The New Hulu

Yesterday, I was delighted to log onto Hulu and get a look at its new interface!

I'm a big television-watcher - I call it a hobby - and I've been a member of the website for a number of years. Over time, the site's interfaced has changed plenty. Each update making the site easier to explore.

What works regarding the most recent updates?

First, on the homepage (when you're logged in) are thumbnails of all the shows you've watched. (Or, if you share your HuluPlus account with your boyfriend like I do, all the shows the both of you have watched.) This is ideal for people like me who tend to watch numerous shows in small spans of time. While scrolling through this list, I instantly ran across a few shows I'd simply forgotten about.

I still haven't finished GCB.

I clicked on the British political sitcom, The Thick of It, that I haven't watched in a while. (By the way, it's really entertaining.) Above the episode list was the option to resume where I left off on the previous episode I apparently stopped watching. For those of us with short attention spans - or not enough time to finish everything we start - this is quite useful.

I also like the feature segments on the homepage. If I didn't want to watch anything in particular, certainly something on the homepage would grab my attention. There is a LOT there.

I'm not entirely certain whether this is new or if I just missed it before, but the "Staff Picks" section of Television and Movies is a nice addition. You know the deal: you don't know what's good and you ask a staff member, etc.

What doesn't work?

Design-wise, the homepage is a bit image-heavy. Just before this redesign, there were captions and small pieces of text to go along with the images. However, this minimalist design has taken a large amount of that text out in place of images. There are pros and cons to this:

• I've learned that the more words you have to use, the less intuitive the object is. (Ex. A door should  ideally never have the word "push" or "pull" on it because it should be obvious how you open it.) Also, images are more entertaining to the eye.

• However, the massive amount of images is overwhelming. My eye doesn't quite fall on anything in particular; instead, I'm constantly looking around. It's not relaxing. (I'm just glad nothing is moving...)

Another thing I'm not too happy with is the auto-play. At first, when auto-play was first implemented it was opt-in, meaning that if you wanted your videos/clips to auto-play you had to hit the auto-play button. Now it's opt-out - videos will automatically auto-play unless you hit "Pause Auto-Play". That's annoying. 

Granted, there is a 50-second countdown giving you enough time to hit the "Pause Auto-Play" button, but I'd still prefer it to be opt-in than opt-out. Maybe, it's just me...

Overall, I enjoy the changes Hulu has made. It's easier to find new things to watch, watch what you like, and pass some time semi- to unproductively. Hulu itself is a remarkable website that should have been around ages ago. Yes, many television networks offer online video of their programming, but their players are not as reliable and they don't offer nearly as much content as Hulu. 

(Also, I have Hulu to thank for most of the British sitcoms and Japanese anime I watch now.)

Waking Up with the Internet

I don't know how exactly healthy it is, but I often wake up and get online. However, today, in an attempt to be a better person, I searched the Web for ways to wake up well.

I came across this article: "10 Morning Habits to Build Your Day Upon". I encourages you to get your day started by thinking positively and waking up early.

I don't know about waking up early, but I could give it a shot.

Aside from ways to wake up to a wonderful day, I want to point out the glory of a site like PickTheBrain.com. Websites like this not only encourage people to better themselves, but they provide information to help. 

If you think of the Internet as a boundless, source of information regarding everything humans can wonder about - as I do - then there is no reason we all can't become the awesome person we think, wish, or believe we can be!

I hope to become a modern woman, skilled in Krav Maga and Yoga, with a large vocabulary and many creative works. As I see it now, all I need is a couple of Google searches and YouTube, and all my dreams will come true!

I am woman; hear me roar!

Perhaps, I'm putting things too simply...

The Scary Neighborhoods of the Internet

I'm a proud Detroiter! I was born and raised in Motor City, and, when people bring up my hometown, I tend to think of this:

While most outsiders tend to think of this:

Detroit, over the years, has earned itself a bad reputation. However, it's safe to say that every city has a "not-so-nice" area. If we think of the Internet as a place - as I often do - we know there are areas there that we don't feel so comfortable visiting...

I wonder how many free laptops we've all missed out on.

But what tells us that the street the GPS is leading us down may not be the safest? How do we know that www.facebooook.com is a virus site? Why do we think that flashy ad that shouts "Congratuations! You've won!" will kill our computer? We have no proof until we do these things, right?

It's all based on the appearance! Just as a neighborhood with abandoned, burned down houses signifies danger, so does a website with flashing ads with unlikely claims and/or a sketchy url. I recently read a Cracked article about some official websites that have poor designs, and it made me think about how web design can have an effect on the general feel of the website. For example...

I love anime! I especially love English-dubbed anime, and I found a website that offered some of my favorite shows in English. McAfee tells me all the links are okay, and (I double checked) Google agrees, but the design of the website looks a little iffy.

It still has pop-ups (an Internet sin at this point), there are some redundancies regarding navigation, and there is little consistency when it comes to which players you watch the shows on because it sometimes involves third-party websites. (I wish they'd let me fix it or at least offer some reassurance...)

Traits like this lead savvy web surfers to shy away from this potential dangerous area, but it very well may be simply poorly designed! (Granted, the aforementioned website may be foreign, so I'm unsure of the design heuristics on different parts of the globe.) Much like the websites in the Cracked article, harmlessly legit websites may drive away traffic due to their hideous, dubious-looking designs. 

This makes me reconsider clicking away from "ugly" websites. I tend to think: "Well, if x other people are using it daily, then it can't be so bad, right?" Perhaps that's not a safe assumption. Although, a moral worth taking from this post is how important design is to even the most useful websites.

After all, what's the use of a remarkable, world-saving website, when it has pop-ups?

500 Days of (Virtual) Summer

Bored and online, I came across the most entertaining article on Gizmodo! It describes this online "romance" service called GirlfriendHire. GirlfriendHire allows you to have fake relationships with virtual "women" - the female-ness of these "women" are obviously questionable, but who cares. You'll never meet them anyway.

Sure, she probably really looks like Zach Galifianakis, but the jerks from high school are seeing Adriana Lima.

For $5, you can have some virtual woman posing as your girlfriend on sites like Facebook to (a) not feel so lonely and unloved, (b) prove to people you are not lonely and unloved, or (c) shamelessly waste $5.


I'm not against it at all! The idea of a strictly-Facebook relationship intrigues me, and it makes me wonder about some of my Facebook friends. (You know, the ones who are "In A Relationship", but have no pictures to prove it...)


From a social media standpoint, though, I have to consider the cons of this arrangement. Apparently, the site's owner admits to spam and fraud occurring on the website. For the article, he recommended"sorting the girl list by rating to put those with good feedback at the top". Mmm...sounds like a reputation system.  


But what does that mean then? Think of a list similar to the Digg homepage where the highly voted fake girlfriends are listed from most popular to least popular. What's stopping everyone from choosing girl number one?

"We can't all have Ashley!" 

Perhaps an explicit ranking system (e.g. one-star to five-star) would be better. The mediocre ladies will get no love, but at least they can get looks, right? I just wonder if this kind of reputation system will - similar to what Facebook has done to the word "friend" - have an effect on how women are viewed in the real world...




Perhaps there should simply be a way to flag spam or scam accounts and let the legit accounts be. Nevertheless, I think GirlfriendHire has the potential to be a great service. Whether you're lonely, looking to brag, or just have money to burn, your $5 is going toward supporting an innovative way for a lady - or deceptive man - to earn money.

A Video Game About Wandering...No, wait, hear me out!

Let me start this game by saying: I'm sick of the same old stuff! The gaming industry spits out war games like television networks spit out cops shows, like YouTubers post videos about babies, etc.

Now check out this game:

PC Games - E3 2012 - Journey

Journey is absolutely cool because it focuses on something so difficultly achieved and so easily ignored in most modern games: the setting! Sure, the Uncharted franchise makes use of the scenery (as well as some others), but not like this game. 

This game is exactly what it says, a journey.

I remember exploring the water in the jet-ski game Slashdown when I was a little kid. In the Free Play mode, players could ride at their own pace. However, you could also ride outside the race boundaries without it placing you back on the path. I found out the terrifying way, though, that if you go too far away from the path a monster will eat you. (I had to pause the game and catch my breath.)

But I digress...

The environment of that game was spectacular. It took place all over the world: Florida, Ireland, Hawaii, etc. And it looked great!

Journey is a great game, too, because of how zen it is. It is a short game that encourages you to take a closer look at your surroundings, and I think, in this fast-paced world, that is a valuable lesson.

Pins, Pins, Pins!

I joined pinterest a while ago, and I currently have 437 pins on 9 boards! I love Pinterest for more than just the mindless pinning of random internet images. (Seriously, if its a time-killer.)

Pinterest brings to mind the amount of information that we come across everyday. Of course, Pinterest deals mostly with images and video, but we see a large amount of stuff these days.

We read articles, hear stories and poems, make clever tweets and posts, see awesome images, and watch fantastic videos. However, we can't possible retain all the knowledge that gets stuffed into our heads each day!

Sites like Pinterest that allow you to capture images you've seen online (with a link to get back to where you found them), do us the fantastic service of allowing us to revisited things that we found interesting before.

Cheesecake-stuffed strawberries; I don't want to forget this!

Also, in the case of the photo above, you can also find new things on Pinterest. Pinterest is almost the image equivalent to Wikipedia in that it is a collective knowledge of everyone on the site. I found those under the "Food & Drink" category and my mouth has been watering ever since. 

People post other cool things like tattoos they'd wish to get or Fitspo/Thinspo (inspiration to slim down or work out). There are also encouraging quotes and funny things on that website.

Check this out! One of the best tattoos I've seen: "Love never ends"

It all comes together in this zen, indie feel - like anything you see, you can acheive. There aren't any (at least that I've seen) trolls discouraging anyone or starting unnecessary chaos. 

It is a truly inspirational website that encourage all my friends to use!

Something New Everyday...

Recently, I've been playing with Photoshop using tutorials on YouTube. Suddenly, it dawned on me...

When advising someone about how to do something, us techies like to add on the tag line: "You can probably find a tutorial or something on YouTube." We say this because it's true; you can find instructions for just about EVERYTHING on YouTube.

But are we taking advantage of this knowledge? Not nearly enough as we should be.

Instructions on how to professionally retouch photographs in Abode Photoshop, how to tie a tie, cheap crafts, recipes, make-up tutorials, and what are we looking at? A dramatic gopher.

With the rise of reality television shows like Jersey Shore and asinine news reports, society often complains about the lack of intellectualism. "Nobody reads anymore! No one wants to learn anything new."

However, there is so much to learn for free in the on one of the most popular website on The Inter-Webs. I recently watched a TED Talk about a guy who tried something new for 30 days. He found the experience to be very rewarding. YouTube could be your start to a new hobby or career!

As for me, I previously stated that I learned most of my Photoshop skills from YouTube tutorials. (What do you think?)

I'm also interested in learning about the other elements of the Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, etc.) and a fighting style. I've always been enthralled by Israeli Krav Maga, but there are also clips from Fuel TV's Punk Payback that are very entertaining, too.