Minh’s Notes

Time to slim down my “need to blog about but can’t find the time for” folder. Since there’s currently a whopping 171 bookmarks in it, I’ll start with some of the stuff since October:

• Finally, there’s a solution to the troubling trend of small logos: Make My Logo Bigger Cream.
• Wired Magazine details the pains Apple went through to make the iPhone happen, and the lasting effect it had on the phone industry.
• For the last three years, one man, Alexander Clauss, has pretty much single-handedly competed against Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple. Although his Web browser, iCab, looked horrendous for the longest time and never gained even the market share that Opera had, it until this month supported decade-old Macs and modern Web standards at the same time. In case you’re wondering: yes, my computer has a copy installed.
• Those fortune cookies you get from any of the hundreds of Chinese buffets in Cincinnati? They’re Japanese.
• My first quarter out here at Stanford, I joined a few hundred freshmen descending on downtown San Francisco for the school’s annual Scavenger Hunt, essentially a denial of service attack on the city’s mass transit infrastructure. Caltrain, the regional commuter railroad, was resilient enough to stuff everyone onboard successfully (albeit unconfortably), but once we got downtown, the Muni bus system was a different story altogether. Apparently Muni’s semi-subway system isn’t any better.
• Today’s big corporations would be ashamed of what their Web presence amounted to back in 1996. My favorite is Nickelodeon’s site, where a pre–Web 2.0 vlogger is stuck in the back seat of the family car “with only her goldfish, Rover.” Yeah.

Thanks to John Gruber and Steve Baldwin.

Entry №1166, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 6:15 PM | Edit | Permalink
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A little old, but still interesting: a Microsoft employee demos a not-for-sale, stripped-down version of Windows called MinWin. (Not to be confused with the author of this blog, whose name is pronounced slightly differently.) Among other things, it features an ASCII art boot screen. In all seriousness, it’s more or less intended to be a tiny core within Windows 7, as well as the operating system for embedded devices like phones, which simply don’t have the 15 GB recommended for Windows Vista Home Basic.

Also of note are a brief look at Microsoft Bob – which I happen to run on my computer occasionally – and the angry fruit salad known as Windows 1.0.

Incidentally: Windows 2.0 – with Reversi! I love Reversi.

Via Ina Fried of C|Net.

Entry №1165, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 3:36 PM | Edit | Permalink
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Maybe I’m increasing the signal-to-noise ratio at Facebook?

Those of you who’ve known me for awhile probably know of my contempt for so-called “social networking” sites. If they were merely about getting in touch with long-lost friends and looking up someone’s e-mail address, and maybe even bragging about how many favorite colors you have, I’d have no problem with MySpace, Facebook, and the like. But they’re run by for-profit companies, of course, and that means they need a way to monetize our eyeballs. My eyeballs don’t want to be monetized.

I once described social networking sites as “one giant, conflated popularity contest”. I still think that’s the case with MySpace, but Facebook has since been more cunning about its whole business. You can easily find fault with a service where you’re encouraged to maintain a tell-all profile, add as many “friends” as possible, and chitchat with them, but do nothing much else. Facebook, however, caters not only to the super-vain among us, but also to those who have something better to do there. Applications. Facebook is a bazaar, and there’s something for everyone at a bazaar.

This blog has been my soapbox for nearly six years, but after high school, its readership declined considerably, not helped by the fact that Google relegated it to the second page of results for my name. That’s where Facebook came in. Although I was initially wary of its terms of service, Facebook was an irresistible distribution channel for my blog. I relented, and now it’s where the majority of my readers come from.

People are quitting Facebook cold turkey. But as much as I’d like to follow suit one of these days – having already backed up everything I’ve ever done on the site with the glory that is ScrapBook – I can’t quite leave yet, because along with Facebook would go my audience: you. My profile stays, for now. As much as I dislike their tactics, I know how the record labels must feel, so beholden to Apple for sales.

Soapboxes exist to tell everyone what they didn’t know they wanted to hear. If you stand on one, you scream at the top of your lungs, at every chance you get. It’s too bad Facebook just happens to be holding the donation hat.

Entry №1162, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 5:40 PM | Edit | Permalink
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