Interview with MIT admissions person on Thursday!

Anyhow. There was this thing I've been babbling on about for quite some time... Yes. That thing. No, I haven't made any. It's possible. It all depends on whether I can make that leap! I will be sure to show you all how to go about it once the process works.

School. Very busy. Google sent around a PageRank update. While most of my sites got a nice increase, this blog decreased from a 3 to a 1. Not much else. Not seeing that updated Hotmail either.

I don't really remember how this happened, but suddenly I wanted to play Chip's Challenge. What a great game. It came with my first PC (first computer was a Macintosh LCIII), a Pentium II Packard Bell with around 5 GB of hard drive space. This was back in the day when not all the Microsoft software bundled with Windows was trial software. The games came with the Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack. Those were great games, and needless to say I had to relive part of my childhood. Plus, I never beat Chip's Challenge.

But anyway, I've compiled all of these awesome games from the Microsoft Entertainment Pack and they are free for download from my SkyDrive. I'm assuming this stuff is all abandonware by now so, here are these great games in all their retro glory.

Chip's Challenge
I never beat it But now that I'm about a decade older, hopefully I can beat it this time around
Download Chip's Challenge
Link 1 - Link 2 - Link 3

SkiFree
What a weird game. No matter how fast you skiied, a little grey monster would always come down and make you its dinner.
Download SkiFree
Link 1 - Link 2

PipeDream
Okay game. Never really got into it, and it was kind of repetitive. Unfortunately, I could not find the correct version to download.
Download Older Version of Pipe Dream
Link 1

Rodent's Revenge
A rather, uh, interesting game about a super strength mouse squishing cats into catcakes with blocks.
link
Download Rodent's Revenge
Link 1

The other games were pretty boring - just card games, so I didn't include those.
Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack - Archive of Old Games

So there's Facebook. It's run by this Zuckerberg guy. The advertising department is pretty bad to say the least. If you're wondering why, some Google Analytics code on the site I was advertising was referred to by an "interns.facebook.com". I guess that it explains it. Pretty much all of my ads for a few of my websites have been turned down for random reasons. So then I head to my page and what do I see? An advertisement for an enlargement pill product. Wow. Just wow. I try to advertise a web based instant messenger, and it gets turned down over an enlargement pill product.

Ridiculous.

So there are these new Windows ads with Jerry Seinfeld. But I just don't understand them. Seinfeld walks in, offers a churro, starts talking about shoe showers... I'm lost. Maybe it's some kind of distinct humor I would only understand if I had watched the show Seinfeld, which I unfortunately have not. Considering the millions Microsoft paid Seinfeld to be in these ads, you would think they would make a little more sense.

But I guess the intention of these ads must be to get people talking about them. Perhaps the Community Manager could shed some light on this?

Luckily Hurricane Ike didn't cause too much damage where I live. But the air was so clean and fresh this morning. It was incredible. Like being in a forest.

Here are some of the Live Wave 3 screenshot links LiveSide.net has posted. It's looking very good!

http://livesino.net/archives/1312.live
http://livesino.net/archives/1311.live
http://home-beta.live.com/default.aspx=1046
http://www.liveside.net/main/archive/2008/09/11/community-of-sneaky-geniuses-more-wave-3-teasers-in-our-comments.aspx

And... Hurricane Ike has finally arrived in my neck of the woods. Pretty weak though - just some rain and wind.

Search engines are outdated (yeah... lame intro. I've never been great at writing...). Every other web based service as improved and developed over time. Web apps have become more like desktop apps with fancy animations, drag and drop and all sorts of great features. But search engines are still all have the same features they had when they first appeared.

All search engines are pretty much the same in terms of how the results are delivered. They're all static pages with a list of text results, search box on top, and additional pages on the bottom. Obviously there's a great deal that can be improved. Some search engines are much more innovative in the way information is presented, such as ask.com and the much hyped cuil.com.

ask.com has many notable features. It's the only search engine (that I know of) that actually detects your screen resolution and takes advantage of wasted space. All other search engines simply leaves swaths of white if you are one of the many who have higher resolution monitors. Ask displays helpful suggestions to narrow and expand your search on the left, and, if you've got enough pixels, widget like blocks with news, images, dictionary, synonyms, and encyclopedia terms related to a search term. In addition, instead of scrolling the engine page, search box and all, the navigation acts like a toolbar, allowing easy access. The only thing that could be improved is if they extended this concept to the search pages. It also has a very useful preview feature that allows you to scope out a page before clicking. It's also got a useful search history, which is useful, for lack of better ways to expand upon the idea.

cuil.com is that much hyped new browser created by ex Googlers. The search is pretty bad, but I'm only focusing on user interface for now. Cuil has a refreshing user interface and is much more fun to use than boring text results like the other search engines. Its design seems rather forward thinking in that it takes advantage of horizontal screen real estate more than Google, Yahoo and Live. After all, if you can set options to show results as text or icons on your computer, why not on the web? It functions much more like a local disk search in the way the results can be displayed, as results can be sorted into columns. However, it does not allow the option to change into text results, which can be a problem.

There's a few other sites such as Yahoo Alpha and Searchmash that implement a customizable sidebar, but the customization options could be much improved.

But really what these search engines have done is just the tip of the iceberg. So much more can be done to improve search. So here's a list of crazy ideas of what a truly modern search engine should have. I would draw some mockups and post them, but I don't have a camera with me.

1. Stationary Navigation and Search Box - When you search on the computer and scroll through the results, does the navigation disappear? It stays on top so you can easily modify your search. Cuil.com gets this right.
2. Modifiable Sidebar - Ask.com gets this right. Live.com tries, but the implementation isn't as good as Ask's. But a sidebar could do so so much more. Essentially you could add custom search widgets. For example, if you want a glance of images along with your results, add an image widget. Users can also submit custom widgets for their sites or for well known sites like Wikipedia. Some other widgets could be definition, antonym and synonym, encyclopedia, or news.
3. Easily Accessible Advanced Search - All search engines create a huge disconnect when users want to select advanced search. Most lead to another page, ask.com creates an irritating popup which disappears. The problem is that for all of these advanced search features the result is that on the new page, the advanced search box just disappears, leaving less skilled users with custom tags like -,"", +, site:, link: etc. Plus few are familiar with all of the modifiers to fully take advantage of the feature. Advanced search should slide down from under the search box, much like Vista's advanced search, and it should remain until the user chooses to close it.
4. Search Suggestions - Every search engine needs one.
5. Search Other Sites - Suppose you search many different sites, you can add options to search other sites from within the search engine.
6. Results View Option - Ability to switch between tiles (screenshots) and list view. I'm tired of text.
7. Some Sort of Self Improving Cloud Thing - Like Apple's Genius feature, but with search. Basically instead of improving a music selection algorithm (lame), it would improve search. I'm not quite sure how this could work, but it's possible.
8. Stationary Advertisements on the Left - It would improve visibility and clicks, so everyone benefits. Results would stay in the middle.
9. Change Results Per Page - Use a slider like the magnification on in Office 2007.
10. Notepad - Live, Google, and Tafiti have one, but each only works for a particular search, such as images or web. This feature should be available for all kinds of search, and could be stored along with a web history.

Just some ideas. Please tell me your thoughts!

But now that I'm finishing this post... if I had the skill I would totally start my own search engine with these features. These are (I hope?) great ideas that would really improve searching. Maybe it could become the next Google lol.

So the new iPod Nano is out, and I can't help but feel that the designers were completely out of ideas. This generation was marked by, aside from much needed storage and value improvements, more superficial modifications. Genius music suggestions (sells more songs), "nano-chromatic" colors (seems like a last resort to get people to buy one), accelerometer (only useful on the Touch and iPhone) and touting its environmental friendliness (which isn't a bad thing). All of these seem like nothing more than gimmicks.

Take the accelerometer for example. It's key function is to allow for the Cover Flow feature to work when the iPod is flipped horizontally. Both the last generation Nano and new one have the same screen resolution - the only difference is that the new one has been reoriented to be vertical. If they had left the more squarish design, the accelerometer wouldn't even be necessary. But then they slapped on a cutesy "shake to shuffle" feature to make it seem useful. If the screen was larger at all, the accelerometer might make sense, but it's not.

However, in terms of value the new Nano is indeed better and on par with its competitors, but I'm still not ready to buy it yet. I've been spoiled by the fantastic voice recorder and FM radio on my Sandisk Sansa. Once it gets a mic and radio with voice recorder, I will, but in terms of value it's not quite there yet. I'd still readily buy a Sandisk View or Zune. I will admit though that the color gimmick is working great - that two tone orange looks incredible.

Now to wait for those awesome new Zunes!

Yesterday I watched Pirates Of Silicon Valley. It was one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. The film chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft in the early 1970s.

The movie starts off with what appears to be a religious rant, but in fact it's Steve Jobs explaining to a commercial director the purpose of the commercial he is creating. Then it flashes back to the early 1970s, the beginnings of Apple and Microsoft. It's hard to say how much of this is accurate, but the personalities of some the characters seemed grossly exaggerated. Steve Ballmer was even more effusive and Steve Jobs was some sort of buddhist hippie. As the businesses develop, Jobs's zealous, domineering attitude begins to destroy the company of pirates he began to create.

Compared to Steve Jobs, who seems more like an idealist, Bill Gates has much better business acumen. After gaining Jobs's trust, Gates is able to gain a glimpse of the upcoming Apple II and copy the design. Later when confronted by Jobs, he compares the situation to two pirates stealing the same treasure, only when Bill has reached the treasure first.

I'm no good at movie reviews, so go watch if it you haven't. And why join the navy when you can be a pirate?

So basically at my school students are allowed to start their own clubs. It sounds fine and wonderful and everyone (including me) assumed a moderate turnout would be guaranteed. As many have discovered, that just isn't the case. That is rarely the case for unique interest clubs such as business, DIY, etc. The only clubs that are able to gain a rather large following seem to wonderful like a land of unicorns and hopping bunnies, but somehow it is just about impossible to capture anybody's attention unless it is some sort of social oriented club.

So here's the story of two clubs and their (slightly) different student turnout rates. Both clubs did the same paper advertising, putting up flyers and such. But the other club, simply boomed loud music (Eminem) and threw out some chips and salsa and attracted 50% more people, a large amount. Although the people weren't necessarily there for the club, it's incredible how much these more outlandish advertising methods are so successful. The purpose of the initial meeting is indeed to simply garner interest.

So how can I advertise my own club more effectively? Paper obviously doesn't work because nobody reads these days... Have you seen advertisements from the mid-1900s? There were entire paragraphs of information advertising the product. In a (probably) wonderful world without email and endless information people had time to read. Look at today's ad. It's basically a picture and a phrase expressing a particular ideal because people don't read. I guess same goes for all those flyers hopeful start up clubs put up.

Going back to the music booming club, I'm assuming the most successful type of advertisement to the senior high school crowd is something that gets attention. While the officials weren't pleased, as advertising for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, those little LED ads definitely did the trick of conveying the anti-establishment ideals of the show.

I'm thinking about some sort of 3D display type ad that will be easily reproducible and actually invite curious people to take a look. So essentially the flaw in the current advertising system employed is that the ads simply don't get attention, so the next step of readers getting the information isn't achieved, thus the 3D display would fix that particular problem.

So the web is all abuzz about Google's foray into the browser arena with Google Chrome. With all the development of web applications and such, Chrome has potential to gain some serious market share since it is apparently designed with those in mind.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2329246,00.asp
Yes, a browser, which many people—incorrectly by the way—consider a substitute operating system is definitely a better move than the once-rumored "Google OS."'

With all this talk about cloud computing, and speculation that computers will become nothing more than portals to the web, this response seems way off the mark. Google's browser could essentially become the operating system, since a browser would be all you need to run web apps and in the supposed future of computing. Plus the way Chrome is described in the comic, it sounds almost like an operating system sort since it's handling multiple tasks and has its own task manager. If Chrome is successful in any way, it and every other browser will start to take on OS qualities.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html
The Google Blog post on Chrome.

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html
Interesting Chrome comic that explains the workings of the browser.