Or What You Shouldn’t Do To a Theme

By Shana | Published: January 17, 2011

As some people may or may not know, I’ve been trying to create a new WordPress theme for this blog. I’m using the same base theme ad before (Thematic), and I thought it would be worth it to mention a major mistake I made.

I wanted to make a HTML5 compliant theme so that the blog would age gracefully.  I found out that the way thematic works there is a file called “Extensions” which contains a number of files that are the basis of most of the basic functions that are called in the theme framework. I figured that I could just change one function to echo the right doctype, and delete the other function that creates extra material for head.  This broke the theme. Apparently there is a hack for your functions.php folder for your child theme – but I don’t think it as cool as editing the original theme to make sense in HTML5 in the first place.

 

My other big issue as of the moment is that editing in Chrome is a pain in the a**.   I’m getting the following message:

 

The webpage at http://localhost/wordpress/ has resulted in too many redirects.

Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer.

 

This StackOverflow post seems to have a hint.  One problem – I don’t understand it. :)  Other problem – I am not running a multisite.  So umm help in the comments please? (yes I am port: 80 in case you need to know this, I switched it from port: 8888 I believe, so umm why is this happening.)

Posted in Starting Out, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

On Behalf of Soundcloud

By Shana | Published: January 10, 2011

So, Soundcloud is asking as part of a community manager position to sum up some personal thoughts on customer service and community building.  Here they are:

 

1) Wait a moment before interfering.  Even if someone is complaining, it is hugely more satisfying to most people if s/he can figure out his/her own problems by him/herself.  Barring that, it is equally appealing, if not more so, to work with a community at large to figure out the problem.  It is one of those behaviors that seem to increase loyalty over time.  As wonderful as this sounds, if after a day or two there are only more complaints and no solutions, one should jump in and help.

2)Comp the hard core members on semi-irregular occasions.  They represent the majority of your income, and tend to notice shoddy service because they use your service the most.  Delay that in advance and also get them involved in the occasional community building through their comped service(s).

3) Don’t interfere with unexpected user behavior and unexpected requests (eg: like this: http://bit.ly/f0My0r – there are multiple versions of this request)  The reason is as follows: You can’t tell users what to do or not do with your product, and allowing them to play around and then tell you about features that they need/want will guide you to a better customer/product fit.  With that in mind- DO ask questions on a regular basis to your customers to get you to a point where you understand their logic behind the product, as well as where these sorts of requests come from.)

4) ABN – Always be nice. It is your reputation on the line, and being nice never hurts it.

5) Don’t try to have everyone love you – it almost never works.  Some people are not going to be a fit, accept it and move on.

Hmm, that is really it.

Posted in Ideas | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Price of Medicine in the Internet Age

By Shana | Published: December 30, 2010

While applying to a job over the past  week (I believe it ZocDoc), I found that I was hit with an interesting idea.

What happens when we review all doctors on the internet, because we’ve moved to a completely electronic medical data system?

Someone I know hit upon the following book, “The Price of Everything,” (note, haven’t read the book, will tell you later about it), in which there is a discussion of “The SuperStar Effect.”  The superstar effect is the following – better players/musicians/etc.  get more of a share of the profits than the next level down -and this habit is only emphasized by technology.

If we digitize all medical records and publicize on the internet who really is the best doctor, an interesting question arises (even more so than previously)- will the best doctors become even more overbooked, because more people will know who they are?  Will they drop insurance and make it a direct pay only business? How will they handle the superstar efect, considering that such a touch oriented business really can’t scale (there are so many hours a day a single doctor can see patients)

The reason why these are important questions are as follows: With Obamacare (no matter the court damage) in theory everyone now has access to medical care.*  This doesn’t mean everyone has equal access to quality medical care -only those who can afford to pay  the price above insurance will get access, because they will have the technology and the finacial ability to pay for top notch care.  So will ObamaCare actually make premiums worse? Will it push out bad doctors and bad medicine?

Full Disclosure: My mom helped architect the digital medical billing system that everyone hates, because hospitals kept charging different costs for say Aspirin to different patients and there was no standard way of keeping track of those differences (as well as charge the correct cost to everyone) before that system was created.

 

*There are some secondary issues – In NYC there are definitely more specialists than say upstate NY.  So even if you had more money in rural upstate NY, because of doctor shortages in those areas (as well as poor urban areas, though not to the same extent), this whole theory may be bogus.  Doctors can’t move so often, and for critical care issues patients are unlikely to be flying all over the place.

Posted in Business, Economics, Internet | Tagged , , , , , | 0 Comments

Economies of Networks

By Shana | Published: December 29, 2010

Because I am really tired of hearing the same arguments about is something overvalued, is something undervalued, will something succeed on the internet.

Things on the internet, at some point, work the following way: You fill some niche, people come to you, they pay/fill some goal that leads to some cash, you expand out of your niche, and you get people to pay you/fulfill some goal that leads to cash – etc.

What ends up happening is the more this happens, the better the product is for the people who use it (aka the buyers).  A product with 500 buyers is better than one for 100 buyers, because there are more people who can help you with your product, plus there are secondary parts of the product that allow you to fill niches in that product.

With phones, coupons products, things that are digital (except for some rare cases) this effect is even more profound.  Because these products are a little less finished (don’t have the ideal coupon, don’t have some software), others (new sellers, outside software item) come and fill those crooks in that niche.  As these niches are filled by those outside providers, the main enginer (the coupon dealer, the phone) become stronger because it fills more niches.  And so this good cycle continues until people decide that its too big and the niche said product was filling is no longer being filled.

With digital products, this process is both hell easier (once you make it through two of these cycles, you are good, personal guess, because network effect is so strong)  and hell harder (incumbents can innovate pretty fast too, and it makes it hard to find niches).  It also makes it hard to support more than three payers- as players are supposed to be able to change their offerings rapidly (this is not producing buttons, where rapid change is much harder because of mechanical parts).

 

So the more people use your digital product, the more powerful it is as a tool, which causes more people to use it.

 

Hence, why services like Groupon gets so powerful, and why everyone talks about the rise of Android…it is because they have tons of people using them and those people are causing effects that cause other people to use them…

 

 

Posted in Business, Economics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Chromebook, from a non-journalist

By Shana | Published: December 22, 2010

For those curious (or have seen me with my machine)  I have one of those CR-48s, or ChromeOS notebooks. And it is truly a combination of seriously annoying and seriously amazing.

it’s essentially your browser.  But they did so many nice things to your browser that the normal browser doesn’t do.

eg: pinned tabs.  I love pinned tabs. I love knowing where all my important tabs are.  I love knowing that my imp ortant information is going to appear where it is supposed to. I love some of the interactions of apps.  They have these little pop-unders at the bottom of your screen.  They look nice and they disappear out of the way for real work.  I could see some major uses and very different approaches to notifications because of this unique style of notices. (some kinks need to be worked out though, the google talk is a good example -it doesn’t play well with those who use aim)

I dislike the lack of privacy functions. Give me back private browsing.  Give me back some sort of easy lockdown when I shut off the monitor.

Things I have very strong mixed feelings about- Unless you are a heavy photoshop user, or a heavy word/excel user, you are forced into a system with Google Docs (and I guess eventually one day the online version of Photoshop, Word, Excel).  Interestingly, the rest of the internet is not structured this way at all.  So there is no currently good way beyond a bunch of what feels like a very backward step into getting things of various sorts onto the internet.  (This has come up with job applications. No one sends a link of his/her resume, they send a resume, which is almost always uploaded into a server)  There is no good text editor, no good ftp client to get stuff on a website.  While we perceive those things as unnecessary, at some point every computer user has or will be using those sorts of basic materials to get things done on the web. (You’d be surprised how many people who use these sorts of items, who you would not recognize as techy, and are in fact scared of the word FTP).  There is no file system, everything goes to downloads – so if you do need to store some form of media and you fill your folder, sucks for you.

However, that maybe actually opens up a whole new level of how we will get things done through the web.  ChromeOS makes an excellent point – we can survive and the web will change for a world where the Browser really is that primary and mimics the OS.  Eventually we will move to a rich web where the idea of uploading and even coding is done directly to the cloud.  If that is the case, then I sit here writing on a computer that is just way before its time.  And one which, unlike the rest of the naysayers out there, I can see using as a secondary machine until the web moves to a point where what the Chromebook offers just makes sense as a primary machine.

And mark my words, that day is coming.

Posted in Hardware, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 0 Comments

An important message from your host

By Shana | Published: November 28, 2010

Dear all, I’m thinking of junking the theme.  Any suggestions of themes you like (or something I can build off of easily) would be appreciated.  Please leave a comment about how you want this changed (since it needs a change).

Posted in Random | Tagged | 2 Comments

Is this real?

By Shana | Published: November 28, 2010

Before reading the rest of this post, please go read this link.  The rest of this post will make absolutely no sense

Read More »

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 0 Comments

The Importance of the NLRB/Facebook Case

By Shana | Published: November 9, 2010

Since this has yet to be picked up by lots of people (for I enjoy reading the news late at night)

The National Labor Relations Board is pursuing a case of an employee being fired because she complained about her job on Facebook.  It has a rule that any worker may talk about their work to other workers without interference from their bosses (including to complain).  Today is the first day it’s being covered by major news outlets (NYTIMES, INC)

If you are a company on facebook, you should be watching out.  Large company’s pages tend to have an odd sort of Facebook SEO applied to them where what someone else says on Facebook will end up on their pages.  (This happens all the time with say, my old college, you get drunk comments on the page). If this case is decided in favor employees, there technically is no way for a company to stop negative things said about it from appearing on the page.  Further, if I am going to guess, eventually status updates from facebook will start appearing in search engines when they are relevant (An extension of the Bing-Facebook partnership)

This is also the first time the NLRB seems to be taking a stance that is in some ways pro-average use of digital media and social networking.  Most of people today are using platforms like Facebook as their nouveau water coolers.  It’s extremely interesting to see what will happen-will companies need to be more responsive to labor conditions because of this problem. This ruling could also open up the possibility that social media whistleblowing can be done with no penalty (though really, use the anonymous hotlines first).

It means companies are going to have to manage their internals and their perks more effectively- because now all employees could become public spokespersons on behalf of any company.  Otherwise, a company may end up in a situation where they lose customers because of potentially egregious actions against employees.

Though as a personal note- if you are in a non-unionized environment, or are management in a union environment, I don’t think its a great idea to publish what you think about work on Facebook.  It’s still an incredibly competitive work environment- a future employer may look badly upon such behavior, even if it is technically illegal in the future (they’re worried about your long term loyalty and that you can be a presentable person to the company in public.  They’re also worried about if you have just an angry personality or something )

 

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Posted in Business, Media | Tagged , , , , | 0 Comments

The Matrix that is the Web

By Shana | Published: November 7, 2010
A segment of a social network
Image via Wikipedia

My guess,when you the reader, sees the tiltle, is that you think I am about to talk about “The Matrix” the movie.

Actually, this post is about an idea I heard about today- Emile Durkheim came up with an idea about communities.  Essentially, from what I have been hearing about, there are two kinds

1) group organization.  It’s identity is formed by those who are not in the group,

2)a Matrix organization (there is the title)- the hierarchical arrangement of communities based on knowledge and observance.

It seems, from my observances, that there is going to be a long growth of communities that organize as Matrices on the web and off the web.  The first reason is that more information is available now on the web- so there is more opportunity for wholesale criticism as well as dissemination of of the communities’ ideas and practices.  The second reason is that it is easier to highlight and organize behavior that complies with the matrix.

However, it leads to a new problem- for individuals (not communities), there are many more possible matrices to join and ascend.  What I see happening is the following: all  of these communities are in competition with each other for people to maintain them.  They’ll cross with each other, they’ll partner with each other, they’ll even merge with each other.  Over time, it will be harder to develop new communities (and maybe easier) around new ideas that may be at variance to society because some will gain market strength.  It also means communities that are also at serious variance to society at large also will lose serious core members- they’re competing now with many other communities that form the matrix of the Great Society.

It’s going to be an interesting time to see how traditional communities keep to their traditional values over time as a result, especially if those communities don’t have the same social code as the greater society they are in.  It will be hard if they don’t have help to push their  message.

We live in interesting times.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Data Wars

By Shana | Published: November 5, 2010

If you haven’t heard the news- Google is getting rid of the ability to get your contacts imported into secondary web applications unless reciprocral data is shared back to Google.  This hurts Facebook the most, as it is the largest user of said data. (Primarily from your email)

Some sigifigant points to be made here:

1) Despite the press- the reason this is important is not because of you and yours (or me and mine) (aka the social graph).  Your immediate social graph is not nearly as useful as the links between social graphs, nor as useful as your social graph in comparison to Other’s social graphs.  So the idea being floated that data liberation and how users can use facebook data to transfer themselves over to another service- it’s probably bogus.  What matters signfigantly more is how these large data masses get used.  (See Bing for early examples, though by no means the best yet to come)  With data sharing (especially large chunks of data) comes the ability to build much better/faster/cooler products.  By keeping large chunks of data to oneself- one keeps innovation by others (including large companies) at a lockdown. (Small companies seem to matter less in all of this- they have far less data in the works)

The most important thought to think about- if Facebook got all of Google’s search data of your preferences- what would happen?  In Google got all of Facebook’s social graph data- what would happen?  Remember that both are effectively large advertising platforms of various types.  How would all the cookies, when combined together, make for more powerful advertising?  Basically, being Switzerland is the most obvious answer to the problem of Data.  Be agnostic about your data- show some, not all?  Play friendly to both sides!

2) Privacy issues as the reasoning being tossed around is only a partially bogus issue.  You’d be surprised how many people have secondary and tertiary accounts on Facebook, and use anonymous emails at times.  That being said- Mark is right about privacy concerns.  As an individual, you have no idea what I can find out about you from searching your email address or other “privately oriented information. (Don’t Ask Me about this, ask Justice Scalia…)

 

Posted in Advertising, Business | Tagged , , , | 0 Comments
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