People are not like you

Everybody sees things differently. What goes through your head is related to who you are; your experiences, your memories, your situation.


We had Chewy Chong over from Bing on February 22. Before the session, I'll have to admit i was expecting some marketing session, with some Microsoft dude selling us this Google competitor, and wasn't really looking forward to it.

That was so far from the truth.

The world is so different from what any one person can perceive. In showing us the CBS News video of a blind man's family, he showed us what a normal life is like to a very different part of society. 4 generations sharing a house and bank account, even when different members are doing very different jobs, and somehow always having someone watching after the patriarch of the family. How many families in Singapore have a remotely similar lifestyle? With that lingering in our minds, he said something that stuck with us for the rest of the session.

People are not like you. Step back and take a look at the system without wearing your usual lens.

That is, I feel, the greatest takeaway from this session.

On a separate note, perhaps he did succeed at selling Bing after all, for I find myself less adverse to switching from Google. Bing, according to Chewy, is more targeted towards aiding decision making, for most searching done is a precursor to a decision of some sort. Thus, Bing would attempt to determine what decision you were trying to make, and related information in a more relevant and helpful manner

Get Help

So, the blog post today is on the application Get Help. So what IS Get Help? It's an interesting use of Facebook's inter-connectivity: using it to ask for help from those on your friends list. While the idea is a really good one, there are some inconsistencies with the design that may detract users from its main purpose.

Initial / Main Page

First of, the initial page one sees on launching the application. The profile tab is highlighted, when this is clearly not the profile. It may seem minor, but a consistent design is often key to reducing the learning curve of a new application.

Also, beginning the request with "I need help with" could actually hinder the users somewhat. Not every request can be phrased as an "I need help with ..." statement, leaving the user puzzled as to how to phrase the request.

On the available alternative channels for posting a request, I'm a little puzzled as to how an SMS option would work. Who would the application be sending SMS-es to? Would it be somewhat a breach of privacy if the application were to start SMS-ing a group of the user's friends?

I feel that the choices of who to send the request to could be greatly improved. More specifically, I believe there is a need to allow users to prevent certain users from sending their requests, even if said request has been forwarded from the original sender. Imagine, for example, a request for help to build a gift for a close friend. Most probably, the user would not want this request to be seen by the intended recipient of the gift, as it would spoil the surprise.

Overview Page

Now, onto the Overview Page. I don't exactly think a Project being likened to a Fire is a very healthy comparison... Also, perhaps adding Overview and Recommendations to the group of tabs might be a better idea, for it can be a little hard to find these two links otherwise.

Project Page

The Project Page. How do you get here? Perhaps the flow of the site would be more apparent were I actually using it... And as a somewhat sidenote, "Wish her luck!" seems somewhat redundant as such well-wishes could be offered in the comments section, and with more detail at that. The 4 tabs being covered by the Project details also affects the design negatively.

Statistics Page

Finally, the Statistics Page. I disagree somewhat with the assignment of rankings and rewards to an otherwise altruistic application. Such rewards detract from the purpose of helping, which is simply to help, without expectation of any gains. Instead of encouraging people to help, such rewards actually change the motivation of helping, and soon the users would be helping simply for these rewards.

So, while I feel the idea was a really good one, I think the implementation could do with quite a few improvements~ That being said, they have already changed their design, and I'll be checking it out soon to see whether any of my suggestions have already been implemented ^^

Pitching Session

Okay, first up, an admission: I went to the pitching session already knowing what I was going to do for the final project~ I'm not sure how many people / groups had a similar frame of mind, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one, which leads me to think that the pitching session could have come sooner, before most people would have made plans for the final.

Certain presentations stuck with me for various reasons. The introduction to the World Cities Summit was informative, but presented in such a strange manner it left me wondering why he was present at the pitching session. For the better part of his presentation, I was trying to figure out if he was attempting to convince us to build a SimCity adaptation for Facebook, or just... Being helpful and telling us all about this swell event. Turned out to be the former, which I feel should have been the focus of the presentation from the beginning instead. If it had, we'd probably have a clearer picture of his ideas and the direction in which such a project would head, whereas the speaker mainly concentrated on the event, leaving the marketing of the application idea till the very end. Perhaps the speaker did not even come with such an idea in mind, for he certainly gave that impression to me.

Project Nimbus came with two shirts proclaiming Data and Services respectively, which is, essentially, their product: Data as a service. Instead of innovators spending time "chasing or recreating content, screen scrapping sites, and Google-ing for random data sets", Project Nimbus aims to provide such content to them, leaving them free to, well, innovate~ Although I'm not in need of such a service now, I can see how other projects (and perhaps mine in the future) could conceivably benefit from it.

The Red Sports presenter, Leslie, was obviously passionate about his goal, to promote Singapore's youth sports scene. He had an idea and followed it through, and now his site provides regular sports updates from schools in Singapore. Together with a team of writers, the site resembles one of a newspaper. As I'm hardly a sports-centric person, what I took away was not the product they have managed to create, but the energy and passion of this person that has led him through many years to reach this point, which I find admirable.

Perhaps the presentation that left me the biggest impression was the only one by an undergraduate. I had already seen Module-Review.com before, having been referred to it by a coursemate. What I couldn't have guessed was the fact that it was created and is still being maintained singlehandedly by an undergraduate like us - Jace. I think the idea is a very solid one, as many students do wish to find out more about the module from students who took it in the past, before signing up for the same. Perhaps the database could be extended further to collate feedback about lecturers, especially if a lecturer is teaching a module for the first time and thus has no applicable comments from the previous batches. However, future maintenance may be a problem, since a site that is visited generally two periods a year would not gather a lot of advertising revenue. Jace will have to find some other way to support this site.

Well, that's generally what impacted me during the pitching session. My laptop has this sudden aversion to loading blogger for some strange reason, so I'll be back as soon as I find a PC, to embark on dissecting yet another Facebook application.

Wrestled back my Facebook account

So apparently, my account has undergone 4 iterations this year: from Bob on 9th June and Garett on 22nd August to Viviana on 24th September. Wanting to *gasp* finally create a Facebook account, I knew, somehow, that I'd find somebody squatting on my account, waiting for me to activate it. And guess what? I was right! ^^

Unfortunately... I kinda screwed up a little there. You know the link below FB activation emails? The one that goes "Think these notification emails are for someone else? To report this account, go to: (link)"? Well, I went to click that, thinking it'll throw the squatter out.

And... my email got disabled in FB's records. That was 13th December. So I emailed them... and somehow the admin team behind FB sat on it, probably shoving my request to the bottom of the pile, and only re-enabled it on Boxing Day... Does it take 13 days to toggle a single flag?? Oh and what's with addressing the mail to "Garett"? I definitely signed my mails Patrick, and the last squatter's called Viviana... Makes me wonder what records they were looking at.

Interestingly, the squatter was still on my account after all that mess. So I did what I should have done long ago, which was to request a new password, change it to my own, change her name, change her profile, and basically flush all traces of her existence on *my* account. Geez. These people...

Lessons learnt: when flushing squatters, do it the fast way. Change the bleeding password. ^^