LIVEdigitally

Monthly Archives: March 2008

Gotta Love Bloggers Blogging About Bloggers Blogging!

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Dave Winer believes the end is near for blogging as we know it (or knew it?  sorry if I’ve misinterpreted, Dave), and Mark Evans feels there isn’t much original thought out there. These are two people I know, like, and respect, and two people I’m in complete disagreement with.  First of all, there’s tons of good, nay, great blogging out there.  A small fraction of it makes it to TechMeme. By the way, I’d recommend reading Ed Bott’s thoughts on the blogosphere, which seems to have kicked this whole thread off (good on ya, Ed!).

If I can make the analogy, think of the movie industry.  There’s a lot of creative, original movies being made every year.  Most of them don’t air at the uberplex, and the typical Blockbuster employee won’t recommend them to you.  Sometimes they “bubble up” like Little Miss Sunshine did last year (overrated by the way, but that’s not the point), or Sideways a few years back.  But if you read the mainstream reviews and movie sites, you have to deal with the Stiller-Wilson-Vaughn Theory (a modernization of the classic Caine-Hackman Theory).

TechMeme tracks “the conversation” and therefore is the worst agent possible for finding distinct, outlying content.  This isn’t saying TechMeme is bad, it’s not, it’s very good at what it does.  But now we are seeing a certain lament for the so-called 250, who appear to blog about an insular set of topics.  Well, let’s face it, a certain percentage of the incentive to blog is ego-driven, and it ranges from individual to individual.  The more one wants power or fame, the more one is likely to want to be found on TechMeme.  The more one wants to express individual, distinct thought, the less likely TechMeme acts as a motivator.  Ask Robin Williams why he did Good Will Hunting, my hunch is it’ll help clarify things.

Several months ago I made the decision to rarely get involved with TechMeme topics (which this post is most clearly defying, ain’t it ironic?).  It’s my feeling that there are enough other intelligent people out there getting into those “conversations” but the truth is, I started getting the feeling that they weren’t really conversations, they were more like discordant shouting matches (albeit occasionally polite ones).  I feel it’s unlikely that I have many readers (other than my family) who follow my blog but are completely in the dark on these other “popular” topics.  But more importantly, I just felt I wasn’t really blogging about things that inspired me as much as others.

I may not be in the 250.  I may not have hundreds of thousands of readers subscribing to my feed.  I don’t really know anymore, since I turned off all stats anyway.   Want to find some different voices?  Look for the bloggers who rarely make TechMeme, and subscribe to them, and take the time to read them regularly (here’s four to get you started:  Frank Piller, Shawn Morton, Umair Haque, Tom Evslin – no offense to my other friends, I just wanted to pick some that don’t fall into the mainstream as often!) .  Unsubscribe from “TechMeme Regulars” since it’s pretty likely you don’t need to read all their posts anyway.  In other words, if you really want to find the indie films, you’re going to have to stop renting from Blockbuster.

Geeks, please go do some more good!

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Last December we organized our first “Geeks Doing Good” event at the SF Food Bank.  We had a good time, and more importantly, did a lot of good (especially by inspiring others, such as Robert Scoble). We’ve since set up a Facebook group and my colleague Andrew Kippen has done a phenomenal job pulling together more activities and volunteers.

Not exactly sure why, but compared to things like FriendFeed we aren’t getting nearly the responsiveness we’d originally anticipated.  That said, the word did make it around the world to Cameron Reilly in Australia, who did a 30 minute podcast with me a few weeks ago.  I think a lot of people have a lot of preconceived notions about volunteering.  It certainly doesn’t seem “sexy” or “cool” to spend the day working in the SF Food Bank.  It’s true, it isn’t really “cool” but a quick recollection of the “cool kids” I knew back in high school places them today working at the local TJ Maxx and/or something that involves using packing tape many hours per day (not that there’s anything wrong with either job – but they aren’t quite the expectations those kids probably had back in the day when they were being very cool), so I’m all good with not being cool.

Which brings us back to this weekend.  Andrew & co have organized two more shifts at the Food Bank (morning and afternoon).  I personally won’t be able to join this time around, but maybe I can get one LIVEdigitally reader per shift to sign up and volunteer on my behalf?  I know there’s lots of other things you can do this weekend but I will promise you this – none of them are quite as rewarding.  Knowing you’ve contributed to making the world a better place feels great (yes, even better than calling in a helicopter in COD4!).

Prelim Vaio Update: Maybe Not So Sucky???

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When Ed Bott first told me he wanted to get a look (so to speak) under the Sony Vaio’s hood, I have to admit, I sorta snickered. Not because I didn’t think it would be interesting, but because I was pretty sure the situation was so hopeless. He’s had a few days with it now and it turns out he’s making some impressive progress. So impressive that I might not be able to write snarky headlines like this one anymore! Highlights:

  • Before shipping the machine off to me, Jeremy noted that he had wiped out Vista and installed Windows XP. Ironically, the machine with XP installed was practically unusable. (jt: yes, this I can attest to!)
  • With a clean install of Vista Business and enough custom drivers to enable all installed hardware devices, the system was a rocket. Boot time to the logon screen was 33 seconds. (jt: zomg!)
  • With that hardware and a clean copy of Vista, there’s no slowdown to be noted. (jt: wow!)

Ed will go into the nitty gritty of how he waded through the Sony murk and mire to accomplish this in a future post, but I do recommend reading his report so far. Especially the part where he’ll be talking to Sony reps, I’m very curious about their feedback.

Since I’ve never really talked about it, I wanted to clear up one potential misconception of “me vs Sony”. As I blogged about back in 2006, I loved my last Vaio. I told *the world* about my Vaio (literally, as that was the year I notched about 180K miles). I raved and raved. When someone wanted a reco, I said “buy-0 a Vaio” (not really, I’m not quite that corny). So when mine got stolen and I replaced it with the newer model it was as a previously very satisfied customer.

When you go from really loving something to finding its replacement utterly terrible (much like Crissy on Three’s Company), there’s a true feeling of betrayal. I am like a woman scorned, and plan to tell everyone in the world as such until I feel it’s been made right. Ed has very generously offered his time to do this “Vaio Speedup Challenge”, but frankly I feel that Sony “owes” me. Is that a fair feeling, probably not. I feel much of the same angst toward Microsoft right now, as a 15-year Windows veteran I am not happy with the fact that I felt I had no choice but to go Mac. It’s all a little irrational, but spending 8-16 hours a day with a computer over my career pretty much implies I’ve spent more waking hours with Windows than I have with my wife so far! That’s quite a relationship to burn.

Back to the topic at hand. I am very excited to see the new & improved Vaio. The Dell I’ve been checking out has performed very well (we had a minor snafu with a mouse we hooked up, but it turns out it was a negligible error that was fixable in minutes), and it’s refreshing to see a Vista experience that is leaps and bounds above what I’ve experienced so far. And huge thanks to Ed for taking the time to do this!!!

MacBooks are both trendy and good

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My friend Mark Evans wrote a blog post today entitled “Are MacBooks Just Trendy?” and I thought I’d write a completely unwarranted perspective myself. In his article, Mark ponders the value of the budget laptop buyer, who can pick up a lower-end Windows laptop for ~$500. He continues with…

Before the MacNation starts clamoring about how Macs are more stable, elegant, better designed, etc., the question that should be asked is whether the “regular” computer user needs a Mac to do what they need to do (browsing, e-mail, writing documents). In other words, can you avoid buying a Mac, and still have a satisfying computer experience?

The answer, I think, “Yes”.

First and foremost, while I did convert to the Mac last year (because the Sony Vaio VGN-SZ460 is such a wretched use of silicon it made the Foleo look like a good idea), I don’t consider myself a fanboy just yet (I even chastised them during CES a few months back). That said, however, considering the state of Windows Vista, I simply cannot endorse ANYONE buying a new machine that doesn’t run either XP or OS X.

The real question to me is what are you getting for your money, and I’m going to use the one example I have the most hands-on experience with: my mother. She bought a lower-end Dell last spring for ~1000, it has all the right speeds & feeds (dual core, 1GB RAM, DVD burner, etc). She hates it (possibly more than me and my Vaio!) because everything is slow, she gets alert messages all the time which make no sense to her, and even after I installed Picasa she has trouble managing the photos on her computer.

Again, I’m going to blame this on Vista, not Dell per se, but it doesn’t matter. My dad has a year old PC, his Logitech webcam crashes every third or so time he uses it. My mother-in-law just got a brand new budget PC, her Internet connection is no longer reliable. Even the Dell I was sent by Ed Bott as an example of a “good” Vista installation is unable to recognize two generic USB mice I tried (although it did boot in about 40 seconds, which was very impressive).

Is the MacBook trouble free? Absolutely not. For example, iMovie ’08 crashes on me everytime I run it unless I manually remove files from my preferences folder – a task my parents would be completely unable to do on a regular basis. MacOffice is still a far cry from Office XP/2003 (I’ll spare the discussion of Office Vista/2008). It isn’t perfect by a long shot.

But, it is reliable, and if you use OS X the way it wants to be used (because the other way around is a no-no), the MacBook is the best bargain computer on the market. For $1000 you get the same specs as a mid-range Windows laptop, except you get a computer than runs better and faster, all the time. It even tends to run Windows about as well as any Dell does, just in case you need to. The extra $500 is well worth it in the long run.

And as to the question of “is it trendy?” and the obvious “yes” response, there’s a reason for it. Look around Silicon Valley and many of the thought leaders you see have switched to a Mac. And they are happy they did. Further, there’s unquestionably a “trickle down” theory of high tech. As fashion starts in New York and moves West, technology starts in San Francisco and moves East.

The only other “trendy” PC I can think of is the eeePC. Oh, wait, and those red Dells. Because there’s nothing I want more than a bright fire engine red laptop sitting demurely on my desk. The real “question” in my eyes is this: what can Microsoft and the PC manufacturing industry do collectively to make a trendy Windows-based computer?

Does anyone have an answer? Bueller?

From Geocities to FriendFeeds: the (de?)evolution of self-expression and stalking on the Internet

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Ten years ago individuals seeking a form of online self-expression typically ended up at Geocities (or a similar site) and built a “home page”. It was typically gaudy, unreadable, and used some combination of the flash and marquee tag. Many of them linked to a Turkish(?) guy named Mahir. The Home Page fad went on through the 90s, then went fairly underground. Traffic remained high, but universally it seemed clear that home pages were (1) ugly, (2) boring, and (3) a frivolity at best.

But just as the Wii revived a dormant Nintendo, the 2000s rolled around and blogging “appeared” (and I know there are folks such as Dave Winer who’ve been blogging longer than that, but the main trend emerged a few years ago). WordPress (my blogging technology of choice – open source, extensible, free – what’s not to like?) has dropped the barrier to entry so low that I can start a blog in minutes and yet not have to sacrifice any form or function. Blogging got so big and exciting that Engadget got acquired by AOL, blogging networks such as b5media emerged, and blog tracking from startups like Technorati spread to the giant Google.

At the same time as “us older folks” got really into and excited about blogging, another world was experiencing unbelievable growth: social networks. Popularized by Friendster, then capitalized upon by MySpace and now Facebook (and even good ol bebo), there are hundreds of millions of users of social networks today. In a Geocitiesesque fashion, people again are flocking to the opportunity to create a distinct slice of themselves on the Internet, only this time not only are they creating ugly annoying pages, they are also finding new ways of embarrassing themselves long into the future.

But neither blogging nor social networking was really “enough” to last. 2007 saw massive changes in behaviors in both arenas. As blogging got bigger, our focus drifted. Where we used to read individual blogs to read individuals’ opinions, a massive shift to all-encompassing feed readers occurred. It’s become less about the ‘whose opinion do I want’ and more about ‘what’s an interesting headline?’. Blog aggregators such as TechMeme have also improved our ability to find trends (memes) in blog-to-blog “conversations” but yet have de-emphasized the importance of writing quality articles instead of just linkbaiting headlines.

Also, microblogs like Twitter gained popularity, giving writers the benefit of a limited structure (140 character entries), and again, distributed focus away from the individual and into the crowd. Social networking sites, led by Facebook, implemented platforms for building applications, most of which seem to involve being bitten by zombies and/or having a sheep (or worse, poop) thrown at one’s eye.

Next up are the layers on top of all these building blocks, and 2008 will be a big year for them. FriendFeed launched (as did SocialThing and Plaxo Pulse and others) as an aggregator of all of your online activities (other than social networking sites, which already do this independently). Louis Gray did a phenomenal job recruiting/inviting/involving the “a-list” bloggers (which I most certainly don’t belong in, but others like Scoble and Dave Winer do), though Mark Evans and Brian Solis have a lot more to say on that topic. I’m still not sure why/if I need FriendFeed (nor is Duncan Riley), nor if I plan to use it in the future (although I did sign up here), but at least I’m not judging from afar this time (as opposed to Twitter, which I still refuse to use).

By now I hope it’s clear why I regard this as both evolution and de-evolution. We have more flexibility, more control, more features, more zombies, but we also have less focus, less clarity, more clutter, and much much more confusion. Each new addition brings not just the functionality, but requires basic comprehension of the building block. Adam Ostrow yesterday blogged that FriendFeed “crossed the chasm” (a term implying moving from early adopters to the masses) but I couldn’t disagree more. My parents, as an example of “mass Internet users” are still barely comfortable taking pictures from Flickr and printing them at Shutterly or in a local store. The masses don’t know from Twitter, and are still just finding out that there are a lot of cats who have appetites for cheeseburgers and ride invisible bicycles.

One thing that these technologies seem to expose is humanity’s obsessions with other people. Never before has it been so easy to virtually stalk someone online (and by the way, it’s only a matter of time before some uber-lifestreamer experiences a home robbery by making their personal travel plans so easy to access). Never before has our work/life balance been so ridiculously far out of whack (and I’m not the only one who feels this way). Never before have we seen the individual have the opportunity to have microcircles of fame (or should that be microfame?), nor the obsessive-like compulsions to follow.

I think the part that concerns me the most is the extreme levels of digital divide that are emerging. It’s not just the technology barriers, it’s the inevitable social barriers that come along with it. The divide is growing, even amongst those who have access to the technology. And it’s going to get a lot worse for a lot of people, especially inside families (“mom, I so totally twittered that I was gonna be streaming live from the mall today, u r so lame!”).

There are times when I feel technology evolution is outpacing humanity’s ability to absorb, react, and evolve as a society. We are probably closer to being “one world” than ever before, yet we are also probably closer to being “six billion individuals” than ever before.

My Music Collection, Alphabetically

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While doing some testing for TuneUp, we hit the “play” button inside of iTunes on an office PC.  The volume was low enough that we didn’t really notice the music in the background for a while.  Somewhere in the middle of Billie Holiday’s performance of “All of Me” I realized that it was actually playing.  My entire 87GB music collection was queued up, in alphabetical by track name order (sorry, not in autobiographical!).  Decided to let it ride.

We’re almost 2 hours into the mix – it’s pretty interesting.  I highly recommend you give it a shot, just for the fun of it.  I’m going to try to to let it go all 30+ days to completion, unless I go crazy first…

Web 6.4 on display at Under the Radar next week

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Made ya look.

UTR logoSeriously, the tri-annual Under the Radar event is one of my few conference favorites. I like it because:

  • It’s local (ok, technically the peninsula is not really local, but I’ll cut them a break).
  • It’s highly unlikely that there will be any form of “witch-burning” during an interview.
  • Companies’ demos/pitches are short and sweet, and (typically) well-rehearsed. There’s nothing less fun than watching an exec fumble through a PPT that they haven’t practiced (again, there are in fact many things that are much less fun, but I have no metaphors in me right now).
  • The events are focused. This month’s is about Web Apps, so I can pretty well assume what topics will be covered (as opposed to, say, CES, which I also like, but where software, phones, gadgets, and car stereos all converge).
  • I’m moderating for half the day (the morning, for those of you who are curious).
  • For demonstrating companies, it doesn’t break the bank just to show up. Same deal for attendees.
  • Quite impressive batch of attendees includes lots of VCs, decision-makers, and press.
  • Two of Stage Two‘s clients (kwiry and DeviceVM) are presenting. If you have not checked both out yet, you really should. – cool stuff.
  • I can get ya $100 off! What’s not to like?

Hope to see some of you there!

TH-50PZ77U: should it stay or should it go?

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The good news: My new Panasonic plasma arrived. It’s really freaking sweet. I think that’s about the only proper description of it, as it’s not exactly “beautiful” since it’s electronics and it’s not artlike in a Macbook Air kind of way. I’d actually say that a nice plasma is the modern equivalent of a “bitchin Camaro”…

The bad news: Despite all my readings, somehow I missed the fact that the next-generation of Panasonic plasmas started shipping oh, say, 3 days after mine did. Augh! How did I miss it? Well, the 50″ units won’t ship until April, and I had stopped looking at 42″ displays already. My bad.

Good: I can return the 77U in the next 28 days for no fee.

Bad: I don’t really know if the 80U or 85U are really worth it. Here is my summary of the differences (or you can see the official comparison at Panasonic’s web site, which is much more impressive than I thought it would be when I first visited!):

P77U P80U P85U
List price $2800 $2500 $2700
Current street price $1600-$2000 $2300+ $2500+
Contrast ratio 10000:1 20000:1 30000:1
Panel tech G10 G11 G11
Moving Picture Resolution (??) N/A 900 lines or more 900 lines or more
480 Hz Sub-field Drive (??) N/A Yes Yes
24p Playback(2:3) (??) N/A Yes Yes
Deep Color (??) N/A Yes Yes
x.v.Color (??) N/A Yes Yes
HDMI inputs 2 rear 3 (1 front) 3 (1 side)
Screen Coating Anti-Glare Coating New Anti-Reflective Filter New Anti-Reflective Filte

Of the above, the biggest factors I can identify are:

  • New units have better contrast ratios. This is something which seems undetectable to us mortals, but is supposed to be “better”. Don’t know if I care.
  • Next generation panel technology. From some of the discussions I’ve read on AVSforum, there’s a belief that the new tech has more vivid whites and blacks.
  • Anti-reflective filter vs anti-glare coating. Panasonic added the anti-glare to the current generation for the first time, then dropped it for the next generation. This implies they either weren’t satisfied with it’s performance or have improved upon it with the new filters.

Am I missing anything obvious? Are these “non-issues” and I should put the topic to bed? I

Good: I feel like this is a no-lose situation. I got a great deal on my unit, and it looks awesome. So I either have a great unit, or a possibly slightly more greater unit.

Ultimately, here’s how I look at it: if I had purchased this unit and the new one wasn’t shipping until this Summer or later, there’d be no debate. But it’s already on display at Best Buy apparently, which is at least a little bit frustrating. Again, had I *known* about both models and made this decision based on price, then there’s no debate. But I can’t help already think I have something out of date on the day it arrived (as opposed to waiting the typical 30 days to feel that way).

Do Sony Vaios really suck, or is it just me?

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For the loyal fans, you know my feelings about Sony Vaios. For the newcomers, suffice it to say I went from loving them (even being quoted in Business 2.0 magazine about it) to loathing in a short 8 weeks last summer (you can read this summary to catch up). It’s become a bit of a running gag for me to mention it every few posts, but the truth is I am outraged at the fact that my $2500 is being used for exactly these purposes:

  • Print serving
  • Enabling my Drobo to be network-accessible
  • Playing some Call of Duty 2
  • Beta testing the TuneUp Media software (can’t wait to talk more about this one, and for continued disclosure’s sake, they are a client)

That’s it. That’s my less-than-a-year-old formerly top-of-the-line Vaio. And by the way, I’ve “upgraded” it to run Windows XP in order to perform the above tasks in a satisfactory manner.

When Ed Bott commented a few days offering to inspect the Vaio, I was instantly intrigued. My wife had been trying to put it up on eBay on our behalf (she’s the eBay/craigslister of the family), all we got was interest from a likely scammer (this person, who very cleverly has built some feedback by buying cheap items, then accidentally spilling the beans with us by sending two different emails asking for the same item, with two different addresses – one in the UK, the other in Nigeria – and offering two different prices. oops!). So we’ve taken down the listing, I’m finishing up the scrub on the Vaio today to make sure I didn’t leave any work-sensitive docs there, and I’m shipping it to Ed tomorrow.

Why, you may ask? Well, Ed wants to see it firsthand, see if there’s any saving grace to the “hunk o junk” (as I like to call it). Ed’s going to spend 30 days with the Vaio, during which I’ve told him he’s free to reinstall Vista (as many times as it might take) and try to see if there’s anything to be done with it. In the meantime, he’s going to send me a Dell laptop that he feels performs quite well. In all fairness, my only other Vista experiences are over the shoulders of others, including my mother who has a low-end Dell that I believe is class-action lawsuitable, considering how terrible it performs.

I have an open mind, and frankly I’d love to become impressed by Vista. I’d love to discover my two big experiences were random isolated occurrences, and it’s actually a really stable, fast operating system. Odds aren’t bad I’ll be buying a new notebook 30 days from now. But odds are pretty good right now that it’ll be a MacBook Pro. We’ll see what happens!