Author Archive
Saturday, January 5th, 2008
Portfolio Project: GMNext.com
GM just launched a major new campaign called GMNext, to signify its 100th Anniversary.
Over the next year, General Motors will celebrate the start of its second century through GMnext, a dialogue-based campaign that engages people via social media and interactive experiences. As a platform to showcase GM’s commitment to transportation solutions employing technologies that are relevant to consumer needs, GMnext will demonstrate our focus on solutions to the challenges that will shape the future of transportation.
A huge team of talented professionals is responsible for GMNext.com and I was fortunate and excited to be part of it. I did the Flash piece top and center on the homepage of GMNext.com, with the 3D flying windows. Performance was crucial here, since each of the windows can be populated with a ton of dynamic content. The motion needed to be fluid and convincing and earlier attempts at producing the desired look and feel were not successful. I love to squeeze every last bit of performance out of my interactive projects and my capabilities were put to good use here.
Click the screenshot to visit the site:
Read More: GM Asks the World: ‘What’s Next?’ (Fox Business)
No Comments » - Posted in Rich Internet Applications (RIA), Flash, Business by Jacob
Tuesday, January 9th, 2007
Adobe Reader is a bloated sack of crap
So, I needed to view a PDF on a new machine today and, of course, I head over to Adobe to snag a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader, or Adobe Reader, or whatever it’s called today. Version 7 is out now, unbeknownst to be me, and Adobe has apparently invented more reasons to increase its version number, system requirements, download size, memory usage, and decrease everything desired: speed, ease-of-use, and simplicity. And I still don’t use a single feature that I didn’t have in Acrobat 4. I haven’t been to Adobe’s campus, yet–is it right next to the freeway? Whatever the case, there’s got to be some seriously potent fumes running through their offices to explain the horrible trainwreck that Adobe Reader has become.
In my typical, ever-so-slightly dramatic fashion, I typed in “Adobe Reader is a bloated sack of crap” in Google and found…
No Comments » - Posted in Productivity, Software Engineering by Jacob
Thursday, January 4th, 2007
Hassle your users with captcha
So, I’m trying to find some decent Jazz tickets the other day and I run into their captcha test. That’s “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart”, of course. Unless you’re the programming-type, this will probably help: 
Over the course of my visit to Ticketmaster, I probably fail the test 25% of the time. Me, the programming-type, with 20/20 vision, and an itch to buy some egregiously overpriced tickets. Sites add these tests to their submission forms to keep sneaky people from doing things in an automated fashion, like posting comment spam on blogs on a massive scale. That’s nice and all, but it has gotten out of control on some sites to the point where users are regularly failing these tests multiple times in a row. That’s a serious impediment to users who are trying to give you money. Ticketmaster execs, I’ll bet you a cup of Starbucks per day for the rest of your life: you are losing a measurable amount of revenue at your captcha test screen.
No Comments » - Posted in Software Engineering by Jacob
Wednesday, September 13th, 2006
What I’m learning in college
In the middle of taking my third economics course, I’m (again) reminded of the fickleness of college courses. You’d think that the knowledge I’ve gained in other courses would be directly applicable to this one, wouldn’t you? But my third economics course from my third economics professor introduces yet another set of definitions for basic economics concepts. I know this stuff already. But, each professor wants you to regurgitate their particular interpretation of the concepts. There is little room for free thought and generalized empirical application. No–parroting a professor’s own language seems to be the recipe for success. I know from experience that going with the flow will be the least-stressful path and will guarantee the best grade, but I feel like I’m doing a disservice to my brain by allowing it to simply act as a playback device for my professors.
No Comments » - Posted in Education by Jacob
Monday, May 22nd, 2006
Failure
I’ve been thinking about failure lately. Given that each of us has finite energy each day, I wondered how much of it I expend avoiding failure. The answer is a lot. This has had the deliberate effect of causing more successes than failures at the end of the day. But it’s also had a tremendously negative effect. All of the effort to avoid failure has caused cautiousness, hesitancy, and even avoidance. Risk aversion.
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less
willing to risk failure. - John W. Gardner
Mmmhmm. Failure is simply feedback–so you can get your ass up and try smarter next time. Failure is education and must be treated as such. The only real failure is if you stop trying. Once again I’m reminded that action is everything. And just to remind myself: Think less, do more. Here’s a couple more pertinent quotes:
“A life which does not go into action is a failure.” - Arnold J. Toynbee
Don’t consider losses a waste of time. Consider them an apprenticeship. - Greg
Norman
1 Comment » - Posted in Productivity, Business by Jacob
Friday, March 10th, 2006
Why AJAX sucks
Ok, ok, so the title is a bit strong. The truth is, I think everything sucks to some extent. And I should mention that I’m a long-time Flash RIA (Rich Internet Application) developer. Now that we have that out of the way, I still think AJAX is pretty cool. I thought it was even before some bastard gave it a buzzword and it was still called DHTML and XMLHttpRequest circa 1999. 
My complaints with it then pretty much stand today. I hate Javascript. Not the language, necessarily, but the implementations of it. A huge problem is cross-browser differences. I should not have to write script to accomodate implementation differences between browsers. One of the reasons I love Flash is because the same code runs the same way in any Flash player (*keep your esoteric exceptions to yourself).
Another huge problem has been error handling (less so since Javascript >= 1.5, which is included with the latest mainstream browsers). If your Javascript breaks for some reason, all the user gets is a little non-descript icon in some corner of their browser and the rest of your script stops working. They don’t notice it. Hell, I hardly notice and I’m usually looking for it. And depending on how much your application relies on Javascript, the user could end up with a blank, incomplete, and/or unusable user interface. That is an utter nightmare for serious applications, one I suffered with a lot when I was developing a prototype of my early-draft SCORM-based Learning Management System (LMS) a few years ago. It was 7-8K lines of Javascript at that point. And there were all sorts of gremlins that kept it from being as stable as we needed it, despite proper coding practices and numerous workarounds to keep things from flaking out. Ultimately, we scrapped that and re-wrote it mostly in Flash, where it proceeded to kick an enormous amount of ass. Honestly, there should be a standard, uniform, no-brains-required way to catch and report errors back to the server and handle them gracefully on the client.
Third, and this comes mostly from spite, although the point is still wholely valid: The same people that complained about HTML frames and those who complained Flash not being SEO-friendly, back button-friendly, or accessibility-friendly (nevermind being a proprietary product of an evil corporation) should be complaining about AJAX. Many of those same issues, which I agree with to a certain extent, still apply to AJAX as well.
“AJAX” is being hyped (along with its equally Buzzword Bingo-worthy illegitimate lovechild “Web 2.0″) as being some sort of magical panacea. It’s not, by any stretch of any imagination. But, like with XML in the late 90’s, we’re going to see AJAX is every web-related job description known to man, whether it’s appropriate, legal, or congruant with the laws of nature. All of that being said, it is pretty cool to be updating parts of your page dynamically that would otherwise require full page refreshes…and I’m using it on a few projects.
3 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by Jacob
Friday, February 24th, 2006
More innovation, less imitation.
Love him or hate him, Bob Parsons is an interesting guy. I was browsing his blog last night and caught an old post of his about Sony (How Sony Got to be Great). He quotes Sony co-founder Masura Ibuka who said, “You never succeed in technology, business or anything by following the others.” I love this concept. Not that it should be your only modus operandi…
No Comments » - Posted in Startups, Software Engineering, Business by Jacob
Friday, February 17th, 2006
New Routine
Two weeks ago I started a new weightlifting routine:
day 1 - light
1. squat 3 sets x 15 reps
2. power shrug (pull) 3 x 5 using light weight
3. shoulder press (push) 3 x 15
4. calf raise 3 x 15
5. ab crunches or swissball crunches 3 x 20
day 2 - heavy…
No Comments » - Posted in Health / Fitness by Jacob
Tuesday, February 7th, 2006
The Glory of Being an Entrepreneur
I remember when I was 17 and I worked in the paint department at Ernst (think Home Depot). I’d get into these future-oriented conversations with a co-worker. He was older, maybe 2.5 times my age. We’d talk about starting our own businesses and he had a lot to say about it. It really got me thinking about actually doing it when I was older. This was one of the first times I remember really contemplating the idea. I’ve had some proclivities towards it.. Like in the 4th grade, I would assemble these little devices…
2 Comments » - Posted in Startups, Business by Jacob
Sunday, February 5th, 2006
Me and Wal-mart
See, I have this thing with Wal-mart. We don’t get along. I hate it. Sure, hate is a strong word. But, when it comes to Wal-mart, it flows so easily whether I’m walking down one of their God-forsaken aisles or if I hear about their latest crime against society in the media. I hate the bottom-of-the-barrel product quality. I hate the raping of American businesses, the three of them that are left and are still able to supply Wal-mart, anyway. I hate the absence of that one thing…what is it…oh yeah: customer service.
Every single time I go, I regret it. Every time. I’ve given it several chances to redeem itself. I’ve even tried going during that 2-hour window of the week when there is more than one parking space available. But, it doesn’t work. It makes me feel dirty. And it’s of little consolation that I saved 18 cents on that bar of Zest I just bought, since I’m going to wear down half of it scrubbing off the stench of Wal-mart’s immorality. I’m much happier driving literally 5 miles right past the nearest Wal-mart to go to Target, a somewhat lesser evil. At least I can buy something that doesn’t suck there and the majority of my co-shoppers have showered in the past week. To commemorate my avoidance of Wal-mart, I’ve made a button you can use on your sites and blogs to show how many days it’s been since you set foot in a Wal-mart.
