Thoughts

  • June 9, 2007

    Save Money on Purchases

    Cash Money

    A week or so ago, I wrote about how I need to be more fiscally responsible. The hardest part about doing this is I love buying stuff. My brother told me I spend money just to spend it, and to a certain extent that’s true. However, I have come up with a couple of ways to save money on those oh so important purchases I make.

    Money Back Programs
    This is my biggest form of money saving. I’ve found two solid money back programs in Best Buy’s Reward Zone and Amazon’s Associates Program. With both programs, you get a certain amount of money back on your purchases. With Best Buy, it’s in the form of certificates to Best Buy which, face it, for a guy like me is perfect. With Amazon, you can opt for direct deposit to your back account, which will occur every quarter assuming you make $10 or more. This has led to me using Best Buy and Amazon for most of my purchases, as I get money back on their already relatively low prices.
    Student Discounts
    If you are a student, take advantage of it. A lot of places offer some sort of student discount- the gym, the movies, etc. There are also student online stores, like Journey Ed, which has great student discounts on computer hardware and software, PDAs, USB Drives, etc. If you are not sure about student discounts in certain establishments, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

    These methods have saved me quite a bit of money already this summer. Journey Ed, especially, offers massive discounts on some great software suites. What do you do to save money?

  • May 29, 2007

    Financial Responsibility

    Now that I’m (dun dun dun) a college graduate, I feel like it’s time for be more fiscally responsible. My senior year I feel I really wasn’t, and I’m OK with that, but now I think it’s time to buckle down, especially since I will be freelancing my way through grad school (with the help, hopefully, of an assistantship). I think I have pin pointed a few of my problems and will be able to work on them to be financially sound.

    Don’t impluse buy
    This is a HUGE problem of mine. I’ll go out to a store, maybe with a friend or to buy stuff I actually need, and then pick up something on a whim. If I stopped this, I’d have so much more money. And it could be as little as a couple of $5 movies from Wal-Mart, but each of those purchases Nickel and Dime me.
    Don’t be so generous
    I kind of blame my dad for this one, but when I go out to the bar with some friends, I usually feel the need to buy them a drink. Or when we go to dinner, I will sometimes treat or eat the bill a little. This probably bothers my friends more than it does me, but I also need to recognize that I can’t be doing that all the time.
    Don’t spend more money when I don’t have to
    This could come in the form of late fees for bills or (ahem) my first speeding ticket ever. It could also be spending more money for convenience. I’m not saying I should be completely frugal now, but a little frugality is never a bad thing.

    This summer will be a pilot program for these 3 little rules. With that in mind, I will also be doing some big things this summer- concerts, Texas (hopefully) and I’d like to buy a new digital camera (yes I know, That would be 3 within a year- am I already breaking one of my rules?). But these are things I am planning and saving for. With any luck, by the end of the summer I’ll have a nice little bundle saved up that I can put in some nice savings account to build interest on. Any suggestions?

  • April 16, 2007

    How Design Effects Users

    As a web developer, I feel I know a little bit about design and functionality on a website. Lately I have been noticing my use of a website depends heavily on design and functionality, as I’m sure it does for most people whether they realize it or not. Take, for instance, how I get my news online.

    CNN

    Fox News

    Here are screen shots of both CNN and Fox News. Click the images to go to the sites. While Fox News is more my brand of news (surprise surprise), I find myself going to CNN more often. This is because I feel CNN has a nicer, cleaner looking site. CNN’s logo blends nicely with the rest of the banner, unlike Fox’s, which just looks like it’s thrown there. There isn’t too much going on ‘above the fold’ for CNN. With Fox, it’s a different story. For example, Fox offers 27 links in it’s main navigation. CNN offers 20 (which was actually more than I thought). CNN’s navigation is also contained to one, solitary line. Fox has theirs on two lines, each a different shade of blue. Below the fold on Fox is even worse.

    Where CNN offers more stories organized in a pretty nice fashion, Fox offers links to all of their shows and a litany of thumbnail images. I feel that I get much more information from CNN’s homepage, which is what the user wants. Plus, CNN’s links are much friendlier. If you’ll notice, a link to a story on CNN appears like this, after ‘cnn.com’: /2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html. Year, region, month, day, name of story. Here is a link following ‘foxnews.com’: /story/0,2933,266463,00.html. This is not informative, nor very nice looking. But news isn’t the only problem area. Because of GMail, I never use my school’s email system.

    What got me thinking about this was Google asking students to take their survey about campus email. I am a staunch user of GMail and tell everyone I know to use it. It’s a good interface, easy to use, lots of space and has great IM and Calendar integration. I was also able to make it a one stop shop for sending and receiving email from the multitude of email addresses I have. “Royal Mail,” as the University of Scranton calls it, is not a good experience. It’s poorly designed and not very intuitive. Unless you change the settings, you get oldest mail first, and deleting a lot of email at one time is not easy. But the biggest annoyance I feel, is no search. GMail has excellent functionality here, allowing me not only to quickly find mail, but the search also allows me to use GMail as a file server. And with near 3GB of space, I have the capacity to do so too.

    Design and functionality is everything on the web. If your site doesn’t make the user experience easy, you’re app is dead in the water. GMail has turned me away from my school’s lousy email system, and CNN’s design helps me tolerate their particular branding of news (though CNN isn’t nearly as bad as MSNBC).

  • April 9, 2007

    Finding Originality

    In a world with mash-ups, open source, and the Internet, it’s pretty tough to find an original project- something that has not already been done. For instance, I’ve thought of many projects that have already been done, most notably something similar to Facebook. About three months before Facebook got popular, my friend Steve Mekosh and I started planning what we were calling a MySpace for College Students. In retrospect, I don’t think we could have done something as awesome as Facebook is, but still the idea was there. I’ve also wanted to do something similar to Remember the Milk, a tasks website. So where do I draw the line and say, ‘This has already been done, forget it’ or ‘I can make this better?’

    Right now I have two projects in mind that are out there that I can make better. So here is my process. I’ll come up with an idea, write some notes on it- basic plans, a mission statement for the website, etc. Then I will use Google to find similar websites. If I find something that’s strikingly close to what I want to do, I’ll sign up for it and use it. I will keep track of changes I’d make that I feel the general public would also like. After a week or so, I’ll decide if the project is worth doing.

    I’ve done that with two websites now and I really feel with one website, my project would be an improvement. With the other, I feel the mission of my site is different enough that it is worth doing. The important part of this ordeal is not to get discouraged because something has already been done. Check out the product and see how many people actually use it and what they like/dislike about it. If you honestly think you can do better, try it out. If anything, it will be a learning experience for you. That’s the way I look at it. However, one thing I do need to work on is finding time to actually do the projects I have in mind.

  • March 22, 2007

    Desktop Publishing

    I have been doing a lot of desktop publishing lately- Quark Xpress, Publisher, Photoshop for info graphics and the like. I’ve got to say it has been a nice change of pace from the normal coding sessions I have been doing the past few weeks. Once some of the stuff I have been working on is finalized I will add it to my Projects page. As much as I love coding, it’s been nice to do some design work lately. I can only take so many lines of PHP (and recently those lines have been hitting the thousands).

    PS- Once I get time, I’ll be posting some of those projects too!

  • March 18, 2007

    Using AIM 6.0 to send Pics

    AIM

    A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about AIM 6.0 and how I made the switch to that from GAIM. One of the nice new (or really, improved) features of 6.0 is the Pictures feature. Up until last night I used Hello by Google to send pictures to people. It was a superior product with the ability to select a picture and chat about it, send multiple pictures at ones and view them as a slide show, among other things. Last night I tried the pictures function on AIM 6.0 and it also offers all of that, with the very nice ability to drag and drop photos right into the session.

    With this change I will not be using Hello any more, and there is one real reason for it. As seems to be the problem with many Google products, even though it might be superior, Hello is lacking a user base. All of my friends use AIM. This means Google Talk is not used as often (though since its integration into GMail, I’ve been using it more); nor is Hello. I don’t have to ask my friends to go download Hello and make a screen name for it now just so I can send them pictures. I can simply open a session in AIM. More very nice work from the people at AOL to make AIM more than just an instant messaging client!

  • January 25, 2007

    The Gym

    One of my resolutions this [every] year is to go to the gym, try to lose some weight, etc. This year I am actually following through with it, and it feels pretty good. I started on Jan. 2, the day I got back to school, and have been going just about everyday, taking a day to rest here and there. Once I actually started going, it wasn’t that hard to continue. I felt pretty good after going to the weight room and/or cardio room, even if I was sore or tired. And I started seeing progress after just the first week.

    So what I am doing different this year? I am actually going. My friend told me getting to the gym is 90%, and that’s about right. Once I get there and start working out I want to keep going and finish the work out for the day. Some awesome music doesn’t hurt either.

  • January 18, 2007

    Treo vs. iPhone

    Treo 650

    Today I read a post at Treonauts.com comparing the Treo and iPhone. As a Treo user (and a bit of an Apple hater), I was curious to see what they had to say. While I do find the Treo better, I felt the comparison was pretty biased towards the Treo (even for a site dedicated to Treos). They break the article down into 7 sections pitting the two phones against each other. While I won’t go in-depth, I will touch on what they said.

    Screen Resolution + Input Method (Palm 1: Apple 0): I will agree with them on input method. While it is cool that the iPhone has a touch screen keyboard, and multiTouch technology, there is no replacement for the recoil of a real physical keyboard. Plus in my experience, it’s easier to type on a real keyboard. However, the screen resolution on the iPhone is better. Treo: 320×320, iPhone: 320×480. I would say 1:1 here.

    Operating System (Palm 1: Apple 0): I agree with them here. Palm OS is more open, and more versatile (as we’ve seen so far). However, it’s epic that a phone is running OSX. 2:1

    Storage (Palm 1: Apple 0): It’s also epic that the iPhone will have 4 or 8 GB on board. However, that’s all you get. Treo has SD support, so I can have theoretically as much memory as I want. 3:1

    GSM + Wireless Data + Camera (Palm 0: Apple 2): No question. iPhone wins this bout. 2.0MP camera for a phone is crazy, and WiFi built in. That is something I wish the Treo had. 3:3

    Battery (Palm 1: Apple 0): The battery is removable. Plus, the Treo battery is a tank- I can’t imagine the iPhone having a great battery with the nice screen resolution, WiFi, bluetooth, and Lord knows what else going. 4:3

    Dimensions + Weight (Palm 1: Apple 0): Sorry Treonauts, no matter how you slice it, the iPhone is smaller and weighs less. One thing I wish was different about my Treo is size. The 650 is like a brick. 4:4

    My Overall Thoughts:: I was really impressed with the iPhone when I first saw it. It may be revolutionary. But no keyboard or removable battery is tough. Especially since the iPod has had so many problems. Built in WiFi is awesome. The internet stuff is awesome- better browsing, mail and the adaption of OS widgets is cool. But I love the Palm OS and the freeware you can get for it, it’s awesome battery life and real keyboard. If I had run the same review as the treonauts, the Treo and iPhone would be tied up. BUT, I feel like the Treo is better choice, at least for me. While the iPhone is rich in graphics and media, the Treo I feel is better for practical and general use.

  • January 2, 2007

    Facebook vs. MySpace III

    The Showdown

    This is part 3 of a 3 part series that started here and continued here.

    User Friendliness

    The most important part of any website is user friendliness. If it is not easy to use, most people probably won’t use it. The site must also be able to grow, and keep its users informed. It can be a culmination of everything I have already talked about, which is why I saved this post for last. From the first post of this series, I talk about how Facebook is much cleaner, with significantly less ads. They really put the user first. They have a blog, where all the developers can post what they are working on. And they respond to feedback. The best example of this is the Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg (the facebook creator) he wrote in response to the uproar about the mini-feeds. Shortly after, they had fixes out for the feeds so you can control content. These are things you don’t see MySpace doing. If they have a blog, I can’t find it. You do see the occasional bulletin from Tom, but that is usually to say “If bulletins are being posted under your account that you didn’t post, change your password,” or “Sorry for the downtime.” And there is no archive for them. (Point of interest: Facebook has no spam or downtime.)

    The second post in this series talk about add ons. Facebook this year alone has had so many. While I showcased some of them, there are a number I left out. MySpace hardly had any. This just shows that Facebook pays more attention to the user. They add things they think the users will like, and accept feedback asking what features users want to see, or what to change. I also mentioned Facebook uses the latest technologies like AJAX. This makes it much easier for the user, with less loading time and switching pages. The user can focus on browsing the site and not on waiting for the site to load.

    As you can probably tell, Facebook really impresses me. The site is really well done and the communication from the development team is second to none. The ads aren’t in your face, and the user has a lot of control over content. Facebook, in my opinion, is the better of the two sites, and possibly the best social networking site out there. Let me know what you think in the comments. Later!

    UPDATE: I just read this bulletin from Tom on MySpace:

    Some of you may have noticed already–the photo count has been increased to 300! You can now upload up to 300 photos. Enjoy! Next week we’ll have albums so you can organize your photos. Enjoy and thanks to Warner Bros and 300 for making this possible!

  • December 31, 2006

    2006 in Review

    This post I have been thinking about for a couple of days now, and I am not sure what to say. 2006 was a pretty good year for me. JLC Web Design had a benchmark year, doing pretty well client wise. I’ve picked up a few new skills, like programming in AJAX and C. I’ve taken more pictures and got a litany of new toys, including a new laptop, camera, mp3 player, and of course, my Treo 650.

    I also started a couple of series on this site that I hope to continue. The first one is The Business, where I give some insight on running my business, JLC Web Design. I also started a series on productivity and staying organized.

    Coming in 2007: a new design to the blog, and hopefully a whole new project. All in all, it was a pretty good year. I’ve learned a lot, and hope ’07 is just as good! Later!