Great New Websites

Lately there have been some pretty cool Web 2.0 sites popping up around the interwebs. I'd like to take a moment to highlight some of the best that I've found recently.

Lala

Listen to any song in their extensive catalogue for free once, buy the 'web-only' version of the song for 10 cents, and buy an un-drm'd mp3 for usually less than 99 cents. The user interface is really nice, and loading the website in chrome is much faster than waiting and waiting for iTunes to load. You can even upload mp3s you already own to the website so you can listen to your library from anywhere. The 'follow friends' feature is pretty nifty too for discovering new music that your friends are listening to. There's only one downside - if you upload your music collection, you can't redownload them as mp3s, which means lala will not replace your existing music collection on your harddrive.

Mint

Hate your bank's website? I know I do. Bank of America has a terrible UI and you practically have to pass an exam to log in. I understand they're concerned about security, but answering 10 trivia questions about my account before logging in is ridiculous. Mint allows you to monitor your finances in an easy intuitive interface. Not only that, but you get some great meta-information about your account for free - how much you're spending on food per month, graphs of your spending from month to month, etc. They were really useful when they sent me an email saying, "Did you know Bank of America just charged you a 220 dollar service fee?" I did not know! Luckily, I sorted this out with the Bank and thanks to Mint I'll know if something like that happens again. 

Raffstar

Found out about this one from last week's episode of Diggnation. Basically, you win prizes for free on the internet - and for the first time, it's not actually a scam! They are ad-supported so you just go to the website, get raffle tickets for prizes, and then check back when the raffle ends to claim your prize. Additionally, some profits from each raffle are given to charity, which means not only do you win free stuff, you feel good while doing it. I'm definitely going to be spending a lot of time on this site.

Any cool new web applications that I'm missing? Leave a comment and let me know.

Why iPhones aren't just for Snobs

For the past couple months I've been using an iPhone, and when people ask me what I think about it, I respond: "This phone has completely changed the way I use the Internet." Now that's a pretty bold statement, I know, but the following is why I think that in 5-10 years, everyone will have the Internet in their pocket and the world will be a different place.

A level of disconnect exists between the Internet on a desktop and its general usefulness. Think of the case of using Google Maps or MapQuest. The common use case is to type your destination into Google Maps, print directions, and bring these directions in your car so you can use them to know where you're going. With the Internet on a phone, the common use case is to type your destination into Google Maps, and then go.

So what's the real difference here? Having the Internet on your phone is having the Internet when you actually need it. You don't need directions when you're at home planning your trip, you need directions when you're in the car wondering how to get to a destination.

The analogy I like to draw here is the replacement of land line phones with cell phones. Cell Phones are so popular because the idea of calling a person rather than a place is so intuitive. In the same way, having directions at your finger tips when you're in the car is more intuitive than having directions at your home, and needing to print them out to have them in your car.

I think in the coming years, as more and more people have Internet enabled cellphones, the whole concept of what the Internet is and how people use it will radically change.

Qualitative States

This post is about qualitative states. Qualitative states are often (although not uniquely) expressed as "the X of Y" where X is a sense, (like smell, taste, or feel) and Y is something that exists out there in the world. Examples: The smell of a rose, The taste of wine, The feel of getting stung by a bee. Most people would avow that they are familiar with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of these states. "Yeah, of course I know what the smell of a rose is like." Upon deeper inspection though, I think that people are not really as familiar with these states as they lead themselves to believe.

Ask someone to describe the smell of a rose, they will probably give adjectives such as flowery, pleasant, or refreshing. These adjectives don't really seem to describe the scent itself, but are more just labels used to classify scents. Compare this to asking someone to describe something concrete, say, a table. hard, wooden, brown. These adjectives are not just labels, but are actually inherent qualities of the table itself.

Phrased another way, if you group all the things in the world that are hard, and pretend for a minute that they don't exist, there would still be a definition for hard. Hard can be defined independently of things that are hard.

Now take the word refreshing and group all the things in the world together that are refreshing and pretend for a minute that they don't exist. Would you be able to define refreshing without reference to something else that is refreshing? I think not. Try this thought experiment with other adjectives and you'll see that this pattern remains consistent.

So what's the point? Basically, my point is that we don't have the access to our own qualitative states like we think we do. We think we know what The smell of a rose is like but really all we can do is vaguely compare it to everything else we have smelled before. This leads to the intuition that qualitative states actually don't exist at all, but more on that later.

Microsoft's Comeback?

Microsoft is seen as an outdated company that makes software that doesn't really work. People associate them with crashing computers, programs that take forever to load, and slow internet connections. Often times people tell me how much they hate Windows Vista; but if I ask them if they've ever actually used Vista before, they usually admit that they've either never used it, or have just played around with it maybe once or twice.  They usually can't point out specific problems with the OS except for maybe "Program X doesn't work on it", where X is some 3rd party software that Microsoft has nothing to do with. 

I've been wondering why Microsoft has been so silent while Apple rags on them day in and day out with their "I'm a PC/I'm a Mac" commercials. They have been doing a phenomenal job perpuating the stereotype that machines running Vista are horrible. It's great to see that Microsoft has finally responded.

I think their "I'm a PC, and I've been made into a Stereotype" ad campaign is a huge step in the right direction for the image of the company. Microsoft really can't try to convince people that they're 'hip' like they've tried to do in previous ad campaigns. (By the way, whoever decided that hiring Jerry Seinfeld is a good way to make the company seem modern should be fired.) Their only hope was to make themselves appear as if they're the OS used by people who actually get stuff done, and not just want their computers to look pretty. I think people will see these commercials and start to reconsider Microsoft as a company that makes good reliable software that tons of people use.

I believe that if Microsoft wants to push forward, they need to show pictures of their OS working in their commercials. If you have seen Vista before, you probably agree that the graphical user interface is stunning. It is just as beautiful, if not more beautiful then Apple's OS. I think people still think of clunky Windows XP when they think of Microsoft and that's something the company needs to change.

I'm interested to see where Microsoft goes with their ad campaign and how the image of the company will change.