Google Plus: Modeling Real Life Social Interactions

While the service may be in its infancy, I think G+ shows some real promise. Of particular interest to me is the ways in which the Circles feature models social interactions from the real world. I believe that in this aspect it is far better than Facebook, though it will take time for these interactions to click with users.

Circles: Just Like Real Social Circles

Quickly, think of one of your real life social circles. For most people, they will think of a group of friends, coworkers, or family that is tight knit and perhaps share some commonality. In many circumstances, these people will show up in multiple circles. G+ models this perfectly. You can easily take a person and put them in as many circles as you'd like.

Again much like real life, that person doesn't know that you consider them part of a particular circle unless they know implicitly or you tell them. That person may be on your "frenemies" list. Perhaps you only consider them to be an acquaintance (we'll get back to this) but you don't want them to get the wrong idea that you're keeping them at arms length.

You may never use this feature to its full potential, but one of the aspects of social software is that it allows you to organize and catalog your life in new and novel ways. The implementation on G+ is both easy and visual. You may learn something about how you think of your friends by attempting to put them into circles.

Sharing Controls Allow More Frank Conversations

When you share something on G+ a key feature is that you can easily limit or expand the scope of sharing. I know some people consider this to be a confusing extra step but it is necessary to model these interactions. It allows people to conveniently have separate social circles that need not often interact.

Think about it, is your mom or boss on Facebook? This answer is increasingly "yes." With Facebook's privacy settings it is complicated to avoid sharing sensitive information with these people. It's likely none of your boss's business that you were out partying all weekend, but it is so easy to inadvertently tell her just that. In order to avoid this you must either not befriend these people on Facebook (smart, but sometimes awkward) or go through a fairly unintuitive procedure to modify who can see a particular post. It's not impossible, in fact I have custom security settings that keep several people who are officially "friends" from seeing the content on my wall, but it is nowhere near as intuitive nor as central as it is on G+.

As an aside, I think that Google is placing their bets that by enabling you to have more control over who sees what info you will in turn feel more comfortable sharing things. If that becomes true then people who share relatively little now could find new life in a product like this. Also, I should note, the addition control is not absolute. Just like in the real world, if you say something to anyone then that person has the ability to share that information. Digital communications are easier to copy and verify, so it's not like this would give you carte blanche to trash talk your employer or openly cheat on your spouse.

Dealing With Acquaintances and Beyond

The way Circles work will allow for far less awkward interactions with people you don't know or don't know well. If a random person adds you to a Circle, you can simply ignore it and they will only see public posts. Any posts they share with you will go to your Incoming page. You simply don't have to see those people, and it requires no action on your part. Sure, you can block them if you really want. A better strategy would be to simply treat public posts as you would any other public speech and not say anything too personal or socially unacceptable and you don't have to do anything about them.

Say that guy you met at the party last weekend adds you, and you might share some stuff with him based on what you know about him but you don't want him to know too much about your personal life, then file him under Acquaintances. When you share personal info don't share it with Acquaintances. Or create another group that's even less intimate. Chances are that most sharing of this sort barely has a real world model because many acquaintances don't have frequent interactions after the fact. So even if you never share anything with these people you shouldn't feel bad about.

A Conversation With a Circle

In the real world it is unlikely you will have a chance to talk to people from all of your social circles at once more than a few times in your life. The one time this is likely to happen, at your wedding, is something that many people only have happen once, and others only a few times. Good luck getting your coworkers to buy you a fourth wedding gift.

Instead, you probably have conversations with a one circle of friends at a time. It's likely that you tell these groups many of the same things, but you probably choose not to tell certain groups certain things, and other times you probably change things slightly to match the group. Each group likely reacts differently, even if similarly, to the same conversation. Sometimes, you would tell two people the same thing, but not when they are in the same room. That's how social dynamics work. It's a dynamic that Facebook breaks and G+ models somewhat correctly.

For some people, Facebook has changed this social dynamic forever. Any public announcement will be just that: public for all and for all to comment on. They probably value the varied interactions of their different circles of friends meshing together. Fortunately for these people, G+ offers the "My Circles" and "My Extended Circles" sharing settings, not to mention "Public".

For everyone else, the genie can be put back in the bottle. If you have a conversation with one group of friends no one else need know. You can have the same conversation multiple times shared with multiple groups and avoid any interaction.

Why would you want to do this? Well, maybe you want to give your close friends a low down on your trip to Cancun, but you want to share photos with your family. You don't want your rowdy friends commenting where Granny can read. Or, maybe you know people from Ohio and Michigan and you want to discuss the fine mess that OSU's football program got itself into but you'd rather it not become a huge flame war.

A Conversation From a Circle

Here's another key difference. Right now G+ does not have a "wall" that anyone can write on. Some people think this is terrible, others love it. I like it because it gives me control over who sees what my friends say to me. However, the real benefit of this is that it models how interactions from a circle of friends to you work in the real world.

If you're hanging out with a circle of friends one of them might say something to you that everyone in the circle can hear. This could strike up a conversation within the circle, and maybe it's a story you would recount later to others but people outside the circle would not likely be involved.

How you model this in G+ is to make a post directed at your circle and tag the person you are speaking to. This will allow your mutual friends to comment on this post. If your friend wants to share it more broadly he can do so by clicking Share and selecting more of his circles. By sharing it with your mutual circle of friends you can have the same sort of intimate, candid conversations you would have in the real world. If it's something you want more people to talk about you retell it by sharing, the same as you would need to otherwise.

This again empowers you to control who sees what information. If you think about Facebook's wall, the idea of allowing someone to write on your wall is like asking for someone to write graffiti on your house or draw a penis on your forehead. Sure, it's also like having them sign a cast, but even then they normally ask permission. Think of resharing as your wall plus asking permission.

Public Speaking

Public speaking is something that Twitter does pretty well. Conversations on Twitter are so disjointed that it is more a broadcast platform than anything else. Of course, conversational discourse is kneecapped on Twitter due to the size limitation. Facebook makes most of the things you say into a semi-public event that is invite only. Unless your profile is open to the public only your friends will see it, but then those people not in your friends list can't interact with it. G+ is modeled a little bit after both services, allowing you to have both private and public conversations. However, G+'s public conversations are far superior to Twitter and more shareable than Facebook.

Anything you post that is aimed at the Public should be considered to be something of a seminar. It's like gathering all of your friends, acquaintances, fans, etc. into a big room and offering for anyone to comment. You can assume that this will be fairly public, as it is tied to Google after all, but the people who will immediately know about it are the ones who have you in their circles. Thus, you practically have an attendance roster right on your Circles page. Unless you disable comments then you can allow public interaction on these items, basically anyone with a G+ account can comment.

Getting Along with G+, Acceptance & Adoption

When we deal with a new service like this one we must be careful. Some people will proclaim it the next big thing, others will call it DOA, and still others will begrudgingly drag themselves along for the ride. We'll recall Google Wave (over and over again) and Orkut. We'll think of MySpace, which is funny because it was a huge success that just didn't have staying power. Maybe we'll think of all the other projects Google has done that no one would give a chance to yet have proven to be popular over time, like GMail, Google Maps, and Android.

Chances are that people like me will be more lenient on the service. I don't mean because of the reasons laid out above, but rather that I tend to love Google interfaces. Even their quirks often agree with me. I try to cheque my fanboyism and be objective. Certainly, as someone who does interface design for a living I can be critical of their choices. Still, it works for me for the most part.

It's also important to remember that this service was launched early in the development stages. It is clear that they intend to follow their pattern of rapid iterations and live testing. Google is capable of developing slick interfaces that work well, but often their first generation is somewhat clunky and pointedly favors geek culture with features like keyboard shortcuts. If you're not so much of a geek (or sometimes if you're just that much of a geek) then you won't appreciate this as much as people like me.

I'm sure there are more ways that this service both mimics and deviates from real life social interactions. After all, it is a piece of software and it does do things that are impossible or difficult to physically accomplish, like bringing together people from geographically divergent places. However, I'm not exactly a social scientist nor will I proclaim myself to be a social media expert. This is all I've thought of up to now and it was inspired by several conversations with various friends. This may not be the last I write on the subject, I only hope that the next thing I write isn't a post-mortem.

Failure is Great

The other day as I was describing a failure of mine to my boss I realized that I really enjoy those instances. I like when the current me is able to go back and fix some failure the past me created. I like admitting to stupid mistakes, and I like correcting them.

I wanted to write a long-winded post about this and talk about various failures of mine, but every time I start I would let myself be distracted and stop. It's sat like that since the day referenced above. Thus, this post is in essence a microcosm of the phenomenon it describes.

The one failure I originally set out to address that I will include is that of my grand scheme to post juvenile friend descriptions about people in my Facebook friends list. I started everything, beginning with a spreadsheet listing every person from the friends list. Then I used the random number generator to pick 10 people. The first was my niece Angela, and I was instantly discouraged when I realized that while I know Angela well enough I don't know that I care to write about my grade schooler niece whose account was created for FarmVille.

Then there was the brief Facebook meme that solidified my resolve to scrap the project. You might recall those couple of days where people would ask for someone to send them a random number and then they'd post a status about them. Given the similarities, my idea was suddenly far less edgy. Without the edginess all that was left was the immaturity and pettiness of it all. So I gave up.

I'm embracing the failure, though. Next time I'll put more effort into my petty juvenile ideas before I announce them, that way I'm more likely to follow through and I can have even greater failures than the past. Who knows? Maybe one will be a success instead.

Social Experimentation

Now that I've detailed how many friends lists are maintained, and how I maintain mine, it's time to put this to the test.

The theory: I believe that my social network is comprised of well known associations and that I can make a legitimate justification for each of these.

The test: I will randomly select friends from my friends list. For each friend that I select I will write an entry about them. I plan for these entries to be candid and informative, they will probably consist largely of descriptions about how I know the person but many people will also include some personal stories. If I cannot explain how I know someone and why they're on my list then I will defriend them.

By picking at random I hope to avoid any bias toward people with whom I have a deeper and easier to explain relationship. I'd like to get some of those more awkward relationships out into the open without waiting until the end. If I defriend anyone I will write about it.

I've already entered my current friends list into a spreadsheet. Using random numbers from Random.org I've selected 10 people so far. First up, my niece Angela.

Since this is a public blog I'll use first names only, or first name last initial. I don't want people to be listed in stories on the open Internet without their consent but I don't think it's worth getting consent first. When this is reposted on Facebook I will tag people.

That's about it. I'll try to work my way through my friends list. I realize this is the sort of thing that a teenage girl might do, and that makes it so wonderfully awkward. I can't promise any sort of a schedule, but now that I'm committed I have to at least do a few.

Qualifying as My Facebook Friend

In my last post I wrote about how I think most people treat social networking "friends" with a new mix of intimacy and distance, and that I doubt most people have lists filled with true friends. In this post I will explain what is required before I add someone to my friends list, which I believe deviates from the norm in a few ways.

How do you become one of my Facebook friends? The simple answer is that we have to have some significant contact outside of Facebook.* So, to be my friend you must have a deeper connection than simple acquaintance.

I have several previously unwritten measures that I use to determine whether I should send a friend request, or if I should accept one. Most of these I would consider "significant acts." Though I will admit that I'm far more inclined to accept a request because I view that as an olive branch, the request in itself can be considered a significant act.

A significant act is an action that solidifies a friendship or moves an acquaintance up a level. Normally this is something like, "I see this person every day." Sometimes it's someone I'm just getting to know but I've at least had a few interactions with them. More often than not I have had a lasting relationship of some kind with these people, even if that relationship consists of purely online interactions.

This brings me back to the asterisk about contact outside of Facebook. Since I consider online interactions as potentially significant it is not impossible that a person who I only know through Facebook would become a friend. In fact, that happened recently when a friend of a friend (who I've met once but only talked to a little) sent me a friend request. In several interactions with mutual friends he and I had talked, so I felt that I knew him well enough to accept the request.

I can classify most of my friends fairly quickly. There's family, the inescapable fact that if your family is part of your life you will probably interact with them in multiple ways. Friends from everyday life, the people I know because my wife and I interact with them on a somewhat regular basis. Friends from my hometown, likely people that I was completely out of touch with for a decade that these networks have brought back into my life. Coworkers and former coworkers, people who I've met through work that I felt inclined to codify my connection to them. Friends from online, people who I know from my 15 years of online presence. There's also some stragglers in there, but almost everyone falls into these categories.

Having high standards for the people I share my Facebook presence with allows me to worry less about privacy problems that have plagued the service. If I know everyone on my list then I don't have to worry as much about sharing my phone number or email with contacts. I don't worry about telling people my location or my activities, because I know these people well enough to assume they will not abuse the information. I can, at times, have very meaningful interactions on the site. I'm also not weighed down with the noise of hundreds of acquaintances.

I believe that social networks which have been codified need to be maintained. There should be some barrier to entry. There should be situations where you cut ties. Sometimes you lose touch with a person, or you grow apart, and it should be okay to realize this and record it by removing that person from your friends. If one of you decides to get back in touch then you can always re-add.

This is how I manage my social network. In my next post I will introduce an experiment of sorts that I will impose on myself. I hope to prove or disprove how close I am to those in my friends list.

Qualifying Facebook Friends

One of the concepts that social networks are redefining is that of friendship. Sites like Facebook and MySpace focus upon a "friends list" that allows users to interact with one another, control their privacy, or just show off. I think it's intriguing how this has changed the meaning of friendship, and also how it breaks down old walls and builds new ones.

For me, the most interesting aspect is how many social networking users have changed the meaning of "friend" into "acquaintance." While it is common for someone's friends list to achieve membership numbers in excess of 500, it is rare in a real social network that a person would actually consider 500 people their friends. I do not believe that there has been such a huge population of super networkers and that online social networking sites [from here on: Facebook] have suddenly exposed them. Rather, I believe that this demonstrates a situation where somewhat loose acquaintances are now added as "friends" on social networks.

Adding people to your social network seems to have replaced previous acts such as exchanging business cards, phone numbers, or emails. In many ways it is superior to the actions it replaces. If you meet someone at an event that was planned using Facebook then you can later add them from the attendees list. However, the boundaries are significantly different between adding someone to a list online and giving them your phone number.

Social contexts were dramatically different before the advent of Facebook. If I give you my phone number you probably feel some hesitation to use it if you do not know me well. If you never use it then we will never communicate. If, instead, I add you to my friends list on Facebook then we barely have to initiate communication. Unless I've quarantined you using privacy features then you'll likely see my every status update, and you can choose to browse through most of my interactions. In essence, I've conveniently opened my life to someone I may barely know.

The walls continue to break down from there, though. While you may have felt that hesitancy to use my phone number or email, it's less likely that you will hesitate to write something on my wall or reply to a status update. This is a major social dynamic of early contact that has changed dramatically. Not only can a short encounter cause me to open my life to you, but the social code dictating further contact has opened up such that it is far more likely that you will engage me.

That's not to say that new barriers haven't formed. It may be easier for communications to occur and that may enable lesser acquaintances to know more and say more, but these interactions are by far less intimate and less important. Significantly more interaction is required before any sort of trust is established, which is somewhat ironic considering the volume of information you've likely shared.

The other big wall is one that may or may not be real, but in a world where everyone is at your fingertips you may not have such an urge to meet up in person. I say this may not be real because I do not believe that online communication will create a generation of reclusive geeks who only talk online. Those geeks will be there, but they were there last generation as well, and the one before that and so on. More to the point, those who don't already fall into this category will not be reclassified due to social networking. Instead, I believe that some of the types of encounters we used to have will be less prevalent. After all, who needs to meet and catch up with friends if you never quite fell out of touch?

The cliché is that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Absence is almost nonexistent in modern culture. We are always online, always available, always within reach. This can have many unwanted effects between friends. Those old friends from high school are now available, but they might not be the same person you remember. If you put your coworkers in your network you might suffer from too much information or too much exposure. These things serve to deteriorate relationships, not to grow them.

Is this the right way to handle social networking? I believe it is not. It certainly isn't right for me. In my next post I will discuss how I handle my Facebook friends. Beyond that, I hope to explore some patterns and actions that may help bring these things more in line with past societal expectations.

What Does a Smartphone Do?

It's been about a month since I received my HTC Droid Incredible. I'm extremely pleased. Recently I've been thinking about the various ways this phone has changed my life.

I have a history of limited success with my cellphone choices. The phones I've had thus far were... okay. Most of them got the job done and that was about it. So, it's been somewhat revelatory having a true smartphone for the last month.

A quick rundown of my previous phones: The first was a Kyocera stick phone that pulled little more than basic phone duty, I had phone numbers stored in it but that's about it. Next was a Samsung flip phone, and with that phone I added alarm clock duties that are now requisite on all my phones. After that was an LG flip phone, which I started using for light camera work and text messaging. Then I made a big jump from Verizon to AT&T and I got a Blackberry Pearl, which also marked the shift from texting to email, a little more contact management, occasional searches, and infrequent GPS duties.

I was terribly disappointed in AT&T's service, though. So as soon as we had the chance we jumped ship back to Verizon. I splurged and for the first time bought the phone I really wanted, the Incredible. Of course it's picked up the duties of the previous phone, but it's so much more capable. Here's a list of what this phone is to me, with a brief review of the features.

• It's a phone! Well, duh. It is a decent phone with good call quality. I've used the speakerphone a lot with great success. I like to use it so Kevin can talk to his grandmother without having to hand the phone over to him. My only gripe is that I instinctively hit the "Phone" button but all that's available from there is a numeric keypad. If you hit the numbers it will then select contacts based on the old-school phone key mappings, but it's difficult to call those contacts secondary numbers. I want an alpha keypad so I can search contacts and then easily select which of their numbers to call. The solution is to put the People shortcut within easy reach and teach yourself to use that instead.
• It's the Internet! The Internet capabilities of this phone are pretty great. It has some Flash support, but that's not the strength. The browser on this is really great. Navigation and zoom is every bit as good as the iPhone, but it's a bit quicker. Actually, the zoom functionality is better because not only can you easily zoom in on your text but the browser then changes the flow of the text to match the width of the screen. It does this with tables and some other elements, too. For instance, if I browse the forum I frequent using my phone then I can zoom in on the thread titles column, it will then resize that column of the table to match the width of the screen so that I no longer have to scroll horizontally to read the entire title. Maybe that sounds minor, but it's huge for readability. Counter point: Navigation between tabs takes a few actions more than iOS.
• It's an email client! That sounds like a non-issue, doesn't it? However, Android phones have the advantage of fantastic GMail integration. Basically, the GMail client on this phone is a native-running version of the web interface. Sure, there's a few differences, but it's a phone. It supports conversations, labels, and all that GMail goodness. The way other clients handle some of GMail's features really annoys me. For instance, my Blackberry would treat my Google Reader shared items as new messages when they hit Buzz. It would also treat every message sent as a message received because of the way conversations work. Android doesn't do that. It easily handles both of my accounts. On top of that I also have an IMAP account and my Yahoo! account. The Blackberry had some great shortcuts that I miss, but the pros far outweigh the cons here.
  
• It's a camera! The camera on this thing is simply amazing. I turned the capture resolution down to 5MP, because I just don't need the extra detail that the max 8MP resolution offers. The flash works okay, especially for a phone. It's not too slow, either. It's great because I finally have a camera on my person that takes passable pictures and doesn't require 2 minutes to warm up. (The Blackberry was terrible about opening the camera app, and then it took grainy low res pictures.) There's no downside here.
• It's an IM client! Maybe this falls under the Internet, but I think it warrants its own bullet. I no longer send SMS "text" messages. Instead, I use IM over my phone. Why pay the outrageous rates for SMS messages/plans when I'm already paying for a data plan? There's no need at all. Plus, I'm more highly available via IM because I can have it open on my computer or my phone. I did this a bit with the Blackberry, but I found it to be annoying. This phone handles the conversations a bit better and I like the onscreen keyboard better than the Pearl's keyboard. It helps that this device is so much more responsive, so I can reply very quickly. The downside is that some people still think SMS is a good idea, I've started telling them to use my Google Voice number.
• It's an iPod! Well, it's at least an MP3 player. I don't think the music players available on this thing quite stack up to the iPod, but they're close enough to render my iPod Touch a paperweight. Between the music stored on my phone and Pandora, I probably use this thing 30 hours a week for just that. I need to get a bigger MicroSD card, but otherwise it's completely replaced my old music player. It also has some features that the iPod lacks, like an FM tuner. If my commute ever changes back to one that relies on public transit then I will use this more, but I've already used it a few times if there's something interesting on NPR and I have to get out of my car.
• It's an alarm! I mentioned this one before, I use my phone as my alarm. The alarm on this is much better than my Blackberry's was. It's almost the same as my iPod's alarm, but the iPod's weak external speaker rendered that useless. I suspect any iPhone would be equally good. The last time I had a phone with this good of an alarm system was the LG. I'll add in here that it's also my watch. I haven't worn a watch more than a handful of times since I started carrying a cellphone.
• It's my planner! I generally have no clue what the date is. Actually, there's a lot of times where I can't pinpoint the day of the week. I have to try very hard to remember what's planned. The phone syncs nicely with Google Calendar and I've started putting things directly in via the phone. As I get more used to this I may even stop relying so heavily on my wife to remember what the hell I'm doing on a given day.
• It's got the traffic and weather! When it's quick and easy to pull up this information on your phone there's that much more incentive to take a second to check this info. I can glance at the weather in the morning, and I normally check the traffic before I leave the parking lot after work.
• It's a GPS Navigator! I have a Garmin that I use on the weekends, so I haven't had too much of a chance to use the GPS. I did use it a few times, once as a test on my way to work. Another time to find a restaurant in Passaic. Both times I found the turn by turn directions to be on par with Garmin's, though the text to speech system isn't as good. I'm a big fan of GPS navigation and I'd always planned to eventually get a second unit for my truck, but I've scrapped that now. The navigator on my phone is good enough for lighter duty use and I can use the Garmin for longer trips.
  
• It's a time killer! Like the iPod/iPhone, this device is great for little hand held games. I have a few on it already. These are perfect for taking a break or in the waiting room. Yesterday I managed to play a game of Minesweeper while my boss took a call. [Don't tell her that.] Of course, I can also play most YouTube videos on it if I want. Or I can pull up Google Reader and churn through my RSS feeds.
• It's going to be my 3G modem! I did root my phone but I've yet to get the tethering to work correctly. I will, though, and I'm sure it will come in handy eventually.

I could go on into minutia but I'll stop there. I think the point is clear, this is a very useful device. Some of the uses are limited and others are trivial, but overall it's great to have around.

I will temper my enthusiasm, though. By now you've heard that the battery life on Android phones is terrible, and I won't dispute that claim. Depending on what I'm doing I've gone anywhere from 12 hours to 2 days between charges. It helps to put the phone into airplane mode at night, something akin to the sleep mode that Blackberry phones have. There's also something to be said for the sheer volume of my personal data that I've entrusted to Google, which is a topic I could write an entire post on.

There's also the iPhone comparison issue. It is inescapable to compare the Incredible, or really any Android phone, to the iPhone. For me the Incredible wins hands down. When others mention they're in the market for another phone I tell them that the iPhone will serve them well. This is akin to my advice with portable music players, I prefer not to go the Apple route* but I point almost everyone else in that direction if they're looking for such a device. I actually don't point people away from Android, but I recommend they go to the store and try out the different offerings.

*I have an iPod Touch because I won it, I still have my iAudio player from before that but the iPod holds 16x as much music so it was impossible to resist at the time. As I mentioned, the iPod is now a paperweight.

I'll have to see how this phone ages. I plan to write about my experiences with it and any tips, tricks, or particularly useful apps that I find. For now, let's just say I'm pretty happy being an android.

A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy

This is part of a series of reprints from my classes. Once the class is over, I will lose these if I don't save them elsewhere. I've decided to post them here as they may be of some interest. I was trying to write about my favorite piece of writing. I succeeded and I failed. I do love Shirky's piece but I've thought since that I should have selected another work.

On April 29, 2003 Clay Shirky gave the keynote at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference in Santa Clara. I wasn’t there. Fortunately, Mr. Shirky saw fit to post the text of his A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy keynote online shortly thereafter. A few years later, on the recommendation of a friend, I read this for the first time. I’ve returned to it frequently since.

The topic of Shirky’s piece is social networking. He commented on this shortly before the massive explosion of self-aware networking sites and just as blogging was becoming a mainstream concept. While the topic was hardly ahead of its time, many of the focal points were of the distant past. He saw fit to remind everyone that group dynamics and human interaction are nothing new. Neither, it would seem, are the troubles that social software operators encounter as those group dynamics are at work.

He begins by explaining the title and its origins. He explains the story of W. R. Bion, a Psychologist who published the results of a study in his paper Experiences in Groups in 1950 about a group of neurotics. It is Shirky’s opinion -- if not Bion’s, I have not read that paper -- that we can determine many behavioral patterns of a group from this study. He explains using parables of Internet communities that have long since passed, most notably “LambaMOO.” Then he explores the question of “why?” social networking is about to explode. While he continues in-depth on the subject he begins this analysis with the conclusion: because it’s time. In retrospect we can see how right he was. Still, it’s enlightening to see that moment captured and understand how everything started to come together.

Lastly, he offers advice on what not to do if you are running a community and what you may want to plan for at the onset. As someone who has participated in numerous online communities and created a few this is almost sacred text. Yet, I believe that most participants in communities could benefit from this thousand-foot view of how they operate.

I find myself drawn to this text so strongly because it all rings true to me and many of the topics are ideas that I have expressed at some time or another. Shirky brings everything together with great style, though. His words are straightforward and mostly simple. He balances heavy content with friendly presentation that does little to scare away the non-technical reader. I believe the true power of A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy is in the ability to make any member of a group more aware of the role they play. In some cases, they may not realize that they are part of that group at all. I think the most important audience for this, though, are those who seek to create, run, or oversee a group. For that audience I believe that this should be required reading.

Favorite and Daily Use Applications

This is part of a series of reprints from my classes. Once the class is over, I will lose these if I don't save them elsewhere. I've decided to post them here as they may be of some interest. This is from my Introduction to Information Systems class, which I was too lazy to test out of.

My favorite application is Google’s Picasa. Picasa is a great photo organizer that allows you to effortlessly move photos from your digital camera to the web or print. It has most of the tools needed to clean up an image, and they’re all very easy to use. Yes, I could always open Photoshop, and sometimes I do use it for a particularly troubled image, but normally that is akin to driving a finishing nail with a sledgehammer. Picasa is powerful enough that it works for more advanced users, but simple enough that even a novice can use it with relative ease. That range of usability is extremely impressive.

However, I do not have a need to use Picasa daily. My favorite daily application is Firefox. The best thing about Firefox is that it just works on almost any platform. It doesn’t matter if I’m on my work computer, my Macbook, my Windows 7 machine, or a Linux installation. All of them have Firefox and it works with very little deviation in function. This ubiquity has led me to use more in-browser applications as substitutes for desktop applications, such as GMail instead of Outlook, or Google Docs instead of Excel.

Since I use so many computers, another application I would be lost without is Dropbox. Again, it’s cross platform, and again it just works. Dropbox creates a folder in your profile that it monitors for changes. When you add a new file to that folder it uploads the file to the Dropbox server. Once the file is uploaded, your other computers will download that file immediately if they are online, or upon the next login. Also, you can login to the Dropbox website and access those files from any computer. It’s far more convenient than carrying a thumb drive. Did I mention that it's free for up to 2GB of storage? Well, it is.

Other daily applications include Microsoft’s Outlook (for work email), Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server Management Studio 2008. At home on my Mac I use Quicksilver, which is basically the best application launcher ever, and I proof most of my work in Pages.

My Computers and Mac vs PC

This is part of a series of reprints from my classes. Once the class is over, I will lose these if I don't save them elsewhere. I've decided to post them here as they may be of some interest. This is from my Introduction to Information Systems class, which I was too lazy to test out of. While working on this I compiled a list of my computers that I posted earlier.

About 50 hours a week I use my work machine, a Dell Precision M65 laptop running Windows XP Professional SP2. When I’m at home I primarily use an Apple MacBook White laptop running OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Often, I connect into my file server, which is a Dell Optiplex 170L desktop running Windows XP Professional SP3. The file server, which I have dubbed “Kowalski,” is in my office and does not have a keyboard, mouse, or monitor attached to it. Other than hosting copies of my media files, it also serves as secondary desktop and I use it as a print server.

Other machines in my house include my wife’s Lenovo S10 netbook, a Dell Dimension 4700 desktop running Windows 7, and a Compaq Armada 1500 laptop from 1996 running VectorLinux that I saved for my toddler to play with. Roughly 6 years ago I received the Compaq laptop, at the time it was my first laptop, so I worked hard to make it useable again. I’m proud to say that it works well for light internet use and simple games, it even has a working wireless NIC.

As for my thoughts on the Mac vs. PC debate. Well, I find that it’s not much of a debate. Instead you have a majority of people who simply don’t care and a tiny minority of geeks who are passionate about one system or another to a religious extent. Very little debate happens due to this, instead each side focuses on circumstantial issues, biased opinions, and stereotypical members of the other camp. While this is great for strengthening the resolve of the group, it’s terrible at exposing the true strengths and weaknesses of each operating system.
In my opinion, the market leader (not to be confused with the sales leader) changes every few years. It’s about to change back to Microsoft, after Apple has enjoyed several years of superiority with OS X. The problems with Windows over the last several years have been security, polish, and a fear of breaking backward compatibility. Apples issues have more to do with their longstanding inability to attract corporate users [builds familiarity] and software vendors [more tools to get things done] and cost of entry.

Microsoft made a great stride in addressing their issues with Vista, they came close to fixing some of the worst security problems. Unfortunately, Vista is bloated due to the backward compatibility, and it is severely lacking in polish. [For a great breakdown on the polish issue search for “Joel Spolsky Yale talk” on Google.] After some time using Windows 7 it is clear that Microsoft has further refined their security, nailed the polish, and it seems that their implementation of backwards compatibility was taken right from the OS X playbook.

Meanwhile, Apple has mainly rested on their laurels with their operating system. The jump from OS 9 to OS X was huge, and for good reason: OS 9 was terribly outdated and only the staunchest Mac users remained. Since, they’ve further polished the system, and I can say that Snow Leopard has great usability from experience. The only issue that they’ve addressed at all in the time has been entry price, you can get a computer similar to mine for about $900. I did find that there are plenty of software vendors for the Mac world, I only ever need to use a Windows desktop if a site require Internet Explorer or to verify that my Pages document is formatted correctly to display in Word, but I know that plenty of people out there require software that you cannot find for Mac. Similarly, I’ve seen almost no increase in consideration for Mac users in the corporate world. Firefox has done much on the Web to expose the need for platform independence, but little else has changed.

Last year when I bought my MacBook I did so because I was fully aware of the issues with Vista. I did not want to buy a Vista laptop. I knew the Vista Capable debacle. [Though I don’t know what happened to the lawsuit that it caused.] When my Inspiron 6000 died I knew I would have to either buy a Mac or a PC with Vista, and at the time a PC with similar specifications was no cheaper than the MacBook. Ironically, Vista’s issues and the success of netbooks have pushed the PC manufacturers to sell respectable machines for far lower prices. Right now the PC truly is the better deal.

Windows 7 will re-energize Microsoft’s slumping sales. If we can assume that the price of a new PC will remain somewhat flat, or only rise a small amount, then I think they will fly off the shelves. People will be happy with them, and the bleeding in the laptop segment will stop for Microsoft. The debate will still go on, but it’s clear that competition is a good thing.

Favorite Websites

This is the first post in a series of reprints from my classes. Once the class is over, I will lose these if I don't save them elsewhere. I've decided to post them here as they may be of some interest. This is from my Introduction to Information Systems class, which I was too lazy to test out of.

Like the vast majority of Internet users, I get my search results from Google. I avoid Live.com like the plague. Interestingly, I recently took a blind comparison between the three major English language search engines and found that I preferred Yahoo! slightly over Google. That is not enough for me to change the default search on my phone and many computers.

I use GMail for almost all of my email needs. When I was given I GMail invite long ago I admit that I was skeptical. Ultimately, I think that GMail’s concepts of email conversations and labels were revolutionary. I know they invented neither but their implementation is top notch. I can hardly wait for Google Wave.

Facebook is the unquestionable king of social networking. No site on the Internet is better at helping you find and stay loosely connected to a group of people. Their suggestion data mining is so good it’s a little scary.

Netflix is my favorite site, and my top pick for entertainment. I've been using Netflix for seven years. In that time I've seen the site grow from a simple rental-by-mail service to a community of movie fans. This site has the best selection of streaming content on the Internet, though Hulu is closing fast. I'm also a fan of Bill Scott, the director of UI engineering for the company. I've rated over 1400 movies, according to my Netflix profile, and roughly 500 of them were rented or streamed from the company.

Honorable mentions include: SlickDeals.Net for bargain hunting; Lifehacker for, well... "lifehacking;" and Wondermark.com for humor.

Viral Gaming

Listen to the criticism of social network site, especially Facebook, and you'll hear complaints about people wasting time playing games. This was something I never noticed when my only social networking experience was on MySpace. Once I joined Facebook it seemed that every other contact was playing some game or another.

It wasn't long before I was sucked into the fray. I noticed a few of my friends were playing Mafia Wars, which appeared to be an HTML-based RPG. I figured that I could probably handle something like that, click on it a time or two a day, do a few tasks, and that would be it. Of course it never works out that way.

The problem is that these games are designed to take advantage our competitive nature. I started out doing exactly as I planned, or maybe less. Then I kept losing fights, getting robbed, and was killed repeatedly. Each time something like that would happen a notification in the Facebook interface would show.

My choices were to give up or dedicate a little more effort. Not to be outdone by a little game, I decided to give it a real try. First I simply increased my efforts to improve my character. I did more tasks to gain experience and reach higher levels. I bought more property so I could have income to buy more weapons. Then I bought weapons and defensive items.

None of it worked. My character was still losing fights and getting robbed and killed.

Back to square one, I wondered what the heck I was doing wrong. There is a link in the application to a user forum. Taking a peek, I found that there were a few guides to help pick weapons and upgrade your character. Those led nowhere. Then I realized the undercurrent of the discussion: everything focused on having a huge "mafia." [read: guild, team, group, etc.]

There was my problem. Not only did I have a small mafia consisting of whichever friends were playing the game, but I had made little to no effort to expand it. When the game posted notices on my profile I quickly deleted them. I changed permissions to disallow such postings because I didn't want to advertise my involvement. This meant that I wasn't spreading the game to those around me, so I wasn't connected to as many players.

That's when it hit me: To be successful at this game you have to spread it like a virus.

That's what all those alerts are intended to do. Create more players that need more players, spreading virally by spamming via the players profile. I was a failure because, even though I was infected, I was washing my hands after each use so it wouldn't spread further.

The game seems somewhat self-aware about this. By default it posts an entry about almost everything you do, with certain achievements being highlighted by larger posts that have accompanying images. In order to "ask for help" to get your other mafia members to contribute on a task you have to post an alert to your profile. You can invite your contacts to play the game, and this is considered more important than reviewing your existing mafia to the point that you have to access your mafia via the invite screen. If you run out of invitations - I suppose their somehow arbitrarily limited - then you have to post an alert on your profile to all your contacts asking them to join. Occasionally the game asks you to send game items to your friends, and of course the entire contact list is the default option.

There are more games like this. In fact, my wife was playing another game by the same company. This one, FarmVille, uses cute images and sappy statements to garner attention. It spreads the same way. It also has limitations that impair your ability to play unless you manage to convince others to play as well. The kicker here: When my wife let the app spam her profile a few times and not enough people bit she actually asked me to start playing as a favor. I complied and a similar cycle ensued, except I had enough "neighbors" to be somewhat successful at this.

I took a different approach. I found that the forum had an "Add Me" thread for Facebook. If you post a link to your profile you'll get dozens of friend requests. This all but ruins Facebook for other uses but what the hell am I doing there anyway? I did spend some time setting permissions so that I could add all of these total-stranger-friends to a group that wouldn't be able to dig into my personal life. It's the other part of the site that's ruined, the one where I can see the broadcast messages of my real friends. C'est la vie.

What do I get from all of this? I suppose the reward for me is a few mindless, distracting clicks a day. Things that I can do to give my brain a rest from the tribulations of working in a cubicle farm. I'm not winning anything, though. More realistically, I've lost by playing.

Hulu: The Best Streaming Video Site?

Hulu is the undisputed champion of free streaming music video sites. What if we remove the word 'free'? Is it still the best?

I watch a couple shows a week on it. I watched even more before but I eventually ran through the interesting parts of their anime library. I've also tried to limit the time I spend watching TV, even if the computer is functioning as my TV.

Hulu has a great selection of content. Their strength is the same sort of content you would find on both major and cable networks. The television-sourced content is top notch, but their movie selection is mostly tired and old. As I mentioned, they have a respectable selection of anime, mostly series but a few movies as well.

The video quality is pretty great, if you have the hardware for it. Much of the content is available in two quality settings, 360p and 480p. Some is only available in the lower quality 360p. If the original was wide screen then so is the Hulu version. [At least as far as I can tell.] The 360p version is watchable and most likely to run smoothly, the high resolution content is better than standard definition television but not as good as 720p HDTV. [The numbers really give it away.]

The bigger difference between the two formats is in the audio quality. The low resolution audio is terrible, it sounds flat and tinny. It's compressed so badly that quieter sounds are sometimes lost entirely. The high resolution sound is good, if not great. The story is all about the low resolution sound which is unlistenable.

The problem here is that the only way to get the high quality sound is with the high quality video. If your hardware, particularly your processor, isn't up to the task then you're stuck either watching a smooth, full screen 360p video with atrocious sound, a choppy, full screen 480p video with great sound, or a smooth, windowed 480p video with great sound. I'll return to this, but needless to say it's not the best list of options to choose from.

Moving on to the interface, Hulu's site is fairly easy to use. I don't find their search particularly useful but most of the categories are organized well enough that it doesn't matter. The default sort of each category is popularity of video. You can also sort by air date, date added, and user rating. The same sorting options exist for shows instead of videos. I prefer to view by show, as I'm normally seeking a particular series or episode of a series. Each show has a page that lists all of the videos, with indications of when they were added and whether it's a clip or an entire episode. For my purposes most clips are rubbish, though The Office often has good clips of original "webisode" content.

The player interface is the best among the free sites. This is especially true if you make an account, where you can set your preferences to default to the higher quality video. If you don't have an account or change this setting then you will always have to click the 480p button to get to the higher quality stream. You cannot make this change while a commercial is playing.

When the player is not in full screen mode there are a few other interesting buttons on the right side of the video. If you're happy to watch the video in place you can click the "lower lights" button that overlays a translucent black layer on top of the page, but does nothing to dim the rest of your screen. If you can't watch in full screen but you want to resize the video you can click "pop out" which will put a very similar interface on screen in a window with no other content in it. Lastly, there's the full screen button.

The full screen mode is decent, but conspicuously missing is the quality setting. If you enter full screen only to realize that you forgot to go to the higher quality video you must exit full screen to change quality. The same is true if you enter full screen but find the video to be choppy and want to watch at 360p. I'm not sure why this is so but it proves to be an annoyance. You can stop and start the video with the space bar, and escape will exit full screen. I don't know if there are any other keyboard controls, but it's better than nothing.

Playback is fairly simple and intuitive. There is a progress bar at the bottom of the video that disappears after a few seconds, except in the pop out window where a small progress bar is shown the entire time. It has dots on it that show when the commercials are. You can skip ahead or go back. There's some algorithm that tries to force a commercial if you skip past one, and you only have to sit through one even if you skip past two. In the lower left is a play/pause button. That's it.

Of course, this is an ad supported service. With a few exceptions every video you watch will have commercial breaks. You can pause the commercials but you cannot fast forward. Even if the commercial doesn't load it will make you sit through a 15 second notice that you're being a bad citizen. Occasionally you will be offered an alternative commercial scheme where you can watch a two minute ad then the entire video will be commercial free. Normally I take that offer, especially if it's the cool Honda ad. I'm not a Honda guy, nor a big Danica Patrick fan, but that ad is good. In general I find the ads on Hulu to be far more tolerable than the ones on television. The breaks are shorter and the mixing isn't so ridiculously loud. They're also often real ads, not the self-serving drivel like on ABC.com. Lastly, the ads played in line with the rest of the stream, so you don't have to click to continue. Overall it's a very television-like experience, but more pleasant because the ads are fewer and higher quality.

That brings me back to the original question: Is Hulu the best? My verdict is no. Hulu's service is limited to only a few devices and their media center capabilities are wanting. The well-documented fight they've had with Boxee hasn't helped. On my Macbook running a 480p video at full screen pushes the 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor to its limits, and at that it drops frames. Flash video doesn't seem to offload much if any of the rendering to the GPU, keeping it all on the processor. This is unacceptable when you pair it with the poor audio in the lower quality stream. The commercials are tolerable, if that were the only fault I might declare Hulu the winner on the strength of their catalog.

There is a respite for Hulu, though. They recently released a media-center friendly desktop application. The content navigation in this app mirrors the website -- though it's a little clunky, especially so with a remote. The playback is better, adding some fast forwarding capabilities and showing a scene preview if you use the progress bar to skip around. The scene preview is a little slow. The real killer feature is the "medium" video quality setting. It seems to play a little smoother than the 480p stream from in-browser and the sound quality seems better than 360p.

The short take is that Hulu is a great DVR alternative with a good selection, but they take second place in the online streaming contest.

Social Networking Boundaries

Where the heck are the boundary lines, anyway?
The modern social networking site seems to be half popularity contest, half status update. Sprinkle in some idle chatter and time wasting and you have electricity. It seems that everyone has a different idea of how to use these sites and where they draw the line. At a bare minimum you're exposing parts of your life to the world, and greater parts to some loosely defined circle of friends and acquaintances.


What does friend mean to you?
I'm completely lost here. It seems as though I could consider anyone I've ever had any sort of contact with a friend. I've seen people do that on these sites. Even more abstracted are when your friends are really someone you don't know, you're just a fan.


I normally view friends as people that I have a legitimate connection to. That may mean that I only have conversations with them on a message board or that I've known them all my life. To qualify it has to be a situation where I actually communicate directly with the person at some point. Otherwise how could I ever consider that person a friend?

That's limiting, though. It omits those loose acquaintances whom I may want to become friends with. If I'm stingy with that label I will forever have a small circle of friends. Maybe they'll be closer to me but they will be far fewer. Perhaps I might miss out on a great friendship because of this. Could it be that I'm unwilling to open up?

On the other hand, I think it's odd to apply that label too loosely. If everyone is your friend, do your real friends know who they are? Do you know who they are? I may be missing something, but I don't think that even the best social networking software can enable someone to truly maintain hundreds of friendships.


Who do you want to truly connect with?
If you look at your friends list, how many people there would you talk to every day? How much of what you put in your profile is really for their consumption alone? What are the other people doing there and do you ever think of their presence?

I wonder about all of this because of the odd mix of events that occur on social networking sites. Many of them act as a sort of microblog with status updates serving as quick publications. They're used in odd ways, though. Often the microblog includes a chat spin off, or it's actually directed at a certain person or people. After all these years have we come back around to in-browser public chat with a slightly modified format?

Beyond that, I feel like a voyeur watching these status updates. Even though I've limited my friends list in ways, I still find myself questioning whether I would see these things in any other medium. I'm not sure if I want to know them, and I wonder if the person on the other end truly wanted me to know it or if they've just desensitized themselves to the lack of privacy.

My problem here is that I don't know whether these things were intended for me. I sometimes feel compelled to comment or act on information but don't because I wonder if I'm crossing some fuzzy border.

Social networking has a permissive dimension that is above one, but far shy of two. That is to say that it is like a fractal dimension. It is clearly not one dimensional, or else we could see the line and we would know when we cross it. It is not two dimensional either, because there is no clear line for where others stand and the other axis is not well defined. Instead, like the fractal, as you examine each line you will see never ending complexity comprised of the same questions. I suppose it boils down to this: Social networking boundaries are irrational.

Cancelling Cable Update

Last time I wrote about canceling my cable service. Since then, I tried an antenna and I received my new VOIP package. I also investigated a little bit and found that I may be able to significantly save on my cable bill without completely canceling television service.

First, the VOIP. I haven't tried the new service, but I am impressed that it arrived so quickly. They are already processing the number port and they say it should happen this Friday.

Next is my disappointment with the first antenna experiment. I walked into the local Circuit City and bought an RCA ANT146. I was able to pick up two PBS channels in English, one of them HD, and around nine foreign language channels in standard and high definition. The major networks from New York were mostly static, and high def. was out of the question. I'm thinking of buying a Winegard SS-3000, which is highly rated on Amazon and seems to be made for the sort of situation I have. (My windows face away from the direction of the signal origin.)

Finally, I learned that the cable company still has a basic cable package for a mere $12 per month. That's $12 more than I want to give to the cable company, but it may be worth it to cover sports, news, and prime time. According to the cable company I need a cable box to receive the HD version of the broadcast networks, but I was able to pick up those channels without the box on my HDTV when I tested last night. If I have to settle for this package then I will be eating a quarter of my entertainment budget, but it may be better than antenna frustration and it's still almost $90 cheaper than the package I have now.

Canceling Cable

The special package price on my cable service expired in November. Suddenly I'm faced with a $165 per month cable bill. That includes Internet and phone service, but it's still a big bill for entertainment and communication. Especially when you consider that I'm also paying around $100 for a few cell phones and $15 for NetFlix.

My first order of business is to cancel the phone service they offer. After the introductory period it now costs $35 per month. I only take a very few inbound calls using that phone. I'm going to go with BroadVoice's In State Unlimited plan, which is ~$15 per month after fees and taxes.

Next up is the television service. This one is interesting. I like TV, and I think it is possible to consume it without becoming a zombie. It's just not worth the $100 per month that I'm paying for basic ($55 or so), digit/HD ($10), and two DVRs ($35). Don't get me wrong, I think I have a great setup and as far as cable goes I think Cablevision does pretty well. It's just that I don't want to pay $1200 a year to watch it, not anymore at least.

As for the Internet service, I will keep it. It's $45 per month if you have their cable service, and it will be $50 per month when I get rid of it. Cablevision's Internet service is very good, and FiOS isn't available in my area so there is no competition for it here. I'll need it for the VOIP service anyway.

In case you've been keeping a tally, $35+$100+$45 != $165. I know. I get a whopping $15 discount for having all three services. Good thing, because $180 per month would be intolerable. Glad I don't have HBO.

Next up, I have to figure out what to do instead. I don't want to miss out on sports and I do enjoy a few sitcoms. My son watches a few cartoons, most of which we record on the DVR so he can watch them according to his schedule. My wife occasionally watches the news and the weather channel. Otherwise, our television viewership consists of random stints, almost entirely by me. I still want to have access to some of that, and I've come up with a bit of a plan.

I can sum it up in three words: Antenna, Netflix, Hulu. There are other aspects to this but those are my main weapons. Other factors include purchased DVDs, video games, and probably turning the TV off.

Antenna - I have to purchase an antenna for my HDTV. I've yet to do this, and it may be the most crucial element here. If the antenna doesn't work well then I will miss out on sports, something I really enjoy watching. Even with the antenna I will be forgoing ESPN, I'd rather not lose everything else. The antenna will also provide access to local news and primetime television.

Of course, I haven't purchased an antenna yet. I don't know how well it will work. I'll have to mess with it and I may have to make multiple purchases before I'm satisfied. That's fine, because I live in a major television market so I'm confident I will be able to find something that works.

Netflix - I already have Netflix, and most of the movies I watch are Netflix rentals. I'm a fan of the service. Right now I have the two out unlimited service. Under my new strategy I will return to at least the three out unlimited plan, but I may increase that. I plan to try to take advantage of their streaming content, a library that seems to grow constantly. It will be a great way to spend a boring night if I don't have a movie at home or I'm not in the mood to watch any that I have. This leads me to the third part of my plan...

Hulu - Have you tried this service yet? They offer DVD quality streaming content and they have a wide variety ranging from obscure crap to some of the most popular shows on TV. Hulu has commercials, but they seem to have less than TV and so far they aren't mixed such that they make you pee your pants when they come on. Obviously this isn't the only service to offer streaming video, but right now they're the best option to directly replace television viewing. Veoh, Netflix, and in some cases the show's website offer similar streaming content. Another option is iTunes, where I may be able to purchase episodes of shows. So far there are no current episodes of any show I like available there, but who knows what the future might bring.

There you have it, my three pronged attack at the rising cable bill. I anticipate that this will save me at least $100 per month. I will save part of that money toward an entertainment budget that I will use to buy electronics and content. I hope to buy or build a media center PC sometime later this year so that I can record off air content and watch digital content on my TV.

Will this be as convenient as cable? Of course not. There is a reason why cable costs money and people pay, because it's easier than doing something like this. I won't get as much content, either. With my current package I get around 300 channels. Many of them broadcast 24 hours a day. Having a DVR attached to this opens the door to countless hours of content, more than I can consume. It's like the Golden Corral of entertainment.

Instead, I will use my entertainment budget to target my viewership. I will focus on things that I am more likely to enjoy, instead of whatever the networks decide to put in my viewing window. It will take more work to find these things, and sometimes I will have to pay for them, but I will be saving far too much to mind. Besides, I'm sure a little less consumption is a good thing.

The Hungry Truth

I'm going to be contributing to a new blog about cooking called The Hungry Truth. I'm not sure how much I will contribute, but it should be interesting. There are some really talented people working on this project and I'm excited for it.

Finally Making a Move from Microsoft

Years ago I attempted to shift my home from Windows to Linux (GNU/Linux with KDE, GNOME, and a few other window managers, for the sticklers out there). It was a terrific success and then a huge failure. For around six months Windows was almost never used at home. Then my wife started school and a week into that it wasn't worth the struggle to get things to work with her school.

Her school was generally uncaring about what she did or didn't have available to her, for them she had to have a Windows OS and Microsoft Office. They wouldn't accept PDFs, her assignments involved creating documents that use features RTF doesn't support, and at the time OpenOffice.org still had issues saving Word documents. So, even though I managed to trick the school's website into unblocking Konquerer, she eventually had to use Windows.

Windows is a drug. All it takes is one use and you're hooked. Ignore the side effects, the constantly degrading performance, the nearly mandatory reinstall every few years, the need for all sorts of protective [and resource draining] software, it's still easier than fighting the tide. Roll with it, and you become addicted to the ease of communicating with others who are hopelessly addicted to Microsoft's proprietary formats. You can move on with your life and forget about the computer.

Along came Vista, and things started to change. The staunchest Microsoft supporters can only give a meek yelp of defense for Vista. It is becoming a Windows Me 2, and everyone is avoiding it. As more people move to that OS I hear more chatter about this or that device becoming a useless brick. Now that you must jump through hoops to buy a new system with XP, more people are becoming sympathetic with those who switch from Microsoft.

The resurgence of Apple is the tipping point. Apple is becoming less of a niche market every day. It helps that Apple kept their price points up so Macintosh owners are now associated with money. America respects money, so America has started to respect Apple again. With respect for Apple comes the understanding that interoperability [the real definition, not Microsoft's distortion] is important.

To give due respect, FireFox plays a big part in this as well. FireFox is largely responsible for the browser market opening up again. Now that Internet Explorer is relegated to a mere two thirds of the market fewer businesses are ignoring the other browsers. This means there is far less of a chance that a website will required IE for basic use. Although I still encounter a lot of small organizations who are behind the times and want IE for important features to work, sometimes inexcusable features like rendering or navigation. It is far better than it was, which is important because the World Wide Web becomes more useful every day.

When a shock to my Inspiron notebook bricked it this weekend I had a choice. I could continue with my addiction to Microsoft, or I could pay a little more and make a big step toward freedom. I took the step and I bought a MacBook.

A Quick BlackBerry Post-Mortem

I recently carried and returned a BlackBerry 8820 for my job. I did this on a temporary basis as a stipulation of my vacation, since not enough notice was given I had to be on-call for at least two of the five days. My experience overall was a positive one, I was able to be responsive and somewhat productive what out of the office.

I never finished this one. Long story short, I found myself checking my mail too often. I felt slightly leashed to work. The 8820 was too big for my liking, and the keys too small. Yet, through all that I was able to be away from work without worrying too much that I'd miss out on things. I could communicate still, and I was able to make a big contribution with only a small amount of my day.

I decided not to press for a BB through work, but to get one for personal use. Last weekend I did just that. I chose the Pearl because it's more phone-like yet it has larger buttons that are easier for me to use. I'm trying to work something out where I can get my work email on this phone without the attached expectations of having a work BB. That way I can use my free time to help my productivity without my boss (or her boss, more importantly) feeling that they command 24 hours per day of my time. We'll see how that goes.

DVR is a Game Changer, Someone Tell the Networks

When I started writing this I planned to write three or four consecutive posts about TV. I had a lot of thoughts about how TV could be better for DVRs, and I like to think that DVRs could be better for TV...

First, the problem: When a sports broadcast does not end on time the broadcaster often shifts the start time of later programs so they can be displayed in their entirety. This wreaks havoc for the DVR user, whose device relies upon the program scheduling to know when to run. Extra innings in a Sunday afternoon baseball game can cause prime time to shift, sometimes by over an hour.

I think that the networks are foolish to ignore the DVR market. I know they really dislike DVRs because they embody a change in demographics that scares advertisers. I think that this data can easily be tracked and the ad revenue will not cease for quite some time. In fact, if they work with DVR providers they may be able to collect more accurate information on the subject. I think that time shifting, particularly with the ease that a DVR offers, opens up the viewership to new demographics while the existing demographic stays the same. It also could change the value of off-peak time. Imagine running new content at 3 a.m. and telling viewers to set their Tivo, but I digress.

The important part here is to make sure that the intended viewer sees the show they want to watch. Even those who don't have a DVR may have time constraints that prevent them from watching the 9 o'clock time slot. There are more potential solutions when you consider the DVR, but even the average viewer could benefit from a few changes.

Give the event some insulation. Put a show after the event that can easily be canceled if the event goes into overtime.

Why Doesn't the Theater Industry Do Something?

Here's a brief diagnosis of what's wrong with the theater industry. I was going to suggest that they do more dinner theaters and IMAX screens, and I still think that's the answer. Make a movie ticket significantly more expensive and increase your service level. That will make movie goers feel special and they'll respect the entire experience more. One thing is for certain, something has to change if this industry doesn't want to join the drive-in...

After much ado, I recently purchased my first HDTV. I've had a surround sound system for quite a while. I also have a Netflix membership and a very comfortable couch. This leads me to the question:

Why should I ever go to the theater again?

I'll further qualify this by stating that I am nearly 30, so I'm mature enough to not bite on advertising hype. I've learned the people and conversations that I need to ignore so that the plot is not spoiled for me. There are other factors to help solidify the decision that I really don't want to go to the theater anymore, but I won't bore you with them.

Back to the question, I think that people need a compelling reason to go to theaters. I'm going to try to find ways that the industry could answer this question, but in reality the industry should be attempting to answer it themselves. Without an answer, I believe that somewhere around three of every four theater goers who purchases an HDTV will abandon the theaters and never look back.

The Simple Answer

The simple answer, and the one that theater owners have stuck to, is that they must keep DVD release dates pushed back as far as possible. They must cling to the old system where movies come out in theaters and then are released on consumer media some arbitrary time span later. This gives the theaters a temporary monopoly that adds value to their ticket sales.

This is the same flawed logic that is hurting the entertainment system everywhere. They are simply so afraid of change that they will spend every dime they can to make things stay the same, instead of adapting. They're ignoring what their consumers want. The consumer wants to either stay at home or have a better experience at the theater. They don't want to go to the theater to spend $50 for sticky seats and obnoxious company. (I can hardly remember the last time a movie at the theater wasn't marred by some selfishly loud commenter or teen who can't hang up their cell phone.) People will not continue to honor the monopoly of the theaters if the entire experience is terrible, the rest of the industry will not continue to ignore this either.

If the industry and the consumers abandon the theaters, who is left? No one. The theaters will fold at that point. America will then be left with an immense collection of empty big box multiplexes and a mere memory of when it was worthwhile to go out and see a movie.

Basically, while the limited monopoly answer is still part of the equation, it's not a good answer. Theaters can not afford to rely on this. The supplier is threatening to take it away and the consumer is demanding it go.

It's an indictment against the theater experience. The only way to fix this is to fix the experience. The answer lies in asking more questions. Questions like, "How can the experience be fixed?"