APIATBL

Awesome Person I Aspire To Be Like

APIATBL

Sincerely,
TCBATL

Music Friday: Retrosexy

A postmodern ode to 80's/90's dance music

Armand Van Helden
"I Want Your Soul"

Yahoo! continues its trajectory towards irrelevance

Based on the two recommendations I laid out in my last post, it seems like Yahoo! is going to have difficulty catching up in either domain.

First bit. I found this piece in Valleywag that talks about Yahoo!'s new Digg clone, "Yahoo! Buzz." I think this line nicely sums up the expectations:

[It's] another example of Y! not innovating but rather copying existing products in the marketplace poorly.

Bit 2. Techcrunch ran this cool graph last week which showed the demographics of the people who use Yahoo! searches vs. Google searches. Let's just say that poor, uneducated people use Yahoo! and trendy, self-absorbed educated people use Google. (...now all I need to do is buy a Prius and switch to Mac)

Yahoo!'s place in a Google world

I'm not ashamed to admit it: my default homepage is set to Yahoo!. No, not google. Yahoo!. Unlike my fellow collegians who have welcomed Google with open arms, I've remained cautious, even unwilling at times, to join the Google bandwagon. Call it a virtual comfort zone if you will, but Yahoo! has been my portal to the web ever since I first started using the internet. Throughout middle school and high school, any time I sought resolve to the inquiries construed by my inner-nerd or closeted sexuality, Yahoo! was there to provide me, and my hormones, with answers. In that era of chats and searches, online games and emails, I was on team Yahoo!. There were others, like AltaVista and Lycos, that competed for my attention traffic, but none came close to usurping my allegiance from Yahoo!. Eventually they faded into obscurity, leaving Yahoo! king of the virtual kingdom.

Life for me was good when Yahoos roamed the web.

But then came the calamitous dot-com bubble. Yahoo narrowly survived, but the internet landscape was forever changed. Newer, fitter, species emerged, making it more difficult for old dinosaurs like Yahoo! to thrive. But thanks to its well-known brand and legion of loyal followers, Yahoo! maintains, as precarious as it may be, a position at the top. The highly coveted online community it's fostered over the years remains its most important asset. Without the legion of followers to sustain one of the most vibrant, active, communities on the web, Yahoo! has nothing. In a world of Web 2.0 where application synergy dominates the pecking order, Yahoo! - and Microsoft for that matter - fall tragically short of Google's superiority.

So why do I stay with Yahoo?

In all honesty, I haven't been so loyal. I've pretty much stopped using Yahoo! altogether except for keeping up with daily AP headlines and conducting sporadic searches. I needed Yahoo! for its utilities, not the community, and now that its utilities are virtually irrelevant, I have little reason to stay with Yahoo!. So what can Yahoo! do to win me back? I see two solutions.

1) Improve infrastructure. Yahoo! has a semi-decent interface, but its applications are deplorable. Virtually every program offered is superseded by an alternative equivalent located elsewhere on the web. Google, Amazon, Ebay, etc. are just a few examples of web outlets with far better email, retail, and auctioning capabilities. If Yahoo! ever wants to be more competitive, it needs to subsume these successful models (or companies) into its own offerings. As I write this, my friend Max turned to me and said "why do you use Gchat instead of AIM?" Because like AIM, yahoo's chat is cumbersome to have running when all of the people I care to chat with on a daily basis already use Gchat/Gmail, bringing me to my next point:

2) Improve community. Yahoo!'s community, admittedly large and diverse, is still mostly over the age of 40 and ill-equipped to operate in the 21st century's digital era. And even though I, like the rest of the Yahoo community, enjoy the Price is Right and World News Tonight with Charlie Gibson, I more closely resemble the typical Google user; young, 20-something yuppie who's completely saturated in online networking, culture and information.

So when Dan walks in and asks me what I'm blogging about, he laughs when I tell him the topic is my reluctance to switch from Yahoo to Google, not because the topic is particularly funny, persay, but because he knows that I'm actually still lame enough to continue using inferior Yahoo over Google.

I suppose I should mention Microsoft's recent bid to take over Yahoo!. A wise attempt to capture this vulnerable community (and market share), but ultimately a useless venture. The younger generation will continue to use Google and the Yahoo dinosaurs will eventually go extinct, lest they adapt themselves to be more successful in the future era of Web 3.0.

Blogger's Block

I've been suffering from blogger's block this past week. Much like the term writer's block, blogger's block is just a euphemism for self-affected laziness. There are a lot of topics I'm planning on writing about, I just need some motivation to overcome my indolence. In all fairness though, I have been pretty busy this week, wanting nothing more than to use what limited free time I had to veg out and watch my roomies play Zelda. But now that it's Friday, I have a substantial amount of time to use for procrastination, so I'll get back to blogging. I'll keep you posted. (pun!)

Music Friday: Two great songs, one creepy name

"The Creeps"
The Freaks



"The Creeps"
Camille Jones vs. Fedde La Grande

Music Friday: Vive La France!

Tom Tonik
"Find the Rhythm"



...I've kinda become obsessed with French house music this week

The secret of magnets

Today I stirred, what will hopefully be my last, bout of blog-related drama. My last post was, apparently, more controversial than I intended. Since I'm not, nor ever want to be, in the business of hurting people, I've done my best to remove that post from the hyperlinked tomes of the internet.

Needless to say, I was pretty bummed about offending the parties involved (as I know they were) so I'd just like to extend, once more, my sincerest apologies.

That said, when I finally got home about a half-an-hour ago, I was pleasantly delighted to find some happy blog news!

It turns out that I'm not the only one who caught the Reno 911! Penis-Peanut Butter fiasco. One of the google search queries that landed some poor sap on my blog, I kid you not, read:

"who stuck there penis in my peanut butter reno 911"

Google that grammatical gem and you'll see who's on top!

If there's any lesson to be learned from this day, it's that blogs are like magnets. There are some posts that are bound to repel, and others that have a bizarre, unexpected ability to attract. Just make sure that when you repel, you have enough peanut butter to lure them back.

: )

Music Friday

In the spirit of our weekly pregame parties, I thought I'd share some of the fun music with you.

Samim - "Heater"

*Props to the dancer in Shinjuku, Tokyo!!

Food for thought... and sex

Before heading down to Chinatown to celebrate Chinese New Year, I flipped on the TV to pass some time while Brett hygiened himself. I mistakenly went to channel 42, thinking it was Comedy Central, to watch the weekly South Park episode. There were some obnoxious commercials, for which I had no will to endure, so I reached for Brett's laptop and opted for some internet-ing until South Park returned. Obviously South Park never came back. I had, unbeknownst to me, instead, given 3.5 minutes of my precious secondary attention to TNT's advertising department! I acted quickly to rectify this inconsequential, yet inexcusable, incursion. (I'm a very picky regulator of background distractions, whether it be music, TV, boyfriend, etc.) After a few clicks north on the remote, my (unfairly) misappropriated attention - and time - were given due compensation with a satisfying episode of South Park.

Comedy Central was airing "D-Yikes," the one where Mr(s) Garrison becomes a lesbian. Even though I had seen it several times, the wanton racial stereotyping (re: Mexicans and Persians) hardly gets old. Unfortunately, I had missed most of the episode after losing 3.5 minutes of my life! (in all truthiness, I did start watching at 10:20) But luckily, I caught it in time to see the best scene where Mr(s) Garrison teaches Xerxes how to scissor!, aka Lesbian sex.

Good times. Anywho... South Park promptly ended and Reno 911! just as quickly (and unfortunately) began. I may have actually groaned. Out loud. I really hate turning to Comedy Central when I want to watch South Park and Reno 911! is on. I can't say I've ever watched more than 5 minutes of the show, but I have no problem passing unsubstantiated judgment on it. In case you couldn't already tell, I really hate that show! The only piece I'll concede is, I sorta like watching the gay cop in hot pants. Not because he's particularly hot (he's not hot at all), but because his character is mildly funny and his homoerotic escapades, are, well, homoerotic : ) So rather than turn off the TV altogether, I decided I'd keep it on to catch a few glimpses of hot-pants cop and his intrigues.

As I'm sitting there, surfing the net, listening to Reno 911! in the background, I hear "Alright, who stuck their penis in the peanut butter jar?!"

Penis? Peanut Butter!? The combination of those two words in one sentence, let alone even one, is enough to seize primary attention. The scene wore on, the joke got old, and my willingness to pay attention diminished. I was, however, left with some food for thought.

Would it feel good to stick your dick in a jar of Peanut Butter?

The writers for Reno 911! certainly thought so. I mean, these are probably the same type of guys that have experience doing random shit like this during their longed-for frat years. But hey, I'm not elitist, I'd entertain the idea of sticking my penis in peanut butter just as much as i would caviar or grey poupon. I turned to Brett, who was getting changed at this point, to ask him what he thought of the scintillating scenario. He blurted a quick, "No." I pondered a slew of possibilities for why it might not feel good, yet I remained unconvinced. I asked him to explain.

Brett gave a few winces and incoherent umms. I prodded, and he ummed some more. Having much reluctance to volunteer a cogent answer, I probed more bluntly, "you think it would be like pressing into a brick wall?" He grinned, and said yes. I hadn't ever considered the possibility of peanut butter being impenetrable, but I suppose his point had some validity. After all, peanut butter's high viscosity would more than likely stay clumpy without providing desirable levels of friction.

Even though the question was resolved, a larger quandary remained. Which food would be fun to stick one's penis in? We quietly ruminated to ourselves, but as soon as our eyes met, our faces lit up and the answer became obvious.

"Jelly!"


Update: When I retold Dan this story, his first reaction, "Don’t you dare stick your penis in my peanut butter!"