Matthew Watts

Like most things in life, a process can be modeled. Adwords is no different. When clients ask me about pay-per-click marketing, their eyes often glaze over when I get too specific with them. The System’s Analysis and Design class last week went over a pretty neat concept—flow charts—to demonstrate more complex ideas into an easy-to-understand diagram. Above, you can get an idea of the concept. The advertiser chooses their keywords, bids on them, and Google distributes the ad either in their search results or through their AdSense Program. A visitor will then click on an ad using Google’s search, or through something which has an ad from AdSense for that [...]

As part of the MIT curriculum we are going to be developing iPhone applications. To start off, web apps are the focus. As the first step to creating them, we have been covering some basic concepts and meta tag properties that allow regular web pages to be targeted to the Safari Mobile browser that is on the iPhone. The code should also work for any browser that uses WebKit. I am very interested in this area because it is good insight into how standard web pages can be re-arranged to be optimized for mobile users without much additional effort in creating a separate page for them – then just having [...]

One of the assignments for the MIST 7500 class was to watch the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog at Hulu and check out the social media phenomena. This was in conjunction with the previous Rich Media lecture (adding pretty and engaging stuff to websites to better the user experience). Dr. Horrible came about as something that Joss Whedon devised during the 2008 writer’s strike. He wanted to show the world what could be done when you focused on quality for less – removing the bloat from production. He wrote about this in the Dr. Horrible master plan. It’s a pretty interesting idea and after having watched the 42 minute video – [...]

During the first of the class, the topic of favorite iPhone Apps was brought up. Dr. Piercy had mentioned to me about the Pandora Internet Radio App. After using it, I truly wish I had found it prior to purchasing the additional monthly subscription for the Premium Listening for the SiriusXM App. Though, I think I will be canceling that this month and go with Pandora – just because it seems more portable and doesn’t close my listening connection after an hour. I found Pandora significant for another reason – their use of the Music Genome Project. For those who aren’t familiar with the project, it is seeking to understand [...]

The first class for MIST 7500 discussed exactly this. Most of us have used the Internet in some form or fashion since the 90′s when it became commercialized. The class started by Dr. Piercy asking us the technology, software, uses, social impacts, and business side of the Internet. It quickly became apparent after an hour of discussion that the uses were endless. It touches all parts of our lives. For instance, your microwave had its parts coded into the manufacturer’s system. The system information is distributed globally to everyone in the company, the company’s suppliers, and the company’s customers. Those parts then get to the manufacturing plant which again keeps [...]