Keeping Yahoo! from Becoming Old News...

In a recent New York Times article, it discussed a recent speech by Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo!, in which he said that, unfortunately, Yahoo! has not yet obtained the new look everyone's looking for. Over the years, Yahoo! has become a complex network that an extremely large number of people use to communicate to one another, with new features such as Yahoo! groups, certain developers' programs, and others, but of course, its very popular search engine is still up and running.

Yahoo! now is starting to develop a plan with which it intends to beat out many of its biggest competitors, namely Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. It wants to reach out all over the Web to outside applications and other sites, to gain more internet traffic. "'The goal,' Mr. Yang said, 'is to turn Yahoo into a primary online “starting point” for consumers.'" As Yahoo! gradually begins to seem like it is likely to start losing popularity, and consumers, investers start to question whether or not their investments truly are a good idea. Yahoo! is still the most popular property on the Web, but certain sites, like Google, beat out Yahoo! in number of searches performed by a long shot. Google has even developed a counter to MyYahoo!, known as iGoogle, allowing viewers to personalize their homepages and, of course, boosting popularity. Many of the people who work at Yahoo! say that they should still offer basic features, like search, email, and instant messaging, yet people like Liz Lufkin have organized new features, like the "today module", which displays new information that coincides with recent trends in searches and other hot topics on the Web. An important aspect of this is its outreach to third party websites, which many consider problematic, while many say it could help boost popularity. Overall, many new features in the future of Yahoo! are promising, yet will they help?

Personally, I believe these new changes are essential to the development of such a website. Its outreach to other sites will definitely boost its popularity, as Yahoo! will be affiliated with more sites and will hence be visited more often. I believe its new features will also make it more popular in our world of speed-communication, and its search engine will simply prove another additional asset to its ranking in cyber-popularity. In general, I believe Yahoo! has a bright future, yet it must be quick to make these very important changes for its own benefit, and that of its consumers and investers.

Creativity

Do you ever find that you are most creative in a certain environment? Sometimes I realize that I write my best work when I am inspired by some sort of recent event, particularly a tragedy. For example, for my English class, we were given an assignment to do one of various things to write a two-page entry in our journals, but for mine, a great deal of ideas ran through my head. When given a book to write in freely, such as my English journal, although I don't use it very often, I find that my best work reveals itself when I am prompted by some sort of motive or initiative, particularly about something that has had a major impact on my life. I believe I write best at night, where everything is most calm and quiet, making it easier for me to think. Sometimes I like to listen to music while I do my work as well, to further inspire me and put me in a more relaxing environment. Everyone has different circumstances under which they are most creative, but the above are some of mine that help me do my best work of which I am most proud.

Aha! Moments...

During 2007, I'm sure there were a great deal of us that went through frustrating times, whether they were serious problems or minor issues. Overall though, I found that I was able to overcome any problems I had, usually by simply being optimistic. For example, I'll confess that I did procrastinate several times on major assignments for school, and that I ended up staying up late. Being a relatively good student, I didn't want my work to suffer from these time constraints, but I was getting worried that I wouldn't be able to achieve what I wanted on these projects. Although I was almost in panic, I constantly told myself to think positively and focus on what I needed to do, and when I got my grade back, I had received perfect scores on both assignments. Another time when a frustrating situation seemed to suddenly fall into place was when I was working on my HTML-encoded webpages for my Webpage Design class. A good amount of the time, there were minor errors in the codes which made major problems in the webpage, but I worked hard to find them, fixed them appropriately, and everything worked out fine. There is no feeling like when you know you've done a good job on something you worked hard on, so these so-called "aha!" moments always make my day. I know to always focus whenever I have a difficult task ahead of me, so that I know no problems shall arise. I hope you all had a great 2007, as well as a happy holiday season. Happy 2008!