Two Pyramids
November 5, 2009
I was thinking about the relationship between the pyramid scheme and the pyramid of attention. The pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme” (Wikipedia).
And the pyramid of attention? I like the term as something to do with retweeting, blogging about, posting to social bookmarking services, etc. But I never did come up with a definition that would enable me to write an interesting comparison between the two pyramids (i.e. the economic pyramid scheme and the pyramid of attention).
While I was thinking about it, I looked for a suitable image. I found this one, which made available with no known copyright restrictions by the Brooklyn Museum. I liked the image so much I wanted to post it anyway. Perhaps the sphinx has views on economic and attentional pyramids: we will never know.
Journalist, Curator: not real-time jobs
November 4, 2009
Twitter Lists: Journalism Becomes a Real-Time Job is the title of a very recent post by Pete Cashmore, Mr Mashable himself. My real-time reaction to it was that real journalism is not a real-time job, since it requires fact-checking – and maybe even thought.
Perhaps I was reacting to the post title, when I should have been reading the post itself. After all, the post title is about one-third of the maximum length of a tweet. The post is pretty much a pointer to Pete’s CNN.com article, in which he discusses “a new breed of editor: the real-time Web curator.”
Curator: that’s a word I see more and more these days. It has scholarly, thoughtful connotations. I’m not sure it fits well with real-time.
Craigslist Before Moving
November 3, 2009
The less stuff you have to move, the easier the move. We’ve been trying to live by that as we prepare to move from Boston to DC. We’ve lightened the load in many ways: giving things to friends, donating things to thrift stores, putting stuff out on trash day, and… Craigslist.
I’ve been disappointed with the response on Craigslist. Items such as air conditioners, humidifiers, didn’t get any responses. We managed to sell a bookshelf (several people responded, we sold it to the person who could come and collect it) and a small couch (we delivered).
Still, that’s probably what would have happened had we used classified ads, back in the day.
Waiter, there’s a distortion in my headline
November 2, 2009
The New York Times isn’t just mainstream media on paper these days. It’s also mainstream media online, with a side order of social media. Its site includes a number of blogs, one of which recently included a post entitled 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1).
There’s been a lot of discussion about the post. There are over a thousand comments at NYTimes.com. There’s also lively discussion at reddit, at reddit (which seems over-tolerant of duplicate submissions), and at Waiter Rant (in a post that delivers the promised rant), and, I’m sure at many other sites.
Many of the comments are critical of the list of 50 things (50 more will follow in Part 2) that restaurant staffers should never do. But I’m fairly sure that Bruce Buschel, the author of the post, wrote no such list. I think that he wrote the post itself, including the first sentence: “Herewith is a modest list of dos and don’ts for servers at the seafood restaurant I am building.”
So “100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1)” shouldn’t be considered a blog post title, since it wasn’t written by the blogger. It should be considered a headline, probably written by a copy editor. The headline misrepresents the post in at least three ways.
First, and worst, the headline makes it sound as though the list applies to all restaurants, while the post makes it clear that it is about a particular restaurant. Second, the headline refers to restaurant staffers, while the post is about front of the house staff. Third, the headline refers to things that should never be done, while the post lists dos as well as don’ts.
I’ve emailed BB to check my hypothesis that he didn’t write the headline. If he replies, I’ll update this post. Update: reply received, hypothesis confirmed. I like the sound of his restaurant, by the way. I don’t like the way a misleading headline can be put on a thoughtful piece of writing, even if said piece of writing is controversial – especially if it’s controversial.
Like Etsy But…
October 31, 2009
Another weekend, another Halloween… but I’m getting ahead of my blogging. Last weekend saw the last SoWa open market of 2009. SoWa is a silly term for the south end of Boston’s South End.
It was a lovely sunny October day, we bumped into some friends, we bought some art… The print of dinos reading is by Eric Sturtevant: our home life sometimes resembles the picture.
The two smaller prints are by Chen Reichart, whose blog and Etsy store are called botodesigns. The autumnal print seems to illustrate that we should become a two-Android family soon. Chen and her partner were kind enough to compliment me on the tshirt I was wearing, and to ask where I got it (Threadless, Star Men in Moon’s Milk).
Indeed, the SoWa market is like Threadless, Etsy, and similar web sites come to life, in ways that demonstrate advantages of real life over the web. The market has a good selection of tshirts, crafts, etc. It also has an antique market next door, in a rather wonderful old trolley barn.
The market also provides the chance to meet the artists: that’s face-to-face, the ultimate social medium. On Sunday it had sunshine, halloween candy and other seasonal flavorings. Now, time to post this, and get ready for halloween itself.
Data Liberation Front: Many Types of Goodness
October 29, 2009
The Data Liberation Front is a team at Google with a laudable mission.
Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.
The DLF is good, in many ways. Its mission is good, in that it’s ethical. I believe that the DLF will be good for Google, the profit-seeking firm. Let me break out some reasons, starting with those most relevant to ethics (good for society) and moving toward those most relevant to profit (good for Google shareholders).
- Yes, users should be able to control their data.
- Don’t be evil is a Google motto that arouses more cynicism as Google gets older and bigger. The DLF is a Google team opposed to the evil of lockin.
- Many users are wary of where they store their data. Such users, when evaluating a software tool, will want to verify that there is a way out before they bring their data in. The DLF is building and verifying ways out.
- As Google encourages users to bring stuff into Google services and out of non-Google services, it can point to DLF to show that Google doesn’t believe in one-way streets into Google. It believes in two-way streets, with the user being allowed to set the direction. If you want an example of something that Google is offering to take over for you, how about voicemail?
- Although most of the coverage of DLF has been about moving data out of Google services if you want to, note that the mission is “to make it easier to move data in and out” (emphasis added by me).
Droid? $1831. Having the latest gadgets? Priceful.
October 28, 2009
The Droid, the new smartphone from Motogoozon, will cost $1831. Motogoozon is of course the combination of Motorola, Google, and Verizon.
The cost would be $1931, were it not for a $100 rebate: what a relief that it’s so much lower than $2K.
1831 = (299 – 100) + 24 x (39 + 29). As usual with smartphones and other fancyphones in the USA, most of the cost is in the monthly payments, rather than upfront.
I could cite many sources for this, but I’ll go with John Biggs’ post on Crunchgear. There is much rejoicing in Crunchland about the Droid.
Personally, I’m happy to see the Droid hype. It increases the chances of an Android app boom. On the other hand, there are no guarantees that new and interesting Android advances will run on my G1.
Twitter: Clothes Without an Emperor
October 24, 2009
Even Twitter Thought Twitter Was Stupid At First, reported Jason Kincaid from Startup School. Well, if Ev Williams and Biz Stone thought that, I was in good company.
The Twitter story is a mirror image of the story of the The Emperor’s New Clothes. People find uses (clothes) for Twitter, but the clothes are just empty outfits. The outfits march on, and the march picks up the pace, when inside leg and other elements are revealed: those measurements correspond to the API (“Huge,” said Biz).
Now, of course, there are so many outfits that it doesn’t matter that there’s nothing underneath. The outfits are the emperor, and the empire is strongly placed.
Singing Lala About Google Music
October 21, 2009
The speculation about the impending music-related announcement from Google seems to be boiling down to this: Full-Song Streams, Not a Full Music Service, as part of search results when the search is music-related. The link in the previous sentence is from GigaOm. Elsewhere, Crunchy Mike noted that this is a huge win for LaLa and iLike, Google, partners in the streaming.
I find this post-worthy, not because it’s a huge leap for Google-kind, or because the world needs another music service. It isn’t, and it doesn’t. Let me backpedal on the latter a little: maybe the world does need another music service, one that isn’t fragmented and restricted by nation.
The main reason I like (no pun intended) this is because it’s good for Lala. I want Lala to prosper, or at least stay in business, because I have a bunch of web songs, which I can stream whenever I like as long as Lala lives. So long live Lala, I service I like, and will continue to like while it survives to serve my web songs.
As you may have gathered, I have some concerns about Lala’s chances of survival. Those chances increase with the Google partnership. They would also increase were Lala to be acquired. I wonder if the commitment to serve web songs indefinitely is a barrier to purchase. I don’t think that it would be a significant barrier were Google the purchaser of Lala…
The Mobile Whale
October 21, 2009
Part of going mobile and setting up my G1 phone is getting a Twitter client. Guided by the results of a Mashable poll, I went for Twidroid.
First impression: looks good. In fact, it looks good enough that I might be able to get through a Twitter-related post without taking a dig at Twitter. Having said that, I seem to have taken a little dig in the post title… and, in the unlikely event I post about Digg, I’ll probably be unable to resist a dig about Digg.
I feel as though I’m finally seeing Twitter in its natural habitat. I can check tweets when I don’t have the attention span for the feeds to which I subscribe. By the way, my mobile feed reader is Google Reader, via the Android’s browser.
Thanks to Kiwi Mikex for making the whale photo available through Creative Commons.
