Name: Alvin Lau
Alias: The geek
Age: 26
Height: 1m72
Weight: 70kg
Occupation: Electrical Engineer
Working 45 hours a week at Phillips Electronics
Status: In a relationship
Hobbies: Photography, chess, online game, read books, anything that is geeky
Alvin loves Yahah! For one thing, he is an engineer with intense workload. Sometimes when taking a 5 or 10 minutes break, he would want to find some quick and hassle free relaxation to free his mind for a while. He loves the variety of things that Yahah! can provide. He already have enough stress at work so he didn't like to read serious news and depressing stuffs on the media. He loves witty jokes that is smart and with a lot of implies, which are so hard to get out there, since people are so shallow, he feels.
Second thing is the customization. Alvin doesn't like YouTube, because everytime he goes there he has to search for something. Sometimes he just didn't know what he wanted to see. And sometimes it's frustrating to see or fast forward through the entire clip just to know they are not what he wanted to watch. With Yahah! everytime he log on he already have clips there for him. If he doesn't like it he just needs to click a thumb down, and it will automatically skip to the next relevant clips. The more thumb down he puts, the less frequent these annoying content appears. Which is great, he thought
What else, after a Youtube video he has to pick a similar video to watch. With Yahah! he moves straight to the next content. The more he watches and puts thumbs up or thumbs down, the more relevant and accurate the content will get.
Sure, he has to participate pretty often. But he didn't mind. He wants to be involved and decide the content he will see. And he wants to know the system is interacting with him. For youtube he has to fastforward and search again himself. Everytime he rates the system doesn't do anything for him and it never learns. Yahah! is like a smart friend to him. Everytime he commented on something it will just get better, learning from his preference and also dislikes.
Sure there are a thousand things out there to waste your time on, but he didn't consider Yahah! a waste of time. It gives him the entertainment he needs with less time. Youtube is so over. Yahah! is the new things and sooner or later, these shallow, novice users will realize it.
"It's always cool to be THE GEEK!" He concluded :)
Thursday, March 8, 2007
The debate - The good, the bad and the ugly
During the idea presentation of the final project, the class was divided into 2 groups, one is supposed to support whichever group from their side and one is supposed to shoot the idea down. While this certainly is a more interesting way to present things than just sit there for hours listening passively, it has certain drawbacks and certain things I realized. And perhaps no one will read the blog so I thought I took my thoughts down
The good:
- People are more involved and they actually listen and talk about what was presented
- Pressure helps the group to present better
- Time management was good (or at least not as bad as it used to be). And the time limit imposed on the presentation make it more realistic to real-life presentations
The bad:
- A lot of time I feel people get the idea, they just purposely dig deep into some minor or really irrelevant points for the sake of attacking.
- It's always easy to criticize than to defend. Especially when the one who understand about it the most cant explain. No one is protecting your dreams the way you do. But everyone is just gonna shoot you down. I believe when YouTube started out a lot a lot people also said it was a stupid idea (I still think it is).
The ugly:
- The class got split to half and basically some arguments don't make sense at all. After some time I just decided there were too much negativity so I gave up.
- Some comments/attacks turned to personal and making fun of classmates. It's not helping and not constructive at all. I believe the purpose of the session is to suggest to the group how to improve, not discourage them
But I guess it's a pretty close simulation of life where people, because of politics and competition, they will just dismiss your ideas. Guess our group will just have to persevere, which is exactly what we will do because we know we are providing something very different, something more than an extension of what already is there. And we are happy funny people, so we shall come up with a happy funny interactive site :)
The good:
- People are more involved and they actually listen and talk about what was presented
- Pressure helps the group to present better
- Time management was good (or at least not as bad as it used to be). And the time limit imposed on the presentation make it more realistic to real-life presentations
The bad:
- A lot of time I feel people get the idea, they just purposely dig deep into some minor or really irrelevant points for the sake of attacking.
- It's always easy to criticize than to defend. Especially when the one who understand about it the most cant explain. No one is protecting your dreams the way you do. But everyone is just gonna shoot you down. I believe when YouTube started out a lot a lot people also said it was a stupid idea (I still think it is).
The ugly:
- The class got split to half and basically some arguments don't make sense at all. After some time I just decided there were too much negativity so I gave up.
- Some comments/attacks turned to personal and making fun of classmates. It's not helping and not constructive at all. I believe the purpose of the session is to suggest to the group how to improve, not discourage them
But I guess it's a pretty close simulation of life where people, because of politics and competition, they will just dismiss your ideas. Guess our group will just have to persevere, which is exactly what we will do because we know we are providing something very different, something more than an extension of what already is there. And we are happy funny people, so we shall come up with a happy funny interactive site :)
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