AlexHopmann.com

I’m getting increasingly annoyed by all the crap Facebook apps that constantly spam me. But the most egregious abuse is that most of these apps are more focused on spamming invitations rather than providing useful features.

Why do half the actions not provide any useful information in the news feed, instead making me click on it? Because then they make my add their stupid application, and invite other people just to see what someone actually did. Facebook authors are more busy being viral than providing useful service which is a bad trajectory.

To be fair, its not a new thing. Evite is a example of the worst of this. When you receive Evite messages they typically don’t have the useful information in the email, like when and where the invitation is for. They are stuck in a business model where they are so focused on driving traffic to their web site and to their ads that they annoy you to death.

My buddies at Jackson Fish Market have introduced Invitatistc which takes this problem head on. Its simple, doesn’t do wacky stuff, but its useful and doesn’t have to beat you over the head. I’m hoping they are right with their bet and that people will realize that you want to use a service more if it focuses on adding value rather than scamming you. I’m assuming Facebook apps will realize this too- I just noticed several things in my feed that were more useful- for example in the past it always said “John Doe has asked a question” and now it appears to be including the question in the news feed which is a big improvement.

The Penryn 45nm QX9750 is out and available although for psycho expensive prices for now. I see reports that the 3.2ghz / 1600mhz FSB QX9770 is due next week along with the newer X48 chipset (just weeks after the X38 came out.. how odd).

In any case early benchmarks suggest that the X48 is hardly better than the X38 at least with current CPUs and video cards. Meanwhile the new Radeon 3xxxx series is due tomorrow so it seems like it might be a busy couple of weeks to watch the new announcements and pick our parts for a system.

DDR3 RAM continues to drop its price rapidly- looks like $239 for the 1333mhz 2×1gb kits. Of course I ideally want a 2×2gb which is still running in the $900 ballpark, compared to $225 for fast (1066mhz) DDR2 sticks. All in all it leaves me still tempted to stick with a less expensive P35 and DDR2 for now, any maybe I’ll upgrade the motherboard later (although it seems like it will hardly be worth it).