Demanding Yuppies

We've Moved

2006-07-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

We've moved from this blog!

You can read about Sachin's blog about databse development with Visual Studio Team Edition here.

You can read my new blog, AdaVox, here.

Amazon.co.uk's DVD Rental by Post

2006-04-10T18:11:00.000-07:00

Haven't heard much about this, so I was surprised when I noticed that Amazon.com has joined the fray against Blockbuster Online and Netflix in the UK with DVD Rental by Post in the UK. I suppose it makes sense since Amazon has already had to make the investments to be able to ship things everywhere.

This is a really interesting development since Netflix has recently been busy suing Blockbuster for copying its business methods and the subsequent patents on its of no-late-fee paid subscription model. Is this really that innovative to deserve patent royalties? Hmm...

Google PigeonRank

2006-02-22T17:17:00.000-08:00

Things that make me go "what???"

Google PigeonRank: "By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings."

Other quotes:

"While some unscrupulous websites have tried to boost their ranking by including images on their pages of bread crumbs, bird seed and parrots posing seductively in resplendent plumage, Google's PigeonRank technology cannot be deceived by these techniques."

"Brin and Page were the first to recognize that this adaptability could be harnessed through massively parallel pecking to solve complex problems, such as ordering large datasets or ordering pizza for large groups of engineers."

Super Bowl XL Commercials on Google Video

2006-02-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

In case you missed them, Super Bowl XL Commercials on Google Video.

Internet Explorer 7: Beta 2 Preview

2006-01-31T15:33:00.000-08:00

For those of you that don't follow the IEBlog, Internet Explorer 7: Beta 2 Preview is here!

Google Base shows itself to be useful??

2006-01-23T19:01:00.000-08:00

The Google Base blog has a story about how David Sanger Photography benefited from the Google Base service. The reason why Google Base is so useful for him as a photographer is that it allows people to search for each individual photo by its tags, as opposed to the traditional method of browsing through a catalog.

Google Base has been described before as a chaotic, confusing way of making an online classifieds (heck, I even put this blog on it as an item, and it let me). However, when you think about it as a way to quickly categorize and sort individual items, then it has some implications for creating "micro-markets" and unbundling larger products (e.g., a photo-set to individual components, or maybe a magazine with content articles) and making it feasible to sell each picture off individually due to lower search costs.

Cool Flickr Toys

2006-01-23T15:46:00.000-08:00

What an interesting idea on what you can do with your Flickr pictures - flagrantdisregard.com Flickr Toys - make trading cards, calendars, magazine covers, movie posters, photo fortunes, etc! Much more interesting than just printing the photos and trying to be crafty with them.

Gmail Delete Button

2006-01-21T22:23:00.000-08:00

It's been out for a few days already, but the Gmail 'Delete Button' is the lamest "feature" that Google's come out with yet. It's right up there with the 'Google Pack.'

BusinessPundit: Why I Quit Entrepreneurship and Got a Real Job

2006-01-18T14:30:00.000-08:00

BusinessPundit: Why I Quit Entrepreneurship and Got a Real Job: insightful view from the other perspective, since usually you run into people who preach for entrepeneurism.

Windows Live Mail

2006-01-17T13:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got invited to join the Windows Live Mail Beta. I'm pretty bitter about the delay, by the way, considering that Sach was on it weeks before me. At least I beat him to getting GMail invites by quite a stretch. >:D

First thoughts?

Much slower than GMail, which is disappointing.
I can't figure out how to turn on my Reading Pane. Sometimes I'm slow, I admit, but I've been hunting and hunting and I can't find a button to turn it on?
Doesn't work in Firefox! And why not?

I also hate how Windows Live Messenger Beta pops up all windows in IE and not my default browser (Firefox). It feels so anti-competitive, it gives me the shivers.

p.s. Still have Live Messenger Beta invites if you want'em. Let me know.

Anonymity in Blogging

2006-01-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

New York Times has an article about business blogging, and the outcry that happens when a semi-personal blog becomes featured or popular. All of a sudden there is a face and a name and godforbid -- visibility! -- on the Internet. It seems like the blogosphere is really good for an objective, honest perspective on topics -- but what happens when your identityis exposed, and you didn't write great things about your current employer? Or that one time you wrote all that crap about your friend because they made you mad? Narration of your new job search? I guess the options are 1) Self-censorship, 2) Anonymity and 3) trying to strike a good balance.

I don't really believe it's that easy to produce content on the Internet and not somehow be trackable. I Google people all the time. Really, I'm quite the stalker. I walked in to my interview with MSN Search having Goog^H^H "MSN-Searched" my first three interviewers in advance (they liked that). I also look up school people on Facebook when I'm in a position to evaluate them, and I know a lot of employers do that as well.

Jenidallas, who was linked in the article, writes a response on her blog saying she's "not sure whether to be flattered or annoyed" that her fragile anonymity is pierced. Mostly she's concerned because her clients might find her personal side, rather than her business identity.

Some people have done a great job of striking a balance. Scoble can be openly critical of Microsoft without fear of retribution, for instance -- e.g., his criticism of Microsoft for taking down the Chinese blogger, to which people like Battelle say rock on.

JSPWiki: Interviews

2006-01-16T20:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to JSPWiki: Interviews - it's a wiki compilation of various people's accounts of interviews with Amazon and Microsoft. Pretty good resource to look through on how to prepare for an interview with Microsoft.

Sophomores and juniors at Wharton are all freaking out right now about getting their internships. Maybe 'Running of the Bulls' isn't that inaccurate afterall.

Windows Live Messenger Beta

2006-01-12T16:18:00.000-08:00

Windows Live Messenger Beta invites - want one? Let me know.

Campus Manual

2006-01-07T02:13:00.000-08:00

Campus Manual is a wikipedia-type project to catalogue the cultures and personalities of various college campuses. It was started by two Brandeis students and recently they posted on Livejournal on the ivy_leaguers community trying to get more involvement. It will be pretty interesting seeing how this evolves, and whether or not it will be overtaken by biased opinions or really funny but incredibly useless college humor (e.g., Penn's incident of sex in the highrises).

It could be good though! It's such a high-interest area for college applicants.. every year it gets more bloodthirsty. :)

Long Absence

2006-01-02T01:27:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the long absence... I'll be back up and running in the next week once I get back to Philadelphia and no longer have to deal with dial-up internet! Whew, I feel like I'm back in the stone age.

Happy New Year everyone!

The latest news in my life is that I've decided to join Microsoft next year starting in September.

What's the Deal with Google News, Anyway?

2005-12-16T19:09:00.000-08:00

I think Google News is very interesting how it's shifted my reading behavior away from NYTimes, WSJ, Reuters, etc. Between that, Bloglines, and various magazine subscriptions (Bweek, Newsweek, FC, Wired, FHM (hey, I got it for free), Scientific American, if you're curious), that's how I get my news nowadays. Oh, and don't forget Penn's somewhat credibility-challeneged newspaper.

However, the frustrating thing about GNews and something that I've always wondered about -- what's the deal with all of the sketchy news sources that Google News links to? Maybe it's my ethnocentrism speaking, but it bugs me that the much of the time, the links behind the breaking stories are like, Gazette Philippines, Brisbane Courier Mail, Malayala Manitoba, etc. -- huh?! Then you scroll further down and find the reassuring Reuters, Washington Post, LA Times, etc.

Does this mean that those other countries are more literate than us (always possible :-) ), or are these news sources doing a very good job at SEO to make it look like they are the most popular? Admittedly, the articles with "good" (in my opinion) news sources as a primary link have increased dramatically since Google News first came out, but I've always wondered... hmmm... :)

Cute Overload! ;)

2005-12-16T15:08:00.000-08:00

Oh my gosh, this is HUGE. A blog that is devoted to cute pictures: Cute Overload! ;). Perfect for a little "aww" in the middle of finals-overload.

This will provide all girls in the world everlasting amusement. :-)

meebo.com

2005-12-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

meebo.com is rapidly becoming popular as an IM client - I've read a few blogs about it and there are even some friends at Wharton that have told me about it while "playing studyrat" in JMHH. I've tried it, and I like and recommend it - pretty cool stuff! Tell me if you disagree.

Gritwire which is an RSS aggregator, has remarkably similar UI as meebo, with those cool little floating windows. However, what really bothers me about both of those is they are so low on descriptors of what the hell they do. What happened to an about page? What happened to providing more detail than a link to your blog and "This site offers a free and easy way to help you stay on top of news, sports, and entertainment."? Erring in favor of believing that you are so usable and intuitive that you don't even need an explanatory statement of what you are means you alienate a bunch of people who land on your entry page and go "huh?".

Matt Cutts disses on assclown SEOs

2005-12-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

Matt Cutts entertainingly flames "assclown SEOs" (his words, not mine). Grumpy, grumpy.

Code4Bill - win a year on BillG's team

2005-12-11T20:45:00.000-08:00

CNet article: "BANGALORE, India --- Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, announced a contest Friday to identify promising software students in India, offering as top prize an internship with his technical team for a year."

Interesting, an Indian contest named 'Code4Bill' with a year-long internship as a prize. It's about time that Microsoft got into this - Google has been doing Code Jam for a while now.

Edit:

In a hunt for better information, I typed "Code4Bill" into Google and found only a paltry four results.

In contrast, when I type the same thing on the MSN Search site, it gives me 253 results for the search term "Code4Bill" including the Microsoft information site and blog for the contest - the relevant results I was looking for.

So my question is, is this intentional obfuscation of good search results because Google doesn't like Microsoft (rather unlikely), or gasp---is MSN Search just better in this case?

Wharton's SPIKE Beta Tester

2005-12-09T14:47:00.000-08:00

I'm one of those people that regularly Googles for myself & others on. Sometimes I stray from Google to see if I get different results, and discovered today on MSN Search (a few pages deep) that I'm referenced as a Student Beta Tester on Wharton's SPIKE homepage. I didn't realize that there were so few of us.

The Number | Lee Eisenberg

2005-12-09T10:17:00.000-08:00

So after Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed made note of Lee Eisenberg's interesting promotion of his book - i.e., pre-releasing them to bloggers - I signed up and just yesterday received the book in the mail.

I'll keep you posted on what I think after I get around to reading it.

New Gmail Clips

2005-12-09T09:21:00.000-08:00

Gmail has come out with new Gmail Clips, this annoying little bar that hangs out on the top of your inbox and has a text feed of the latest news going on.

It reminds me of those similarly annoying news tickers that show up on all things AOL.

Edit: So I take it back. It's actually an RSS feed that lets you assign it to whatever blogs, news, etc., that you want. The actual usefulness of a one-line cycling preview is debatable, but at least they let you remove it!

Life as a Huntsman Rat

2005-12-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

This is my somewhat bitter ode to honor Huntsman Hall, which is nicely, happily portrayed on the Wharton website as "Wharton's home in the center of Penn's campus."

Considering the $140M it took to build you, you'd better be good!

There's a sinister second life to this happy image, though.... let me instead label you as an undergrad-infested building, constantly teeming with sleep-deprived co-eds scrambling furiously to finish their latest Excel masterpiece in financial modeling or cram for their latest exam. You've even developed your own vocabulary, considering the number of times words like "culture," "synergy," and "co-opetition" are tossed around from the adoring lips of your rat-like denizens. Dear Huntsman, I spend the vast majority of my waking life in your corridors--I've slept on numerous couches in your Forum, and right this moment I am typing away in one of your many study rooms. My entire life revolves around you, and you are integral to my college experience.

I can't wait to graduate! :)

Good old 80/20 rule strikes again...

2005-12-05T12:22:00.000-08:00

Well, not quite. More like the 50/20 rule, but still.

Apparently the top 18% of the online buying population account for 46% of total online spending, purchasing on average 4+ times a month and over $185.

How to identify and target these Most Valuable Purchasers? There is only a smattering of demographic information, but finding a way to make these consumers 'fess up and signal who they are would be fantastic. But how? Perhaps behavioral targeting might be a potential solution.