HW 8 Post

Homework 8 is to "Choose a social website that you use to find music, movies, websites, or anything else" and compare/contrast it with a competing website.

I chose Amazon.com because it is, about a decade after its creation, still the #1 shopping supersite on the web. Amazon has gained a solid reputation in the world of ecommerce for delivering its products as promised, and overall customer satisfaction.

Amazon's original speciality was books, and they still are the source for buying books. They seem to have every book ever published; and if it is out of print or they don't have it for whatever reason, they maintain a marketplace for users to buy/sell new & used books of their own. For regular users, Amazon begins to offer reccomendations based upon previous items viewed or purchased, as well as the ability to click back to what you were looking at say, last week, when you last shopped.

For each product Amazon has tons of information supporting it. This includes a section for:

• expert reviews - experts review the product


• "spotlight" customer reviews - reviews dubbed "most helpful" by customers


• customer reviews - all other customer reviews


• other items customers bought - shows other items bought most often by customers who bought the item you are checkin' out. This cross-selling feature has been emulated by many ecommerce sites. I still think it is great, and it usually turns up other relavent items.


• the (newish) customer wiki
- now items have a section for customers to add whatever information they wish, and like all wikis it is created and edited by a group.

Clearly Amazon gathers information from a multitude of sources, but it continues to be current and innovative in its methods, now offering more and more peer-to-peer information on products. To keep from becoming overwhelming, Amazon follows a pretty linear, scroll-down layout. The search bar, price, and most important specs of each product are at the top, and as you scroll down you get more and more detailed information.

Overstock.com is a somewhat-competing ecommerce site (I think almost EVERY ecommerce site has to compete with amazon somewhat) which sells tons of stuff at "overstock" prices.

I am a fan of Overstock's almost comically large tab system at the top of the page. When you click on a caegory all of its sub-categories (mmmm, subject trees) appear conveniently down the left side of the screen; and of course overstock also has a search feature at the top.

Overstock has a nice, easy layout that allows anyone to find what they are looking for, plenty of selection, and supposedly lower prices (I have not comparison-shopped, yet, so this could very well be untrue)and some similar features to amazon: customer reviews, customers also bought, etc.

Overall "The 'O'" is cleaner/less cluttered than Amazon and therefore better in a way. For beginners to online shopping Overstock might be a good option. However, Amazon isn't exactly difficult to navigate, and after you get the hang of it, the sheer wealth of available information (and products) on Amazon trumps Overstock.

HW 6 Post

I added links to Jared's blog and Jake's blog, and would like to thank them for doign the same.

HW 5 Post

  
    
Date Range 
    
Visits
    
Pageviews
  
  
    
Wed 10/4/06 - Tuesday 10/10/06 
    
1
    
1
  

Well, my blog is getting just about zero traffic, guess I am talking to myself for he most part. Those are my stats, according to Google analytics

HW4 Post

I found a connection between Microsoft and CVS.

I was studying my COM317 notes, and our professor had taught us a case study about CVS's advertising so I chose that company. I'm on an apple computer so I sought a connection between those two companies. When none came up, I swapped in microsoft for apple.

Ms Ann McLaughlin Korologos apparently sits on many boards including Kellogg, Host Marriott, Microsoft, AMR, and Fannie Mae.

Thomas P. Gerrity, from the CVS board, also sits on Fannie Mae's board, thus the connection from Microsoft to CVS looks like: Microsoft-Ann-FannieMae-Thomas-CVS.

Perhaps corporate america is a small-world network:

• This path between two seemingly random vertices is very short


• Many vertices have some of "the same friends"


• AND Each vertex (presumably) only knows a small fraction of the whole corporate network

Post #3-2: Bookmarks

I recently added the following links to "My Bookmarks" on Bookmarks by CS103:

• Eurosport Soccer Online
  ...because I've played soccer forever, and that is the place to go for gear.


• Maddox
  ...because Maddox is a funny dude, and I hoe for similar success with my own page


• TimandPat.com
  ...my site which is currently under construction, whenever I have free time, will be full of funny pictures and videos, as well as stories and blogs written by me and my friend Pat.

Post #3-1: Creative Commons License

So we had to choose a Creative Common license for our blogs, I chose
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5.

This type of license means other people can build upon and edit my work, as long as they credit me, and do not use it for commercial purposes. Also, share alike means any new works derived from my original work share this same license, and cannot be used commercially.

Also, heres an imagelink to the skong picture section (for HW3-6):

Post #2

Me and pat's site. Me and pat realized we are smarter and funnier than almost everyone else, so we're having a website. Should be up within the month, nevermind what it says. Will be awesome and hilarious.

Skong ...my first site.