I won't lie.
I haven't found this program particularly enlightening or useful. Most of the services shown have been ones I've already known about or don't have any particular interest in. Much of it appears to be just riding the recent "we are Internet 2.0, so we're so awesome" bandwagon. I must be getting old - I like things the old way. Simple, uncluttered.
I'm also hampered in my appreciation of some of these things because I know other ways to do them. I've run and managed my own web space for quite a long time, so the benefits of blogger are generally wasted on me. I went through a phase of signing up for all the cool things I saw on the internet... the spam in my old HoTMaiL account is testament to that. When I see a new site, either within this program or without... one of the first metrics that pops in my head is "wow, this is silly. I could have made this"... which is a first step down the road of dismissal.
Regardless, it isn't the tools, or the presentation that makes these sorts of sites useful - its the content. Some of the ones that I mistreated and maligned may very well be excellent resources - for people looking for other content than I am or who want to digest it in a different way than I find convenient. I personally don't have any issue with my current methods of finding and consuming information, but if some of these newfangled sites are useful to you young whipersnappers, then I hope they stick around.
As long as they are open and allow the general world in to access what content they have I have no issue with them. If I have to jump through hoops to access something - unless I know for *sure* its there and it is what I want - then it might as well not exist at all. Asking me to create an account and specify any personal information *at all* is a big hurdle for me: the candy in the van had better be delicious.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Thing 22 - Audio Books
My reservations vs podcasts are also true via audio books. I'm never going to find time to listen to them - and if I did, I'd rather read them instead. I've glanced around in the provided links, but really haven't found anything that interested me.
If anything, I am less interested in Audio books than podcasts. An audio book, by definition, implies that there might be a hard copy somewhere. If I saw anything interesting in here, I'd pursue the hard copy instead.
If anything, I am less interested in Audio books than podcasts. An audio book, by definition, implies that there might be a hard copy somewhere. If I saw anything interesting in here, I'd pursue the hard copy instead.
Thing 21 - Podcasts
I've used podcasts before. They can be nice - I've had then set up in iTunes to go to my iPod. Unfortunately - I don't have a morning/evening commute, which is the 'desperate to listen to something' period for me, so I never end up listening to them.
I've added the link for one to Feedburner, which strikes me as hilarious - Podcasting without the Pod. Re-adding the tether, having to sit at your computer to listen to something that by design was meant to be something that you could take with you... like a radio station that would automatically appear in your mobile music device overnight.
If I'm going to have to sit at my computer - unless the contents of the audio are musical, dramatic, or otherwise enhanced by remaining audio - I don't want to hear about it, I want to read about it.
I can read faster than I can be talked at. I can fast forward, jump back at will. Rereading is an option, as is skipping entire sections. When dealing with an audio file, you are locked into a presentation. You have to be an amazing speaker in order to hold my attention in a podcast, unless I'm a captive audience already (driving, for instance).
I've added the link for one to Feedburner, which strikes me as hilarious - Podcasting without the Pod. Re-adding the tether, having to sit at your computer to listen to something that by design was meant to be something that you could take with you... like a radio station that would automatically appear in your mobile music device overnight.
If I'm going to have to sit at my computer - unless the contents of the audio are musical, dramatic, or otherwise enhanced by remaining audio - I don't want to hear about it, I want to read about it.
I can read faster than I can be talked at. I can fast forward, jump back at will. Rereading is an option, as is skipping entire sections. When dealing with an audio file, you are locked into a presentation. You have to be an amazing speaker in order to hold my attention in a podcast, unless I'm a captive audience already (driving, for instance).
Thing - 20 - Youtube
Ok. That was crude, but hilarious.
I like Youtube. So much of our culture is televised these days - having a searchable archive (even if the archive only lasts long enough for the Copyright Gestapo to have it closed back down) of things that you missed is an invaluable service to anyone who is trying to keep track of pop culture. There is simply *too much* programming on the hundreds and hundreds of channels these days for anyone to hope to catch it all, so the ability for somebody to send you the highlights of something important that was missed is wonderful. Look at all the politicians, for instance, that have been outed as being inconsistent liars due the Youtube's of the world. Of course, this is all the not-copyright-legal use.
Legally, Youtube allows you to shoot a video of you picking your nose and post it online. Yawn. Very little of the user-created content is actually useful - with the possible exceptions of the people that use the 'video reply' feature to respond with something meaningful.
The unintentional (wink wink) clipping service that Youtube etc provide are a beautiful example of copyright circumvention that directly benefits the people. The companies can complain about their rights all they want - but copyright was established in the first place to serve the common good.
If the copyright owners of the world ever manage to stamp out Youtube and its ilk, that will be a sad day for our shared culture.
Thing - 19 - Awards sites
I looked down the list, and eventually picked Google Maps. Not to be boring, but because I wanted, for a change, to write something that wouldn't sound like bitter grousing.
Frankly, most "Web 2.0" stuff is crap. In fact, a lot of these 2.0 things don't really feel next generation. It seems as if the 2.0 buzzword has flowed in reverse, subsuming *any website at all* that has interactive capabilities, ignoring the original 2.0 critera - which was that web apps were becoming as interactive as desktop apps.
Google Maps is one of the progenitors of the entire line, and one of the extreme few that gets it right. Without throwing away the traditional metaphor of the web page (links still work as you expect, there aren't mysterious and inscrutable drag+drop mechanics behind the javascript). Pages can still be bookmarked, printed, resized. You don't have to log in and become yet another dot in their "We have X,000,000 users" marketting spiel. You just go there, can explore the map with great ease, get your information and get out. They don't attempt to become another community to grab and control your attention for 15 minutes out of every day. They just get you your information ASAP and let you get out.
Google Maps is one of the very few things that I've seen so far on any of these 23 thigns that I can say would actually legitimately save me time and frustration.
A lot of these 2.0 people need to go back to the school of web design.. their sites are irritating and difficult to navigate. I'm a bad customer, because I know how things *can* be: sensibly arranged and uncluttered. When I see a site that doesn't have those attributes, I bail. I don't want to spend 30 minutes clicking around in an ugly tag cloud. No, I don't want to receive your email updates. Or yours. Or yours. I almost don't want to receive any email... ever again.
Google Maps can afford to be so good - not because of who they are, but because of the information they have behind them. The majority of the other services we've looked at rely on user-made content - their entire 'Meat' is user made in a lot of cases. That means they have to bootstrap up and tie users in so that they hang around and contribute instead of wandering by and leaving nothing behind - otherwise they never grow and never get new users. Since Web 2.0 is such an attempted-moneymaker for so many people, they pull all their marketing tricks in an attempt to grab and hold you.
In summary - I love Google Maps. They don't try to own you.
Frankly, most "Web 2.0" stuff is crap. In fact, a lot of these 2.0 things don't really feel next generation. It seems as if the 2.0 buzzword has flowed in reverse, subsuming *any website at all* that has interactive capabilities, ignoring the original 2.0 critera - which was that web apps were becoming as interactive as desktop apps.
Google Maps is one of the progenitors of the entire line, and one of the extreme few that gets it right. Without throwing away the traditional metaphor of the web page (links still work as you expect, there aren't mysterious and inscrutable drag+drop mechanics behind the javascript). Pages can still be bookmarked, printed, resized. You don't have to log in and become yet another dot in their "We have X,000,000 users" marketting spiel. You just go there, can explore the map with great ease, get your information and get out. They don't attempt to become another community to grab and control your attention for 15 minutes out of every day. They just get you your information ASAP and let you get out.
Google Maps is one of the very few things that I've seen so far on any of these 23 thigns that I can say would actually legitimately save me time and frustration.
A lot of these 2.0 people need to go back to the school of web design.. their sites are irritating and difficult to navigate. I'm a bad customer, because I know how things *can* be: sensibly arranged and uncluttered. When I see a site that doesn't have those attributes, I bail. I don't want to spend 30 minutes clicking around in an ugly tag cloud. No, I don't want to receive your email updates. Or yours. Or yours. I almost don't want to receive any email... ever again.
Google Maps can afford to be so good - not because of who they are, but because of the information they have behind them. The majority of the other services we've looked at rely on user-made content - their entire 'Meat' is user made in a lot of cases. That means they have to bootstrap up and tie users in so that they hang around and contribute instead of wandering by and leaving nothing behind - otherwise they never grow and never get new users. Since Web 2.0 is such an attempted-moneymaker for so many people, they pull all their marketing tricks in an attempt to grab and hold you.
In summary - I love Google Maps. They don't try to own you.
Thing 18 - Google Docs
Its a word processor... on the Internet! Kind of a basic one. I don't see the big deal. They don't *make* computers that don't come with rudimentary word processors. Dont' have Word! start->run->write.exe... problem solved.
Plus, as a bonus, you get to keep custody of your document. Hooray!
Plus, as a bonus, you get to keep custody of your document. Hooray!
17 - add a link
I added on this page : http://marylandlibrariessandbox.pbwiki.com/Favorite-Blogs : as specified. Not sure what else to say, I've posted on Wiki's before.
I will say... I hate the WYSIWYG edit bar that this wiki uses. I find it more complicated than necessary. Writing things just like you are inside MS Word is an affront to the idea of how the wikis were originally set up.
There was a simple code that you could use in Wiki text ( I don't know what you call it) that makes it trivial to maintain formatting consistency even when used by many people. Stuff like...
---
That would have been turned into a horizontal line. _Underline_ gets underlined. For a bulleted list:
- blah
- blah
- blah
... and the Wiki software does the hard lifting of putting the html in for you.
On web pages, having every single element styled differently, as tends to happen when people have that freedom, just turns things into a mess. The linked page above shows the first signs of it... every single library organization listed is in its own color, style and font. Its quite ugly.
I will say... I hate the WYSIWYG edit bar that this wiki uses. I find it more complicated than necessary. Writing things just like you are inside MS Word is an affront to the idea of how the wikis were originally set up.
There was a simple code that you could use in Wiki text ( I don't know what you call it) that makes it trivial to maintain formatting consistency even when used by many people. Stuff like...
---
That would have been turned into a horizontal line. _Underline_ gets underlined. For a bulleted list:
- blah
- blah
- blah
... and the Wiki software does the hard lifting of putting the html in for you.
On web pages, having every single element styled differently, as tends to happen when people have that freedom, just turns things into a mess. The linked page above shows the first signs of it... every single library organization listed is in its own color, style and font. Its quite ugly.
Wiki Wiki Wiki
Wikis are a neat collaboration tool. I've seen good ones, and bad ones. Largely, this isn't a measure of the technology itself (there are several different wiki implementations, but they all more or less function the same). The success or failure of a wiki purely depends on the people involved.
If you have people that are interested and dedicated to maintaining a particular wiki, that site will resist the general tend toward drivel which roams the 'net as surely as entropy stalks us in meatspace. If you have a neglected wiki, or a wiki in which the people do not cooperate in terms of organization/writing style/policy you end up with a chaos of random pages.
If you are going to run a library wiki on any topic and include public participation, I see one of two fates. Either it will suffer disuse - or administering it will become your entire job.
On the other hand, a closed membership Wiki for collaboration on a specific topic can be a very effective way of maintaining a knowledge base or discussion system. However, forum or blog software (anything with threading) tends to be superior when dealing with any sort of back and forth conversation. Having the ability to edit the past of a conversation is very disorienting, even if its possible to pull differing versions of the old page up.
The "hey, post something" attitude that is fine for forums and blog comments falls apart when it turns into "hey, read and understand our elaborate Wiki guidelines, please check quick to see if there is a more appropriate page, then post something and please have it fit within the tone and topic of the parent body as well as checking the Talk page for this particular topic to see if your change has already been discussed and rejected. Also, check back regularly to make sure nobody has deleted your contribution and replaced it with a Viagra ad".
Maintaining a good wiki is complicated greatly by the ease of editing.
If you have people that are interested and dedicated to maintaining a particular wiki, that site will resist the general tend toward drivel which roams the 'net as surely as entropy stalks us in meatspace. If you have a neglected wiki, or a wiki in which the people do not cooperate in terms of organization/writing style/policy you end up with a chaos of random pages.
If you are going to run a library wiki on any topic and include public participation, I see one of two fates. Either it will suffer disuse - or administering it will become your entire job.
On the other hand, a closed membership Wiki for collaboration on a specific topic can be a very effective way of maintaining a knowledge base or discussion system. However, forum or blog software (anything with threading) tends to be superior when dealing with any sort of back and forth conversation. Having the ability to edit the past of a conversation is very disorienting, even if its possible to pull differing versions of the old page up.
The "hey, post something" attitude that is fine for forums and blog comments falls apart when it turns into "hey, read and understand our elaborate Wiki guidelines, please check quick to see if there is a more appropriate page, then post something and please have it fit within the tone and topic of the parent body as well as checking the Talk page for this particular topic to see if your change has already been discussed and rejected. Also, check back regularly to make sure nobody has deleted your contribution and replaced it with a Viagra ad".
Maintaining a good wiki is complicated greatly by the ease of editing.
Library 2.0
The loss of the library collection is a troubling thing.
Libraries traditionally collected information and made it available for free. They are more and more relying on for-profit companies in order to provide access to the information that they once stockpiled. I've seen microfilm collections, which were in the library's custody, give way to a subscription system, controlled by a vendor.
This loss of custody reduces an independent organization into a consumer before the whims of the vendor. As information gets older and begins to fall out of copyright - custody becomes de-facto ownership. The information may be public domain, but the owners of the copies of it have no obligation to provide it to the public other than under their own terms.
With the libraries not having copies of their own, that effectively pushes the ownership of our collective histories into the hands of the for-profit archivists.
I have a similar conspiracy theory about web.archive.org. In 75 years or so, whatever the copyright term is these days... they will own the only copy of... the entire Internet circa the year 2000.
Loss of the collection is also *trusting* that other people will decide to keep their version. When everybody trusts everyone else in this way you suddenly find yourself in a position where no copies of something exist any longer.
Libraries traditionally collected information and made it available for free. They are more and more relying on for-profit companies in order to provide access to the information that they once stockpiled. I've seen microfilm collections, which were in the library's custody, give way to a subscription system, controlled by a vendor.
This loss of custody reduces an independent organization into a consumer before the whims of the vendor. As information gets older and begins to fall out of copyright - custody becomes de-facto ownership. The information may be public domain, but the owners of the copies of it have no obligation to provide it to the public other than under their own terms.
With the libraries not having copies of their own, that effectively pushes the ownership of our collective histories into the hands of the for-profit archivists.
I have a similar conspiracy theory about web.archive.org. In 75 years or so, whatever the copyright term is these days... they will own the only copy of... the entire Internet circa the year 2000.
Loss of the collection is also *trusting* that other people will decide to keep their version. When everybody trusts everyone else in this way you suddenly find yourself in a position where no copies of something exist any longer.
14 - Technorati
Technorati! Its a search engine... for blogs!
Woo-woo.
I'm kind of surprised that this resurgence of 'tagging' is somewhat effective. It was tried before - look up "meta" tages in html for instance. The idea was that the creator of a page would specify some keywords and whatnot so that the search engines and so on would have an easier time digesting the site. They are still used, a little, in conjunction with the other site attributes. In the innocent days of the web they were trusted explicitly - this was a main method of making your website climb up search results for unrelated results. If, circa 1998, you ever had hardcore pornography creep to the top of the list while on a search for, say 'honda civic muffler', you were probably the victim of intentional meta tag spam.
This current tagging fad is basically the same thing. It doesn't tend to be so bad largely because the wide search engines of the world basically ignore them and the communities within which they are used tend to be somewhat moderated.
One thing that does make me chuckle about tagging in general is that it takes the library idea of a controlled vocabulary of topics and throws it completely out the window. The opposite is occuring - the individuals are tagging things however they they want, and they seem to be happy.
Woo-woo.
I'm kind of surprised that this resurgence of 'tagging' is somewhat effective. It was tried before - look up "meta" tages in html for instance. The idea was that the creator of a page would specify some keywords and whatnot so that the search engines and so on would have an easier time digesting the site. They are still used, a little, in conjunction with the other site attributes. In the innocent days of the web they were trusted explicitly - this was a main method of making your website climb up search results for unrelated results. If, circa 1998, you ever had hardcore pornography creep to the top of the list while on a search for, say 'honda civic muffler', you were probably the victim of intentional meta tag spam.
This current tagging fad is basically the same thing. It doesn't tend to be so bad largely because the wide search engines of the world basically ignore them and the communities within which they are used tend to be somewhat moderated.
One thing that does make me chuckle about tagging in general is that it takes the library idea of a controlled vocabulary of topics and throws it completely out the window. The opposite is occuring - the individuals are tagging things however they they want, and they seem to be happy.
Thing 13 - Delicious
Again, I have a creative disdain for anything social-networky.
Delicious strikes me as a little less creepy - not enough to become a regular user - but not so much that I want to reflexively hit the back button. Its quite likely because this is the sort of information gathering that I am used to - they are basically creating a microcosm of the "good stuff on the internet rises to the top when enough people link to it" formula that google and the other search engines use to draw order from chaos these days. It also is less intrusive during signup, so I feel more comfortably anonymous within its system.
Insofar as the 'keep your bookmarks organized' feature, I don't find it that useful. I used to have it setup so that my home/work computers both synced their builtin bookmarks against a person ftp server. (Something like... http://lifehacker.com/software/bookmarks/hack-attack-back-up-and-sync-your-firefox-bookmarks-with-your-personal-server-235519.php)... but not that exact setup. It fell into disuse - keeping bookmarks forever only left me with piles and piles of bookmark clutter - sites that I thought I would visit again at the time but never got back to, or forgot about... etc. Bookmarking for me just turns into clutter, I think its a personal usage issue. If I can't remember it - I need to write it down - anywhere but under the Bookmarks menu. Putting it on flickr just hides it behind yet another website to lose my login information for.
Also, for whatever reason, the 13 minute video didn't work, so I skipped it.
Delicious strikes me as a little less creepy - not enough to become a regular user - but not so much that I want to reflexively hit the back button. Its quite likely because this is the sort of information gathering that I am used to - they are basically creating a microcosm of the "good stuff on the internet rises to the top when enough people link to it" formula that google and the other search engines use to draw order from chaos these days. It also is less intrusive during signup, so I feel more comfortably anonymous within its system.
Insofar as the 'keep your bookmarks organized' feature, I don't find it that useful. I used to have it setup so that my home/work computers both synced their builtin bookmarks against a person ftp server. (Something like... http://lifehacker.com/software/bookmarks/hack-attack-back-up-and-sync-your-firefox-bookmarks-with-your-personal-server-235519.php)... but not that exact setup. It fell into disuse - keeping bookmarks forever only left me with piles and piles of bookmark clutter - sites that I thought I would visit again at the time but never got back to, or forgot about... etc. Bookmarking for me just turns into clutter, I think its a personal usage issue. If I can't remember it - I need to write it down - anywhere but under the Bookmarks menu. Putting it on flickr just hides it behind yet another website to lose my login information for.
Also, for whatever reason, the 13 minute video didn't work, so I skipped it.
12 - Rollyo
...
Search aggregation. Where do I begin. Ah yes, Webfeat. I'll slam Webfeat.
My opinion on this sort of thing is: if you know what you are looking for, look for it in the proper place. Searching unrelated, specfic sources of information for a single topic is a waste of time and resources. I believe effort would be better spent in educating people and presenting the information in such a way that they are able to identify what information exists within a particular resource, instead of blanket searching across all of them.
As far as Rollyo goes, if you know what site you are interested in, you don't need a Rollyo account. can add the words "site:whatever.com" into the query box on Google and only search the contents of site.
This is beginning to look a lot like the old pre-crash web bubble, except none of these sites are actually spending money on anything except bandwidth.
Search aggregation. Where do I begin. Ah yes, Webfeat. I'll slam Webfeat.
My opinion on this sort of thing is: if you know what you are looking for, look for it in the proper place. Searching unrelated, specfic sources of information for a single topic is a waste of time and resources. I believe effort would be better spent in educating people and presenting the information in such a way that they are able to identify what information exists within a particular resource, instead of blanket searching across all of them.
As far as Rollyo goes, if you know what site you are interested in, you don't need a Rollyo account. can add the words "site:whatever.com" into the query box on Google and only search the contents of site.
This is beginning to look a lot like the old pre-crash web bubble, except none of these sites are actually spending money on anything except bandwidth.
11 - Librarything
Argh. Another thing that I find more creepy than useful.
Here is my librarything calatalog link: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/elifu
I guess I'm just not suited for this whole internet thing. I have, no joke, gone back through Netflix and cleared out all the ratings and history so that the autosuggester would stop. I would have done the same for Amazon, but I shop there so infrequently that it doesn't freak me out as much.
I don't like large databases existing that detail my likes and dislikes. I will never return to librarything.
Here is my librarything calatalog link: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/elifu
I guess I'm just not suited for this whole internet thing. I have, no joke, gone back through Netflix and cleared out all the ratings and history so that the autosuggester would stop. I would have done the same for Amazon, but I shop there so infrequently that it doesn't freak me out as much.
I don't like large databases existing that detail my likes and dislikes. I will never return to librarything.
Meez - Thing 10.
Tried to make a meez. I dress up the silly little doll, then click 'export', and it says I haven't made one... then sends me back.
I have to say that I do not believe this is my sort of thing. Ever. These are really, really, incredibly lame.
I know now that the reason I've been subconsciously unable to progress along the 21 things was the dark spectre of Meez hulking in my subconscious, just out of reach in the mysterious and decadent future. I am relieved that I couldn't get the export to work, I don't think I could tolerate the horrible visage of my creation staring back at me from this very webpage.
I have to say that I do not believe this is my sort of thing. Ever. These are really, really, incredibly lame.
I know now that the reason I've been subconsciously unable to progress along the 21 things was the dark spectre of Meez hulking in my subconscious, just out of reach in the mysterious and decadent future. I am relieved that I couldn't get the export to work, I don't think I could tolerate the horrible visage of my creation staring back at me from this very webpage.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Finding News Feeds
Ok, so there are tools to help me find news feeds. I've played with them for a bit, but I'm probably not going to be using them very much. Information overload - if I want to know something, I prefer to go out and look for it, rather than having the trough of knowledge fill itself automatically.
I've looked at Merlin before, never saw much that I was interested in reading about. Most of the content doesn't seem to be targeted at me... and the way my work schedule tends to happen I don't feel drawn into any particular virtual community other than the one that grasps its claws through the bars of my email client.
I've looked at Merlin before, never saw much that I was interested in reading about. Most of the content doesn't seem to be targeted at me... and the way my work schedule tends to happen I don't feel drawn into any particular virtual community other than the one that grasps its claws through the bars of my email client.
Just an observation
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but the cacophony of browser windows that open between my email, blogger account, 23 Things Blog and the subsequent instruction pages is quite confusing. I'm largely making this post because I found this window first, still looking for the description of what I'm supposed to be doing next...
#8 Make Life Really Simple with RSS and a News Reader
RSS I don't mind so much. I've played with it in the past, but I've never found much use for it. Quite frankly, I'm so inundated and overloaded with information that finding a way to drag *more* in to me automatically is nowhere near a priority for me. Most of the places that seem to push RSS are in fact the places where it is the least useful: sites that have a very high flow rate of content. No, I don't need to have every headline from every news site presented to me every morning.
Where RSS, in my opinion, really shines, is when there are a fair number of *very* low traffic information sources that you would like to be able to keep an eye on, but not have to visit all the time. RSS would let you amalgamate that into a nicely sized bundle of up-to-date information and save you time and energy.
Following the instructions for this particular thing however... adding 10 feeds alone sticks you with over 100 individual articles to browse through that I don't have any particular interest in, but still feel obligated to peruse.
I just don't see the benefit in spamming myself in this manner. On the other hand, getting Dilbert automatically is awesome. I was not aware that Dilbert had an RSS feed. One comic a day is a perfect RSS rate as far as I'm concerned.
Where RSS, in my opinion, really shines, is when there are a fair number of *very* low traffic information sources that you would like to be able to keep an eye on, but not have to visit all the time. RSS would let you amalgamate that into a nicely sized bundle of up-to-date information and save you time and energy.
Following the instructions for this particular thing however... adding 10 feeds alone sticks you with over 100 individual articles to browse through that I don't have any particular interest in, but still feel obligated to peruse.
I just don't see the benefit in spamming myself in this manner. On the other hand, getting Dilbert automatically is awesome. I was not aware that Dilbert had an RSS feed. One comic a day is a perfect RSS rate as far as I'm concerned.
Technology
Something technology related.
When did technology become equal to electronics? All the examples were purely electronic or internet based, but technology is a larger subject than that. Lets talk about sanitation, or medical research, or space travel. Antibiotics are pretty cool, even though we are reducing their effectiveness through overuse. Advances in farming techniques are also going to become increasingly important if we expect to reasonably feed our growing numbers. If you think the hoops that nations jump through to obtain *oil* are nasty, just wait until the needed commodity is food instead.
Oh wait, an iPhone! Shiny What was I saying?
When did technology become equal to electronics? All the examples were purely electronic or internet based, but technology is a larger subject than that. Lets talk about sanitation, or medical research, or space travel. Antibiotics are pretty cool, even though we are reducing their effectiveness through overuse. Advances in farming techniques are also going to become increasingly important if we expect to reasonably feed our growing numbers. If you think the hoops that nations jump through to obtain *oil* are nasty, just wait until the needed commodity is food instead.
Oh wait, an iPhone! Shiny What was I saying?
Mashups
Mappr seemed neat... if I could get it to work. The curse of these sort of third-party applications is that they magnify any slow attributes of the underlying service via calling its features many, many times. I can click on things on the map, but it isn't allowing me to zoom in on photos or see any of the details. (Loading tags...)
I hate the internet
I absolutely despise the invasive nature of the sign-ins at these websites required in order to complete the 23 things. I already have accounts with some of these people - which I don't want to combine with this program. In my attempts to keep them seperate, I keep getting logged out of one system and into another and asked to give out all sorts of personal information that I don't think they have any business having - including such things as my name, D.O.B. and so forth. It is none of their business, and is a prime reason why I do *not* have an inclination to use any of this fancy smanchy web 2.0 stuff.
Being able to upload pictures lazily on Flikr is *not* worth my personal information, ever. Being pulled into a whole network of sites (You can now do all this with your Yahoo/MSN/Google ID, and we can track you constantly as an individual advertising target!) freaks me out, and I don't even consider myself particularly paranoid.
Would you also like to hate these companies and what they do? I suggest this book.
End of rant.
Being able to upload pictures lazily on Flikr is *not* worth my personal information, ever. Being pulled into a whole network of sites (You can now do all this with your Yahoo/MSN/Google ID, and we can track you constantly as an individual advertising target!) freaks me out, and I don't even consider myself particularly paranoid.
Would you also like to hate these companies and what they do? I suggest this book.
End of rant.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Easiet Habit
I would have to say that habit 7 1/2, Play, is the easiest of the listed habits for me. I don't think all of the others are necessary applicable, they seem very structured in their approach to learning (with the exception of the learning-from-your-challenges one). In general they seem to be written for the 'learning on purpose' crowd, of which I cannot claim to be a member. I don't learn well in a structured environment... I very much hated school as a child.
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