Some Things Just Lose Their Appeal

On 04.23.10, In Random, By AC Slater

Whenever there is a new fad or technology or whatever, I usually jump on board and give it a shot to see how I feel about it. I'm not really one of those people that likes to base my experience on other people's opinions. So with that being said, I thought I'd put together a short list of things that I was really into in the past couple years that are either, just now gaining popularity or have been pretty popular within the last 2-3 years, that I'm now official sick of.

After writing a few of these I realize that I come off as a complete jackass if you're still into any of these things.. so just note that these are my opinions and you shouldn't let them deter you from any of these things if you enjoy them... (now I sound like a vag).  I'll update the post as things lose their appeal or as I realize there are more things that I'm sick of...

1. Twitter - I'll admit, I was one of those people that jumped on Twitter before any of my friends did. I had no friends on the service, but for some reason I thought that other people wanted to read that I was taking a shit or hanging out with friends that no one else on Twitter would know... Eventually more and more of my friends and celebrities joined the service and it became a little more interesting for me, but as of late I've become very bored with it. I used to post about everything I did, but I've begun to realize that nobody gives a shit... And you know how I realized this? Because every time I fire up TweetDeck and read what the people I'm following are doing... I DON'T GIVE A SHIT. Now I'm not talking about the celebrities, although most of the time I don't give a shit what they are doing either, but at least they lead a more interesting life than most of my friends (Kevin Smith's tweets are always entertaining), I'm talking about people I know in real life. Now not all my friends are retarded when it comes to Twitter, but some of the ones that post every day that think they "get" the service... really aren't using it how I feel it should be used. And that makes what they post absolutely pointless to me, and I'm friends with these people, seriously if you want to have a full conversation with someone there are much better ways to do it than Twitter. I have no idea how anyone could follow a random person and find their shit interesting. It would be like me watching two donkey's trying to have sex in a zoo, the donkey's are limited to what they can do because everyone is watching them and they are confined to a certain amount of space, and after a while nobody gives a shit that the donkey's are having sex because it's boring as hell. Maybe then one of the donkey's does something interesting like takes a huge shit as he's mounting the other donkey, but that's only interesting once. If the donkey continues to shit while having sex it just becomes dumb and uninteresting. And then maybe the male donkey decides it wants to appear "special" to the people watching it so it decides to try and fuck the zebra in the next pen... but that's the problem, the zebra is in the next pen separated by a fence so as much as the donkey tries to fuck the zebra, all it's really doing is fucking a chain link fence. And while that's fun for us watching to make fun of, it's actually kind of sad for the donkey. But eventually a new person is going to come by and show the donkey the attention it craves and once again he'll feel that people want to see him fuck the other donkey... and the cycle continues.

Don't get me wrong, I still feel there are some good uses for Twitter, but for the every day person who leads a (sorry) uninteresting life, there's no reason to post every thing you're doing because as I said before, NOBODY GIVES A SHIT!

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Google Buzz

On 02.10.10, In Technology, By AC Slater

My Gmail account was just setup with Google's new social networking tool, Google Buzz and after a few minutes of playing with it, I honestly wish this is what Twitter was like. Now, do I think that there needs to be yet another Twitter clone out there, no, but I would love to see Twitter implement some of the things that Google Buzz is doing. The way Buzz handles links, images and videos are much better than Twitter considering Twitter itself doesn't handle any of that it relies on sites like Twitpic to create links to pictures that are stored on another site. Buzz embeds them right into the, umm, I have no clue what to call each update, there doesn't seem to be a cool "buzz" word to use for them like Twitter has Tweets.

Anyways, links you post automatically grab a summary of the link, videos embed for viewing inline and pictures can show up in a nice little slideshow if you want. Much better implementation than Twitter, but it really just seems like a dumbed down version of Google Wave. I get that when Wave was announced it was thought to be this amazing thing that would change the way we communicate online, but it's a little complicated and while it does do things pretty well, you need to have a use for it... and people to use it with, so it kind of fizzled out. I still use it during the day to talk to a few people and we're currently using it to plan a trip for this summer, but it's hard because not everyone going on the trip has it and/or knows how to use it. So it looks like Google took some of those cool aspects of Wave and implemented them into a Twitter clone that is built into GMail and thus available and has the possibility to be used by a lot more people.

The fact that it incorporates right into GMail is a huge plus since people don't have to go all over the place to update it or use it. And it can also pull your tweets into it so you don't have to update 2 places. So for now I don't know that I'll use it too much, but we'll see. I think the overall user experience is a step up from Twitter, but with Twitter having such a huge head start and a rapidly growing user base it'll be hard for Google to get people to switch over, but we'll see.

What are your thoughts on Buzz so far? Will you leave Twitter and start using this or will you stick with Twitter and maybe have it update your Buzz feed?

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Will You Square Up?

On 12.03.09, In Technology, By AC Slater

I had heard about this start up a while ago, but then it sort of died out and I hadn't heard anything, that was until this week. Square, as it's known, is a way for people to accept credit cards (and I'm assuming debit cards) as a form of payment and when I say people, I mean anyone with a compatible wireless device. And by portable device I mean cell phone or really any device with a headphone jack. The hardware plugs into the headphone jack of any device it reads the credit card and turns that into tones that are then sent through the audio jack and decoded by the Square software, then all authentication is done on the Square server and sent back to the device.

The company came about when Jim McKelvey was trying to sell a piece of his artwork, but couldn't complete the sale because he couldn't accept credit cards. He brought this idea to Twitter creator Jack Dorsey and Square was born. The idea is simple, since pretty much everyone has a cell phone why not give those devices the ability to accept payments of all forms. The hardware add-on is extremely small and since it uses the headphone jack to send data, there is only need to manufacture one device with one connector which will work on all mobile phones (unless of course your phone doesn't have a headphone jack which is kind of weird, but possible none the less). The only thing missing from your device is software and currently the iPhone and iPod Touch are the only devices to have supported software, but the groundwork is there for any device to eventually use this technology.

One of the coolest features, I think, is the e-receipt system. If you've ever been to the Apple store you've seen those guys walking around with the wireless devices that have the ability to check you out from anywhere in the store, this is essentially the same idea, but it can be done much cheaper and anyone can do it. Think about it, a wireless credit card reader costs anywhere from $700+, where as an iPod Touch would only set you back $250 or so. So back to these e-receipts, basically there's no paper after a transaction. An e-receipt is sent directly to your e-mail address indicating how much you spent, where you spent it, your signature, contact information of the restaurant (or business) and even a map of where the purchase was made. I hate receipts so this is pretty outstanding to me.

I also like the different verification methods that Square looks to incorporate into the software. If you have a Square account (I'm assuming you don't need one to actually make a purchase, but I'm not sure) you can assign a picture to your account and it will act as another verification when you make a purchase. The device will bring up a photo of you asking the cashier to verify that the person in the picture is the person making the payment. With the amount of plastic being used these days I always feel a little safer with a few extra verifications methods.

I'm not sure when Square will launch to the public, there are currently only a few places in the San Francisco area that are utilizing it, but I have signed up to get more info when it becomes available so I'll be sure to let you know. I would imagine that the hardware and software would be free or close to free and the transaction fees would be the only form of payment, but I'm not sure. I know I read an article a few months ago that said the cost to make the hardware itself is next to nothing since there's basically nothing to it.

Have any of you read about this thing? What are your thoughts... Could you see yourself using this in the future? Do you think businesses will start to embrace it and we'll start to see waitresses carrying around iPhones instead of having to take your credit card up to a cash register? That would actually be pretty sweet considering waitresses at bars can get pretty bogged down when trying to run your credit card to pay your bill.

Square

Update: Added video after the jump

Update 12/9/09: While in Paris this morning Jack Dorsey announced that Square will be given away for FREE! And that they expect to start rolling it out to the iPhone and iPod Touch in March 2010 [cnn.com]

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Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM on Xbox 360 – Why?

On 11.19.09, In Music, Technology, Video Games, By AC Slater

Microsoft rolled out the latest little update to the Xbox 360/Xbox Live service this week in the form of a couple applications. You can now access your Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM accounts via the Xbox 360 dashboard. Now I understand that Microsoft is trying to bring all aspects of social media onto their platform and make them easily accessible by it's users, but why? The only one that makes any sense to have the Xbox 360 is last.FM and I think it's great that they've added support for it, but what am I going to do with Facebook and Twitter on my Xbox?

To be perfectly honest I have not tried out the Last.FM application yet, but just in theory alone it sounds like a perfect match for the 360. It gives you the ability to stream all sorts of music through your TV. Last.FM is a great service that I use on my computer all the time and I think people will use it quite a bit when entertaining guests, etc. However, Facebook and Twitter seem absolutely pointless to use on the 360. Both applications are extremely basic and I can't see myself ever using them again. I installed them the other day just to test out and see what sort of features they were offering, maybe Twitter would tweet out what game I was playing or what achievement I just received or maybe Facebook would update my status with the same information, but as far as I can tell they don't do anything really.

The Twitter application is about as basic as you can get, picture what the Twitter.com homepage was when it first started out. It's basically the updates from all of the people you are following and then a box where you can enter what you are doing, oh and you can access the Twitter trends. That's it. I don't know about most people, but I follow a lot of random people that I don't always want to read about which is why I like TweetDeck and it's ability to separate people into different groups for easier reading, not so much here. It's just one long list of updates from all of the people you follow and it only fits about 10 updates per screen. I don't know, maybe there was a demand for this, but I personally think it's pointless and will never take the time to log back into it ever again.

Now let's talk about Facebook. Again, why on the Xbox 360? It makes no sense! The interface is clumsy, it uses the same tile structure that the dashboard itself uses and it barely displays anything on the screen at one time. Maybe I didn't dive into it enough, but from what I gathered in the few minutes I played around with it, I will never be logging in to it again unless it can do something like show me my Facebook friends that also have Xbox Live and what their gamertag is or something. I know it asked me when I logged in for the first time if I wanted to display my gamertag somewhere within Facebook, I said yes, but I have no idea where it's displaying it. Maybe this is a feature and I just didn't take the time to find it, or maybe my friends have the same feelings as me and find Facebook on the Xbox pointless and didn't even bother logging in.

So are people actually using the Xbox 360 for Facebook and Twitter? I don't know how many people have a keyboard or the chatpad hooked up to their 360 (not me), but it takes a damn long time to type anything using the on screen keyboard even if it is only 140 characters. So I don't know, are you guys using this? Did you try it out at least? Am I missing the point of all this? Do the apps have the ability to update my Twitter with games I'm playing? Someone please tell me what I'm missing here, why would Microsoft waste their time doing this?

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Domain Sales Can Be Lucrative

On 07.16.09, In Technology, True Life, Twitter, By AC Slater

This isn't usually the place that I post stuff like this, we have another blog that we usually use to record and write about our online money making schemes, but that site rarely gets updated since we're not making much money at the moment. Seeing as how I buy domains all the time and never get around to doing anything with most of them, when this opportunity presented itself I knew I had to jump on it.

Most of the money I make online comes from affiliate networks and the occasional Google Adsense click. I try to keep this blog free from too many ads as it's just a place for me to write bullshit on and if people want to read it that's cool. acslater.com was one of those domains I had laying around not doing anything. I actually had intentions of using it to promote Dustin Diamond aka Screech Powers' Saved By The Bell tell all book, which I don't think ever got published or maybe even written for that matter. I was surprised when acslater.com wasn't taken so I snatched it up along with a bunch of other random domains that I never did anything with.

While I was in my random domain buying phase Twitter was just starting to come around, this was about April of 2007. Not too many people outside of the tech world were using the service yet and none of my friends had even heard about it. In fact one of my friends who I'm currently working on a web project with made fun of me when I told him we should do something with Twitter (as in some sort of project that utilized it's information) and that it was going to be huge. Needless to say we never did anything with it, but that doesn't mean that I didn't buy up a couple domains in anticipation. Now since I'm no longer the owner of the 2 domains I recently sold I'm not going to give out the urls, however they were related to celebrities and twitter.

At the time I bought them the only celebrity that I really knew that was on Twitter was Diablo Cody (at least she was the only one that posted constantly). I had no idea if more celebs would accept the new form of fan based communication or not, but for $7/year it's better than a lottery ticket. So I purchased the 2 domains with the idea of making a sort of RSS aggregator to display the different celebrities Twitter posts. At the time I set up one of the domains I only had enough celebs to fill one screen (I think there were 5 people on there) and most of them weren't even really Hollywood celebrities. So anyways, I now owned these 2 domains and just sat on them until more celebrities embraced the service and some other people with more coding skills got the same idea I had. Pretty soon there were a bunch of sites listing the different celebrities on Twitter in a much more appealing manner, so I dropped the idea all together and figured I'd just hold on to the domains for a while and maybe try to sell them on an auction site or something.

Jump forward to NBA Playoff time, I'm not good with dates and I only remember sitting at the bar watching the Bulls game when I got an email offering me a decent amount of money for one of the domains. At this point there were quite a few celebrities on Twitter and the news was starting to talk about it on a daily basis, everyone was flocking to it. I figured I may be able to get a little more for the domain than what I was offered and emailed a buddy of mine who I though might have some contacts of people that may be interested. I gave him a week to get back to me and let me know if there was any interest, there wasn't. Ok no problem, I'll just sell it to this guy for his original offer and make a pretty good profit on it. So I emailed the guy back and of course he had a change of heart and pulled the offer off the table... ouch. Oh well, at least I now knew that I had something here and that at least there was some interest out there.

I started looking into domain auction sites to try to sell the domains before they expired, but I never got around to actually listing them. Rather than let them go and have them instantly be snapped up by someone, I renewed both of them hoping to unload them before the next year was up. After a while I kind of forgot about them as things with my other sites started slowing down and I had stuff to do at my actual day job. Fast forward to last week, me and the girlfriend are wandering around the grocery store looking for something to make for dinner that night when my phone rings. It was an out of state area code and I usually don't answer those, but for some reason I picked up the phone. It was a college kid looking to buy one of the domains.... nice. I told him that I had already received a little interest in the domain, but that I was just sitting on it doing nothing with it so I'd be more than willing to sell. Without thinking about it I made the kid an offer and the deal was done, he accepted and that was that.

There were a few tiny concerns with payment and the transferring of the domain (he was leery about sending me money first and I really didn't feel like using an escrow service, mainly because I never have), but I told him I'd stay on the phone with him until the deal was completely done and he seemed to be more comfortable with that. So he immediately wired me the money and as soon as that was confirmed I started the domain transfer. I think he was starting to get a little worried when the transfer was taking a few minutes, but GoDaddy can be a little slow with certain actions so I wasn't too worried. After about 5 minutes he received an email telling him that a domain was being transferred to him and instructions on how to accept, 2 minutes later the deal was done.

This was probably some of the easiest money I've ever made. The investment is low and the rewards can be pretty substantial if you get in on a trend when it's hot. I may take this experience and turn towards selling a few more of the domains I have laying around or maybe buying up some more and turning them loose on the auction blocks to see what I can pull in, but I'll definitely be looking into this a bit closer now that I see how easy it is to do and what the profit numbers look like.

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