Dear Facebook

For the longest time, you were being boring an unoriginal. First you tried to turn status updates into tweets and become twitter, though honestly the existence of twitter as a separate entity is stupid so you taking over it's roll was fine in theory, sadly many still use twitter though. Then Google+ came out, and you copied some ideas from them in an attempt to be better so you could remain on top. All you were doing was copying ideas from other sites, and not coming up with anything unique to make Facebook actually better than others, you were content with just being just as good as others.

But now that's changing. The timeline thing is nice, I think I like it. It's unique and new, and actually makes Facebook different. It's nice to see some actual innovation. And there are other improvements too, like your Android App. The old app was probably the worst made app I'd ever used (except Words with Friends), it barely worked, was slow, awkward to navigate, etc. It was so bad I actually uninstalled it and just used the mobile version of your website. Randomly decided to download it again the other day, and WOW what an improvement. The UI is completely redone, and is actually really great now (better than G+'s mobile app actually in this one aspect), it's actually quite usable.

So thank you Facebook, keep this up and I might actually want to use you more than G+.
-SF

Dear SOPA and Protect IP

There are so many things wrong with you. I understand that piracy is a problem, and I agree that stopping it would be good. But what you're trying to do will basically destroy the internet as we know it. That seems extreme, but it's not an exaggeration, that's actually what you could cause. Most of the biggest and most important websites, like Facebook and Youtube just to name a couple, could easily be designated as being potentially useful for pirates, and just flat out blocked entirely. The problem is I think most of the people voting on you don't really understand the ramifications this will have on the internet as a whole, and the everyday lives of everyone who uses it. It's simply too extreme, and many innocent websites will be blocked.

Personally, I'm a supporter of the Safe Harbor Act (pretty sure that's what it's called), something that was passed a long time ago, which basically says a website cannot be held responsible for the actions of it's users. So when someone uploads copyrighted stuff to Youtube, the owner can complain, and Youtube usually cooperates (often too well), but Youtube cannot actually get in trouble since they simply provide a video hosting service and did not condone using it for illegal purposes. This approach is the only thing that will allow the internet to operate at it's full potential, since no website can actually control it's users, so if the website could get in trouble websites would have to be much more careful and strict and there'd be plenty of services that simply wouldn't be offered at all because of the risk they'd pose to the owning company.

The rules you're trying to create would not only destroy tons of already established things, but make creating new things on the internet have an inherent risk they don't currently have, so less stuff will be created, and the growth and innovation of everything on the internet would be greatly slowed. And on top of all of these negative effects, you also just plain won't work. Pirates will quickly find ways around the blocks, and continue pirating stuff all the time anyways, leaving you having no real effect on the piracy issue.

So please, for all our sakes, don't pass.
-SF

Dear Large Websites

When you make improvements and updates, why don't you just... update the whole site. What's the point of slowly rolling out updates to different people at different times? It doesn't make any sense. I understand testing things with small groups, but this isn't just a "testing phase" on a small group, and then update everyone. This is just randomly giving it out to a few new people everyday. It's INCREDIBLY frustrating.

Doesn't this create problems for you? Having multiple versions of your site must create issues sometimes when people on different version attempt to interact with one another. What's the benefit here? How is this a good idea in any way? Isn't it a lot more work to do the crazy, complicated process of slowly updating people?

Usually it'll be over the course of a few days, and that's a mild annoyance but whatever. Well sometimes it takes longer than that. I actually am currently worried that due to some strange glitch, I might be stuck never getting some updates. The layout of Google as a whole (the area at the top that is pretty much the same across all of their products) changed, and it has now been at LEAST like two or three weeks since people started getting the new layout, and it still hasn't changed for me. At the same time, youtube has gotten a whole redesign, and I don't have that one either. However, if I log in via a different browser (or in incognito mode, I use Chrome by the way), I get youtube's new layout. I logged in, played with some stuff, not sure how I feel about the changes but I could see it. Back in my normal browser though, it kicked me back to the old layout! Facebook ALSO is getting a re-design, which I of course can't see. Their adding the timeline thing, and this has some privacy implications. I was reading an article on Lifehacker about how this makes it much easier for people to see old posts, so you should consider making sure you don't have any old posts you don't want people to be able to find. Luckily, you can see your timeline now but they won't be publicly viewable for about a week. Well it's been about a week and I still can't see my own timeline. Can other people see mine? Can others see stuff of mine that I can't yet get to so I can't control?

Plus, on top of all that, I just like new things. I'm sure plenty of other people like new things too. Some of us want to be able to see and play around with new updates as soon as possible, and hanging them over our heads for WEEKS is just not cool.

So please, update everyone at once, or at least within a day.
-SF

Dear Internet

If you change your RSS feed for some reason, make sure the last update to the old one says something along the lines of "RSS feed is changing, click here for the new one."

I'm tired of occasionally losing updates from things without noticing.
-SF

Dear Tennis

Why is your scoring system so stupid? I can live with the fact you call zero "love", it's a little weird, but fine. I can live with it starting out 15 and then 30, each time you score you get 15 points, kind of pointless but alright. I can even understand the "advantage" thing when it's a tie and you both have enough points to win, you just need to be ahead by two, and the ahead by two thing I understand because it just helps reduce the chance of the wrong person winning from sheer luck.

The real problem I have... is with 40. I mean come on, what kind of a stupid scale is 15, 30, 40? That means NOTHING. If it was 45, then I'd be ok with it. Better yet, make it 1, 2, 3 like normal numbers! You don't need the 15. Seriously, the 40 is just wrong for so many reasons.

And while we're at it, the game basically encourages playing it in a way that's boring. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing tennis from time to time. But you're encouraged to just score as fast as you can, scoring directly on the serve is considered a very good thing. Well that's BORING, both to play and to watch. You know what's fun? Volleying the ball back and forth like 25 times before someone scores. The volleying is fun, and it also makes the actual score that much more dramatic. So how about a scoring system that encourages longer volleys, like maybe when you score, you get one point for each time the ball was volleyed or something.

Seriously though, lose the 40, it's stupid.
-SF

Dear Pizza Delivery Guys

Why am I supposed to tip you? I get the tipping for waitresses. Sure, I dislike the system as a whole (though that's a topic for another letter) but I get it, they do our bidding for a while, so we pay them. They come back repeatedly, they take our order, they bring us food, they refill drinks, they bring us more ketchup, they do whatever we need. So sure, I'll tip them since that's what I'm supposed to do.

But what do you do pizza delivery guy? Almost nothing. You don't take the order, I order online. Some people order by phone, but I doubt you're the one who takes the order. You don't repeatedly come back bringing me everything I need. You don't make the food. You don't do much of anything for me. You get handed a box and an address. You get in your car, presumably use GPS to easily find the location, and do the astoundingly difficult task of carrying a box up to my door. You should get paid, sure, you're doing a job. And I'm ok with paying a "delivery fee" to cover that. I may not like paying extra for my food, but I understand that the company needs to pay you, so in order for them to offer delivery they have to charge a bit to cover the cost of hiring you, that's fine.

But you have done nothing special for me. No going out of your way to be helpful. It's not that you're bad at your job, there aren't really any opportunities to go out of your way to be helpful to the customer when you deliver pizza. You've done nothing above and beyond at all, so I just don't see why it's my responsibility to give you extra money.

Demand higher wages from the pizza company, not from me.
-SF

Dear Sleep

Why do you take up so much time? I never feel like I have enough time in the day to do all the things I need to do, and here you come and take up a good eight hours every night! What gives you the right to demand an entire THIRD of my life on just laying there doing nothing? I need more time for more productive things.

And I can't just choose to ignore you, no. Somehow you have the ability to make me feel like crap if I don't give you the time you want. There's just so many things I could be doing with that time, why do you have to have so much of it? There is no other single activity that takes up as much as you do. I just want a little more free time, is that so much to ask?

But at the same time... I love you. You're all soft and warm and comfortable. You're stress free. So relaxing, there's no need to put in any effort of energy, there's no doing poorly and getting others mad at you, there's just... peace. It's so nice.

So I guess we have a love-hate relationship.
-SF

Dear Scientists

You need to make this happen. This is a great idea. The article claims similar technology was patented a few years ago. This needs to happen as soon as possible. Regardless of the environmental benefits from needing less electricity from the wall, the extended battery life would be phenomenal. One of the biggest limited factors on all small, portable technology is the battery.

Seriously, take out your phone, open the battery compartment and take out the battery. Unless you have an iPhone, or any other apple product... then you probably can't take out the battery. They suck like that. Anyways, compare the battery to the rest of the phone. Keep in mind that some of that volume of the phone is just the metal/plastic/whatever casing, and then there's the screen itself. Now how much volume is left that actually contains the processor and the other "computer" like components. Pretty small huh? On my phone that's actually smaller than the battery.

So technology like this in the screen means tons of improvement in phones. Longer battery life, of course. But not just that, it means the phones can be better. Sure, we could have a battery that lasts three weeks... but that's unnecessary. Instead, we can shrink the battery, leaving more space for the processor and stuff. Plus, more powerful processor means it needs more power, but that has to be limited so the battery doesn't die in an hour. Longer lasting batteries mean that's less of an issue to.

And the article is unclear, but it sounds like it might also be able to charge off of other ambient light, not just from the LEDs themselves, which could mean that the battery could last indefinitely, unless you only use it in the dark.

Basically, it's awesome and I would pay significantly more for a phone that could "magically" last insanely long or forever. Worrying about running out of battery when I'm out is inconvenient and limits my use of the phone.

Do this now please.
-SF

Dear Android

I love you. You are an amazing operating system for cell phones. You actually let me do anything I want, unlike stupid iOS. There's a bajillion reasons why iOS sucks, but that's a topic for another time. Android is great. The notification bar works brilliantly, and makes it easy to get at any notification while you're doing something else without any difficulty, but also keeps them out of the way until you're ready to look at them. Widgets are great, letting you have actual functional things on your homescreens instead of just links to apps. Displaying my calendar, the weather, a nice button to turn on and off wifi... tons of great things widgets can do.

The only thing I didn't like was that at the bottom of the home screens is a section reserved for a "dialer" button, a "contacts" button, and an "app drawer" button. (the app drawer is a list of every program installed on the device, in alphabetical order, so if all else fails there's always a way to get to any program, even if you haven't put links or widgets or anything on your homescreens)

Of course, since this is Android, by Google, and they want to let you do what you want, I was actually able to download a whole new "launcher", which basically re-did the entire UI of the home screens. This added many cool things, including the ability to customize the dock at the bottom. (I ended up downloading Go Launcher EX, in case you were wondering)

So basically I just love that they actually let you do whatever you want. And it works great. I love my phone (a Droid R2D2, which is just a star wars themed Droid 2)

Android, and everything else by Google, you rule.
-SF

Dear My Mechanical Pencil at Work

How is that you manage to always be so sharp? I've used plenty of mechanical pencils over the years, but never have I hurt myself on one. Every time I barely touch your tip, it's sharp enough to cause me pain.

Today as I set you down on my desk, somehow my right ring finger scrapped along your point... and you dug deep into my flesh. You gave me a good half-inch long gash in my finger, I don't understand how you could possibly be sharp enough to do this.

Please stop, I dislike pain.
-SF

Dear Internet

So I had a fun dream last night, thought I'd tell you about it.

So it was me in a huge group of people. We all had magic wands, and were having a massive brawl with Harry Potter spells. We didn't have real magic though, we were just pretending and having a blast with it. And no one was using any crazy bad spells either, just a lot of expelliarmus and other harmless spells.

So some girl and I turn to each other and simultaneously cast expelliarmus at each other, so we both throw our wands in the air as though we've been disarmed. Somehow we happen to have accidentally thrown our wands to each other and both caught them. So we just look at each other for a minute, confounded at the coincidence, and then turn to fight others.

This is when a friend of mine from real life shows up. But not with a wand, with a sword. He swings it at me, and I try to cast the first spell I can think of at him. I start to say "Jelly legs..." but before I can finish he cuts me off. Well, more like he cuts my wand. In half. So the spell fails, and I've been defeated.

But it was tons of fun! And if any of you don't know what the jelly legs jinx is... well, go on youtube and watch A Very Potter Musical.

I hope your dreams are as fun as mine.

-SF

Dear Some Comedian I Saw in a Commercial

In your commercial, we see a clip from some show of yours that they're advertising. In it, you tell a story about Halloween with your child. The child asks "Daddy, what are you going to be for Halloween this year?" and you respond, in an angry tone, with something along the lines of "I'm gonna be a grown man!"

Now, I'm assuming you didn't actually ever say this to your child. Hell, I don't know if you even really have a child. You were just making a point. But here's the thing... it's a stupid point. Parents SHOULD participate in Halloween to some extent with their children. The idea that you're "too old for it" is preposterous. Sure, maybe if you were entirely on your own you wouldn't do anything for Halloween, but if you have kids, you damn well better be participating in some manner. Implying that you're too good for Halloween is not good parenting.

This add makes me think less of you as a person, and makes me want to avoid watching your show, because surely more of your "humor" is based off of stupid points that illustrate just what a bad person you are.

I hope your children's mother is a better parent than you are.
-SF

Dear Mosquitoes

I hate you. I finally recovered from having over a dozen bites on just my feet which drove me crazy for like a week. Seriously, when I had shoes on, every step was like torture. When you have bug bites on your feet, leaving them alone so they don't bother you as much is not possible.

But now that's over, so you've decided to go and give me a bunch of the huge bites on my legs. These things are like twice the size of normal mosquito bites. I don't know why you are trying so hard to cause me pain, but I hate it.

I hope you all get stepped on.

-SF

Dear Internet

Hello there internet, this is my new blog. I've noticed that from time to time, I post things in a format like they're a letter addressed at whatever I'm talking about. I've posted "letters" to a variety things. Some to a specific company or product, such as a letter complaining to Facebook about something they're doing terribly. Some to less specific entities, such as "the guys who design theme songs".

So I've decided to make a blog dedicated to posts like this. Some of them will be those letters to various people/organizations/concepts. Some will be like this one, letters to the internet itself, mainly aimed at you, my readers.

I hope these letters end up being as much fun to read as I know they will be to write!

-SF