becausemaybe blog » Techie

Spotify Bandwagon

nel — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 10:46:27 +0000

I’ve been wasting a lot of my leisure time on Spotify. Mostly because my friends and I have been collaborating on compiling decade specific ULTIMATE playlists.

You can find those lists here:

Ultimate 80s
Ultimate 90s Alternative
Ultimate 2000s

Overall, I like Spotify but there are two things that really annoy me about it: their super long and intrusive ads and their selection of music is somewhat limited. I would say 30% of the time, they don’t have what I’m looking for OR they have a version of the song that’s not by the original artist (i.e. crappy cover or karaoke version). So if anything, I’m still on the Spotify bandwagon just for the social aspect of it. And that’s about it. When it comes to discovering new music, I still prefer to listen to Indie Pop Rocks on SomaFM.

You can find me on Spotify: becausemaybe

Are You Serious, Facebook?!

nel — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 08:38:09 +0000

Around midnight tonight, my Facebook account refreshed to reveal a not-so-favorable surprise. I believed it to be a launch of a new feature but it currently is only active on a few accounts. The majority of my friends do not have this new feature. I only know of one acquaintance in Australia who has this new feature active on her account. And the minute I saw it, I quickly wanted to remove it (but of course, there is no option to do so). If you take a peek at the screenshot below, the highlight area in the right sidebar is the only thing that has changed. The rest of the layout has remained unchanged but I am not yet sure if there will be any changes to Facebook chat. When this change came into effect, it knocked out my Facebook chat. What was once in that right sidebar areas was the birthday reminders and event reminders. And it is now replaced with a mini-feed. You’re probably wondering how it’s different from your regular News Feed. Well the difference is…this feed shows you everything your friends are doing. And I mean EVERYTHING. It updates and displays in real time and moves almost as fast (if not faster) than a Twitter feed. It displays every comment, post, like, game play, added friends, you name it! So imagine your Notifications bar, except you’re seeing your friends’ notifications.

I don’t know about you, but I think there’s something super creepy and more-stalkerish-than-usual about this. What makes Facebook think that I even want to know EVERYTHING my friends are doing?! And even worse, right now since it hasn’t taken effect across all accounts yet, my most of my friends don’t even know that I can now see everything they do. Sure some of the content in this new mini-feed are already displayed on people’s individual walls, but unless you view every single friend’s profiles individually, you would never see it. But what that means now is, this new mini-feed is now calling to attention that information and putting it on the main homepage. The point I’m trying to make is…Why would you want to see what Person A commented on Person B’s photo if you don’t even know Person B at all!

And then if you click on one of the entries, it gives you a pop-up that allows you to interact with that post without having to go to that person’s profile.

And this just makes me wonder if this is Facebook’s response to Google+’s Stream. (But I don’t think it’s similar to the Google+ Stream at all). I’ve been on Google+ for about two and a half weeks now and I really do prefer it over Facebook. But I’ve also contemplated deleting my Facebook account several times over the course of the last two years, this recent move is just adding fuel to the fire. My hope is that Facebook is just testing this new feature on a small test group and it never reaches wide release. I’ve been on Facebook since roughly Sept/Oct 2004 (which if you want to refer to the Facebook timeline, that’s a little over 6 months after its launch). And it’s come a long way from what it was. But ever since I started my Twitter account in 2008, I’ve been moving further and further away from it. I just like that with Twitter you can interact with others who share similar interests and be able to have a conversation without having to delve into our personal lives. But I just like that you can see the comment threads on Facebook. But I have a lot of hope for Google+. I really want it to succeed…because come on! who doesn’t have a gmail account these days?! And I think it’s really going to change the way content is shared.

**Also, I sincerely apologize to all my friends who appear in these screenshots. You can bitch me out for it later.

Returning to Roots

nel — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:57:58 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about investing a good amount of my time in web development. My interest in graphic design started in web, so I think it’s only appropriate to venture back into that realm. Tonight I was at AIGA/LA’s 2nd Installment of the Print 2 Web series. And it made me realize that I’m part of that rare breed of designers that actually likes coding HTML & CSS. There’s always been something really soothing about it for me. Maybe it’s because I don’t see it so much as a necessary labor but more as a language. A syntax for dialogue. I just always liked the idea of controlling how intangible things talk to each other.

But I was also reminded of how I used to build sites of Geocities and the days before Dreamweaver when I used to hard code using MS Notepad. All the HTML I knew back then was self-taught. And even a lot of the HTML I know now is self-taught. I remember when frames were such a big deal in how a website was structured. These days, they’ve been replaced by alternative ways to do the same thing in CSS.

I guess what I’m saying is…I miss the days of sitting at home and staring at code. I feel like I’ve been out of the loop for so long that trying to catch up to what’s relevant now will be exhausting. I’m constantly debating with myself if that’s the route I want to take. Do I want to focus on web? Truthfully, I just want to be better at developing WordPress themes. I don’t care about Flash or making media rich websites. I care more about the structure. In the next few days, I’ll play around and think things through. And who knows, maybe you’ll be seeing some new things from me soon.

Meet Google

nel — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:39:30 +0000

Meet Google (HUNGRY BEAST) from Elmo Keep on Vimeo.

My friend over at Kuro shared this with me. I think it’s a fun little piece. But I would like someone to explain to me what Google Wave and Google Buzz are for, because although I have both my general response to them is… Isn’t that what Twitter‘s for?