Month: February 2008

Cloverfield

The other day I watched “Cloverfield“. It was slightly boring, as it was supposed to be, assuming it was filmed somewhat amateurish. It was a bit tiring on the eyes as well. The “Blair Witch Project” kind of tiring. It had some suspense in it, and even some special effects, but it was missing something. I can’t put my finger on it just yet…

Overall, it was pretty good. If you decide to watch it, I’d recommend to get it on DVD or something and watch it on smaller screen (TV/computer). It really doesn’t need all the size of the cinema screen. And it won’t tire your eyes as much.

Beautiful women of my Flickr favourites

Once in a while I go through my Flickr favourites (unfortunately no RSS feed yet).  And every time I do so, I am amazed by this or that – models, lights, moments, post-processing, etc.  Today, I was impressed (again) by the beauty of women.  So much, in fact, that I decided to share the feeling via this blog.

 Muse

And here is another one, totally different:

Smoking

There are, of course, plenty of more, but most of those pictures don’t allow for bloggers to re-post.  So you’ll have to see them on Flickr. Because if you don’t, you are missing out.  Really.

The return of the categories

Once again it has been proven how unstable and messy I am in my data organization.  This blog already went through a few iterations of categories, tags, and sections reorganizations.  However, it seems this not the end just yet.

I have decided to bring back the categories.  They were chopped into pieces last time when tags came along.  But tags are way too flexible and messy when I have no strict rules on how to apply  them.  So I ended up with a whole lot of tags which looks, sound, and spell very similar, but not exactly the same.  Hopefully, there will be more order with categories now. I intend to use categories in conjunction with tags.  Categories will be few and major, while tags will be more flexible and many.

Also, this will provide for an easier access for those of you who come here to read certain types of posts (Personal and not Technology, or Movies and not Blogging).  If you are interested in everything, then there is a category All for you.

P.S.: Note that for each category there is an RSS feed, which should be picked up by your browser or feed reader auto-discovery feature.

MIME type of uploaded files in PHP

Today I came across something that rather puzzled me at first, seemed irresponsible and such, but was cleared later, upon reading the manual.  When uploading files in PHP, variable $_FILES stores a bunch of information about each file.  One of those stored bits is the MIME type of the file.  I was puzzled with how easy it was to trick PHP into setting a wrong MIME type.  However, documentation clearly says that:

The mime type of the file, if the browser provided this information. An example would be “image/gif”. This mime type is however not checked on the PHP side and therefore don’t take its value for granted.

Yahoo + Microsoft vs. Google et al

The big news of last week were of yet another attempt by Microsoft to buy Yahoo.  If you missed all the buzz, Web Worker Daily has a really nice round-up with separate links to facts (read: press releases) and opinions (read: speculations).  If that’s not enough for you, you can always find more with Google, Slashdot, and Digg.

Many online news sources continue to be completely dominated by discussion of Microsoft’s hostile bid to acquire Yahoo! And no wonder: a deal of this magnitude has the potential to touch the lives of pretty much everyone living and working online. It’s a rare web worker indeed who doesn’t use something from one or another of those two companies in their daily lives.

So, first, can it affect me personally?  Yes.  I don’t use any Microsoft/MSN/Live services, but I can’t live without Flickr and del.icio.us, both of which belong to Yahoo now.  Also, I do occasionally use Upcoming.

Now, what do I think about this whole thing?  Well, I think it shows how desperate Microsoft is.  The general trend is towards the web, not the desktop, where they still rule.  Most of their own web services turned out to be pretty lousy.  They want to get online, and they are willing to pay a lot of money to get their fast.  Mostly, of course, this is a war for a place under the advertising sun.

From the Microsoft view point (I think), Yahoo looks to be online.  More than so.  Yahoo is the second most important company online after Google.  And Google is giving Yahoo some rough time.  And Microsoft realizes it clearly, that Google is partially to blame for this whole trend towards the web.  And it also realizes that if it is serious about moving online, it’ll have to compete with Google in one area or another.  So it makes even more sense to acquire Yahoo.  From the Microsoft point of view (again, I think), Yahoo appears to know what they are doing.

And that’s where I see their biggest mistake.  Yahoo is indeed the second most important company on the web after Google.  But it struggles to be there, and it struggles even more to keep Google in sight.  Because it is falling pretty far behind.

A little side note: I think there is a war of concepts between Google and Yahoo. It’s bigger than just advertising space or anything else.

  • Yahoo started off with a directory of links, which was better than many at a time because it was moderated by humans.  Google started off with bringing huge improvements to machine based indexing and searching.  Yahoo:Google – 0:1.
  • Google brought this whole concept of clean user interfaces and simplicity for the end user.  Yahoo stayed and expanded on the old idea of portals, which bring all possible and impossible to the front page of the site.  Yahoo:Google – 0:2.
  • Google made a stake on the brilliance of its people – if the service is properly done, it’ll grow by itself and bring in more users.  Yahoo played it safe, trying to purchase web services that already have momentum.  Yahoo:Google – 1:2.

End of side note.

Overall, I think that this is a bad move on Microsoft part.  If the acquisition will happen, I think, it’ll damage both companies, and, maybe even, drive at least one of them into the ground (eventually, not immediately).  Yahoo, being at the position it is now, needs more flexibility.  The online space is getting more and more competitive.  That’s where you need to move fast.  Yahoo made some really good acquisitions before, and I’d say that they have some sense in this area, but they need more speed with integration of their acquisitions into their backbone.  With Microsoft on board, I’m afraid, everything will get a lot slower.

Also, I think that Yahoo won’t win much from this acquisition.  Surely, some money will come their way, but it’s not always a good thing.  And I don’t think that it’s good in this particular case and at this particular time.   I believe it would do much more good for Yahoo to get smaller, faster, and “hungrier”.  Hunger (think: limited resources) makes one’s mind sharper.  That’s exactly what they need now.  Not more “fat”.

As for Microsoft, I think there strategy should be more directed towards entertainment.  If they really want to buy something, they should buy some entertainment companies.  Those that produce content.  Disney studios maybe? Or some sort of a deal with AOL/Time Warner (they had a few frictions in the past, but they seem to managed to work out a solution together).  With more and easily accessible content they can reinforce end users interest in their Windows desktop, as well as their gaming platform (Xbox thing), and their mobile platform (Windows Mobile).  And, entertainment content by itself is a rather popular thing among the end users, which makes advertising much easier.  And rich advertising too – not just text-based relevant web ads, but audio and video media.

What do you think about all this?