Some interesting facts in life.

User Requirement

Got this dilbert comic strip from a friend today.  It is really hilarious.  Just want to share it with all the software/web developers.

Cross-browser Compatibility Issues

I know this is a rather technical topic to discuss in this course but I believe this is too important to skip if you have a serious website/blog.  I tried my Google Map feature this morning on Firefox but it doesn't quite work the way I want.  It turned out Firefox is more strict than IE in terms of defining a div tag.  A width has to be defined to make it happy and occupy all the empty space.

Innovative Feature

Last night we spent couple hours on research and finally came up an innovative idea to further distinguish our site from other competitions.  We figured out an innovative way to leverage Google Map and incorporate it on our hub site.  We will put a pin on the every restaurant we review and the info dialog (when clicking on the pin) will contain all the links to the blog entries related to that restaurant.  Cool huh?

A Note On The Domain Name Choice

Our team decided to choose the domain name nicetaste.com for couple reasons:

• Short
• Easy to remember
• Relevant to the topic of our blog but on the other hand general enough to expand to other topic in the future

I think we followed the best practices and picked a good domain, any comment?

Grand Opening of Our Hub Site

Our team's hub site is finally here.  The goal of the site is to share our dining experience in the Ann Arbor area.  Each team member will contribute his/her own experience.  A gourmet theme has been chosen to match the goal of the website.  Each blog on the hub will have a corresponding "teaser" blog on the original author's blog site to increase the chance of viewing.  I guess what distinguishes us from website like Arborweb is that we include nice pictures of the food we review.  Our team believe this is critical to the success of fighting against our competitors.

Spicy Chicken Sandwich

Today, I tried the new spicy chicken sandwich by McDonald.  It tastes pretty good!  Click here for detail.

Project Proposal

Our team has decided to have our class project on Ann Arbor's food.  We plan to start the project by writing a proposal.  We believe it is going to be fun.  Yummy!

Google Directory

I tried to use google directory to search for U of M.  The admmission page has a pretty high ranking.  In my opinion, directory is good only when you have a very clear idea what you are looking for.  I rarely use the directory as the main google page usually does a decent job to return what I want.

Livejournal accounts hijacked!

It seems like Alison's concern on blog security is actually valid.  According to washingpost.com, blog accounts on Livejournal, a subsidary of Six Apart (also the owner of TypPad), were hijacked by a hacker group called "Bantown".  The group claims to hijack accounts through different javascript flaws found in the Livejournal website.

Cost per click vs Cost per impression

In online advertising, there are two popular methods of billing.  One is cost per click and another is cost per impression.  Cost per click (CPC) bills by the number of times the ads is clicked while cost per impression (CPI) bills by the number of times the ads is seen.  Usually, when using cost per impression, advertisers will be charged every 1000 impressions.  The term cost per mille (CPM) is used instead as the advertising industry is more familiar with it.