HMediapro.com

Well, its been a crapshoot for the past two months. I am happy to say though - HMediapro.com will be back up and running by the end of the week.

I am moving over the entire domain/hosting to a Netfirms. Nothing personal - just didn't really enjoy the last company's service.

I apologize to all of those that have tried reaching www.hmediapro.com in the past few months. It has been an inconvenience to us all and it will be something I will stand to see doesn't happen again.

Feature Fools

As a college student I have a few years under my belt in terms of using social networking. I've been around since the debut of Myspace, Facebook, and Xuqa. Now, a few years later I shall look at the three applications and see how they rank up.

Myspace
Back in 2003, www.myspace.com was a very simple place to set up a profile and meet online friends. At the time Friendster.com had a major share of the newest idea on the horizon - social networking. Over time though, Myspace became more and more popular, especially in 2005. What set Myspace apart was the fact you could customize your own profiles with html codes. Now in 2007 Myspace has a variety of features, including but not limited to:

• Myspace Jobs (utilizes Snagajob.com postings)
• Comedy and Music profiles (for those of us that would rather not pay for music)
• Blogs
• ChatRooms
• Events
• Classifieds
• Horoscopes
• Schools/Univerities
• MySpaceIM
• Music
• Filmmakers
• Profile Editor
• SMS Alerts
• MySpace TV
• Mobile

That may look like a lot, but it really branches out for the various mediums that attract our attention. It's not just a way to make friends anymore - Myspace has quickly become a highly attractive promotional tool. What else will they bring to the plate?

Although they are feature-full - this won't keep me happy. The website isn't dependable at all. The fanbase is too large for the servers to handle. I would highly recommend updating the equipment to hold the bandwidth that the users require or at least.. investing in some better technology than Coldfusion :).

Facebook
Facebook started with a simple idea - make an online contact listing with a photo to attach to the information. It worked splendid for quite some time. It was also very nice because only college students from various networks had access to it. Take that spam!

Then.... Facebook added features - something which they have proven to lack effectiveness. For example, in the later 2006/earlier 2007 period, Facebook launched a feature that allowed for members to track what everyone in their network was doing (literally). Many have labeled the feature as a "stalker" tool. All it really is though is an RSS feed.

Facebook's next reasoning - allow the release of the Facebook API so that developers can create their own tools for Facebook. Is this the way to get the features people want? Yes. Is this the way to drive users like me up the wall? YES!

Now, rather than a feature here and there, I have my contacts sending me requests for using various applications that are just plain stupid - see below:

• Movies Friend
• Horoscope
• X Me
• Zombie
• Beer
• Top Friends
• Poke Me Pro

The list literally goes on. Rather than helping the user connect to their network, they can sign up for applications that allow them to be "zombies biting other zombies", "giving a beer to a friend", or whatever. Since 2006, Facebook has lost its true niches that set it apart from Myspace. It has lost its community sense by opening up to the public and it has lost its pure simplicity that set it apart from the decorative Myspace. At least it's developed in PHP...

Xuqa
Xuqa.com was rather nice when it jumped into the field in 2005. It found a niche in the college market by encouraging the posting of photos from college parties. Collegehumor.com anyone? Another feature was that you could earn peanuts to buy E-items to send to friends. Granted, these features alone were very nice when Xuqa first debuted. Who really wants to stay on the Internet and do this for the rest of their free-time though?

Xuqa found a new way in 2006 to seperate itself from the two social networking giants - make the social networking scene a competition. Just read their tagline -

"Xuqa is a network of 1,000,000+ University Students. Compete with your friends to be the richest and most popular person in the world!"

Nice. Now we can earn peanuts, add people for useless reasons and claim the realm of being the Internet social networking's most popular person. Where is the bragging rights for that gonna hold against .. reality?

Overview:
As you can see, these tools have changed the social life we live. In ways it has made it easier to meet new people, promote businesses, and spread ideas to a greater number of people with less work. In other ways though it has just cluttered our social space with useless tools that will furthermore make our spare time just that - useless. The future is limitless for social networking. I just hope the big guys can use their power for the greater good.

Employee Appreciation Day

Sometimes work gets boring. Then there are days that break the mold.
Today at work we had an Employee Appreciation day to - you guessed right - show appreciation to our employees.

We brought in a dunking booth and allowed employees to buy throws. Why would we charge them to throw on THEIR appreciation day? The reason - to raise money for charity. I must say it was a fun experience, even yours truly was dunked a few times.

I hope to see more events like this in the near future. It's an effective tool for improving internal company relations and takes away the norm of sitting in the office!

I gotta say I've never really been a fan of ASP, ASP.net or C# for that matter.

I know many programmers might laugh at it. In all honesty, I always leaned toward the open source technologies because they were not only free, but provided a lot of documentation for the abundance of questions I would need to ask.

Due to my new job I have been integrated into a .NET environment. With that it means if I want to move up I had best learn the tools of the trade. I have began using Microsoft Visual Web Developer to toy with ASP.net and I must say that I like the tool. It's a nice GUI for programmers. I wonder if there is a tool like this for PHP?

I'm working on a few test projects to get myself warmed up to the thought of things. I may link to the files later on in the week.

As a note to most - I have a lot of work to catch up on and I will be nearly IMPOSSIBLE to reach until around the 26th. Have a great week all!

I hereby raise the white flag

Granted, for those that know me - I'm about as ANTI ASP.net as it gets.

But.. life happens and you get jobs that require stepping up to the plate.

As you all may know I've been working with a very nice company in Southwest VA by the name of Results Galax, apart of the ResultsTel Companies. The site I work at is a call center for our client - XM Radio. Fortunately I have moved through the ranks while there and now will be able to get a taste of the corporate web development life.

What's the flipside? I gotta use ASP.net. It's not bad, it will require me to learn. I have the interest at least :).

Just for that, as a PHP programmer, I have posted a link to a ASP / PHP cross reference. Bookmark it guys!

http://www.design215.com/toolbox/asp.php

Time Management for the College Kid

The quote unquote "real world" is a great instructor in terms of free-time. It has really taught me in some time about how much free time I have had in college and that I never really utilized it. For example, I thought I was almost too busy because I was not only a full-time student, but I was also in a business fraternity, business organization, held part-time jobs, and more.

The beauty of college is that everything is spread out. If you can figure out ways to patch those hours in between your active hours you can really become productive in various ways. Below I have included five suggestions that I have found helpful over the past two years:

• Try waking up before 9am. It adds to your energy and ability to produce. Can't wake up early? Try going to bed before midnight and maintain a consistent schedule of productivity.
  
  
• If you have an hour before class, don't walk all the way back to your dorm or apartment. Find a productive place near where your class begins next and get to work on some tasks that need completion. Possible suggestions could be computer labs or student dedicated centers.
  
  
• Stop spending too much time on certain tasks. A lot of times we study too much for exams or drive the point into the ground in hopes that it will only make us better. Unfortunately, it mostly just wastes useful time.
  
  
• Make use of the time you create by implementing these habits. It wouldn't hurt to use some of the free time to refocus or take a breather from the day's activities.
  
  
• Use a planner! This may sound like a no-brainer, but the effective use of a planner isn't as simple as you would think. Take a week, log what you use your time for. Adjust it accordingly to see how much you can squeeze out of your time in a given day.