... and making some new ones in the process.

I'm a recent convert to the world of facebook. Yep, I got sucked into it because a girl I liked had an account, and I wanted to see more pictures of her. No. I'm not an Internet stalker. I actually knew (and still know) this girl and we met for the first time far before I knew about facebook.

Unlike myspace which is customizable via some very convoluted css (not very many nice selectors), all facebook pages look roughly the same, and I see this as a clear benefit. The facebook screen layout is very clean and simple. I can move my little pods, or "boxes" around by dragging them and this is a very nice thing indeed. I hated it on myspace that everyone's page looked different, maybe it's the programmer in me that likes things organized and orderly, but really I think it's because the focus of facebook doesn't seem to be people tweaking the look of their profile, but rather getting people in touch with one another. I must confess that there are people's profiles on myspace that I stopped going to simply because I found their page layout annoying or harsh on my eyes.

I started out on facebook as I said just to see pictures of my friend, but during the registration process facebook (with my permission) logged into my gmail, discovered my contact list, and automatically found out who I knew that was already on facebook. It then sent those people friend requests. Before I knew it -- BAM! -- I had 80 friends. Now, why none of them ever told me about facebook is another matter entirely, but the point is that setup was simple and helped me to get started in the facebook community. I also like how facebook is constantly (yet unobtrusively) suggesting new friends to me. It's not being random either, the suggestions it makes are friends of friends. So, I'm up to 122 friends as of this writing, and it's simply amazing how many old friends from my days in high school this little (okay huge) community has put me back in touch with. I've spoken recently to old teachers, classmates, and old girlfriends. But that's not all! I frequent a few popular mailing lists for programmers, jQuery, jQueryUI, CFTalk, my local CFUG, OpenBD, and numerous other mailing list (many of which are Google groups), and facebook has helped me to keep in touch with these folks in an area outside of the mailing lists. It's nice to put faces to names that you're used to reading either in blogs or in mailing list posts.

So, I'm a big facebook fan. One other thing they've done which is nice, is their approach to advertising. Yes, advertising. I hate adverts in general, but I also understand the need for the revenue that they create, and the desire of the advertisers to be seen by such a large audience as the facebook community. That said, I like the way in which facebook handles advertising. All adds are unobtrusive, and small. So far, I've never encountered any flashing or spinning or obnoxious adverts. I have run across some ads that I found objectionable, but in this regard the facebook folks were listening to their users. There is a group on facebook (groups are another neat feature of facebook, but not one that I'm going to talk much about) of people who are against offensive adverts on facebook. Particularly the way in which some of the advertisers choose to objectify women. Well, underneath every advert (except some flash ones...) there is a little thumbs up and thumbs down button. No matter which one you pick, you get to give immediate feedback to the facebook folks on why you gave the thumbs up or down. If you chose to give the ad the thumbs down, it immediately replaces the ad with a different one. I've not confirmed this with anyone at facebook, but it seems that they're doing something like Stumbleupon does when you tell it you like or don't like a site. The types of adverts I dislike I'm seeing less and less of, while I'm seeing more of the types of adverts to which I've given the thumbs up.

Currently, my high school class is planing a fifteen-year reunion, and my high school theatre group is planning a reunion of their own (since not everyone was in the same graduating class). I also, use it routinely to communicate with some folks the way I'd use my gmail account to communicate with others.

Are you on facebook? If not, why not? If so, what do you use it for?

I found this while stumbling on the net a couple of nights ago. I find good beatboxers fun to listen to and simply amazing. How do they make all that realistic sounding noise with their mouths?

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Thanks to the folks at ABC, I just got caught up on what is fast becoming my favorite summer series: "Traveler".

Can I just say, "DAMN!" This show keeps getting better and better! Besides the action, excitement and overall pace of the show, what I particularly like is that I think it will have a definite ending. ABC cut their original thirteen episode order down to eight, and tonight (well tonight for me, last Wednesday 07/11 for probably everyone else) was episode number seven.

While I don't think that the entire story will wrap up in the next episode, I can't see them dragging this story out over too many seasons (a la 24). If they had another season of eight episodes I think they could finish nicely. Only time will tell if ABC is going to try and milk this show for all it's worth leaving its audience rolling their eyes an asking if it's ever going to end.

I honestly would like to see that as a trend in well written TV series (i.e. LOST, Traveler, 24). Let's have a beginning a middle and an end. Tell a story, and take as many episodes as are necessary to tell that story. When it's done, move on to the next show. Until the producers of LOST announced that there was going to be a definite ending date for the series, I was almost ready to give up. I was resigning myself to the fact that they'd never answer any questions or they'd just keep answering our questions with more questions. But instead they came out and said, okay we need x number of episodes to finish telling the story and then we're done.

I hope Traveler will follow the same path, because I can't wait to see how this one ends! :o)

Cheers!

I'd almost forgotten that the new Bourne movie, "The Bourne Ultimatum" was going to be out this August third, but during the previews for "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" last night (is it me, or have the other actors passed Emma Watson in the ability to act well?) I saw the trailer for the latest Bourne flick. This is going to be an amazing movie. I've loved the first two, so I've no reason to think I won't instantly love the third one. As far as I'm concerned, Bourne could be come like 007 and just never die, and they could go on making movies and writing books about him forever.

So in looking for more Bourne information on the net I found The Ultimate Search For Bourne With Google. I don't know exactly what it's about, but it starts in just two days. I realize it's just some marketing ploy to draw attention to the movie and any sponsors, but I don't normally do this sort of thing, so I'm interested in seeing what it's all about.

It has you add the "Agent Gadget" to your iGoogle page. When you click there to play the video it just tells you that the search starts on July 16.

Very mysterious. I gotta say, it's getting me in the mood for the movie. I guess I'll see what happens on the 16th.

Cheers!