Interview 8 With Webnotes

For those of you who don’t know, Webnotes is a fantastic tool for taking notes on the web.  It lets you highlight and annotate any webpage and/or PDF.  I’ve had professional relations with them in the past.  I made both the PR screencast and the regular Webnotes screencast.  They’re a fantastic company, super nice guys, and Alex King, their director of marketing agreed to answer my questions.

What is your name and official title at your company?

Alex King- Director of Marketing

What is the name of the company you work for, and what does it specialize in?

WebNotes – We provide research tools to academics and public relations professionals.

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Interview 7 With The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.

What is your name and official title at your company?

Michael Ley; vice president, e-business & payments

What is the name of the company you work for, and what does it specialize in?

The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.

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Interview 6 With Surpass Hosting

SurpassHosting is the company that hosts all of the websites I’m a part of, including this one.  I would not host with anyone else – they’re fantastic.  Kayla is their marketing director and she was willing to answer my questions.  Check out her responses below!

What is your name and official title at your company?

Kayla Selans, Marketing Director

What is the name of the company you work for, and what does it specialize in?

SurpassHosting.com, a web hosting company based in Orlando Florida

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How and Why I Use Twitter

Over the past year or so, Twitter has become an integral part of my life.  Of course, when I first started using it, I was just like any other new person to Twitter.  I had less than ten followers, and I simply used it to tell my friends what I was doing.  At that point, it really was no different than a Facebook Status Update.  To be honest, I didn’t even see the point to using Twitter.  I kept asking myself, “Why do I need to tell these people what I’m doing?” and “Why do these people care what I’m doing?”  Well, since then, my thoughts on Twitter have greatly changed, and as I said, it’s now become an integral part of my life.

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The New Facebook: People Just Don’t Like Change

The New Facebook

The new Facebook is something that has gotten a lot of press lately, both good and bad.  The majority of the articles written by technology blogs, newspapers, etc. have been positive, however, many of the users of Facebook hate the change and are protesting and finding loopholes to be able to go back to the “old Facebook”.  That’s more than apparent considering all of the new Facebook hatred groups and petitions that have formed, including one group that is encouraging users to join the Facebook developer program so they can choose to use the old Facebook.  Here’s the thing: That’s exactly what the old Facebook is, OLD.  What users are calling the old Facebook was a design that remained largely unchanged from the original design that was released in 2004 when Facebook first launched.  It’s been four years now; it’s time for change (that sounds oddly familiar).  The new Facebook features a beautiful design that really will help solidify Facebook’s stance in the Web 2.0/New Media marketplace.  The site is fast and dynamic.  The bottom line is that people simply don’t like change, even if it’s a positive change that is heavily needed.  People get so caught up in routines and patterns that when something as small as a new website design is released, they freak out and demand compensation.  The new Facebook is beautiful and intuitive.  It’s streamlined , and it just makes more sense than the old layout.  There has been an addition of a lot of white space on the pages as well.  That’s a good thing which improves organization and readability.  If users would just give the new Facebook a chance, they’d discover these things for themselves, and most likely discover that they like the new Facebook equally as much, if nor more, than the old Facebook.

SuperGenPass – The Only Safe Password Manager

I have a confession to make: I absolutely hate password managers.  In fact, I despise password managers.  Typical password managers, that is.  For example, 1Password is a favorite among Mac users.  Personally, I would never use it.  1Password offers many features such as filling in web forms, generating strong and unique passwords, it’s pretty versatile, there’s an app for the iPhone/iPod Touch, etc.  Granted, 1Password is a beautiful password manager, but again, at heart, it’s just a typical password manager that is entirely proprietary.  If your 1Password database or Mac OS X Keychain ever became corrupted, you’d basically be up shit creek without a paddle.  You’d know none of your passwords, you’d probably have forgotten which username/e-mail you used for any given site, and did I mention you’d be up shit creek…?  That’s why I use SuperGenPass.

SuperGenPass is really nothing more than a very complex piece of JavaScript that disguises itself as a bookmark that one can easily add to a bookmarks menu or bookmarks toolbar.  What advantages does SuperGenPass have over other password managers such as 1Password?  The biggest advantage, and the main reason I use it, is the fact that one’s passwords are generated on the spot, and nothing is ever stored or recorded.  That provides an amazing level of security.  Also, there is never any need to worry about the program crashing, the database becoming corrupt, etc., because again, SuperGenPass is just a bookmark, and one’s passwords are generated on the spot.  If one happens to delete the bookmark, one can just re-add it and they’ll be set to go.  Imagine if one lost one’s 1Password database and had to reinstall the program.  That would be more than painful.

Similar to 1Password, SuperGenPass uses a master password.  It uses it in a slightly different manner, however.  Rather than using it to grant one access to a list of one’s passwords, SuperGenPass uses one’s master password and the domain name of the Web site one is visiting to generate a password based on a one-way hash algorithm.  It works like this:
- Visit the site
- Type the master password
- Click the SuperGenPass Bookmark
- The master password is automatically replaced with the password SuperGenPass generated

It’s really that simple, and it works like a charm.

SuperGenPass still places some responsibility on its users to remember the e-mail/username for any given site.  I think that is important.  Becoming too dependent on any one technology can be disastrous.  [See my cloud computing article for examples.]  SuperGenPass is also more portable.  To use 1Password on an iPod or iPod touch, one has to download 1Password’s proprietary app/browser.  Go figure!  With SuperGenPass, one just needs to add the bookmark in mobile Safari and that’s it.  SuperGenPass also allows one to host a copy of its site on one’s own server, so if one ever needs to re-add the bookmark and SuperGenPass’ site is down, it’s entirely possible to do so.  SuperGenPass works with any modern web browser, and unlike 1Password, it’s completely free, so why not use it?

[SuperGenPass]

Why The Computer Won’t Be Going Into The Cloud Anytime Soon – Andrew Min

A friend of mine, Andrew Min, wrote an excellent article on cloud computing. It expands on my ideas from my previous post.

Check it out!

Thoughts on YouTube

YouTube Logo

Who doesn’t love YouTube?  Many people probably visit YouTube multiple times daily, whether it’s to watch some comedic videos to brighten their day, or perhaps to watch some news footage that was uploaded by a reliable news source.  YouTube, albeit being just over three years old, according to Alexa, is the fourth most visited website in the United States!  And even though Alexa doesn’t publish actual traffic numbers, in layman’s terms, YouTube is bringing in a ton of traffic.  That’s basically common knowledge at this point.  One would think that with YouTube’s recent acquisition by Google, and it’s high traffic numbers, it’d be doing really well for itself.  Unfortunately that’s not the case.

Let’s consider the most important and fundamental reason why people use YouTube – it’s free!  It’s absolutely free to both content providers, and content receivers.  Even though people consider Google as an endless money pit, running the fourth most popular website in the United States, isn’t cheap.  At this current moment in time, this is where YouTube is struggling.  It’s struggling to make money.  People will argue that 50 to 100 million dollars in revenue each year is quite a bit, which it is, but again, it’s the fourth most popular website in the nation.  Along with that statistic, one has to consider YouTube’s industry.  It’s streaming video!  So not only is it the fourth most popular site in the nation, but it also is the number one online video streamer.  Streaming video eats bandwidth, and bandwidth costs money; it’s that simple.

YouTube cofounder Steven Chen promised that live video streaming would be added to YouTube this year.  It’s new owner, Google, nixed the idea, due to cost.  In a Valleywag article today, it said:

YouTube execs estimated that if just 10 percent of the service’s users took advantage of live streaming, the company would have to add 20 to 25 percent to its huge server and bandwidth infrastructure to support it.

That’s ridiculous.  It’s almost guranteed that if YouTube added live streaming, more than 10% of the users would take advantage of the feature, which links back to the cost factor.  YouTube is already expensive to run, and advertisers aren’t that interested.

Advertisers are only interested in a small percentage of videos on YouTube, and the users of the site do not want to see ads.  YouTube currently employs two types of ads.  They have a rather large banner ad to the right of many videos, and more recently, they’ve begun adding pop-up advertisements embedded within the videos themselves.  Consumers, including myself, hate these, and many simply ignore them, or in the case of the pop-up ads, just close them without even reading or clicking them.  Sure, the companies paid to have the advertisements displayed, but most ad revenue services, including Google’s own AdSense service, works based on the number of clicks on an advertisement.  If people aren’t clicking, then the advertisers and the site displaying the ads, in this case, YouTube, aren’t making any money, and that’s a problem.  Not only are people not clicking, but the price per click on ads is usually very low to begin with.  Therefore, even if a few people are clicking on the ads, it’s simply not bringing in enough money.

YouTube is in a tight spot right now.  People expect it to work, and people expect new features and innovation from the company.  It’s hard to innovate, however, when the budget runs tight.  YouTube needs to find a way to make advertising on the site more appealing to not only consumers, but also to advertisers if it wants to survive.  I’ll even be so strong and say that if YouTube can’t find a way to make advertising more appealing soon, within five years, the site is going to start having serious financial problems.  Those problems could, unfortunately, lead to the end of YouTube.