John Young

Britney Spears Twitter Account Hacked

2009-01-05T12:54:00.001-05:00

I was home for lunch and nearly pissed myself when I read this!

Thank God I took a screen shot because it's already been removed.

Old Pictures Are Awesome!

2009-01-02T09:07:00.004-05:00

Last night I was tagged in a picture on Facebook. The album was called 'Oldies that I scanned'.

Looking at this picture took me back to a completely different time in my life when I was still in college, and Joe Friday's was still opened in Goderich. Life was good was... I remember coming back to Goderich on Friday nights usually being exhausted from school all day and traveling. I would then having a nap, and wake up at 11pm, then going up to Joe Friday's and running in to everyone... and then partying until 4 or 5. This doesn't happen anymore, things are different... but this picture reminded me of those times.

Go dust off some old photo albums and take a half hour to look through them, you won't regret it!!

Zentact - Building Relationships Not Contacts

2008-12-22T10:16:00.000-05:00

The other day I noticed both my RSS reader and Twitter were filling up with praise about a new web service called Zentact. There is a part of me that always wants to be involved, and have accounts with the newest and most exciting things on the web... Gmail was the first, Pownce was yet another. Ultimately I am a sheep, and having an account on one of these 'Invite Only' Private Beta Services gives me a special warm feeling deep down inside like I'm one of the uber cool elete... or something to that effect. I am quite aware that this is exteremly sad... but at least I am not one of the other sheep who pays $100 for a Pownce invite on eBay.

Zentact wants you to import all of your contacts to the service from Gmail, Hotmail etc. Then tag each of them with interests associated with that person. I know my brother, my dad, and two of my other friends are HUGE fans of WWE wrestling so it only made sense to tag them with this. After all of your contacts are tagged (very time consuming), you install a FireFox extension which sits and scans the websites you are viewing and gives you friendly reminders saying 'So-And-So Would Like This!!!' and upon clicking it generates an email to that person with the link.

The idea for the site is extremely simple, but effective and as you look through other sites on the web they all mention that this is one of those 'Why didn't I think of that?' ideas.

So after giving it a try for a whole day here some of my initial thoughts:

The Good:
- This company has done a great job at marketing
As I already mentioned people on Twitter were giving it praise, and my RSS Reader was filled up with stories about the site.

- The site is invite only
This will automatically sparks more curiosity towards the site.

- Geeks are slaves to networking and improving themselves
The idea of a service like this is extremely appealing to our kind.

The Bad:

- Tagging everyone in your address book would take an extremely long time.

The Zentact team actually advises against it in their blog:

Our number one user issue - it is hard to tag all one hundred or one thousand people in your network. Our suggestion - DON’T EVEN TRY.
Import your address book. We will tag them with their name. Pick up to five people that are important. Only FIVE! People you want to get to know better, potential sales leads, someone you want to date and just tag them. You can add the other tags as you need them - either from Gmail or Yahoo mail.

- The 'My Contacts' section is incredibly small
Once full of contacts will no doubt be uncomfortable to navigate.

- Although the popups are only visible for a short period of time, they are still very annoying.
I tagged my brother with 'Guitar, WWE, and God' all things he is crazy about. I have been bombarded with popups telling me to connect with him. This will not be as bad once I have all the correct sites hidden from Zentact. Hiding sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, and regular Google searches is a definite must!

- The Footer has to go.
Whenever you send over a link, a nice footer is included at the bottom that says something along the lines of:

"Found with Zentact - Relationships not Contacts. Your exclusive invite code ...."

This footer ruins the point of the site and to me gives off the wrong impressions. Instead of saying: 'Hey, I was thinking about you... check out this link :)' it is saying 'Hey, I really wasn't thinking about you, this service reminded me to think of you... sign up to so you can be reminded to think of people as well.'

- The site still has bugs to work out.
The site has only been out for a few months, so bugs are both expected, and welcomed to a certain degree. I noticed I had the ability to change weather I used Zentacts mail system, or my own. After selecting 'Use my own' Zentact stopped working. No popups came up, even though the bottom bar told me it had found interesting content for two of my contacts on the site. Clicking on Zentact did nothing, and the only way for me to restore normal operation was to change my preferences to the Zentact. Other people have been having this problem as well.

Conclusion:
The idea of the site is awesome, but they need to HUSTLE!!! Improve the interface, fix the bugs, keep working at it night and day, interact with the community, and listen carefully to the feedback. The idea of the site is awesome, but also simple... if they don't hustle and keep up the momentum that they have another service will know doubt start up with the same idea but expand on it.

I plan on using this service a lot, but I'm going to hold off on importing all my contacts and tagging them accordingly until they give me the ability to use Mail.app and I can send the emails without their footer included.

CSI: Las Vegas Doesn't Exist

2008-12-21T19:45:00.001-05:00

All I know about CSI is that it stands for Crime Scene Investigation, it is incredibly unrealistic (to a certain degree), and that a lot of people I know and love go bonkers for this show!

I found out my Mother is part of this fad, and actually requested CSI Las Vegas Season 1. Which she expressed to me a good three times (very slow) like I was a retard, and could actually screw this up. That's how John's story began...

John drove out to Best Buy on Fanshawe Park, and Richmond - Nope
John walked over to the Blockbuster in the same area - Nope
John went to Masonville and looked for it at HMV and Sunrise - Nope
John ran in to two friends who advised him to try the Future Shop, and Wal-Mart in Hyde Park
John drove out to the Future Shop, and Wal-Mart in Hyde Park - Nope
John drove all the way out to White Oaks
John was disappointed when he didn't see it at the HUGE DVD store by the food court.
John looked at the Sunrise store while out there - Nope
John found out there is No CSI: Las Vegas and it's just called CSI
John had the Sunrise store call their 'Downtown Store' - YES!!!
John drove down to Dundas street, specifically between Richmond and Clarence.
John wanted to hug the girl who sold it to him.

What should John have done?
Reflecting back I realize that I SHOULD HAVE called everyone of these stores prior to driving all the way out there. It would have saved me a lot of gas, time, money, effort. But in retrospect it will all be worth it when I see the smile on her face when she opens it.

Merry Christmas!

Goodbye Rogers Cable TV

2008-12-15T12:23:00.005-05:00

I have given this a lot of thought lately... and it makes perfect sense for me to cancel my Rogers cable TV. I never watch it!! I have a lot of shows I do enjoy and watch... and I mean a lot!! But there are problems with each of them when it comes to television:

Smallville - I know it's on Thursday night's
The Office - I know it's on Thursday night's at the same time as Smallville
Grey's Anatomy - I know it's on Thursday night's at the same time as Smallville and The Office
Kitchen Nightmares - I don't even know what night it's on.
Family Guy - I know it's on Sunday nights at 9
Desperate Housewives - I know it's on Sunday nights at 9
Two and a Half Men - I don't even know what night it's on.
South Park - I don't even know what night it's on.

See the pattern? The shows I actually do watch all overlap each other!
So if I did a comparison I guess it would look something like:

Cable TV
- I have to be home at a certain times to watch a show, and know the channels.
- Regardless of what I watch, I will end up missing something
- I am subjected to commercials
- I'm to cheap to buy a TIVO or PVR of any kind.
- I get to enjoy my couch, and a larger screen.

Laptop + Torrents
- With Wikipedia I know if I'm going to encounter a rerun of a show or not.
- On Friday mornings I queue up all of these shows to download, and they are usually done by noon. Then I watch them over the weekend when I'm hungover... which is one of the rare occasions I actually get to just sit back and do nothing.
- I don't have to sit through commercials.
- I can watch them anywhere.
- I don't have to be rushing home to catch a show, or deal with VHS tapes.
- On the downside I have to watch everything on a much smaller screen.
- Another downside is... uh....

So I really feel this is the right thing for me to do. Sure I'll miss the news, but I use the internet for that! Sure I'll miss the sports games... actually, I won't miss them because I don't watch them!

Anyone else in the same boat?

How BIG Is Wal-Mart?

2008-12-15T11:30:00.001-05:00

I received this email yesterday. I thought it was interesting... and therefore post worthy!

HOW BIG IS WAL-MART?

This should boggle your mind!! And scare you as well!

1 . At Wal-Mart, Americans spend $36,000,000 every hour of every day.

2 . This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!
3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March>17th) than Target sells all year.

4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.

5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest private employer in U.S. (most can't speak English)

6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the World.

7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years.

8. During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought bankruptcy (including Winn-Dixie).

9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are SuperCenters; this is 1,000 more than it had 5 years a go.

11. This year, 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at a Wal-Mart store. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 billion.)

12. 90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Wal-Mart

13 . Let Wal - Mart bail out Wall Street and the big three auto makers!

Enough with the 'Top Lists' already!

2008-12-10T13:54:00.006-05:00

I'm a fan of Digg.com. It's no surprise... I have a Digg baseball cap for crying out loud. I think the entire idea behind the site is great, not to mention that it was the first of it's kind. It's one of the most visited sites on the web, and if anyone else (Netscape anyone?) tries to copy the site they will be ripped on almost immeaditly for doing so.

One of the things that has annoyed me about digg.com latly is that there are frequently stories that make it to the front page that are entitled "The Top __________ Ever!" or something to that effect. Know what I'm talking about? Chances are you probably do.

Why this annoys me for three reasons:
1. These lists are never cited from statistics... therefore they cannot be 'The Top' anything. It's just a list of the Top moments in the authors opinion.

2. It's like people start putting together a list, then after they have found a few... they count and make it 'The Top 5, or The Top 15, or whatever.

3. Half of them are gay!!

Let me try making a list and see how well I can pull it off:

The Top 17 Worst "Top Lists" That Made it to the Digg Frontpage
------------------------------------------------------

The 15 Worst Joker Costumes
This is what triggered me to write this... how does stuff like this manage to get #1135 Diggs?

The Top 10 Reasons Why Kanye West is a Douche
Is a list really needed?

10 Reasons Why It Doesn’t Pay To Be “The Computer Guy”

Hot for Teacher: Top 18 Sexiest Sex Offenders
So you typed the list, counted 18, then called it the 'Top 18" ?

TOP 10 Shirts To Get Arrested In
I'm sure people really aren't thinking about the shirts they wear when getting arrested.

The Top 7 Stereotypical Gamers we Hate
Couldn't come up with three more to make it an even 10?

Top 10 Banned Books

Top 15 Signs You're Addicted to Digg
#16: You make a Top 15 list about Digg

The Top 7 Most Evil Things You Can Do in GTA IV
The entire game is evil.

Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas That Made It Big Time.

Top 8 Most Embarrasing Facts About America
I'm sure there are more then 8

The Top 25 Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians
Who cares?

Top 10 Sexually Suggestive Lines From the Star Wars Trilogy
sigh really?

TOP 10 Movie Gadgets We Wish We Had
Why not 'Top Superhero Powers we wish we had" while your at it?

Top 10 Most Annoying "Lost" Moments
I don't watch Lost, but I'm sure the people who do already know the most annoying moments... and don't want to be reminded of them.

Top 10 Halo Pick-Up Lines
Why not just go pick up in a McDonald's? I'm sure you'll have the same results.

Top 10 Naked People on Google Earth
Who finds this shit?

Top 5 Viruses in Movie History
I might care about 'Real' viruses.

Stay Away From Me (Drum Cam)

2008-12-08T13:30:00.000-05:00

So my band The Takeoff played a show at Winks last Saturday November 29th. Although we only played from 10-11, the show went really well!! A co-worker came to the show just to see me and this band I'm always talking about and took this video of me playing our song 'Stay Away From Me'

The video is a little choppy.... as all digital camera video's usually are, and although this is a great song it's actually pretty simple to play in drum world. I wish I had something a little more impressive to put up where I am just giving it!!

John Young

Britney Spears Twitter Account Hacked

Old Pictures Are Awesome!

Zentact - Building Relationships Not Contacts

CSI: Las Vegas Doesn't Exist

Goodbye Rogers Cable TV

How BIG Is Wal-Mart?

Enough with the 'Top Lists' already!

The 15 Worst Joker Costumes This is what triggered me to write this... how does stuff like this manage to get #1135 Diggs?

The Top 10 Reasons Why Kanye West is a DoucheIs a list really needed?

10 Reasons Why It Doesn’t Pay To Be “The Computer Guy”

Hot for Teacher: Top 18 Sexiest Sex OffendersSo you typed the list, counted 18, then called it the 'Top 18" ?

TOP 10 Shirts To Get Arrested In I'm sure people really aren't thinking about the shirts they wear when getting arrested.

The Top 7 Stereotypical Gamers we HateCouldn't come up with three more to make it an even 10?

Top 10 Banned Books

Top 15 Signs You're Addicted to Digg#16: You make a Top 15 list about Digg

The Top 7 Most Evil Things You Can Do in GTA IVThe entire game is evil.

Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas That Made It Big Time.

Top 8 Most Embarrasing Facts About AmericaI'm sure there are more then 8

The Top 25 Men Who Look Like Old LesbiansWho cares?

Top 10 Sexually Suggestive Lines From the Star Wars Trilogy*sigh* really?

TOP 10 Movie Gadgets We Wish We HadWhy not 'Top Superhero Powers we wish we had" while your at it?

Top 10 Most Annoying "Lost" MomentsI don't watch Lost, but I'm sure the people who do already know the most annoying moments... and don't want to be reminded of them.

Top 10 Halo Pick-Up LinesWhy not just go pick up in a McDonald's? I'm sure you'll have the same results.

Top 10 Naked People on Google EarthWho finds this shit?

Top 5 Viruses in Movie HistoryI might care about 'Real' viruses.