Is Mark Cuban Correct on YouTube

Read this:

The Coming Dramatic Decline of Youtube

Then this:

Watch Full Length Cartoons Online (Massive List)

Then this:

Napster shut down

And more interestingly:

Mark Cuban/YouTube

Update: It looks like Mark Cuban was wrong. Google is a powerhouse.

Social Problems for Social Sites

An author’s response to the loss of Digg’s “top user”:

This comes at a time when another popular social networking website, Facebook, is facing user rebellion. The democratic nature of social media is their biggest strength yet can also be their biggest problem. How should sites respond when their user base turns against them?

While this is a good observation, it’s really nothing new; word of mouth can make or break a product. But for this particular Digg user situation (and not speaking for the new algorithm)… I think they’ll be just fine.

The full article can be found here: Digg Changes Algorithm; Top User Resigns

p.s. If you are looking for a quick read on word of mouth marketing, I can recommend The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing by Emanuel Rosen.

November 19

…is when the Wii comes out!

Conditional Expressions

Finally! Python will support conditional expressions with its 2.5 release (which is available now as a release candidate). Here’s an example of the new, funky syntax:

x = true_value if condition else false_value

Oh, and I’m also excited about the “Unified try/except/finally” (PEP 341) and “Exceptions as New-Style Classes” (PEP 352).

“Listening To”?

Personal websites seem to be littered with music playlists and favorites.  So, why is it that people like to list their music online?  Is it because they want people to identify with them?  Or is it because they like the music so much that they want to share this experience with others?  Let me know what you think?

Here’s what I listen to (mwuahahaha):  Led Zeppelin, Blind Melon, Talking Heads, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Medeski Martin & Wood, Disco Biscuits, Robert Randolph (& the Family Band), Sigur Ros, and AM radio.

Sizes for Common Database Columns

My tables seem to contain these columns on a regular basis, so I have decided to do some research on what others use for these columns. To determine what the popular websites use for their column sizes, I just looked at the maxlength allowed on the column’s respective input tag. Here are my results:

first name: 64
last name: 64
email: 127
address: 100
city: 40
zip: 10
phone: 12