Bill Cammack » upgrade

Facebook “Upgrade” Sucks Again, As Usual

Bill Cammack — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 10:00:46 +0000

Facebook “upgraded” our personal profile pages last night.

If you’ve been on Facebook for more than a year, you know why the word upgrade is in quotes. The changes they make are consistent with a computer figuring out probabilities and not with a gregarious human being saying “Changing XYZ would be an UPGRADE to my facebook experience”.

That’s Not How I Speak

I graduated with my degree in Management Information Systems from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology http://alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack/). Peep the hardware:

There are lots of people that don’t know this.

They don’t know because I don’t tell them.

I don’t begin conversations with “Hi.. I’m Bill Cammack, and I’m an Emmy Award-Winning video editor and MIT graduate”. I mean… Who DOES that? :/

How OBNOXIOUS would that be if every time you went to speak to someone, they rattled off a list of information that you never asked them about?

Apparently, whomever’s idea it was to redesign the Facebook profile pages wouldn’t mind, because that’s what happens now, every time you click on a profile.

New Layout

I was curious to find out what the new page layout was about, so I clicked on the button to “upgrade”, not imagining that there was NO. *******. ROLLBACK. FUNCTION!!! :D JEEZ! smh

So now, anyone that goes to my page is greeted with information that a) I never would have told them if we had met each other IRL, and b) probably has NOTHING TO DO with the reason why they came to my page in the first place.

This information was fine in the sidebar. If I went to someone’s page and was interested in what they were talking about, I glanced to the left and had whatever EXTRANEOUS INFORMATION about them that a) they wanted to share, and b) I wanted to know, at my fingertips.

Now.. Every time I go to to someone’s page, I’m greeted with what school they attended, where they live, where they’re originally from… This would make sense if it were ONLY on their “info” page, but it’s on their wall as well. It’s like WHO CARES? \o/ WHERE’S THE CONTENT I CAME HERE FOR?

To add insult to injury, a filmstrip of images that you’re tagged in has been planted directly under the information you wouldn’t have shared in the first place and above where your actual wall content begins.

Whether or not you give a flying **** who this person hangs out with, you’re reminded each time you visit their page, unless they’re one of those people who blocks their FB pictures from friends being able to view them (or, at least, blocks *YOU* from being able to see their pics! :D).

Sidebars

The formerly-useful left sidebar has now been replaced with a parade of your friends. That’s it. No more links to other websites of yours. No more sidebar widgets. It’s like a dating site. They list “In A Relationship With”, “Friends” and “Family”. Why is that sidebar content? Who cares? If you care whether someone’s dating anyone, you click on INFO and find out. It’s a waste of real estate.

In the sidebar on the right side, you see mutual friends that you have in common. Once again, this is functional from Facebook’s viewpoint, so that people can find more people to connect to and create more traffic for them and more pageviews, leading to serving more advertisements.

For the user, this serves no purpose at all.

The rest of that sidebar is populated with advertisements, like it used to be.

I’m guessing that Facebook made the sidebars useless so they can emulate a Tumblr style of all relevant information residing in one vertical column. This makes sense for their mobile efforts. I’m sure that whichever robot calculated this configuration arrived at an efficient design.

Unfortunately, as usual with Facebook “upgrades”, functionality for the user has been REMOVED instead of being ENHANCED. It’s practically a conspiracy! :D haha I wouldn’t be surprised if after the next couple of “UPGRADES”, Facebook announced premium accounts where you could get back all the functionality they’ve been stripping away if you PAY THEM MONTHLY! :/

GrandCentral becomes Google Voice!

Bill Cammack — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:44:28 +0000

Got this email this morning about GrandCentral becoming Google Voice:

Hello GrandCentral User,

We are happy to announce that GrandCentral has been upgraded and is relaunching as Google Voice. While not yet open to the public, we wanted to give you, our GrandCentral users, the first opportunity to start using Google Voice.

In addition to the GrandCentral features you already know, we’ve added voicemail transcription, SMS support, conference calling, Goog411, enhanced spam protection and low-priced international calling. We have also integrated GrandCentral with your Google Account and your Google Contacts list.

To upgrade your account to Google Voice, just log in to your GrandCentral account and follow the directions at the top of your inbox. Upon upgrading, your GrandCentral number, PIN, and forwarding phones will be moved to Google Voice.

Note that since Google Voice uses the Google address book, your GrandCentral contacts will not be imported automatically. You can import your GrandCentral address book with these instructions. You will also need to recreate any individual/group settings and greetings.

After you upgrade, all your new voicemails will be accessible at Google Voice, while all prior messages will remain available at GrandCentral.

Thanks for being a great GrandCentral user and we hope you enjoy Google Voice!

Best,

Craig, Vincent, and the Google Voice team

~ Bill Cammack

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Fear of Commitment

Bill Cammack — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:43:20 +0000

“Fear of Commitment” is a valid term which is way too often misapplied, leading to yet another way that women confuse themselves when it comes to understanding what men are thinking.

Due to the fault of this chick who will remain nameless, I ended up watching some reality television show about housewives in NYC. :/ Now, before you start laughing and snapping, :D This is why I know more about women than you do… Because I study them.

Anyway…

So I’m watching this show, and this chick asks this guy, her “boyfriend”, to say whether or not he wants her to move in with him ON NATIONAL TELEVISION! He was eating at the time, so he couldn’t immediately respond, but he starts looking at her like “ARE YOU CRAZY? DIDN’T I TELL YOU NOT TO BRING THIS UP WITH THE CAMERAS AROUND? :O”. Priceless! So eventually, when he can speak, he says he wants to talk about it later. CLEARLY, this means “NOT WHEN THE CAMERAS ARE AROUND!”… So… of course… the chick asks him TWO MORE TIMES, gets shut down both times and next thing you know, due to the wonders of editing and time-lapse, she’s explaining to anyone who will listen about how she broke up with her “boyfriend”… the same guy that she claimed she wanted to have kids with within two years… tossed the entire relationship.

The ensuing commiseration and speculation between girlfriends is what got me thinking about “Fear of Commitment”. As I said, it’s a valid term, but it’s way too often applied to guys that are on a totally different wavelength. As an example, let’s look at Arachnophobia [fear of spiders... from Greek arachne (Î±ÏÎ¬Ï‡Î½Î·), "spider" and phobia (Ï†Î¿Î²Î¯Î±), "fear"]. If someone sees a spider and steps on it, they could very well be accused of being arachnophobic. The fact of the matter may very well be that they’re not AFRAID of spiders at all…. They just don’t LIKE them and don’t want to be around them. “Phobia”, therefore, doesn’t apply to these people. It would be more accurate and useful to call them “Anti-Spider”. You know that they’re ‘against’ spiders, but you’re not making any judgements about the REASONS why.

Similarly, a lot of guys are accused of “Fear of Commitment”. I personally can’t count how many times those three words have been tossed at me in that exact order. :) I propose that we consider some additional concepts, such as “No Reason To Commit” and “You’ve Overvalued Yourself Relative To Other Women”.

“Fear of Commitment” assumes that Commitment is natural in the first place. I’ll get into the Alpha Male thing some other time, but basically, there are some guys that are in demand and have no reason AT ALL to select one female to Pair Bond with. These guys will exhibit the same symptoms as a guy who’s actually AFRAID of commitment. They won’t do it. They’re not afraid of anything… It’s just that you have an inflated concept of your worth in his eyes relative to other women.

This is why women have problems going from “best girlfriend” to girlfriend or fiancee or wife. They’re trying to elevate the status of their relationship past where their “boyfriend” actually sees it. In the case of the reality show (which, obviously was taped a long time ago, because I saw a rerun of an edited show, so for all I know, the chick and guy in question are married right now), the chick wanted to go from “girlfriend that sleeps at the dude’s house every single night but still has her own apartment” to “we’re living together”. This reminds me of what women pass down from generation to generation, which is “Why Buy the Cow When You Can Get the Milk for Free?”. Ladies…. There is NO POSSIBLE BENEFIT to a guy for letting you move in with him if he already has 100% access to you as-is. None.

This is what y’all need to focus on if you’re trying to upgrade your relationship… What is the benefit TO HIM of changing the status from “chick he’s seeing” to “girlfriend”? From “girlfriend” to “fiancee”? From “fiancee to wife”? What’s the benefit TO HIM of having kids with you or moving in with you? Why do you need to think about that? Because that’s what HE’S thinking about and that’s what HE’S going to base his decisions on about whether your relationship progresses in a positive or negative direction. Just because YOU think HE’S the one doesn’t mean HE thinks YOU’RE the one. You need to think about that, sooner rather than later.

An additional problem for the chick in the show is that her “biological clock was ticking”, meaning she was getting to the age where she’s desperate to have kids if she’s going to have any at all. This, obviously, is HER problem. This is like when you’re in high school and you don’t start your homework until 11pm when you’re already getting tired. It’s like knowing you have a test coming up on Friday and then cramming on Thursday night. Just like neither of those situations is the teacher’s problem, her “biological clock” isn’t her boyfriend’s problem. According to what she told her girlfriends, when he wouldn’t say that he’d be ready in a year or two (if ever) to have kids with her, she broke off the relationship. Typical. Only problem is, she should have thought about that sooner rather than later, because now, if she doesn’t reinstate her relationship to him, she has to start all over from square one and meet a new guy, get to know him, get him to like her AND get him to agree to have kids with her all within the exact same two year time span. :/

I’ll refer to this as an impulse buy, because this is the stage where it’s easy to get desperate females at discount rates. You’d be surprised how low women’s standards become when they’re scrambling to achieve something. It’s kind of like how guys are, all the time. :D

Speaking of opposites, attractive women could be accused of the same thing. Isn’t it “Fear of Commitment” when a chick has a guy that will take her out and buy her steak for lunch… then turns around and goes out with a different guy who’s willing to buy her lobster for dinner? Hmmmmmmm :D

Why should she choose one guy over the other if they’re both spending money on her? What’s her incentive to stop seeing all of her other guys? Why should she not get the multiple compliments, gifts, trips and bootie calls?

So, similar to how women to go out on dates with guys without having any intention of upgrading their relationship, guys do the same thing. Messing around or hooking up isn’t a ticket to “girlfriend” isn’t a ticket to “fiancee” isn’t a ticket to “wife” isn’t a ticket to “having kids with you”. So, instead of claiming that a guy’s afraid to commit to you, your energies would be better spent figuring out if you’re the kind of woman that might inspire him to commit in the first place.

DatingGenius

Bill Cammack » upgrade

Facebook “Upgrade” Sucks Again, As Usual

That’s Not How I Speak

New Layout

Sidebars

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GrandCentral becomes Google Voice!

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Fear of Commitment

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