LIVEdigitally

Are we having Conversations or Just Shouting a Lot?

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Ask any “social media consultant” and they’ll tell you – “you’ve gotta be part of the conversation.”  This is typically about the end of the advice, though it probably also includes things like “get on Twitter”, “respond to comments”, and other recurring uses of the word conversation. And now for a new media interlude…

Here’s the issue I have: I don’t see much conversing.  I see a lot of one-to-many and one-to-nobody content sessions, but rarely do I see anything that comes even close to a conversation.  In a conversation, when one person talks, everyone else involved is listening.  At the end of the individual talking, another person talks (though there may be a little overlap to determine who is being the most forceful about talking next).  Again, while this second person talks, others are listening (or possibly checking sports scores on their iPhone).  The pattern repeats.  If you feel lost, read this fun article for more help on “conversing”.

Online, however, it’s extremely rare to see anything that resembles conversing.  One person gets the ball rolling, either by a blog post, twitter, or posting first in a discussion forum.  After that, havoc ensues.  Multiple respond simultaneously, instantly fracturing the original discussion into numerous threads.  Newer visitors see the additional comments and either (1) skip/ignore them completely, or (2) reply to one of them.  Also, since many of the discussion systems (or commenting systems) don’t use visibly threaded replies, it’s difficult-to-impossible to create a single thread of discussion.  Most, if not all, commentors do not return to see replies, and rarely actually engage with the original author.  And then there’s Twitter, which is pretty much the ultimate in non-linear discussion.

I find this more than a little frustrating.  First, it create a near-zero value reward system to anyone who “participates” in any form of discussion/conversation/comment thread.  Why bother adding value or debating, when you probably aren’t even coming back to see what people write?  Instead, commenting is basically a huge dumping ground, where people show up, drop some clever remark (psst, it’s not that clever), and then leave, having made the Internet just slightly worse than it was 17 seconds prior.  “Bad commenting” is so commonplace there’s even a funny list defining the worst kinds out there!

The worst part of all this is it applies equally to the “thought leaders” that preach all the virtues the “social web” (social is no longer needed to describe the Web, it’s just social all the time, okay?).  It doesn’t matter if you’re on a monster truck fan page or the freshest Web 2.3 blogger’s microvlog – the content is equally disorganized.  And it’s just as much a  mess on Twitter and FriendFeed, by the way, so it doesn’t matter how much of an “early adopter” you are – the “conversations” are just as screwed up as anywhere else.

So if you want to give anyone advice, it’s probably more likely to say “You’ve gotta be part of the shouting match!”  I guess a better way to have said it all would’ve been “It Seems like Internet Discussions are being Moderated by Jackson Pollock.”

Explaining Twitterspeak to Others

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Now that Oprah’s on Twitter, it’s safe to say there’ll be even more attention being paid to this bizarre little service.  Yes, I use it, and yes, I can comfortably say it’s bizarre.  Never before in the history of mankind has the concept of extremely short format person-to-world shouting been possible, and we have a long way to go to until we truly understand the impact.  But in the meantime, with all the new users coming to Tweetersville, I figured I’d put together a handy-dandy guide to help explain some of the Twits you might see out there.

The following translation table should help get you started on comprehending the true meanings of what can be “conversed” 140 characters at a time. Important disclaimer: if you cannot handle cynicism or snarkiness, well jeez, what are you doing reading blog posts at all (here’s a safer place for you)?

If you see someone Tweet… That person is saying…
I’m here in [COOL LOCATION] but am so exhausted from the flight I’m gonna crash. Hey everyone, I got to go to [COOL LOCATION] and you are stuck in your lame place!
Hanging at the Web 2.0 Expo with @Arrington and @Scobleizer I’m at the Web 2.0 Expo and just saw @Arrington and @Scobleizer walk by
Retweeting [FAMOUS PERSON]: … Hey, [FAMOUS PERSON], please notice me!
Just heard a really cool rumor about a big tech company – you’ll get the scoop tomorrow Nothing.
Thanks for following me, I really appreciate it! I’m a big tool that uses autofollowing/autoresponding services, and didn’t even push a button on my keyboard to send you this message. That’s right, it took exactly zero of my caloric output for this waste of bits to occur.
Gosh, I’m sooooo behind on my emails! Rather than deal with my email overload problem, I’m going to waste more time by Twittering.
Heading to the mountains, have a great weekend everyone! Attention 14+ 19 million people, my house will be vacant this weekend. Please review older tweets of mine to determine my home address, then enjoy yourself to my stuff.
OMG, can’t believe I’m going to be on [SOME TV SHOW, PODCAST, OR OTHER “BIG” MEDIA]! so exciting! Yeah, I’m hot stuff, and I want you to know it. This little realm of 140-character communication is neat-o, but the big folks know about me too, because I’m special. My mommy said so, and this proves she’s right!
Holy crap, I can’t believe they killed [MAJOR CHARACTER] on the [BIG TV SHOW] season finale! I am envious of DVR owners and thus comfortable with spoiling the TV show they watch.
Holy crap, I can’t believe [SOMEONE] won/got kicked off [BIG REALITY SHOW]!! see above
Hey, does anyone out there know where you can buy [SOME PRODUCT] in San Francisco? Hey, can someone Google [SOME PRODUCT “San Francisco”] for me? I’m just too darned lazy to do it myself.
Hah, [COMPANY] just [DID SOMETHING], just like I predicted in my blog post 3 years ago. Gosh I’m smart, even though the other 80% of my predictions don’t come true.
[PRODUCT/SERVICE/COMPANY] is so lame/amazing, I hear [unimportant blah blah blah thing] Someone else just said something about [PRODUCT/SERVICE/COMPANY] and I don’t really know it first-hand, but they sounded authoritative while on that phone call I was listening in on in line at the Starbucks instead of minding my own business
Sweet, only 7 more followers until I reach [IMPRESSIVE-SOUNDING NUMBER]! I spend most of my offline time alone, so I could really use a little ego-boost online. Can you spare a follow? Just a quick follow, please! I’ll clean your windshield…
OH: [SOME CLEVER/RIDICULOUSLY INANE COMMENT] I’ve wanted to say [COMMENT] for a while, but didn’t really have the cajones to just say it myself.
Kinda embarrassed to see myself on this list of the Top 50 Amazing [TITLE] List Not embarrassed at all, only bummed that I’m not in the Top 10, because I feel great about the world when my blogger friends write lists to identify cool people and put me in them. It’s pretty sweet
Twitter’s totally lame now that [OPRAH/ASHTON/SOME OTHER ACTUALLY FAMOUS PERSON] is now on it. I’m probably just going to stop using it, or maybe try FriendFeed I used to think 2000 followers made me popular, and now I realize I’m one of the masses again. And I sure don’t like it.
Waiting in a line to get a Frappucino. Or maybe I’ll try an iced chai latte, I hear those are good. Oooh, vanilla scone bites! Yummy! I have lost the fine art of being able to just do absolutely nothing for more than 17 seconds. I tried to just stand here in line, and let an original thought fly through my synapses, but instead I grabbed the nearest gadget I could and did something with it. Please, oh lord, let me be at the front of the line by the time I am done with my 140 characters!

By the way, I put together the list based loosely on Tweets I’ve actually seen… Did I miss any?

Note: if you are looking for help understanding what things like “bit.ly/2lOL2g” or #gov20 or OH/RT: mean, you are in the wrong place.

Why Does Photo Sharing Still Suck?

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I bought my first digital camera in the late 90s, it was a 1-megapixel Kodak that weighed about 14 pounds.  I took terrible pictures onto my spacious 16MB compact flash card, which I copied onto my Toshiba Tecra (running Windows 98).  The ~500K files had fun names like DCP0001.JPG, and I created folders named “Family” and “Vacations” and even created subfolders like “1997” and “1998”.  Every now and then I’d email a picture or two to a friend or family member, who would look at it in email, and promptly delete it.  Printing a picture was generally a nuisance, and my best guess ratio of pictures taken to pictures printed was around 500:1.

Fast forward to 2009.  My Canon SD850is takes 8MP pictures onto a 2GB SD card (small by current standards), each of which is ~4MB large.  iPhoto automatically sync’s the pictures, which have fun names like IMG_0001.JPG, and stores them in folders named “Apr 5, 2009” and similar.  Every now and then I email a picture (a manual, tedious process since I don’t use MacMail) to someone, who looks at it and promptly deletes it.  Printing a picture is generally a nuisance, and my best guess ratio of pictures taken to pictures printed is around 500:1, though might actually be as low as 1000:1.

So what’s changed?  Well, I can use Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, Kodak Gallery, or one of many other sites to host and store my shared photos. The most recent version of iPhoto also has built-in tools to share with Flickr or Facebook, which has certainly improved the process a lot. Of course, I believe in maintaining a certain amount of privacy to familly photos (which represent >95% of my pictures), so only my “Flickr Friends” can actually see most of the pictures I take.  Which means I have to manually generate “shared links” and manually email these to my family, since the bulk of them are not on Flickr.  Further, most of these family members need occasional assistance in either saving local copies or printing photos (and before you go making comments, these are college-educated people who speak multiple languages and have many other fine skills).

In other words, photo sharing still sucks.

The whole concept around requiring membership to sites is stupid, though in an industry where metrics are “registered users”, it’s clear why these companies want it.  Terrible user interfaces dominate these products and services (go sit with a regular person and watch them navigate Flickr for a while – you’ll be stunned at how confusing it is).  Printing photos is easier, yet still a royal pain because most photo collections are unmanaged.  Managing photos is near-impossible due to the change in usage patterns from film cameras (instead of being film-conscious and taking a minimum number of pix, we now opt to take as many as possible, since we know the storage is effectively unlimited).

None of the services seem to recognize the concept that we might, on occasion, want to use a removable drive instead of the one in our computers.  Photo backup, the single most important feature for digital pictures, is effectively a non-existent feature.  I actually know people (again, smart people) who opt to purchase new memory cards when they fill up, rather than synching to computer hard drives.  Facial recognition is finally making the rounds to facilitate “Tagging” – another feature that makes the techies happy yet utterly alienates everyone else.  Other confusing terminology has resulted in me receiving dozens of unprintable photos, yet the sendor being completely unaware that they aren’t sharing full resolution pictures to someone else.

As the kids today say, epic fail.

Here’s what I’m *still* waiting for:

  • Automatic Backup: Okay, if nothing else, build more backup features.  Ask anyone who’s ever lost photos how upsetting it is.  Heck, Geoff Barrall pretty much started Data Robotics (the Drobo company) because of losing photos! Nobody should ever lose a digital photo, ever.  Ever!
  • Group Albums: I have a BBQ, and create an album on Flickr called “JT’s MegaAwesome BBQ”, and give a link to all the attendees.  Anyone with a matching email address can, wait for it, upload the photos they took.  They don’t need to “register” or “create an account”.  They don’t need to download special software.  They don’t need to “synch” something.
  • Standardized Tagging: Oh look, there I go calling it Tagging again. Call it categories or keywords or tags or whatever you want, but here’s the thing – standardize it.  Make my iPhoto tags automatically transport to my Flickr tags and have them easily usable when I want to print on SnapFish.  Also, auto-suggesting tags as people type (based on popular tags) would sure help create a consistency around terms (rather than seeing photos tagged with “Paris, France”, “Paris”, “Paris 2009”, “Paris Vacation” etc)
  • Improve the Sharing/Printing: Every photo program or web service should have BIG buttons that say “email to someone” or “share”.  Pushing these buttons should make it really obvious as to whether or not they are sending the Original/Printable version, or just the quick one to view on their screen.  Further, when the recipient receives pictures, make it really obvious to them as to whether or not they have received a printable version, and if not, an obvious way to get it.
  • Work with more address books: Don’t make me “friend” everyone on a proprietary system.  Just talk to my local or gmail address book (or Facebook friends, or Plaxo contacts, or whatever), let me save groups/names, and easily update those I want, when I want.  Even *evite* has this part figured out!
  • Support numerous, flexible storage systems: If I have some pictures on my local drive, others on my wife’s computer, more on my USB drive, some online, and others on my NAS or Pogoplug, so be it.  Somebody needs a photo sharing system that is able to understand the concepts that (1) photos are unique, (2) multiple copies of the same photo will exist, (3) photos will be stored in numerous places, (4) some of the storage locations will not be available at all times (ex: backup drives), (5) all photo metadata should always exist with the photo, regardless of location, (6) facilitating moving these photos around is a good thing.  Got it?

I’m sure there’s a lot more to be done to improve the overall sharing experience.  Better search across photo networks.  Better systems for favoriting across multiple sites and services.  Smarter album/set creation and management.  The list goes on.  What’s amazing is how far we came for a few years (until about ~2005ish), and how little we’ve progressed since.  I believe there remain tons of opportunities for existing players, and if none of them make any smart moves, then maybe some new little players will emerge to take them on.

Bug Labs turns 3 years old

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There’s a lot of startups out there.  Tons of em.  Widget companies. Cloud companies. Gadget companies. Streaming companies.  In fact it’s almost hard to imagine more new companies, yet the river never stops, it just ebbs from time to time.  With all those startups however, it’s rare to find the company that is not only highly innovative but also sparks creativity and innovation in others.  Bug Labs is one of those companies, and I’m proud to be involved with them.

Peter, the company’s CEO, put together two blog posts regarding the company’s anniversary.  Part one is a bit of a look back, analyzing the “hits and misses” the company’s made. Part two is a look forward, sharing the vision and plans for the future.  Give em both a read.

I’ve always viewed the BUG as two different products.  The first is a fun kit for programmers.  By and large, programmers today have one environment to work in, it involves a keyboard, mouse, and display (even mobile apps are only a minor variation on this theme).  These days I personally don’t really hack much outside of some occasional PHP scripts. But if I had stuck with the ol’ C++ and Java, I think I’d be fascinated by a programming environment that enabled me to use the same functions, routines, and libraries and be able to interact with sensors, GPS, motion detectors, and other fun stuff.

The second BUG is a prototyping/deployment tool for … well, anyone who makes devices.  Whether it’s in the healthcare, automotive, industrial, or any other industry that spends huge capital to build a small number of electronic products for very narrow/specific purposes.  It seems pretty obvious to me that companies large and small would be better off investing in the relatively low learning curve for a product like BUG as compared to the typically not-reusable time and money investment into custom, proprietary systems.

So far, the company has engaged with both types of customers and learned a lot from it.  There’s a long story ahead still for them, and I’m looking forward to seeing the next chapter.

It's Official, Twitter is a Cult

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I’ve been “tweeting” for about a year now.  As many of my friends know, I joined fairly reluctantly, but felt it was one of those things I just “had” to do professionally.  Over time my use of the service varied, but I tried to stick to using it for mostly professional purposes (with exceptions of important life events, like my hospital stay, the birth of my son, the time I had to wait extra-long at the bus stop, and about that really yummy cookie I got at Specialty’s).  In the past year, Twitter usage has grown leaps and bounds, and their brand awareness is clearly reaching the mainstream.

Now there are those who feel this is bad for society, as we reduce content intake to bite-size formats and become headline crazy.  Personally I think this happened over a decade ago, and Twitter is merely the cough to our lack-of-depth cultural pneumonia that’s going around.  That said, there’s something a bit more to the Twitter effect than the other rapid-fire tools people seem to have at their disposal.  When you talk to people who really use Twitter (I’ve tried to do so to find employees, refer business, donate money, rally volunteers, but none of these efforts really go anywhere for me – I think you have to be in the Scoblesphere to actually have impact on your followers), they talk about it differently than virtually any other Web service they use.  Further, there seems to be a little bit more… fanaticism to Twitter than anything else I’ve seen.  I’ll paraphrase the commentary I’ve heard and seen…

“You aren’t on Twitter?  Dude, *everyone* is on Twitter, what are you thinking?”

“Did you see my funny Tweet today?  It got retweeted like 4 times!”

“I’m already up to 600 followers, but I gotta find more.”

“OMG, @garyvee is following me now! I’m special and important!”

To the non-twitterers, this kind of talk is clearly reminiscent of the Smurfs, with more gibberish words being used to describe any derivation of a Twitter-based action.  But as I’ve spent time watching the unbelievable quantity of discussion about Twitter itself, it’s become utterly clear to me.  Twitter is a cult.  Maybe not we’re-all-going-to-live-on-the-great-spaceship cult, but a cult nonetheless.

Warning to the thin-skinned: there are broad generalizations here – if you cannot deal with that as a concept, go here instead!  As sourced by The Internet, a cult can be defined as a group having all of the following 5 characteristics:

  1. It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain its members
    Twitter users attempt to get non-Twitter users to join.  They talk about the urgent necessity of being on Twitter (funny video on this). New twitterers are welcomed with very open arms. Gaining followers is rewarded psychologically (go find a single human being not happy with “being followed”), and once a user has a mass of followers, they are highly dis-incented to leave Twitter.
  2. It forms an elitist totalitarian society
    Twitterers tweet to each other, and in person, talk about their tweets.  Twitterers believe that everybody should be twittering.  Non-twitterers are ignored. Companies and individuals who do not use Twitter are belittled, and generally looked down upon.  Having followers is “good”, not having them is “bad”.
  3. Its founder/leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma
    Okay, this one is a stretch – first, I don’t know the founders at all, and second, from what I do know about them it doesn’t seem like a very accurate claim whatsoever (though they certainly are treated like royalty around the valley).  But instead of thinking about this in context of the individual founders, think of the so-called “twitterati”.  Many “top” twitterers absolutely act these ways.  They make bold claims, talk about the famous people they are meting with, and otherwise spend a lot of time self-aggrandizing on Twitter.
  4. It believes ‘the end justifies the means’ in order to solicit funds/recruit people
    Forget the solicit funds, since we are still waiting to hear about a business model, but again, look at the communication style of self-proclaimed “Twitter experts” and the utter requirement on dragging anyone and everyone into the twittersphere.  People have offered to spend money to be a “recommended twitterer”.  Social Media Consultants tell 100% of their clients they “must” get on Twitter.  And it’s all self-serving – companies “have” to be on Twitter, because “that’s where the conversation is happening” – and by the way, they need to pay someone to get there and pay for advice on how to Tweet and pay for others to “monitor” their Twitter topics.  If topics like ROI arise, they are swept aside by the “importance of the conversation” and being told “all the early adopters are there”.  Buzzword merchants rule the day, and rational business logic is thrown out the window.  Don’t misread me here – there are early adopters on Twitter, and there are plenty of reasons to get your business listening and engaging in the 140-character-at-a-time shouting match, but the manic rush to push big business there is truly amazing.
  5. Its wealth does not benefit its members or society
    As I linked to above, studies are showing the concerns of impact Twitter may have on society. Personally, I found myself agreeing with many points raised.  As I saw what I will call “prominent” technology Twitterers reacting to the article, their comments treat it with disdain.  Why?  Because it’s a threat to the foundation that Twitter must be good.  While I have seen a few examples of people using Twitter to actually produce a benefit (raising some money, rescue stranded bloggers from the desert, etc), it’s pretty hard to justify other true benefits.  It certainly occupies time, and is unquestionably a fascinating method of communication (albeit a fundamentally broken one), but I’d wager a fine penny that heavy Twitter users are not healthier, happier, or otherwise more satisfied with life than the poor schlubs out there limited to such primitive tools as the phone and texting to just one person at a time.

Quick update: Just read “Twitter Leads to Immorality? C’mon!” – one other common attribute of a cult is the complete inability to handle negativity nor criticism about the cult itself.

Now before anyone massively overreacts to my statements (oops, too late, the angry reactions probably got written as comments/tweets long before most readers would even get this far), I’m not saying “all Twitter use is bad”!  But maybe we need to really consider the role it plays and how we could and should use it.  I fundamentally believe it is not creating “a community” and I am also deeply concerned about the combination of “Attention Grabbing Headlines” with the lack of responsibility used by many Twitterers (urban myth perpetuation, worms/attacks, and, of course, Rickrolling).

If there’s one thing I do believe is that Twitter is pushing us even further down the perilous road of “instant reporting”, regardless of the news or facts about a situation.  Fact-checking is all but dead in traditional writing, let alone 140 character chunks.  This pace is part of the contribution to the “work creeps into personal time” calamity modern society faces. Yes, it’s a calamity – did you know that when we were hunter-gatherers the average human “worked” for about 17 hours per week?

How to solve the problem:  calm down about the Twitter.  Don’t have to stop.  Don’t have to quit.  But also… don’t have to have 50,000 followers.  Don’t have to be retweeted a hundred times a day.  Don’t have to have everyone know every intimate detail of your day.  Don’t call me up to tell me about a cool tweet you wrote. Don’t try to recruit your grandpa to sign up.  Don’t expect every company to beckon to win your love just because you wrote (something negative) about them in 45 seconds.

And, of course, don’t expect a free latte just because you have some followers.

Why did Apple colossally screw up the iPod Shuffle?

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On a scale of 1 to 10, the new iPod shuffle is just stupid.  (You could probably tell from the title what I want to rate it.)

Good lord.  Where to begin.  Let’s start with a disclaimer.  I haven’t touched or seen the new shuffle in person.  Deride me all you want, I don’t care.  Apple has made several colossal, incredible mistakes with this device.

Anyone who’s read this blog before (only a rare few have come back more than once) knows that I care a great deal about Apple, and that I adore the aluminum shuffle.  That review was one of my very first, and it took place almost exactly 2 years ago.  I like that shuffle so much that I even got a second one and had it waterproofed.  But this new one… sigh.

Let’s see.  No buttons. Brilliant, let’s use an earphone-based switch.  Except, wait a second, what if I want to use a different set of earphones?  I can tell you for a certainty that some people (Sol) don’t like Apple’s earbuds – they just don’t fit.  So now I’m locked into Apple’s proprietary earphones whether I like it or not.  I will be unable to skip songs, pause and play, or change the volume without them.  Epic Fail.  And the controls are not very straightforward – Adrian Covert over at Gizmodo compares it to Morse Code.  Haha.

Form factor.  The new one is smaller.  Small as a house key.  Whoopee.  I use my square shuffle when I run, and I clip it to the waistband on my shorts.  It fits easily and doesn’t pinch or push against my skin.  The new one is long and skinny instead of square.  Maybe it occupies less cubic space overall, but it’s still longer than the square version, which means that it sticks further down the leg and is significantly more likely to pinch and press against the top of the leg while running.  Wahhhh!  I know, I’m a crybaby.  Don’t care.  I don’t see how making it rectangular and slightly smaller is an improvement.  Doubling the flash memory while shrinking the device (and preserving battery function) is a technological feat, I will grant them that.

The point is, they’re messing up an excellent product.  Even sight unseen, Apple just took a 7.5 and made it a 3.  The earphone restriction is egregious.  Moronic. Idiotic. It’s dumb.  The judgement on the form factor is my opinion.  Others may disagree, and that’s cool.  They can write their own blog.  But imho, there is no excuse for this stupidity.

Apple is a money-hungry American corporation that wants to insert themselves into our lives and control all our devices and hence have control over our actions and more importantly our buying habits.  For this I applaud them.  Seriously, I’m an American and a capitalist.  I love Apple, even if I find some of their practices annoying (DRM anyone?)  But when they start making bad (or worse yet, stupid) product decisions, that shakes my faith and my confidence in the world of consumer electronics.

As noted above, if I were force to rate this product (albeit without playing with it in person) on a scale from 1 to 10, it would get a 3.  If it weren’t being compared to such a superior previous version, it might score better.  But the earphone thing is pretty stupid.  Gahhh.

This reiew is also published at 1TO10REVIEWS.

Introducing Legacy Locker

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It’s with tremendous pride and excitement that I use my first blog post in over a month to announce the launch of Legacy Locker. I’m one of the founders of the site, and I wanted to share a little backstory to where it came from and how it got here.

Two different personal events occured to me in the summer of 2007 that led to the conception of Legacy Locker.  My grandmother unfortunately passed away, but at the age of 94 it’d be hard to say she didn’t live a full life.  She and I used to exchange emails, a pastime of hers she also enjoyed with other friends and family around the world.  My father and I tried to figure out a way to get into her Hotmail account, but had no luck and basically the account is, for all intents and purposes, unavailable.

On a more uplifting side, my wife and I had a son earlier that year, and in the summer sat down with an estate planner to establish a will (did you know in the state of California that if you don’t have a will/estate/trust, probate attorneys will claim 4% of your assets, including your life insurance money?  scam).  Anyhow, after literally hours of discussing my family tree and my various assets (car, 401k, signed Jean Beliveau picture, etc), I had a huge binder: our “estate” (I always pictured something with a mansion).

Last summer on a flight (yup, I remember that well), I had one of those “moments” in life, where I realized that while my physical assets were protected in my estate plan, I had nothing in place to deal with all of my online goods and assets.  My computer’s password, my email accounts (all 5 of them), my Amazon store credit, my wordpress login, etc.  If anything happened to me, virtually all of these assets would become literally inaccessible to my wife (or others), despite the fact that I had a will.  While they were legally protected, in all practical terms they’d become effectively worthless (including the 70+ domains I own through GoDaddy).  Legacy Locker was born.

JT and AdamWhen I returned home, I talked with my wife about the concept, and she completely recognized the need as well.  I went to my business partner Adam, he too thought it made sense.  I talked to a few other friends and close colleagues, and not a one said “nah, dumb idea, what are you thinking?”  So Adam and I raised some money, and hired a team to get things done.

The site is pretty simple to actually use and understand.  Users register, fill out a profile, and assign verifiers (people they trust to confirm their passing).  Next, they create assets and beneficiaries.  An asset is the online account information to a website, basically a username, password, and some notes.  The beneficiary is the person they’d want to receive the asset.  The last feature is called “Legacy Letters”, which are emails that get sent to family, friends, or colleagues with a “goodbye” note (in the future we’ll incorporate video as well).  For more on how it works, click here.

So this morning the site goes live.  The actual working service won’t come online for a few more weeks, as the final touches get put in place.  We’re looking forward to getting everything up and running, collecting feedback, and building a great service.  Our primary goal is to bring Legacy Locker to the attention of willmakers, attorneys, and estate planners who help service the 12.6 million households who have wills in place (and 900,000 new people every year), hence our slightly early launch.

I’ve been building consumer technology, from gadgets to websites, for the past 13 years.  While I’ve worked on some amazing products in my time, this is my first opportunity to use technology in a way to truly help people.  Thinking about loss is hard (which is why not enough people do backups and only 1/3 Americans have wills to protect their families).  Dealing with loss is even harder, and if we can help make that part of life a little easier for some people, I consider that a great accomplishment.

Thanks,
Jeremy

ps – sorry about the no blogging all month thing – I was in the hospital dealing with a nasty combination of appendicitis and Crohn’s disease, but I’m doing much better now thanks!

Chrome Messenger Bags – Are they just a pretty face?

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Chrome bags look bitchin’. The question is, do they function as well as they look?  I mean, the logo is rad, the seat-belt style buckle is unbelievably cool, and the color choices kick almost everyone elses behinds.  (Timbuk2 bags also offers cool color varietals, but they just seem so darn preppy.)  Nah, in terms of cool factor, Chrome bags definitely carry the day.  But I’m probably getting ahead of myself. Let me backtrack.

This review is about messenger bags, bike messenger bags, and specifically those made by Chrome. While we generally stick to gadgets here at LD, we have reviewed laptop bags in the past.  I got my grubby mitts on a Citizen Bike Messenger bag from Chrome Industries, based in foggy San Francisco, CA. Typically a messenger bag is a single shoulder bag that opens horizontally, has one main strap, a large primary compartment, some level of secondary organizational compartments, and then a myriad of different possible accessories.  These might include some degree of padding, a laptop compartment, stabilizer straps, a removable primary strap, a grab handle, etc. etc. ad nauseum.  (I like bags.)

Working daily in San Francisco, I keep seeing Chrome gear all over the place.  Mostly they’re carried by dirt-baggy, scruffy faced ruffians who nimbly dodge through traffic and congregate during lunch on Market and Montgomery (read: bike messengers.)  The other primary class of people carrying these bags are poseurs.  I mean, serious wannabes who think the logo is cool and want to seem hip with their designer, hip-hugger jeans, their button down shirts with swirly embroidery, their stupid looking goatee with pencil-thin sideburns on their jawline and their aviator sunglasses… yeah, you know who I mean.  I don’t want to be that guy.  And I’m not sure I can pull off the Citizen, especially off my bike (you know, just walking around.)

Now, to be clear, I am looking at messenger bags from a particular perspective.  I do use it on my bike, I commute from San Mateo to San Francisco using my bicycle and the Caltrain.  My typical time on the bike varies between 45 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes per day, depending on which route I choose.  So I am doing a fair amount of biking with the bag.  But I am not a bike messenger.  This means a couple things.  I am not on my bike 8 hours a day.  And I specifically need to carry a few key items, not all kinds of random crap for delivery across the city.  I am commuting to work, not routing back and forth across a concrete jungle.  I need to carry:

  • laptop
  • power charger
  • sunglasses
  • a book
  • a layer
  • a snack
  • an iphone charging cord
  • gum
I’m on the train for part of my commute, so I frequently need to yank out my computer, or get to my book to catch up on some leisure reading.  I want the bag to be comfortable, even when heavily weighted.  I want it to be weather proof, I get caught by rain frequently, especially in the Winter time. I’d like some organization options, multiple pockets and compartments.  Ideally I’d like a padded laptop sleeve, so that I can pop out the computer without having to scrabble past all the other junk in my bag.  And I want it to look dope.  Yeah, I’m vain.  I deal with it, and so should you.

Before I ever picked one up, I went to the streets and asked some regular folks sporting Chrome what they thought.  One person complained that though he was really excited at first, he didn’t like the fact that it was just a big sack.  One big hole to drop stuff into, with little or no organizational options.  This is one of my concerns too.  On the one hand, I like simplicity.  The Citizen is straightforward – it’s a bag, it holds stuff.  There are a few pockets.  One zippered, one non-zippered, and a couple of pen / pencil sleeves.
This is sufficient for most of the small items, and offers a decent level of organization.   My biggest gripe, organizationally speaking, is really the lack of a laptop sleeve and the lack of padding.  It would be great to be able to pull out the laptop and leave the rest of my gear undisturbed.  As it is, I use a neoprene sleeve that I bought aftermarket in order to put some padding around my way-too-expensive mac.  This works fine, but the sleeve would be a nice built-in feature.

It’s important to note here that the Citizen is not intended to be, and was not designed to be a laptop bag. It’s a messenger bag, for carrying stuff around on a bike.  I am choosing to use a messenger bag as a laptop bag.  If I use a screwdriver to drive a nail, I might succeed in pounding the sucker in, but I also might get some bent nails.  That being said, more and more people are bike commuting all the time – lord knows it’s hard to get a seat on the Caltrain for the 8:15AM train.  So I think I’m not the only person who’d benefit from a couple of design alterations.  And Chrome, btw, does offer some laptop-oriented bags.  But none of them are quite like the classic “messenger-style” bags, and none of their messenger bags really hit the mark for the computer commuter.

Another oddity to me is the stabilizer strap.  It seems to me like it ought to run opposite of the primary strap.  In other words, if I wear the bag on my left shoulder, then the stabilizer strap should logically come up my right side, no?  Well, Chrome disagrees, and their stabilizer runs along the same side as the primary strap, and runs under armpit (see left.)  I found this to be pretty ineffective – the bag rolls on me just as much with this as without it.
There are a couple of things I would change about this bag, to make it the perfect bag for me.  Let me reiterate – these are not necessarily shortcomings in the bag itself (at least not all of them); rather, these are things that would improve the bag for my purposes:
  • Padded laptop sleeve (I’ve covered this)
  • Waterproof zipper with storm-sleeve to access the laptop sleeve – it would be awesome to be able to yank out the laptop without needing to unbuckle two clips and rip apart massive velcro.
  • Better stabilizer strap – I think it ought to come from the other side of the bag

The lack of a zipper will stop me from using this bag when I travel.  It’s just too difficult to pull things out of the bag when it’s stuffed under the seat in front of me when I’m riding coach in an airplane.  All that velcro, ugh. But I can also understand not wanting to compromise the waterproof integrity of the bag.  And for riding into work everyday, I am willing to put up with the shortcomings because there a lot of things I really like.  I’ll tell you what I think makes this bag a big winner:

  • The buckle – it’s darn near iconic in San Francisco, and it’s just like a seatbelt in a car.  That’s rad.
  • The materials – ballistic nylon and truck tarpaulin are badass, durable and waterproof
  • The anatomical, padded shoulder strap – even heavily loaded this is a comfortable bag to ride with, even without any padding to speak of
  • Shoulder strap again, specifically, the way it holds the bag upright – with a lot of other messenger bags I’ve used (including an Osprey and a Jandd bag) there is a constant tendency for the bag to swing sideways.  The shoulder strap on the Chrome messengers actually hold the bag more or less vertically, and the shape itself (with a little help from gravity) actually hold it in place.  It was this design element that first caught my eye.
  • The one-handed tightener and loosener on the chest strap

The Citizen from Chrome is an outstanding messenger bag with an unusual and innovative design, outstanding materials, the sweetest logo on the market, a wickedly cool (unbreakable?) buckle, and awesome color options.  There are some things it does really well, and others that could stand improvement.  But on the whole I think the bag will serve well enough for my biking commuter-geek purposes, and it’s clearly outstanding for the purpose for which it was originally intended – to be a bike messenger bag that will last for years of hard abuse.  When I’m riding my bike, I’m stoked to have this bag cause it’s comfortable, functional, and cool-looking.  When I’m not on my bike and I carry this bag, I feel like a poseur, a big lame-o that’s trying too hard to look cool.

If I were forced to give this bag a numeric rating between 1 and 10, I’d have to split things up a bit.  For the purposes of a computer-commuter bag, I’d give it a 7.  As a travel bag it’s a 5.  And as a bike messenger bag this one is a 10.  If I change career paths and start delivering packages via bicycle, I won’t carry anything else.  (I’d be laughed at, scoffed and mocked by the other guys if I did anyway.)

This review is also available at 1TO10REVIEWS.

Firemail iPhone app – Now I'm Typin' Widescreen

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I’ve always detested one (or two) thing(s) about my iphone. My primary moan? Why not make the landscape keyboard more widely available? On a scale from 1 to 10, using a portrait keyboard to type emails on an iPhone is immensely sucky.

Apple made landscape work in Safari; if you’re in the browser and have to type (in the URL, or in a form) the keyboard pops up in landscape mode. This means the keys are bigger, more widely spaced, and significantly easier to tap. This is good usability. In either SMS or email mode, I can only use the portrait keyboard. This is poor usability. Given the fact that the capability exists, I can’t see any reason not to make the functionality universally available.

Lots of people told me that I’d get used to the keyboard if I gave it enough time. They were wrong. It sucks. It sucked a year and a half ago, and it sucks now too. Hence my joy, my excitement, my joie de iPhone that Firemail exists. Firemail is an application available in the App store that lets a user type emails with a landscape keyboard. Lawdy lawdy, I thought the day would never come. The folks at Conceited Software are to thank for this handy piece of code. Let me do so now. Thank you Conceited Software. Try not to let it go to your head. Pun intended.

Now, the mechanics of the thing are not entirely ideal. In order to write these blessedly quick and easy to type emails, you have to load Firemail from your homescreen, not the email app. When the app opens you will be able to compose a subject and message. Once done with your composition you can save a draft (called a bookmark) or send to email. This is great for writing a new email. But what about replying to old emails? That too is possible, here’s how:

  • Open your email app
  • Open an email
  • Hit reply
  • Hit the home button
  • Open Firemail
  • Draft your response
  • Select “Send to Mobile Mail”
  • Boom shaka laka. Your email is now a reply to the email you were reading before.

I didn’t even know you could do this till I read a couple other reviews of this app. iPhone Hacks put a great one together, and so did Ben Boychuck at Macworld. Personally, I think it’s a very strong app, and it has a place on my homescreen. I do wish it integrated a little more seamlessly with the iPhone email, but it’s a very solid app and allows me to do something that’s frustrated me since my very first week with the iPhone.

The app used to be free – it was free when I downloaded it a couple months ago. Now they charge 99 cents for it, and I think it’s definitely worth that fee. It turns iPhone email from something frustrating and terrible into something that’s reasonably not sucky. If I were forced to give Firemail a numeric rating between 1 and 10, I’d call it a 7.

This entry is also posted at 1TO10REVIEWS.

Firemail demo on 12seconds.tv

50 Common Words with Wacky Google Results

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I was trying to figure out how much a bucket cost earlier this week, and googled “bucket” to find out.  I was surprised to discover that anything remotely useful didn’t show up in the first few results.  So, in some bizarre method of either wasting hours of my life or providing complementary services to the SEO folks out there, I went looking for other common, everyday words who had similarly weird results in Google.  This list is not in order of wackiness (but I did consult this list for help).

  1. Bucket.  Some “real” results, but otherwise dominated by Photobucket, a movie, and other miscellaneous non-buckety stuff.  Nothing as cool as the results for spatula either.
  2. Word.  Completely dominated by MS Word, or products that in some way augment MS Word.
  3. Thing. After a comic book, the next few entries Google showed me asked me if I really meant “thong”. Well, I do now!
  4. Seven. The only single-digit number whose top results had nothing to do with numbers.
  5. Live. All MSN, all the time.
  6. Stop. All sorts of goofiness, the highlight being a link to sign up in order to help stop alien abductions. I do not lie.
  7. Run. Nothing super-wrong about the results, but they’re all over the map.
  8. Sea. Instead of a picture of the ocean, the top result is a convenient map showing you where the Seattle-Tacoma Airport is located.  Just in case.
  9. Saw. (get it? sea-saw?) While these aren’t inaccurate results, I most certainly pity the squeamish individual who is innocently looking to pick up a woodworking tool.
  10. City. I’d like to applaud the City of Chicago for being the number one city!
  11. Country. Yeesh, not only isn’t there a country at the top of the list, it’s dominated by country music.
  12. Sad. Nothing out of the ordinary for “happy”, but sad was really sad.
  13. Dirt. Another one dominated by movies & TV.
  14. Table.  Great for people looking for some HTML advice. Awful for the other 99.8% of humans.
  15. Bug. (yeah, I’m cheating here) Top results include the animated film and Bug Labs.  Cool to me, probably would confuse some of my relatives though.  🙂
  16. Apple. Not a fruit-related link in sight.
  17. Orange. While incomparable to the previous entry, it too is at risk for scurvy.
  18. House. Mostly TV shows and a little government to “mix it up” a bit.
  19. Plasma. I only included this one because it was surprising how few of the first results were about plasma TVs. Go fgure.
  20. Lamp. Way out there.  Even the Latin American Microform Project beats out a nice table lamp!
  21. First. Then again, I doubt anyone would be interested in the word first contextually anyway.
  22. Remote.  Results are quite poor for the outdoorsy users.
  23. Well. A couple of entries for a poor place for babies to play, but a bank manages to top the list.
  24. String. Ah, I see that luxury knitting yarns did eke out super string theory, but these were both buried beneath programming terms.
  25. Chip. No silicon or potato references on page one!
  26. Ball. Results show that high society is not very good at SEO.
  27. Angel. Ditto for religion!
  28. Force. In a slight twist, I’d like to applaud the Internet for only 2 of the top 10 results having a Star Wars tie-in.
  29. Falcon. If it weren’t for a Wikipedia entry you’d never even know about the bird.
  30. Owl. Similarly suffering from a lack of ornithology enthusiasts.
  31. Small. The only small thing here is the number of results about small things. Bah-dum, ching!  Don’t forget to tip your waiter!
  32. Big. Insert some Biggie Smalls reference here (it ties the two lines together so nicely).
  33. Wall. Clearly the people in Wall Township were tired of losing traffic to their home page.
  34. Star. Another example where the geeks are just disappointing us all.
  35. Smart. Well, the results aren’t…
  36. Dumb. After losing quite a few minutes to some of these, I figured I’d include it to share the painlove.
  37. Sharp. Lots of consumer electronics, not much about knives.
  38. Girl. Exactly as one would expect, a link to a skateboarding company.
  39. School. A coup for the Montgomery County Public School system. A big fail for anyone not from Rockville, MD.
  40. Robert. Amazingly this no longer goes straight to the Scobleizer himself.
  41. Pop.  I think this effectively ends the pop vs soda debate.
  42. Bowl. Very understandable results, placing lingerie well above ceramics.
  43. Cake. Not terribly abnormal, but I really wasn’t expecting a stock quote that was highly contextual to my interest in a tasty dessert.
  44. Store. A highly arbitrary list of retailers.
  45. Trend. I guess anyone on top of the trends probably isn’t googling this one too often.
  46. Ego. Even paintball products managed to place themselves above any of the “a-list bloggers”… 😉
  47. Past. In a dismal sign for smart people everywhere, google assumed I meant “PSAT” and then provided me with lots of resources to do a better job on the exam.
  48. Bail. Seems to be missing links to rich bankers and/or automakers.
  49. Toe. No links to me or my Dad, whatsoever.
  50. Failure.  I was quite disappointed to find that failure no longer linked to Bush’s bio.  Not to worry, I think we all know it pretty well anyway…

So what’s the point, you might wonder?  I didn’t really have a “deep mission” here to uncover some secrets of the universe, but it was interesting nonetheless (especially since I googled at least another hundred or so “common” words to find the results above).  As we continue down the path of defining our world more and more by what we find with a simple google search, I hope we don’t every end up putting too much faith in the almighty from Mountain View.  Google search, as I’ve discussed before, is not “reality” and it’s cleary not a digital reflection of the world we live in.  If it was, bucket makes, models, vendors, and pricing would’ve been much more prevalent than some mediocre movie.