probability of randomly choosing high payoff options is low.
• Planning/research has a high probability of leading to high payoff options.
• Cost of planning/research is great enough to negate the benefit of choosing high payoff options.
• There exists significant side benefits to the planning/research.

Ideas adapted from a lecture slide Barry Boehm in CSCI 510 called "Conditions for Successful Prototyping (or Other Info-Buying).

On the other hand, there is always the "Do something even if it is wrong idea" which points out that you can spend so much time considering alternatives that you never actually end up doing anything at all.

Short auto-bio of Steve Jobs given as part of a commmencement speech at Stanford

I was browsing on the internet and stumbled upon this transcript of speech given by Steve Jobs. I always thought that Steve Jobs was some arrogant jerk. I have no idea where I got this impression but some it got passed down to me. Sorry Steve. I just stole this photo of Steve Jobs of somebody's flickr (legally), but I have no idea if this has anything to do with the commencement speech even though banner is Stanford's. Here is an excerpt.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography.

Trying Picasa2 out

Okay I'm trying the Picasa2 Blog this feature out. Old picture of me eating with some UCLA Grace On Campus buddies at A&W after a retreat.

Quote from Boehm

"Unquantifiable goals require subjective resolution
But effective presentation techniques can help decision process"
-Barry Boehm

Barry Boehm makes lots of good points. Just a recent point from lecture.

I know it is pretty obfuscated, but basically he is saying that when you are trying to make (business) decisions based upon goals that you cannot quantify (represent numerically) you need to rely upon subjective reasoning, but using effective presentation techniques can help make these decisions a lot easier.

I guess what exactly is mean by effective presentation techniques would really be helpful. I'll get to that later.

Why OpenDocument Won

An article, "Why OpenDocument Won" mostly about how Microsoft will lose the document format war. The article shows organizations that are picking up the Open Office format OpenDocument over the Microsoft Word format as their standard format. And gives reasons for why the OpenDocument format is more suited to these organization's needs.
If this articles predictions are true that Microsoft will lose the war over the document standard it is very significant to the future of Microsoft since their Office lines accounts for 40% of their revenue according to this article.

Sun and Google joining forces

Apparently Sun and Google made some sort of a deal recently. The google task bar will come with any Jave Runtime Environment download and Google will help promote the spread of OpenOffice. Some parts of the deal are not yet publicized.

Old PC Magazine Article examining blogging phenomenon

I was curious how many scholarly papers have been published about the blogging phenomenon. So I did a google scholar search on blog. I found no papers from academia of interest. (I really didn't search that long.)

I found an interesting old PC Magazine article from 2002. I guess it was an early article about blogging. The author lists 5 reasons why he thought people blog. I thought they were interesting.

Ego gratification. Some people need to be the center of attention. It makes them feel good about themselves to tell the world what important things they've been doing and what profound thoughts they've been having. Curiously, while this looks like the most obvious reason for a Web log, I think it's probably the least likely reason, since it's too trite and shallow.

Antidepersonalization. When people begin to think that they are nothing more than a cog in the wheel of society, they look for any way to differentiate themselves. The Web log proves they are different. Just read it. You'll see.

Elimination of frustration. Day-to-day life, especially in the city, is wrought with frustration, and the Web log gives people the ability to complain to the world. You get to read a lot of complaining in these logs. If you think I'm a complainer, oh boy!

Societal need to share. As a cynic who gets paid to write, I have a hard time with this explanation. But it seems some people genuinely like to "share," and this is one way.

Wanna-be writers. A lot of people want to be published writers. Blogs make it happen without the hassle of getting someone else to do it or having to write well—although there is good writing to be found. Some is shockingly good. Most of it is miserable. I expect to see those Open Learning classes around the country offering courses in Blog writing.