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27 sep 06 "What are your thoughts on 'Web 2.0'?" speaking of buzzwordy profit-oriented web drivel, i started a shameful and yet sort of funny project. i mentioned the shameful project in my response to my own 'question': "i missed two questions!" in that 'answer', i arrived at the conclusion (probably a wrong one, now that i think about it some more) that content based on google's top ten searches for the week would yield lots of hits, and would be a good place to advertise if one were a web-whore. those searches and topics being so popular might mean that my ad-laden page will get no hits at all, simply because those topics are bound to be covered by sites like yahoo, cnn, msn, wikipedia, etc -- sites that are in a different league than this one, pagerank-wise. so maybe focusing on the super-popular keywords isn't going to generate very many hits. but, if those pages get a few hits through oddball phrases like reproduce bird-calls on a violin, then maybe those searchers will see an ad generated from a keyphrase "anna nicole smith", and click it, hoping to see her boobs yet again. supposedly she insisted on getting two implants in each breast. anyway, that was my idea, and i'm a little bit curious to see if anyone vists the page searching on these pop culture items, or clicks on the ads related to them ($$$$$). i'm trying to figure out how to get a column of google ads to extend all the way down one of those GZMM (Google Zeitgeist Money Machine) pages -- one chunk of them is only 600px high, and the most i'm able to set one after another along the right margin is three. i posted on an adsense forum, but i'm betting that there's no way to do it. no matter (update: it isn't possible). it's really, really trying to come up with content on things like dog the bounty hunter (WARNING: loud, annoying). i'm thinking in the future i'll just totally rip off the content from wikipedia, except then i'd have to alter my diagram of how the site works. or not. who gives a sh*t, really? no-one, that's who. Mr. Teegin stops writing for the nite, and continues the next day well, i did it -- i did another version for the week ending on the 25th, and ripped every single character of content straight off of wikipedia. i'm stopping this project now -- it's really awful. maybe it'd be interesting if i could force myself to write about reality tv shows every week, but i can't. moreover, i can only talk about the general decline of human culture and civilization once. so, no more google zeitgeist money machine -- it makes me feel dirty. but next week, i'll try some other fresh approach to content (then i'll stop). last week, i did original writing. this week, i copy-pasted wikipedia articles. and next week...well...we'll just see. the whole process of going to the google zeigeist page once a week, grabbing the links and text, looking up the items in wikipedia, printing that wikipedia text on a page template with google adsense on it, and updating an index page with a link to the new wikipedia/zeitgeist/adsense page, is theoretically scriptable, even though i don't want to be the one in charge of scripting it. anyway, what do i think of web 2.0? actually, i think it's web 3.0. no, just kidding about that last (even though that site is of my favorites). supposedly, sites like this constitute web 2.0, according to the buzzword people, and therefore consitute web 3.0, according to my re-analysis. i'm serious, though -- there were at least three stages of web pages: the first, which comprised dorky information in h1 tags and p tags on a white page, perhaps with one or two images embedded, or just linked images displayed directly in a browser (pretty unheard of now-a-days). then, we had the era of web money grubbing, where people tried to sell their penis pills (and still do). finally, sites like del.icio.us, myspace, wikipedia, youtube, image shack, etc. i'm not utterly disdainful of the concept of "web 2.0", but i can see how some are irked, because there aren't any solid criteria for a website having a "web 2.0" nature. when i first heard the term, i assumed it was a specific new technology, or an altogether new protocol -- something like freenet. but no -- web 2.0 generally refers to sites that are user-created and geared towards information-sharing, i think. this is what i remember from a wikipedia (part of web 2.0!) article i read a few days ago, anyway. but yeah -- the concept is indeed sort of ambiguous, and tends to piss off techie people who prefer "x is y" to "x-ish might be y-ish". "a cool site that does something" might be a good definition. so, this one! this site qualifies!! it is a web 2.0 site!!! i am the webmaster of a web 2.0 website!!!! i am the god-emperor of dune. now i have to read some more about web 2.0, because i feel that this answer is thus-far inadequate, being composed of me prattling on about my new horrible project that's seeming dumber to me with every passing day, making jokes, and making unfounded claims about things i barely remember or understand. this is pretty much standard practice. ok, i'm going to read about web 2.0 for five minutes, spend another five minutes writing, go downstairs to watch tv for like an hour, and then go to bed. i have to go to work tomorrow, which i'm getting pretty tired of. i got hit with a big fat slab of "the pointlessness of computer programming" tonight, during class. i think it was brought on by the whole business association, and the way the professor keeps talking about "web solutions" and demonstrating shopping carts and similar nonsense. in contrast, i had always associated computers with games and odd little creative projects, until i started on my slow process of disillusionment and the realization that having fun on a computer is radically different than making your living with one. anyway, computer hobbyism and general uselessness is something that's been with me my whole life:
no web solutions. i guess that's the reason anyone works with computers -- to make money with them. but it's sort of sickening; i really don't like the world of work. i've been thinking lately that life is too short to be in constant preparation for things. at some point, you have to stop taking classes or imagining that some better or radically different life is waiting for you around the corner if you just get one more certificate, or change your priorities, or lose weight, or whatever, and just go off and do whatever it is you want to do. you need to squeeze out every squirt of joy you can during your fleeting 80 or so years on this earth. i haven't quite figured out what i want to do yet, but it might involve the words "greenland" and "assault rifle". after this semester, i think i'm going to take off for a while. i sort of can't believe i purchased these classes, now that i think about it. but, i suppose they might add to the quality of my life. i took them with the hope that they might help me in job-related ways, but i never intended to rely on that justification -- i actually enjoy web-progrmaming and web-goofing, and i've always wanted to do weird stuff with javascript and possibly actionscript. i'll show you a weird thing i recently made with javascript and css; it does different stuff to the number you enter (adds, concatenates two strings of it together, adds twice, multiplies), and then prints it in a freaky css way. see, that's the sort of thing that i want to get out of web programming classes -- not building some stupid shopping cart or "web solution" for a medical technology company, but making little pointless gadgets like this, except maybe ones that are a little bit less throw-away gags. ok, i really have to finish this. it's after midnight, and i have to go to bed. this is going to be the worst "answer" yet. i think i've been polluted by that stupid friggin zeitgeist project, where i had to crank out writing at an unbelievable pace (you should have seen me). also, chris told me that he was the one who submitted this question, so i feel like i have to provide a decent answer for him, even though that's clearly not going to happen at this point. sorry, chris. web 2.0 is gay. |
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