Quote of the Day (2009-03-31)

Sybil Fawlty: Are you still here Basil? Basil Fawlty: No, I went a few minutes ago dear, but I expect I'll be back shortly.

Source: Fawlty Towers

Is Facebook growing up too fast?

CNET News has a nice article on Facebook's growth and the challenges that presents for the site. This is a real challenge for them. The site has gone from a small user base and being based in some guy's dorm room to being an international phenomenon with 200,000,000 users spanning the globe in a very short time. Yet they still run the site like it's that dorm-based system. Somebody high up gets the idea they want to emulate Twitter (why?) so the application interface changes to emulate Twitter. No consultation with users, no long beta period, no options to switch back. They just do it. With 200 million users, you can't do it that way. Management conveys an almost Microsoft-ish indifference to customer needs.

I don't really understand the whole redesign to begin with. They want to emulate Twitter. But Twitter is a totally different application. It functions differently and provides a totally different service. Facebook is about interaction between friends, finding new friends, and so forth. To that end things like notification that a friend has been tagged in a photo or that they added some other person--who I might know--as a friend seems pretty appropriate, but is gone.

The most amusing thing, though, is this:

The changes, Facebook executives say, are intended to make the act of sharing--not just information about themselves but what people are doing now--easier, faster and more urgent. Chris Cox, 26, Facebook's director of products and a confidant of Zuckerberg, envisions users announcing where they are going to lunch as they leave their computers so friends can see the updates and join them.

'That is the kind of thing that is not meaningful when it is announced 40 minutes later,' he says.

So the main thing about the new design is to disseminate information faster to your friends. Good idea. The old news feed did a pretty good job of that, by auto-updating every so often so that if someone put that message out it would show up on my feed pretty quickly. (I also have the Facebook toolbar for firefox which does a pretty good job of that also.) To make it better and distribute that information faster, they...take away the automatic updates, so updates I used to get automatically and within a few minutes now might take hours. In the name of making it faster. Huh?

Quote of the Day (2009-03-30)

Peter Gibbons: Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.

Source: Office Space

Quote of the Day (2009-03-28)

Rick: I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.

Source: Casablanca

Quote of the Day (2009-03-27)

Peter Gibbons: I can't believe what a bunch of nerds we are. We're looking up "money laundering" in the dictionary.

Source: Office Space

Quote of the Day (2009-03-26)

C. K. Dexter Haven: [looking for the "hair of the dog"] Do you s'pose, sir, speaking of eye-openers...? Uncle Willie: Oh, that's the first sane remark I've heard today. C'malong, Dexter, I know a formula that's said to pop the pennies off the eyelids of dead Irishmen.

Source: The Philadelphia Story

Quote of the Day (2009-03-25)

Frasier: God, I hate lawyers. Niles: Me, too. But they make wonderful patients: they have excellent health insurance and they never get better.

Source: Frasier

Quote of the Day (2009-03-24)

Jim Hacker: "But you got me this job [local government]." Sir Humphrey: "Yes, but I didn't expect you to do anything, I mean, you have never done anything before."

Source: Yes, Minister

Quote of the Day (2009-03-23)

Cheryl "Rhode Island": Once I stole a pair of red underwear from the department store. My mom wouldn't buy them for me - she said they were Satan's panties!

Source: Miss Congeniality

The Old Days

For those interested in what I used to do for a living, this is one of my last papers.

Quote of the Day (2009-03-22)

Ralph: Norton, I'm gonna count to five. And when I get to five you better be out that door. Norton: I'm not a-scared of you. If you could count they wouldn't be investigating your taxes.

Source: The Honeymooners

Quote of the Day (2009-03-22)

Ralph: Norton, I'm gonna count to five. And when I get to five you better be out that door. Norton: I'm not a-scared of you. If you could count they wouldn't be investigating your taxes.

Source: The Honeymooners