If I am going to apply to the College of William & Mary in an honest and truthful manner, I must confess something: my mental state is not wholly well. I do not think I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, though some would disagree. Rather, I would describe it as having a very big pet peeve: people need to learn how to use the English language properly and to be consistent in that use. I constantly notice such grammatical errors and inconsistencies on almost everything I read.

Sometimes, the errors are not really errors at all because people know they are making them and do not care. Even I use "ain't" and "gotta" every once in a while. I often say things like "better than me" instead of "better than I." I also am not fond of clichés, even though I use them when it is the quickest way of getting across a simple point. It is only when the grammatical error is in my opinion atrocious and inexcusable do I point it out in conversation.

When reading printed material, however, it is for me another matter entirely. Sometimes the mistakes are minor and barely noticeable, but they are there, and they show apathy on the part of the publisher and/or author. Having visited Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, and William & Mary and being interested in journalism, I read the college newspapers at the three schools and quickly found noticeable errors in each. Reviewing the admissions literature that each esteemed institution gave me, similar mistakes were to be found. Very rarely do I go anywhere without finding the English language misused in some way. It is my plight.

Okay, so it is not the end of the world—most people never notice. As do all superheroes, I say it is a blessing and a curse. It has been a blessing because, among other things, it has helped me get an internship at a local newspaper, The Free Lance–Star, based in Fredericksburg. It has been a curse because noticing and so often pointing out little details like these does not make me popular with the normal people. Most people just do not care, and rightly so. Why should they? After all, if the point is made and communication is not disrupted, then it really does not matter.

Despite this, though, I am compelled to recommend to the College of William & Mary that it look on page 4 of its online application and do the following: check its spelling of the word "position"; ensure consistency on its abbreviation for the phrase "post-secondary college"; check its capitalization of "employment"; and review the sentence stating, "Indicate in the right column those activities you wm to pursue in college."

Do forgive me. I just had to. Conversely, if the reader of this admissions essay finds it to contain errors in any shape or form, regardless of the tedious nature of such errors, I then offer him or her my sincerest and humblest apologies.

JULY 21,21 JULY 2006
News AnalysisA Guaranteed Waste of Your Time
By Steve Rosenberg The Blue Square

The MySpace Ecosystem
Its user audience's stupidity has tripled since News Corp. acquired the site last year. Now, new third-party partners leeches could help it,God forbid, maintain the pace of growth

There's no question that the social networking site MySpace has grown into a three-eyed, child-molesting monster (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/15/05, "Users Crowd Into MySpace"). It had 17 million unique monthly visitors suckers when News Corp. (NWS) acquired it last year. Now the site, where people very poorly attempt to “communicate” via home pages laden with messages, photos, blogs, music, and more, has 54 million unique monthly users pathetic little souls who use it, according to researcher comScore Media Metrix.

It generates more page views than any other site on the Web, except for Yahoo! (YHOO) (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/14/05, "MySpace growing even faster since acquisition")., which is obviously due to the fact that you have to click five buttons to get to anything and hit refresh twenty times to get your pages to load right.

"NEXT-GENERATION PORN INDUSTRYTAL." Now, MySpace is beginning to create its own ecosystem fools’ gathering of third-party companies that are developing features and applications for the giant digital “community”, according to a new report from analyst Richard Greenfield of Pali Wasting Our Time and Money Research WOTMR. He says the idea nefarious scheme is to encourage other companies to use their creativity and expertise to come up with things for MySpace users that MySpace itself hasn't, which wouldn’t be that hard. That could be anything from letting people add to their MySpace home pages from a mobile phone (using Cingular, for crying out loud, not Verizon) or creating a slide show of their favorite MySpace photos. or, even better, automatically deleting for the user all the photos that are obviously crap and/or porn, leaving terabytes worth of room leftover on the server.

The move is an important milestone for MySpace. Only the largest and most vibrant of tech “communities” are capable of creating that sort of network effect. tricking other companies into plotting their evil plans so well. Classic examples of tech companies that have created such ecosystems include Microsoft's (MSFT), with its Windows operating system, and Apple Computer (AAPL), with its iPod digital-music franchise (see BW Online, 7/19/06, "iPod Accessories Gone Wild")., so MySpace is appropriately following in the footsteps of other idiot-friendly corporations. Software developers have created thousands of applications on top of Windows over the years, and the iPod has generated a sizable industry of companies that create accessories for the music player and a dizzying variety of podcasts., the most amusing of which used to be the IMAO Podcast but is now the Order of the Blue Square “CarCast”.

MySpace is encouraging the development of its nascent ecosystem. "MySpace has always seen itself as a next-generation portal. There are enormous opportunities to develop in and around MySpace. We focus on leveraging the expertise and resources from within the Fox Interactive Media network and with third-party partners alike to expand and enrich the community even further," said a spokesman for Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. division that includes MySpace.

MULTIPLIER EFFECT? The effort by MySpace could help it continue its thorrid growth. "The MySpace ecosystem could help the site grow even faster than it otherwise would, increasing the usefulness and awareness of the site at no cost to News Corp.," Greenfield says.

One early example of an outside company that's developing special features for MySpace is the wireless upstart Helio, which is owned by Internet service provider Earthlink (ELNK) and Korean wireless broadband pioneer SK Telecom (SKM). Helio allows users to access MySpace from the mobile Helio phone with the touch of a button. Helio has exclusive rights to mobile distribution of MySpace for an undisclosed period of time.

For now, its subscribers are the only mobile phone users with the ability to exchange MySpace messages of unlimited length while they are on the go.,which obviously reveals a communist plot to centralize even the way you communicate with your “friends.” They can use their phones to snap pictures or video and wirelessly post them to Web pages. "We understand the power of unforgiving, shameless profiteering ability found in social networking, and MySpace is clearly the leader in the field fool among fools," Helio spokesman Rick Heineman said.

LEVERAGINGMANIPULATING ITS AUDIENCE. The MySpace ecosystem includes several tools that extend the range of communications tools at hand. Slide, which can be found at www.slide.com, because we’re too good to link like normal people do, allows users to turn content at MySpace and other sites such as eBay (EBAY), into slide shows. And a free piece of software available from MyWhatSpace (www.mywhatspace.com) lets MySpace members send messages to multiple MySpace friends at the same time., thus taking an innovative approach that was before only used in practically every e-mail service, ever. It also allows users to create subgroups of MySpace friends, and send all of the members of the subgroup a message. Neither company was available for comment., because they were too busy making their own MySpace profiles, the ‘tards.

The MySpace ecosystem remains in the early stages., and must somehow be stopped before it is taken too far. It's certainly nowhere near as large as the iPod's, let alone the massive one around Windows. But it's an encouraging sign for a business that has lots of users but relatively little revenue. As MySpace helps other companies create revenue for themselves, its ability to attract and retain memberseven more hapless suckers should be strengthened, boosting its power among advertisers. other capitalist pigs who want to take advantage of weak-minded teenagers with too much money on their hands. ]]> 138@thebluesquare.net/ I Hate MySpace Fri, 21 Jul 2006 19:08:00 -0400