DygiScape

C:\Documents and Settings\joe>tracert www.bangalore.com

Tracing route to www.bangalore.com [65.65.219.124]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms home
2 40 ms 35 ms 34 ms virginia
3 35 ms 35 ms 35 ms united states
4 35 ms 36 ms 35 ms atlantic ocean
5 40 ms 43 ms 40 ms frankfurt, germany
6 319 ms 319 ms 319 ms middle of nowhere
7 327 ms 328 ms 329 ms india
8 333 ms 335 ms 336 ms bangalore

Trace complete.

Blogging, Geeky, Personal

I haven’t purchased World of Warcraft yet, but a columnist for Venturebeat shares her observations as her husband and brother-in-law talked about the game. I found her account interesting and has a couple tips for new WoW users.

When a new player starts playing WoW, they must understand that there is a learning curve and need to adjust to new environments. Essentially, show some humility and be willing to learn.

Help others first before asking (or expecting) help. While you may be new, you can certainly bring many qualities to a team that they might not know. For example, if you aren’t the best fighter, be a good resource and stay on the look out for enemies.

Online community is the same. You can’t just show up at a new community and start ratting off things you hate about them, or they should do something else. You need to observe and take in the dynamics of the community then ease yourself into them. It’s good to have something to offer in the way of knowledge or expertise so they value you right away, but this isn’t necessary as if you ask questions, that can contribute to the discussions.

Be a good leader. While some communities online are “hosted,” it doesn’t make it better. If you take the initiative to inspire and encourage others to manage themselves and let their creatively expand — the community as a whole grows. As you lead others, they will lead others, and others will lead others. It’s a win-win situation for all.

I observed via my friend Rachel, she is a major WoW fanatic — but she is committed to her online teammates, as if they were right next door. This sense of commitment is necessary for her team to stay alive and prosper. Much like online communties, if no one respects it or is willing to “take one for the team,” then it will collapse.

Anyhow, that’s my thoughts on it. I’ll probably join WoW soon. We’ll see.

Blogging, Geeky community, WoW

Nielsen, one of the most respected audience measurement companies, decided page views are no longer relevant in today’s Web. AJAX technology being the primary cause of some provider’s drop in page views has prompted Nielsen to implement tracking of time in front of a Web site. More time generally means more engagement, and thus, more money.

This should come as no surprise. I’ve ranted went on a tangent about how Web 2.0 companies measure success – [sic] page views aren’t everything.

If you think this change is a bullshit move, I introduce call centers. Most call centers measure success based on call time (or SL — service level availability for customers). Well, after several frustrating years, that definition of success has evolved to resolution rate, satisfaction surveys and possibly sales made on contact. Here’s a breakdown of goals and the effects:

The purpose of this image is to explain that in the call center industry, they simply can not focus on one goal (e.g. Call Time, Resolution, Sales); rather a combination of all three elements. You win some, you lose some — it’s business.

I imagine that this theory holds true for the Web. You can’t focus on one element of success, you need to seize all the opportunity you can and balance your goals. Every Web site has different goals and ways to measure them. As a helpful tool, companies can elect to have services like Google Analytics or Omniture to measure their [aggregate] user tracking on their sites. To illustrate what I envision a company being successful online today, it would balance the following attributes:

I conclude with my opinion that Nielsen made a wise choice in measuring Web sites. I believe that other metrics are crucial to measure a Web site’s overall rating — not just the quantity of page views or minutes spent on a particular site.

What are your thoughts?

Blogging, Geeky, Tech News Engagement, internet, social media, Success, web 2.0

First, let me start off by saying that I acknowledge the fact my risk of my aggregate data could get in the hands of the unknown. Saying that it won’t or can’t happen, is merely denial.

Facebook, which concerned user’s previously about their ability to syndicate user feeds throughout the social network, has absolved their concerns by implementing privacy options that by default are set to public.

That said, I just came across this video today that raises the question about government data mining interests, and the theoretical connection to Facebook. I’d like to informally suggest that Facebook isn’t alone, and I’m sure that Myspace and Bebo have plenty of data mining interests on board, but it does raise the question to their Terms of Service and Privacy Policies.

Do I think Facebook will go to the dark side? No. However, I do like the fact people are questioning their motives and interests in regard to handling of their personal information.

Video Link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMWz3G_gPhU

Blogging, Geeky, Safety, Social Networking facebook, Government, Privacy, Social Networking

Every now and then I get bored, like immensely bored with too much time. To stave off these cravings for something wild to do. I’ve got four ways to can fight boredom online, check it out.

• StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon is considerably new Web site that lets you “channel surf” the Web. You start out entering in your interests like news, video, blogs, etc. Then you start “Stumbling.” This method of discovering new sites is excellent since it blends both Web 2.0-styled feedback and gratification of changing channels on the TV. It’s totally free and the Firefox addon works perfectly.
• Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Fark - Scour these sites for interesting news and dish out your opinions. Be careful, after only a short period, they will become addictive to comment and submit news. These sites are infamous for citizen journalism, so if you’ve got something to share (or leak), go ahead and post it there.
• Del.icio.us Popular - If you’re bored and want to see which sites are gaining popularity among Web users, check out the Popular pages on del.icio.us. On a side note, you can join and add your bookmarks to it as well. It helps better organize your bookmarks for finding them later. What’s not cool about sharing your favorite sites with other users?
• Start a Blog - It’s not just for kids anymore. Start a blog about any topic you like. Some interesting topics that people would like to know is political views, geeky stuff, non-geeky stuff, and just about anything else you’re expert in. You don’t have to even be cool or popular to start one. You can start a free blog at Blogger, Wordpress, AOL, MySpace, and more. You can compare the features of them here if you like that sort of thing.
• YTMND - You’re The Man Now Dog, a popular creative website that enables users to create funny (and some NSFW) web sites usually at the expense of another person. This Website is infamous for popular memes such as PTKGS (”Punch the keys for God’s sake!”), the Emo Song, the Blue Ball Machine, Bat Man Ualeualeua…, …Doesn’t change Facial Expressions and more. As you can plainly see, YTMND can account for hours of wasted time. Here’s one that I made a while back, it’s quite a good laugh about a customer demanding a new mouse.

There’s more ways to kill the boredom online. If you know of a great Web site to browse, go ahead and post it in the comments. If posting a link, and it’s not appropriate for work, please label it appropriately with NSFW on it.

Blogging, Geeky, Tips Engagement, internet, social media

Frequently, I hunt for new social networking Web sites. MySpace feeling like a dull moment out of my generation, I wanted to find something different, that wasn’t a place for 13 year old emo kids. Not that they are bad, but I tend to not care much about how difficult their suburbia life is when they couldn’t go to a concert. Cold hearted, I know.

Shawn told me about CherryTAP. CherryTAP is different because it is intended for adults, and the theme is that you’re in a bar. I like that environment, because it allows people to have a more structured purpose there.

For instance, on Myspace, you made your page, customized it with a CSS layout, added your friends and messaged each other in a behavior like e-mail of yesterday. That’s pretty much it, very minimal focus on pushing users to do other things.

The target audience of CherryTAP is adult. I expected a million requests to be friends from well-endowed women, but I didn’t! For some reason, CherryTAP has grown without much interference from spammers. I like that. I can only wish them the best in holding it down as they continue to grow.

CherryTAP rewards users for their interaction (or other folks call it, “engagement”). For example, the more time you spend on the site, upload pictures, update your profile, comment on profiles, rate pictures — you earn points. While it may seem a little cheesy at first, after a little while you get that Endorphin kick for earning points and thus, more time spent on the site. The more Cherry Points you earn, the more features you unlock (like photos caps and more).

The overall appearance of the site is dark, but not gothic-looking. It does need some CSS hacks to clean it up and better organize it in my opinion. Being a fan of “build now, tweak later,” this site is definitely reaching their goal.

They’ve implemented the basic features of a “Hot or Not” site and have considerably primitive search functions. I expect as the site grows, they will meet the needs of their users. Let’s just hope they’re tracking the traffic activity on those areas to look for areas to improve.

Something unique to the social networking world that CherryTAP does well, is the ability to educate users of new widgets and tips on filling in their profile. Traditionally, most sites let users just free-form every pixel without having any guidance. From the looks of it, it appears to be genuine (organic) recommendations like Slide and others. Looks promising.

My personal experience with the site’s community is the users are nice and friendly. Maybe a bit too friendly for my liking, but that’s OK. As with many social networking sites, the folks who are singles want to mingle, and this site makes it easy for everyone to join.

In case anyone is wondering, I wrote this brief review on CherryTAP voluntarily, it happens to be they turned out good. If you want to suggest for me to voluntarily review your site, let me know and I just might get around to it.

Blogging, Geeky, Social Networking myspace, social media, Social Networking, web 2.0

For the past two weeks, Apple and AT&T have received a lot of press lately because of the release of the iPhone. I disagree with the hype simply because of my cynical view of popular technology reaching the masses without adequate benchmarking. Hear me out on this, I love Apple products, but I am just not purchasing an iPhone and I explain.

For the longest time (since OS 9 era), Apple has made it very clear they needed to offer compelling features if they wanted people to invest in them. Essentially, they went from almost extinct to a elitist brand that everyone buys. Well, that dramatic transformation has led to their own benchmark — they must meet their users existing needs before expanding into unfettered territory such as cell phones (or Windows if you look at iPod users).

That said, I was disappointed at how Apple sold its contract to AT&T. The telecommunications conglomerate, formerly Cingular/Southwestern Bell/Pacific Bell/Bellsouth/Etc., has never had a positive note in my book. I’ve spent hours with their poor customer service porting my old cell phone number to competitor T-Mobile. This narrow-minded approach in offering proprietary services and features is the primary reason why I refuse to purchase an iPhone with AT&T service. As with any great company, you can usually tell if they’ve got it together if their customers are satisfied and/or at least if their customer service is helpful.

To AT&T’s credit, I understand that cellular service is a tough market to win any satisfaction in. However, their network is not optimal for broadband communication (trust me, even text messages took minutes to receive). The iPhone thirsts for network-intensive tasks such as YouTube and more. Why in the world did AT&T bid on the iPhone if they didn’t intend on making their network broadband-capable.

Much like the cable and [landline] telephone companies — they finally understand that it’s the speed, not corporate acquisitions and takeovers, that win consumers over. Comcast offers 12Mb residential service (which probably no average user would ever really consume). I am doubtful AT&T is not overselling their features.

Apple should understand that users like interoperability. You’ve done it with OS X for Bootcamp, iPod for iTunes, and Safari for Windows. Why not make the iPhone compatible with more than one carrier? The question the Cupertino giant needs to ask themselves is not, “How can we get the most money in the bid,” rather, “How can we split royalties from two or more cell phone networks, leveraging the power of two cell phone networks and satisfy the most people to make even more money?”

I know, I know, maybe the FCC would give push back to the idea of a phone using two telcos. Oh, wait…

Here’s ten more reasons why I am not going to get my hands on the iPhone

1. It’s proprietary (which may or may not be such a bad thing for Apple)
2. It’s ball-and-chained with an activation mechanism similar to that of Windows.
3. Users have reported slow speeds when using the Web.
4. Users reported activation hassles.
5. Spending $60/mo on a two-year agreement with AT&T.
6. You’ve spent $500 - $600 and you can’t avoid the big blue ball.
7. The first generation of anything has its problems.
8. The second or third generation usually introduces price drops and firmware updates.
9. You can count on #8, because Apple historically has been impressive at their keynote events
10. AT&T Customer Service.

Even though I’m deeply biased against the iPhone and AT&T I can respect the folks who did get one. I want to know why you bought an iPhone or why you’re not getting one. Post it in the comments.

Blogging, Geeky, Tech News apple, cell phones, internet, OpEd