Nightmares and Dreamscapes
One of my favorite webcomics, xkcd, freakishly hit one out of the park today...
Oh my gosh... I swear, I've had this exact same dream so many freaking times! Especially the part where I realize that I've "forgotten" I even had the class... Weird, because I've been out of college for almost seven years now! The funny thing is that I used to have a similar dream about high school... It was never about my regular classes, though. I would always dream I was back in band class and had forgotten how to play my saxophone. :-P
In other news, Facebook redesigned their site and I hate it. I liked their previous design, which basically added tabs to profiles (a welcome, uncluttering addition) and spiffed up the home page. This new version SUCKS! The home page has been reduced to a glorified Twitter feed. Gone is virtually all the functionality I enjoyed with the old home page... One of the first things I did when I logged on in the past was to click on my Status Updates filter and read what my friends were doing. You can't do that anymore. The status updates are still there, sure, but their sandwiched in between EVERYTHING else. Photos, "gifts," etc... It's really annoying.
I read a good article about the "upgrade" on the Huffington Post.Facebook's Lousy Facelift
How "Twitteriffic" is the new Facebook redesign? Imagine that Apple panicked over the press the Google G1 phone was getting last fall and abruptly decided to remake the iPhone in the image of its upstart competitor--dropping the most desirable features and adopting the G1's bigger bulk, smaller screen, skimpy memory, lack of apps, and mediocre interface. We all know that could never happen: Apple has too much confidence in its own market dominance and design brilliance to blink like that. Yet, incredibly, Facebook--until last week, the Apple of social-networking services--decided to react to the Twitter "threat" by trying to turn itself into its relatively puny challenger. It's like Meryl Streep getting plastic surgery in order to more closely resemble Malin Akerman. Who'd have guessed that Facebook, of all the beloved services, could be capable of such a needlessly lousy facelift?
I think web historians can mark down March 13, 2009 as "the day they broke Facebook." Not that it's easy to pin it down to one date, because some users started getting shifted over a day or two earlier to "New Facebook." (Allusion to "New Coke" intentional.) But there's something unluckily apt about Friday the 13th being the completion date for everyone's home page involuntarily giving way to... The Change. (Menopausal allusion also intentional.) From every indication I can gauge, the reaction among Facebook partisans has been overwhelmingly blistering, making me wonder if they did any kind of market research at all that didn't involve sampling groups made up entirely of Twitter triumphalists. Earth to 24-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: As of last month, Twitter was getting 54 million monthly visits, which sounds impressive, except that this genius thing you invented was getting almost almost 1.2 billion visits--or, in other words, was still about 20 times as popular as the nascent challenger. Remind us again, Mark, what it was you didn't like about that math?
Continued...
The article goes on to list some of the more glaring problems with the change. I really don't get it at all... Facebook, as it was, was awesome. Everyone knows that you don't remove functionality when you upgrade! Annoying... I hope the designers are listening and at least bring some features back. Right now there's a place on the site where you can vote on the new layout. Current results? 19,156 (7%) gave it a Thumbs Up. The other 255,565 (93%) gave it a Thumbs Down. Wow.
Oh my gosh... I swear, I've had this exact same dream so many freaking times! Especially the part where I realize that I've "forgotten" I even had the class... Weird, because I've been out of college for almost seven years now! The funny thing is that I used to have a similar dream about high school... It was never about my regular classes, though. I would always dream I was back in band class and had forgotten how to play my saxophone. :-P
In other news, Facebook redesigned their site and I hate it. I liked their previous design, which basically added tabs to profiles (a welcome, uncluttering addition) and spiffed up the home page. This new version SUCKS! The home page has been reduced to a glorified Twitter feed. Gone is virtually all the functionality I enjoyed with the old home page... One of the first things I did when I logged on in the past was to click on my Status Updates filter and read what my friends were doing. You can't do that anymore. The status updates are still there, sure, but their sandwiched in between EVERYTHING else. Photos, "gifts," etc... It's really annoying.
I read a good article about the "upgrade" on the Huffington Post.Facebook's Lousy Facelift
How "Twitteriffic" is the new Facebook redesign? Imagine that Apple panicked over the press the Google G1 phone was getting last fall and abruptly decided to remake the iPhone in the image of its upstart competitor--dropping the most desirable features and adopting the G1's bigger bulk, smaller screen, skimpy memory, lack of apps, and mediocre interface. We all know that could never happen: Apple has too much confidence in its own market dominance and design brilliance to blink like that. Yet, incredibly, Facebook--until last week, the Apple of social-networking services--decided to react to the Twitter "threat" by trying to turn itself into its relatively puny challenger. It's like Meryl Streep getting plastic surgery in order to more closely resemble Malin Akerman. Who'd have guessed that Facebook, of all the beloved services, could be capable of such a needlessly lousy facelift?
I think web historians can mark down March 13, 2009 as "the day they broke Facebook." Not that it's easy to pin it down to one date, because some users started getting shifted over a day or two earlier to "New Facebook." (Allusion to "New Coke" intentional.) But there's something unluckily apt about Friday the 13th being the completion date for everyone's home page involuntarily giving way to... The Change. (Menopausal allusion also intentional.) From every indication I can gauge, the reaction among Facebook partisans has been overwhelmingly blistering, making me wonder if they did any kind of market research at all that didn't involve sampling groups made up entirely of Twitter triumphalists. Earth to 24-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: As of last month, Twitter was getting 54 million monthly visits, which sounds impressive, except that this genius thing you invented was getting almost almost 1.2 billion visits--or, in other words, was still about 20 times as popular as the nascent challenger. Remind us again, Mark, what it was you didn't like about that math?
Continued...
The article goes on to list some of the more glaring problems with the change. I really don't get it at all... Facebook, as it was, was awesome. Everyone knows that you don't remove functionality when you upgrade! Annoying... I hope the designers are listening and at least bring some features back. Right now there's a place on the site where you can vote on the new layout. Current results? 19,156 (7%) gave it a Thumbs Up. The other 255,565 (93%) gave it a Thumbs Down. Wow.