GameUtopia

Everywhere you look lately there seems to be a new Viral Video circulating. Some of them are less than worthy of carrying the Viral part of the title. Now it seems like every video is Viral. Ok maybe not all of them include the term in the title, but I've seen plenty pop up the past few days.

For some I guess it is just a marketing technique that tends to spark someones interest. Which is what they are after. If adding the term Viral to a video increases visitors, then I guess it worked.

I am getting slightly annoyed every time I see or hear the word Viral now. It was alright a while back, but it is straight up annoying now.

Next thing you know we will see all kinds of other things include the term Viral. We will have Viral news stories, Viral blog posts, Viral pictures, Viral Facebook and Twitter posts. How about a Viral Virus even?

Apparently some college girl likes to spend 3 to 4 hours per day on Facebook. Her mother believes that her grades have been suffering as a result of so much time on Facebook. The mother decided that paying her daughter $300 to stay off the site might improve her grades.

Now I don't know how anyone could spend a full 3 to 4 hours on a site like Facebook every day. I can't imagine what one could even do there for that amount of time. Unless she has a habit of checking out 1000 friend pages each and every day. I can't see how posting a status update, adding a picture or video, and making a few comments could eat up that much time.

The mother can try her $300 offer to get her daughter off Facebook, or to reduce her time there anyway. If I had to take a guess that $300 is going to be a total waste. This girl will take the money and continue to do her daily Facebook routine. If she is that hooked on it, a whole $300 isn't going to make her stop. Nor, will it help improve her grades. Maybe she could take the $300 and pay someone to do her homework, but that wouldn't last long either.

This really makes me wonder...Do a lot of people really waste that much time on Facebook every day? If so how many?

Know wonder so many people are lazy, unfit, and unhealthy these days!

How exciting could a movie about social networking and specifically Facebook actually be?

I mean a movie about the founders of Facebook doesn't seem that appealing or interesting to me. Maybe it is to all the Facebook addicts, or the younger generation that can't seem to live without it.

A few popular movie review sites has it rated fairly decent. Jesse Eisenberg plays the role of Mark Zukerberg. I did like his character in Zombieland.

If they add a mix of comedy it might be slightly more appealing. I just don't find the nerdy computer programing stuff that exciting enough to sit for 2 hours.

The rating is PG-13 and not that it matters too much. I am guessing they wanted to keep it below an R rating so all the teen Facebook'ers would be able to see it.

Kind of reminds me of the older Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, which incidentally I never watched either.

Maybe it is your thing...great...I hope you like it as much as you probably like Facebook - The Social Network site!

If you are one of the Facebook addicts you might have noticed the recent outage or down time a few days ago. Apparently the site was down for approximately 2 and 1/2 hours give or take.

Users reported seeing or getting an 500 internal server error. Others just didn't see or get anything, just a blank page.

It didn't take long for the internet world to take notice. Even the online news media outlet sites were quick to publish an article on it.

It is truly amazing how much time people spend on a site like Facebook, which is pretty much about nothing. Is there life besides Facebook? Apparently not for all the addicts that can't go a few hours without it.

I have never been a big fan of the site. I could easily live without it. I really don't see what is so exciting that someone needs to visit it multiple times a day, but to each their own I guess.

It goes to show no site is up and running perfect 24-7. Even the big name sites have their share of issues and outages from time to time. They are just noticed and picked up on when they have issues, problems, or technical difficulties more than the average site.

I don't know how old everyone out there is. If you go back far enough to remember anything other than Google, Yahoo, and MSN(live/bing) or not. I am not an old geezer yet, but I do go back far enough to remember life before these big 3. And now that Yahoo is serving up search results powered by Bing we might be referring to them as the big 2 in the near future.

There were a lot more U.S. based search engines that each served up different results. I can't recall a single one of them at the time being superior or better than the other. I think most people at the time just preferred one or the other based on personal preference.

The ones I can remember are:

• Altavista
• Excite
• Lycos
• Yahoo
• InfoSeek
• Google
• Netscape
• AOL
• Ask/Ask Jeeves
• HotBot
• MetaCrawler

(Keep in mind they were not affiliated or powered by Google. Each served up their own unique results.)

Excite 1996:


There were a few others I can't think of right off hand or at the moment.

There was much more competition in the earlier days of the internet and through the 1990's.

Kind of funny, and maybe a little sad too. At least to some of us that can remember them and had actually used some of those search engines.

I don't recall MSN search in the earlier days of the internet. I think it came about 1999 or 2000 area. I do recall using Hotmail as long as I can remember though.