I will give the domain to the highest bidder.

“The AIG bonuses are disgusting, but a 90% tax on anything is equally disgusting. I don’t like the precedent.”

- Jason Fried’s Twitter

A tax to make up a mistake by the government in order to return the money that was stolen back into the system is equally disgusting? You mean, when an equation is presented on what is more atrocious:

AIG Bonuses released while on government loan welfare = Government taxing bonuses after making a mistake of not renegotiating bonus releases.

To say this is to welcome the notion that the government is shameful when trying to fix its mistakes in favor of the American people. For Jason Fried to say this, especially on a service where he cannot elaborate this statement, is a testament that butterskin knowledge of a complex problem will lead to a poppycock reaction.

The precedent is subjective, and the evidence that this policy will persist isn’t provided by history since there is no correlative crisis in the history of mankind ( in terms of the complexity and conflicting ideologies within the entire world civilization compared to other meltdowns in other countries/ superpowers in other years ).

Jason Fried could be disgusted by the bill because it will affect employees in bailout companies who have little to do with the current crisis and are improving their companies’ prospects. But the government took control of a situation, and are sending a clear message to financial companies that they will not overlook excesses ( or would fight against them if they weren’t able to manage it in time ).

For anyone to get mad at the tax, must not be fans of Robin Hood. To get mad at this tax is would also be to get mad at your friend for taking back a bicycle that was stolen from him. If you are able to justify your ire at this situation, please write a book and publish it. I guarantee a New York Times bestseller on pomp alone.

Will this bill be a consistent action against bonuses by any company under TARP? For such a complex process to audit and oversee huge financial conglomerates, I highly doubt it. Could you even say if this becomes a rigid law for taxing bonuses, that it does set a precedent. Maybe.

If I could think that the tax is as equally disgusting ( repeat it in your head: equally disgusting ) as people in a company taking huge bonuses after receiving a bailout during a financial meltdown, I would also be guaranteed a vacation to the Lake of Fire after I die.

I am not downing Fried. His company makes amazing web products that make operations a lot more efficient. I do ask, for someone of his stature who can influence others, that he thinks before he writes. Or, in the instance he is adamant on his position, to begin writing to publishers immediately.

I do concur, with others, that this is a minor situation in comparison to un-winding the debt and putting this company back in place. The bonuses are a tenth of just one percent of the whole loan. I can say that the news is overrated, as well as the reactions and responses. Including my own. Which is why I will end the subject now.

In the report, there was a man who had failed to kill himself. He talked about how he is coming along after his life took a turn for the worse, but he still thinks about killing himself. But his will to live overcame his mental struggles.

This story got me thinking: What is Craigslist like in Japan? Considering that there has been a lot of social disorder brewing on this heavily populated island, I pondered if there would be a paralell of anger outputted on the popular classifieds site.

My first stop: Okinawa – Rants & Raves. I always cringe at the racist, misogynistic, barbarian diatribes in the freedom forums of the good ol’ US of A. I was a little more wary of seeing something remotely equal. The reason being that, I have been indoctrinated with the stereotype that all Japanese are cool, hip, happy, Gwen Stefani-grouping, Polysics-raging, fun-loving people. As you get older, you find out everyone is the same, and most are unhappy, selfish, or unpassionate. Like Santa’s cookies when you were five, I try to hold on to the myth as I entered the hate-spewing zone.

And….. nothing.

Take a look. It’s breathtaking. There isn’t one person who has utilized this forum to harvest obscenities to their enemies. No fat girl jokes. No Obama bashing. Not even an exploitative spammer.

There isn’t much in the Tokyo section either, although I did find someone post a random article defending Brendan Fraser. Very random.

Which leads me to two conclusions: A) A savvy upstart in the Japanese web development industry has created a website that not only is 20 times better than Craigslist, but is also a robot that can make blueberry pancakes on command.

Or… Craigslist needs to develop its expansion endeavors with the utility of a language translator! I know they have them for some countries, but you can’t just add another country, and tell them to go f*&k themselves when they need a utility to use their service.

But Craigslist rocks; I am just busting its balls.

Although I can say without any doubt that Facebook did an amazing job with its touch-up, I find that their Facebook advertising system to be highly annoying. I placed an ad for a business at 5 AM EST, and six hours later, the ad is STILL PENDING REVIEW!

This can’t be right, can it? Do they actually sift through all these ads to confirm that they are legit? Is it Spring Break in Zuckerberg’s office?

What is equally annoying about the system is that the advertising that is showcased alongside my own are usually get-rich-quick schemes or bait-and-switch marketing scams. If they are going to take this long sorting out the good ads and the bad ads, something has got to give.

Some sites you can put some money down on your favorite team as well, and you can do this at any time during the tournament ( as long as its before the game ). Take 30 minutes and fill these out, the deadline is today.

If you just want a list without reading all the features, click here.

ESPN Tournament Challenge

Facebook 2009 Bracket Challenge

This is an application to allow you to create a pool with your friends on Facebook. I don’t think there are any prizes that are attributed to this challenge. But its fun to group up with people and talk trash.

Hey Its Free Blog Challenge

I randomly stumbled over this blog post. This guy is creating a contest and giving out $50 to the top bracket winner. There isn’t that many people in the blog, so the chances seem high to win. Check it out.

BetUs March Madness Challenge ( Oddsmaker )

This contest allows you to win money based on each round, instead of the entire tournament. Try and win!

As you can tell, my site gets no comments. I probably average around 20 people a day, and I have hit zero a couple of times. It isn’t anyone else’s fault but my own.

But, if I had a site that was flourishing with comments, here is my idea ( WordPress plug-in developers, or any website developer, write this down ): A malleable comments structure.

What would  A Malleable Contents Structure Be?

When people discuss things, the structure of a conversation is seldom linear. Time is linear, but a forum isn’t so. If it were linear, then it would be hard to make sense of the interaction. Especially when there are many people, there is then exponential amount of interplay, and a linear structure would not bold well.

Commenting is linear-structured. It is impossible to interact with the discussion since you would have to scroll down and pick and choose the content replies that you like. This hurts on two levels:

1) First-come first-serve model doesn’t justify content: A comment is content. A comment is a message. The content/comment most viewed are usually the first few. This doesn’t help since the first comments may not always be the best ones ( and you can see this in many sites, as this parody explains.)

2) Due-diligence is less as someone finds discussion replies: So the best reply is comment #67. Are you going to find it? Probably not. The website writer who moderates will read it, but then it consolidates the discussion between the writer and commenter and not everyone that is involved.

Is the first person that enters the Pub the most exciting person in the establishment? If not, then why is the first commenter rewarded? Is a comment that is muddled to the dark-depths of a blog not worth reading?

These issues can be solved with the utilization of a malleable contents functions. The function works using :

• 1. Voting on best comment ( such as Digg )
• 2. Randomizing first four comments.
• 3. Flipping comment order after a finite amount of time or randomly.

Voting and Randomizing

Voting on the best comment would help because it would show that other people in the discussion participated by acknowledging someone else had something insightful to say. This shows appreciation to good commenters, and their popularity can grow as more people vote for him ( as well as recognize him/her if they are consistent commenters.)

The reward for the commenters would come from the randomizing feature. The randomizing feature would semi-randomly put four comments in the first four comment spaces, regardless of how late they replied. So if you are commenter number 60, you still have a chance to be in the top spot.

The people who receive votes should have a better chance percentage-wise to land a random spot. And one random spot should be reserved only for someone who receives votes.

The third function would invert the comments after a certain amount of time. The Huffington Post shows their comments from latest-to-earliest. Most other blogs conduct a first-come basis for comment structure. What would be the best of both worlds is the ability to invert them either randomly ( so sometimes older comments are shown, sometimes newer ), or after a certain amount of time/comments ( 50 comments, invert to most recent first ).
This wouldn’t be the perfect situation, but it would allow comment structure to have more movement, and push some of the discussion towards where people pay attention: the first few comments. As well, commenters would be more enticed to write if they know their response could get equal exposure. And they will write better responses if they can get votes, and get better placement.

It is a win-win for any blogger or content site. The blogger gets extra content and discussions ( and exposure to advertising ), and the commenter gets to shine ( as well as have a chance for his URL/link to get some exposure as well.)

For WordPress, could this commenting cocktail ever be possible?

The Facebook Feed, which is the home page of all users when they log into Facebook, was ( before the redesign) usually a random collection of “actions” by friends over the course of a day. It would show about 20 friends’ actions ( such as attending events, posting music, writing on friends’ wall etc. ), and it would give the option of showing a “live feed”, which would show all the actions of your friends live ( an equivalent to the blog feed on Wefeelfine.org ).

The “new” Facebook, as everyone is calling, changes this system by automatically giving you the recent actions of all your friends. It is different from the former live feed since it only placces all the actions that have happened ( where the live feed would post an action on the screen while you are looking at it ). So pretty much, whenever your friend does something on Facebook ( that would be essentially public, such as speaking to another friend etc. ), it will be post to the feed.

As well, the Facebook walls of users ( where people can post messages and media onto it; essentially your profile ) has changed, and the design looks bigger and neater.

The Angry Mob Arrives, Pitchforks and Torches In Hand

Many people are outraged over the change, and I for one have something to say on the matter: WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH PEOPLE BITCHING ABOUT FACEBOOK?!?

I love the change that they have done. It isn’t really anything special ( I am ambivalent about the features, but sometimes it is cool to see a friend’s message about a sports game or a funny YouTube video ), except that they aggregate a live feed of your friends. They also make it that they can consolidate your stream based on your friends’ area.

The woe-is-me response to the Facebook change is nothing short of drama-queen whining. Some messages about the new Facebook on an anti- New Facebook group:

“NO SHIT!!! This changing shit needs to stop. It’s stupid. WHY!?”

“I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK ITS GAY”

“I feel like a stalker with new facebook“

Huffin’ & Puffin’ against Facebook at Arianna’s

1. Facebook vs. Twitter for Popularity/ Traffic Argument Viability: Lol

Facebook’s demographic began with the college domain, and over time extended under ( to high-schoolers and tweeners ) and over ( to college grads, Facebook veterans, older people, family affiliates. ) and has a popularity that would destroy Twitter. Twitter has a huge professional following, and its utility has been more of a very useful mailing lists of important people and cliques of friends. This feature, by no means, has anything close to matching what Facebook can offer its users.

What is funnier, is that Facebook has a very popular Twitter plugin that already has 200,000 users. Not only does Facebook trounce Twitter, but nearly 20% of Twitter’s users utilize the Twitter within Facebook.

2. Multiple Uses vs. Single Use Function: Google’ Schmidt Lays Down Hammer

Here is Google CEO’ Eric Schmidt’s thoughts on Twitter:

“Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems.”

“In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they don’t have a full offering. To me, the question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have storage, revocation, identity, and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do email systems themselves broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic?”

Facebook doesn’t necessarily have all the tools of a full-fledged email system as well. But its function not only surpasses what Twitter does, but Facebook has its own update feed, which they can separate into its own feed at any time they choose. If they were ever to do that, there would never then need be a need for Twitter ( although, the adding friend and privacy content functions would have to be tweaked ).

Stopping Twitter Digression Here

Chris Willman does write about some concerns of functions that no longer exists ( such as the real-time live feed ) and some bad quirks ( images are placed on feeds individually so there were many pictures clogging up the screen, but most of the user gripes were based on issues that could not be helped anyway.

He talks of one example of someone who has to be more disciplined on writing on someone’s wall because it automatically gets placed in the feed. This type of statement only casts a spotlight on the stupidity of some users because if you write something on someone’s wall, and someone can see it publicly, then your friends have the means to look at the wall postings. It is the equivalent of stripping in front of a hotel window, and getting angry because you were videotaped with a hi-definition camera and not a cellular phone. Here is the quote:

“Previously, you had to go to a person’s page to see something else someone posted on their wall, building in a level of semi-privacy. Now it’s all part of the same grabbag feed. I am now disinclined to post any status updates or write on anyone’s wall.”

What is more illogical about the this statement is that anyone at anytime could access information from someone’s wall if their information was public or they were friends with the person searching for the information. The fact that stories of people’s Facbook thoughts were being posted publicly way before the change should be enough evidence that the feed isn’t hurting anyone’s privacy any more relative to how people have originally “stalked” people’s profiles.

If you are writing something on someone’s wall that you don’t want someone else to see, you should be disciplined not to put your information in a public domain ( or in this instance, a domain where a “friend” has the ability to access it ). If this information is sensitive or harmful, you should be wary of writing this type of content on Facebook regardless of how the company designs the website. In fact, you should watch what you say whenever you deliver a message, whether it be on any website or even in real-life interactions.

Overall, this rowdy pitchfork-and-torch mob is just a butterskin reaction to a positive reconstruction of a popular website trying to make the content better. Yes, it is a little tougher to get around. And yes, some functions can’t be found. But these tweaks will be fixed in the coming months, and everything will be back to the “new” normal.

The Facebook change: I love it. For all of you that don’t, there are other alternatives that you can use. Oh, there aren’t any as good as Facebook? Yea, I thought so.

ps: Definition of butterskin: Something that is shallow or isn’t concrete, usually to describe an argument, opinion, ideology, stance, or thought.