email me: chris@chris-karath.com
April 2010
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Above is a 23 minute video of last weekend's trip to C2E2. First half is C2E2, Second half is Chicago and Millennium Park. Most of the Still pictures were taken by Jennifer: C2E2, Millenium Park and Downtown Chicago A few were taken by me, as was all but one of the videos.
I want to hear your Facebook is starting to annoy me.
I never really wanted to be on Facebook, it was always too AOL feeling to me. I always kept my profile pretty minimally filled out. I've never got into the apps, and frankly before I hooked my Twitter account to Facebook, I really never made any posts to it either. But Facebook is where other people I do want to follow have chosen to be, so I ended up on there.
Until I integrated Twitter to FB, I never posted and my Likes section on FB has always told people to read this blog, if they want to know what I like. So I've never really been active on the service. But Facebook being the juggernaut that it is, has always been a good place to share links back to my blog, which has always been my preferred place to collect and share info about me.
Facebook seems to have changed it's mission drastically in 2010. It's not even maintaining a pretense about people keeping connected to people anymore. It's now all about keeping connected and delivering structured data to corps. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Generally speaking, I've been pretty open with my online profiles, I've never really cared to much if they got scraped, because, well, scraping most sites doesn't provide a whole lot of useful structured data. And corps really don't have the time to take unstructured data and compile it into structured data on an individual level. Corps have no interest at all in a typical individual, Corps are interested in Mass. It's Superman III and Office Space, take a penny or two from thousands or millions of people and you can make some money, but you generally can't take enough from one person (barring the purchase of a house, or car or a few other large purchases, to make targeting individuals that profitable.)
Facebook is taking things to another level. They are allowing corps to take data about my friends and associate it with me (and worse, thru my friends-- take my data directly). So even if I choose to share very little structured data about myself, my FB "friends" are probably not that savy, and you can, statistically speaking, learn a lot about a person from the company a person keeps.
You're likely to have similar interests, financial backgrounds, religious and political beliefs as your friends, or at least in aggregate a good database will be able to say: this person based on their friends is 75% likely to be a Democrat who likes iPhones, etc.
Sure that's not 100%, but for a Corp, 75% may be good enough to warrant targeting an ad to you, or maybe accepting or denying your participation in some venture.
Facebook's present course is likely to make your Friends list equivalent to a Credit Score. And that's a very interesting road to travel down. (A road that South Park recently lampooned on a personal level-- without seemingly the foresight to extend it to the corporate realm.)
I have a pretty modest amount of Facebook friends. A grand total of 30. I don't accept a lot of miscellaneous friend requests. I've even been known to deny family requests as odd as that seems. Of that 30, I just counted about 16 people that I actually keep up with and see regular posts from on Facebook. Of those 16, maybe there are 8 or so that Facebook is my primary way of keeping up with them (as many of the others are on Twitter or have blogs or gasp-- I regularly talk to in Real Life.)
So Facebook's recent privacy changes has me thinking, are those 8 to 16 worth it? And if I do shutdown and or minimize my account does it matter? Can you really opt out of this type of online mentality and forthcoming system? Will this stuff just follow to Twitter and Gmail etc, soon enough?
That's my rant for now.
Back
It's Monday. I had last week off. Actually I stayed too connected to email at work for most of the week.
Adam and Comfort (The Uniques) stayed the night last Wednesday. That was alot of fun. Saturday and Sunday Jenn and I were in Chicago for C2E2 a comic convention at the McCormick center and just as a getaway in general. Jenn has a nice write up on Saturday on her blog. (One for Sunday is coming soon, I'd imagine) Sunday was alot of fun just exploring Chicago and Millenium Park, the bean etc. I'll be putting up some pictures and videos some time later this week.
Now back to the craziness of work. The Chicago break was nice, unlike the rest of the week, it really wasn't until the weekend hit and the work emails stopped that I really tuned out fully.
It's good to unplug from all the unnecessary work politics.
Of course, I'm firmly back into it today.
Happy Monday.
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
This sucks. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Precentralnet/~3/A1UY1rASO7w/bloomberg-palm-putting-itself-sale While we can?t say we?re completely surprised, we are still surprised. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has long advocated that Palm?s plan is to go it alone and that they had a path to return to profitability, but Bloomberg is now reporting Palm is putting itself up for sale. According to ?three people familiar with the situation,? Palm is working with Goldman Sachs and Qatalyst Partner [/end quote]
Best bet, click the link at the top of this article. No link at top? then try this link
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
The iPad Future
The iPad is a mini TV to use while you're watching TV. If it alarms you that in a few years everyone will be watching TV on a small screen while they watch TV on a big screen, I'm sorry. That is the way things will be. But don't blame the iPad. Without it the same thing would be happening — is happening — on smartphones and laptops.Article: Why the iPad won't destroy creativity
- Last Sunday 3/28/10 Jenn and I went to the John Ball Zoo. It was actually my first time there. It's a very nice park, even though at this time of year it wasn't fully operational. Below is a 20 minute video tour through the zoo.
All video was shot on my iPod Nano, so no zooming unfortunately. Clips were edited together essentially in the order and length they were taken in, except for a few I cut down to get rid of a thumb over the camera here and there. For it's size, the iPod Nano is a great little video camera.
- I went to Best Buy today on iPad launch day and played with one of the floor models. It's a very nice device. Nice responsive screen, well balanced in the hand. Clean, well thought out software blended seamlessly with quality hardware. Apple does nice stuff. The iPad is snappy too. Even with it's single tasking, one application at a time model of use, jumping into and out of apps was fluid and not as much a hassle as I would have thought. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with the device in the store. Apple will sell a bunch of these too.
After a little more shopping Jenn and I came home, and with the rain starting to fall outside, we took a nap. Jenn is a little bit more of a power napper than I and I woke up earlier than she did. But the rain outside was relaxing and I decided to reach for my Palm Pre and start to surf some Google Reader items.
Laying there surfing on my phone, I realized, the iPad that I had held earlier in the store would not replace this use case for me. The Pre can be held with one hand, and with the use of just one thumb, I could flick to the next article, star favorites to read later, email others, and even open some to the actual web page in the Pre's Webkit based browser (the same foundation that underpins Safari) and look at everything except Flash video. (and Flash is coming soon to the Pre)
The iPad sort of requires one to sit up and use both hands, and I do not see myself using it laying in bed on those days where I wake up too early to get up.
The iPad is not huge, but it's not pocketable either. I don't carry a manbag of any type (outside of to and from work) so that is going to limit my use of an iPad device after work.
That leaves two locations I can think of where I'd regularly use this device. Work and at home on the couch.
I have the first Asus Eee PC 7” Netbook, the one that started the whole netbook segment. It's still going strong. Firefox browser gives me full access to the net. And Open Source Apps like Open Office, Gimp, Scribus, and Inkscape make it a very powerful productivity device. The built-in Webcam makes it great for Skype and the Solid State Harddrive keeps it almost completely silent. Plus it has a keyboard, a feature I'm using right now to type this blog from the couch while Jenn plays Dragon Age beside me on the living room TV.
The iPad has a nice onscreen keyboard. In the store I was surprised at how well it worked holding it a hand on each side and typing quickly with both thumbs. But even after a few minutes the weight of the device was evident and quick thumbtyping is no match for even the Eee PC's ¾ sized keyboard. So it's hard for me to imagine the iPad fully replacing my netbook when I want to work on a blog post or type up some notes in a meeting at work.
Mind you, I really want to like the iPad, I want to justify going right back out to that Best Buy and dropping the coin to get one, but laying in bed today with the rain falling and my Pre in hand thinking about it, I could really only come up with two use cases where It would really beat my phone and netbook combo that I already have. Those two uses would be: Surfing the net specifically from the couch. And reading comic books (and I suppose if they ever dropped ebooks down to a more reasonable price:ebooks as well)
I can really see that the iPad would be a fantastic device to surf the net on the couch. And just flipping thru the photo application in the store-- you really need to flip through the photo application in the store, the iPad would be a wonderful addition to any coffee table to share photos with guests, provided of course that I actually ever had guests over that hadn't already seen all my photos on my blog or Flickr-- but I digress; flipping thru the Photo App, I can see how nice it would be to read comics on this screen. The images are crisp, and flipping between pages is fluid and fun. and pinching to zoom on a screen that size is a real delight.
So those are the two uses I came up with after having played with the device and taken my nap and spent some quiet time musing on the subject: Couch Surfing and Comic Reading. Not exactly quite worth $500, for me anyway.
Now I'm not typical. I already have a highend Smartphone and a capable netbook. My Living room TV has a Mac Mini hooked to it that can already play back Youtube and video from the web. Thanks to Jenn's ove of this generation of console games, we are fully outfited for gaming too. For anyone who doesn't already have that kindof technological ecosystem in place, the iPad could be a great shortcut to much of that functionality. And if you're a more normal technologically equipted person, not fully set-up in that way and you think the iPad would be great for you, go for it. It's a great device, and Apple has a great record of supporting their hardware, so you'll likely get years of use out of your iPad and really enjoy it, and in one fell swoop, you'll sort of equal in one device what I'm doing with a half dozen or so.
For me though, I'll probably wait awhile and see if Asus or Google come up with a nice Linux/Android/or chrome capable tablet maybe for half the price that will enhance my couch surfing and comic reading. It seems likely they will, and I can probably wait 6 or 7 months until they do. Summer is coming up afterall, and when this spring rain settles down, I really should get off my couch and enjoy some outdoors. I hear the cool breezes are touch sensetive and the vibrant colors of the flowers coming soon can't be beat, even by Apple's beautiful screen.
The Apple iPad. The name is a killing word ? more than a product ? it?s a statement, an idea, and potentially a prime mover in the world of consumer electronics. Before iPad it was called the Apple Tablet, the Slate, Canvas, and a handful of other guesses ? but what was little more than rumor and speculation for nearly ten years is now very much a reality. Announced on January 27th to a middling response, Apple has been readying itself for what could be the most significant product launch in its history; [/end quote]
Best bet, click the link at the top of this article. No link at top? then try this link
Two interesting Articles.
Why I won't Buy an iPad (And think You Shouldn't, Either)
Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing on the iPad.
I agree with most of his points. The only real issue I see, is if you want to play in this space, NOW, iPad is you're only choice, unless you are resourceful enough to completely roll your own solution, or unless you want to pay twice as much for something no where nearly as elegantly designed.
One good quote in regards to the web from the article that applies to more than just the iPad:
The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of "content" isn't just that they can get it for free, though: it's that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed. Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert. We'll miss your fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the Web so little that we'll hardly notice it, and we'll have no trouble finding material to fill the void.That's why you can't charge. There's just too much free stuff out there now that you can't lock down. And it's "good enough".
The Collapse of Complex Business Models
A good article that looks at why change can't come from inside the institutions that the change disrupts. Clay Shirky also trots out a Rupert analogy in his article on complexity:
To pick a couple of examples more or less at random, last year Barry Diller of IAC said, of content available on the web, “It is not free, and is not going to be,” Steve Brill of Journalism Online said that users “just need to get back into the habit of doing so [paying for content] online”, and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp said “Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use.”There was also this very interesting line:Diller, Brill, and Murdoch seem be stating a simple fact—we will have to pay them—but this fact is not in fact a fact. Instead, it is a choice, one its proponents often decline to spell out in full, because, spelled out in full, it would read something like this:
“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”
Bureaucracies temporarily reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it’s easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.
The above is a very interesting point of order.
