ziizoo blog

My affection for Facebook is still strong as a user (although that is being tested–more on that later), but my affection for it as an advertiser died a long time ago. In the early days the advertising platform was horrible. Then in the spring they tuned it so you could at least target certain age demographics (among other things). But it still did not change the fact that despite knowing who you are, Facebook does not know what you want. Put another way, Google doesn’t know who you are (though that is changing), but they definitely know what you want. Why? Because you tell them every time you do a search! As long as I am competing against Coca-Cola and every other mega-corporation for the same impressions, advertising on Facebook will always be a losing proposition. So when the marketing budget tightened, Facebook was the first to go.

In the spirit of all the babies arriving these days with friends, and my own siblings, this week I noticed a neat site addressing kids at every age, infant through adolescent, parents and style. Urban Baby is well designed and appeals to hip younger parents obviously familiar with the blogosphere. Urban Baby has three sections to visit. The heart of the site is Talk, a lively message boards section, where parents come day and night to share, discuss and ask questions related to parenting and their lives as parents. Talk is a place for honest, uninhibited discussions, quick answers, banter and community. In addition to the message boards, UB offers in-depth local information for New York and San Francisco, local message boards for additional urban areas, and will be rolling out new local resource guides in 2008. They also offer general parenting and product news & tips in Buzz.

We are proud to have finally vanquished this annoying bug. The ziizoo session tool is officially compatible with the most recent release of Flash Player 9 - version 124. This means no more “waiting to connect” messages when you launch the session tool. With this logjam cleared, we will start to roll out enhancements of the session tool that we think will greatly improve the tutoring experience.

Science Prof Online is a free science website which is home to straightforward, easy to understand explanations of complex biological principles, chemistry simplified and current events that bring science to life. SPO offers two virtual science classrooms that are used as supplemental materials for actual 100-level college science courses: the Virtual Cell Biology Classroom and the Virtual Microbiology Classroom. Each Virtual Classroom includes individual lecture topics featuring:

* a list of learning objectives
* review questions
* practice test questions
* practice exercise and assignments
* animations and movies
* Power Point lectures
* additional articles that support the lecture material

One of this site’s most popular features is a collection of Science PowerPoint Lectures, a collection of lecture material from two introductory college courses. The main topic areas of SPO are organic and inorganic chemistry, microbiology, cell biology, genetics, evolution and immunology. The website’s creator, Tami Port, has even included feature articles and a science photography section to complement the instructional content. This is a well thought out and skillfully presented site, on level with the best I have come across!!

ziizoo is up and running. Our Google Mini Search Appliance is happy in its new home, but please let us know if you experience any quirks or bugs with the site.

When an editor of the law review tells you something, you listen. In fact, write it down and memorize it. Tattoo it on your arm if you have to. During my tenure at law school I came to realize rather quickly that these guys and girls were the top of the top. You wanted to know how they did it. Why could they understand the big picture in Torts and Con Law, while you withered under the fire of the Socratic Method? Mr. Todd Johnson is here to help you get into the college of YOUR choosing. His College Admission Partners is a full service firm focusing on the college admissions process. Additionally, Todd brings with him 20 years of courtroom experience. He does not believe that the best college is the highest ranked or the college that has the lowest admission rate. Rather it means the college that is the best fit for the needs of that particular student……Amen.

Due to a snafu involving UPS and our new host, the Google Mini Search Appliance will not be online until tomorrow morning at the earliest. We deeply apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We will be working frantically to bring the Mini back online as soon as it arrives at our host tomorrow morning.

We are in the process of moving our Google Mini Search Appliance to a new and happier home. This is the final stage of our drawn-out, double-migration. The site will be down for the next 24 hours. If you have any questions please contact us at customersupport@ziizoo.com.

ziizoo.com will be down from early Saturday morning, August 16th, until mid-afternoon, Sunday August 17th. We are taking the site down to migrate (again!) to more powerful servers, release the long anticipated fix to the “waiting to connect” error and deploy a grab bag of overdue tweaks and tunes. Thank you for your patience as we work to make ziizoo even better. If you have any questions, comments or immediate concerns, please contact us at customersupport@ziizoo.com.

If you are bored at your summer internship then kill some time playing Little Farm by MumboJumbo on Facebook. MumboJumbo is a leading developer and publisher of casual games and, in the spirit of full disclosure, an investor in ziizoo. So kill some time, have some fun, and help us keep the lights on by checking out MumboJumbo’s games on Facebook or its website, www.mumbojumbo.com (register today to get a free game!).