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I was reading an article in a Fortune magazine tonight and it had a piece outlining the “Best advice I ever got” from different people. One of those people was Larry Page (co-founder of Google) and what he said really hit home with me. This one simple statement hit home for the fact that sometimes, for those of us who have several ideas running though our heads, we just have to pick one and go with it. His statement was this:

“In graduate school at Standford University, I had about ten different ides of things I wanted to do, and one of them was to look at the link structure of the web. My advisor, Terry Winograd, picked that one out and said, “Well, that one seems like a really good idea.” So I give him credit for that.”

What we see today as pretty much the top company in technology, could possibly have been started as coming from a college student advisor’s advice. So for everyone like me out that that have several ideas that you think can go somewhere, pitch the different ideas to someone you respect and just go with that one. The point of just going with it does not say stick with it even if you hit upon something else during that process. The point is to just pick something you are interested and passionate about and give it your all. Who knows what will come of it.

Apparently, Facebook reads my blog since they went off and did this. 

I just recently read an article about the new Ubuntu release 7.10 codename “Gutsy Gibbon”. I then thought back on past release whose code names were:

• Breezy Badger
• Dapper Drake
• Feisty Fawn

I was really curious of how they came about these names so I did a quick search and ran across this site. A very weird but interesting approach I must say.

I subscribed to a trial for Netflix today and noticed something that annoyed me. The one main thing people do on Netflix is browse the movie titles and add them to their queue. So as I just joined, away I went browsing the selection to add movies.

As I was browsing the movie selection and graciously adding movies to the queue, each time a clicked add, it took me to a different page. Now, this may seem ok, but this action confuses me. I did not want to view anything about the movie, I just wanted it added to my queue. I apparently knew enough about it already to click add, so why would I want to view more information. Maybe I saw several movies I wanted to add. So now I have to click add, back, add, back, etc. Why not just implement a nice piece of AJAX as they have done with their ratings so that when I click add, that is all that is done? I think this would make the process a much better experience for the user.

If I wanted to view more information about the movie or find out similar movies, I would then do as expected and clink on the link or the thumbnail of the movie. But when I click “add”, that is all I want to do, nothing more.

This is just a small rant I have about the system, other than that it seems pretty good. Now I am just waiting on my two movies to arrive so I may sit in front of the tube with some buttery popcorn goodness.

Now that Facebook is growing by astonishing numbers, I think it is time to consider what they are doing. Facebook created the Facebook Platform to give developers the ability to create applications within the Facebook system. First off, I think this was genius. As any forward thinking company should do, you have to realize that internal innovation and development is limited. While you may have really intelligent people working for you, it does not compare to the masses. Just think of Wikipedia. So what they have basically done is give the power to the people and are basically getting free functionality by doing this.

Although I think this is a good idea, some people don’t think so. They believe, as I sometimes do, that by allowing anyone to develop applications for Facebook, that they are becoming Myspace. The reason I disagree with this is that it is much more controlled than Myspace. However, some people do enjoy cramming every type of application possible on their profile which gives me somewhat of a headache when trying to look through. So how could Facebook solve this problem?

I believe the solution to the problem is Facebook pages. Since Facebook wants to become the one stop shop for many of your needs, it makes no sense to cram all that onto one page. I think they should create the ability for users to add multiple pages where each page can contain different information. You can almost compare it to a normal website with the different sections for “About Me”, “Contact Us”, etc. By allowing this, you allow users to actually organize their information.

The next question is, given this ability, will users actually organize their information in a decent way? Probably not. Seeing the way some create their profiles now, it is pretty painful on the eyes. But, you could allow developers to set defaults for each application that could determine where the application will go. If it is a photo application, it could go on your photo page. A wall or similar application could go on a communication or contact page. There are many details that I will not go into, but in general I believe that it could really clean up a Facebook profile. Also, sense Facebook really wants to go to the next level of connecting people, I believe this or something similar will have to be done as it grows and the applications increase.