Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category
Spartans going viral
Hello all readers, sorry for the absence of posts lately. As high school students we are still terribly busy with AP exams and other studies but we have a whole chock full of things to get to as soon as tests are over including a fresh site redesign, a new blog, and a couple of other ideas that I have been keeping in mind.
One of the latest ideas that has gone pretty well was this Facebook group to get the whole country to write “THIS IS SPARTA” on AP and other essays and then cross it out with a single line.
Credit goes to my friend Jake Bryant for coming up with this idea 4 months ago for our English midterm. It went pretty well then so I made a note of it to recreate this idea for Facebook and make it go viral.
In just a week, this group has grown to over 4,000 members! Sure this is really nothing compared to the infamous 1,000,000 Strong for Colbert group but I’ve been lucky to get even 100 members in any group I made so this is huge.
Plus it’s a good thing. The letters AP (Advanced Placement) strike fear into the hearts of many high school students but this really alleviates the stress to borderline mock the test.
That and I really wanna see a teacher’s face when they see that thousands of students all wrote “THIS IS SPARTA” on their AP exams. Can you say WTF?
UPDATE: Group now has over 8000 members! It literally doubled in one day and shows no sign of stopping
UPDATE: SPARTANS ARE AT 20,000 MEMBERS!!!
~Kevin Xu
How I wasted my morning reading RSS feeds
If you’ve dabbled into anything web 2.0, you know a major plus for aggregating all your social and informational needs is through RSS feeds. We have one too, right here. So how many are you subscribed to, 10? 50? 100? 1000? I actually know some people that have thousands and they just sit there reading them for countless hours like I just did. Don’t.
Many people get the feeling that they “have to read everything or else miss out on something” or there are others who don’t read them for a long time and go on binges of a million posts at a time. Both ways are wrong and waste valuable time.
The idea for RSS feeds was for updates to come to you rather than you refresh at a page for updates. It became a huge convenience for people that track lots of websites but with more information, we feel more compelled to digest all that information. Once again, don’t.
Most if not all RSS readers have this magic little button called “Mark all as read”. If you are the awkward type that have never clicked on this before, what it does is magically clears all your RSS feeds to “read”. Go on, try it now, I promise it’s painless.
When I was away last week I had over 1500 updates stockpiled up and was afraid to let it all go. I thought “oh no, all that valuable information will be lost, all those tips, videos, photos, interesting tidbits… well my life will go on” and magically my RSS reader was clean.
If you still feel uncomfortable getting rid of all your unread feeds, then try a folder management system. Seen in the picture above, I categorize with:
- Daily Read
- Random Updates
- Skim
- Unimportant
~Kevin Xu
Are you keeping things too private?
In today’s growing “social” world where websites like Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, Twitter, Wikipedia, and now Friendfeed all encourage this thing called “sharing”, should we be more focused on keeping things private or encourage sharing and the collaboration of minds?
One could argue that for startups, there is the need for privacy and to not let their “sacred ideas” get out before they get a chance to make something of it. So-called as going into stealth mode, founders try to keep as much as possible on the downlow until launch and boom from there. But this would also mean not getting other people’s view on things and being very selfish over things.
Recently I took my SAT and did pretty well (2330) so came the onslaught of “Ooh whatdya get’s?” from my friends. But no matter what I got I would have told them without embarrassment. Some of my friends on the other hand, refuse to reveal their elusive score in fear of criticism or who knows what. If they did bad, I would understand not telling the score and I instantly know it from the expression on their face so its ok.
But some cases, geniuses usually, choose not to say anything after “Ooh whatdya get?” probably in fear of competition. I know how their mind works, if they reveal what they got then I would know and if its better then I would take the test again and try to do better. Or if its worse then I can wallow inside on the sense that I did better. Or maybe they just don’t want to reveal how smart they are even though everyone probably knows they got a perfect score. Wrong, wrong and wrong, keeping it to themselves is just being selfish and conceited cause they don’t want others to do better themselves. In my case, I would never express any of the aforementioned reactions cause I honestly do want all my friends to do better and go to great colleges with me.
So I say embrace the idea of sharing and collaborating, the web sure has. Using tools like wiki’s makes things easier than ever. Of course you won’t want to reveal that super master plan for success to others but the basic ideas and concept should be out on the open market. A great example is Jessica Mah using a wiki last week to collaborate ideas for a speech she was presenting. She got the opinions of many others that crafted an even better speech.
I’m willing to bet the future will hold a lot more of this idea of sharing.
~Kevin Xu
Photo courtesy of photoai
A whole new twist to your FriendFeed
While reading around my rss feeds, a lot of the top blogs have been mentioning a new little toy called FriendFeed. Apparently it aggregates all the top social networking sites together into the monolith of social networking all in a nice web 2.0 fashion.
I have never been the one to always follow the crowd so I had not joined yet until I read that Nate Weiner over at the Idea Shower decided to join so I knew something had to be up. I finally decided to give it a shot and I must say I am impressed.
The UI is nice and clean, the networking is strong, and overall it’s actually quite useful. It also brought to light just how many sites I signed up with which appears to be a lot. I don’t have too many friends right now but I hope to change that and this actually got me interested in twittering again.
If you add me as a friend, I’ll add you back, and let the networking begin!
FriendFeed - http://friendfeed.com/kevinx
~Kevin Xu
GoCrossCampus― Bringing Risk Online
Remember the traditional board game you used to play with your friends on bored weekends? Well a couple of guys from Yale and a guy from Columbia want to bring that same intense territory-conquering battle to the web, to your campus, dorm vs dorm. Meet GoCrossCampus (GXC).
This has created a huge stir across campuses as dorms get to make secret alliances and betrayals to battle for supremacy! All in the sake for bragging rights, exactly what college students love.
The game has recently hit the NYT and Techcrunch providing substantial coverage for an otherwise unheard of game beyond the college campus. They hope to expand their user base to even more universities and even large corporations for office vs office type battles. According to the NYT, it seems that Google has taken quite an interest. I hope they find their way to my high school next!
In my opinion, they have done all the right steps so far growing what was an idea into a full-fledged startup. Not many ideas have become more than an idea in a college dorm room (not everyone can be a Facebook) but GXC shows a lot of promise.
The one thing I always wished to see more of with Web 2.0 was integration with the real world. I always viewed the internet as the next “New World”, kinda how America used to be viewed with limitless possibilities, but we still need direct interaction in our current world. GXC involves optional planned meetups to elect commanders and spies for even more fun which is exactly what I wanted to happen. I bet this can be expanded for even greater depth!
GXC even emailed me and we chatted about ideas and such. Who knows, this might possibly turn into something. I’ll keep you guys updated.
So everyone go sign up! You don’t have to be affiliated with any colleges to play some games like the GoCrossPoliticalBash. Go Colbert! =D
~Kevin Xu
Always keep it simple
Uncomplicated, straightforward, austere, smooth, easy, simple.
Everyone likes it when things are simple. From web design to project assignments to blog posts. Simplicity has that rare beauty to delight the eyes and at the same time convey info.
Sadly the world is not always simple and but it is up to web designers to at least make the virtual world simpler. A favorite example of mine is Google, I mean have you seen their homepage? You go to Google to search and it lets you make a search without distraction. Easy, straight-to-the-point, simple.
Recently I received a certificate from Google for participating in the GHOP contest I mentioned earlier and I love it’s design.
Clean and simple, done
There’s absolutely no need for colorful backgrounds or random images to make it look “pretty”. It’s a certificate with my name, the contest, and a signature and I’m happy with it.
So with that in mind, we want to make “Can The World Hear Me” as simple as possible. Wordpress is the master at aggregating and automating many parts of the blog but sometimes it gets cluttered. Fortunately everything is customizable. Uncluttering the website and making the content stand out is our current goal.
And to our new readers and old readers― we have revised the point of this blog to its simplest form:
A chronicle of two boys’ journey to leave their mark on the world
~Kevin Xu
P.S. If anyone wants a really simple blog, Tumblr is the way to go. Simple design and simple posts give a whole feeling of calmness. I’m even considering creating a personal blog using Tumblr ;D
Wanna Doodle 4 Google?
Seems like Google wants to tap into the precious minds of pre-college kids once again― more specifically my age group.
Doodle 4 Google is Google’s newest project allowing kids in grades K-12 to draw a new Google logo and win prizes. It will be centered around the theme “What If…?” which leaves it open to an infinite amount of innovation. Grand prize includes a $10,000 college scholarship, a technology grant for your school, a trip to the Googleplex, and of course your logo on the Google homepage for a whole day.
Pretty genius idea if you ask me. The Google logo has become almost a cultural icon and if you are an artist this is an awesome opportunity to show off your ability. My bet is that Google is going to value the creativity of the logo way higher than the actual artistic prowess of it.
But I find it funny how GHOP just ended with the winners announced and now Doodle 4 Google starts. Google has done a fine job of micro-managing by splitting the company into different departments (Open Source, AdSense, Gmail, etc.) but it’s interesting how they all come together targeting 18 year olds and younger to join them as a part of these contests. It’s a great opportunity and also great prizes await. But it’s all just very interesting…
It’s not like Google is trying to brainwash kids at younger ages to hail them as Godly or something. The least we want is a new generation of fanboys/fangirls (being politically correct here). Or maybe they are just prepping kids to love them so they don’t have to pay them so much?
But I do admit that I love their logos:
~Kevin Xu
Don’t worry, We’re working!
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Sorry for the lack of updates recently, since the new year started school has taken full swing on our minds and sapped our ability to write a decent blog post (Ok that was a lame excuse but just go with it). But we have been working very hard toward our long-term goals! Don’t believe us? Here’s a quick run-through:
- Kevin has been pro-actively studying like a madman for the SATs on January 26 thus the lack of posts as the main author. This is one of the final obstacles in the way of his dream college and he is planning to go all out on this one and do his best so he will not have to worry about it ever again. He has forcefully reduced himself down to the “good asian student” and postponed all other aspects of “fun life” until after January 26.
- Kevin has also created a website for ThinkQuest about Dunbar’s Number. This was done in an extreme example of an all-nighter but on the plus side it looks awesome and he played with more code than was possible in a small amount of time. He hopes to get it uploaded online soon so our readers can see it, critique it, and become educated as well.
- Josh has run through several drafts and templates for a new design for the website. Below is his current draft and any suggestions, advice, critiques are HIGHLY appreciated: (click for larger view)
- Josh has also been thinking about a new section for all our various ideas and projects. One of the main things that we lack is credibility and even though we are slowly building it up, we want a place on our blog to store all that stuff too. Kind of like an informal online portfolio so people know that we are serious and not just kids playing around. This will take some tweaking of the Wordpress code but if anyone knows an easier way to do this then please leave a comment!
That would be considered hard work right? Well we hope it all pays off in the long run. The fun thing about having a blog and dreaming of a startup is that you really don’t know where you are going to end up. Enjoy the ride as they say.
To conclude, we also have an idea! It’s not a super-big idea like Facebook but it is an idea and we might go for it. One thing we do know is that it hasn’t been taken in any which way or form so thats really good. It might lead to something and it isn’t that hard to create either (we think…).
We feel like being a tease so let’s say that it is a rare topic mentioned on blogs but everyone has one and it starts with the letter “B”. To make it more exciting, we are also going to give the first person that guesses it right Zen Habit’s E-Book Zen To Done by Leo Babauta for free! We are allowed to do this now since he released his copyright and we hope that someone can benefit from Leo’s guide for a simpler life!
~Can The World Hear Me
Starting the next Bubble?
I have been known to be a “futurist” and by that I mean half my mind is always in the future. I’m usually thinking of things that will happen in the near future and how I can prepare for it and also the far future and what I can expect. And lately I’ve been noticing that my venture into startups might be very bad timing.
Happy New Year World!
Here’s to 2008, a whole new year with many opportunities and high hopes from two young teens.
To be quite honest, we are amazed that we even made it through the year. We started out all the way back in September and went through a redesign and got out own domain name! Since the move (Nov. 2) until now 2857 visits with 4746 pageviews and 2,324 unique visitors! We hope many of our readers stick with us through our adventure and a great way to do so is to subscribe to our RSS feed!
So what have we been up to lately? Kevin has created a logo!
“This was more of a personal project than anything else. It’s just a way for me to mark my stuff with my emblem and have it all symbolic-y. I also got to play with web 2.0 stuff and GIMP. Hopefully one day it will be a wide-known symbol logo.”
“It’s just a new creation with my initials, K.X. and through a little research, the arrow is supposed to represent power… success… and apparently luck in battle as well.”
Hope you guys like it. If you got any comments or suggestions then please tell us in the comments!
~Can The World Hear Me