Putting down the Twitter

I deleted my twitter, tumblr, and friendfreed accounts yesterday. I've been using most of these sites since their inception and have made tons of friends with them. In the case of twitter, I had become super active, posting multiple times a day and had approximately 1500 or so followers. Of them, I'm fairly certain at least 50-100 actually read what I posted at least from time-to-time.

For that friendship and attention, I am and will remain grateful.

I'm also grateful to Tim Haines and all the work he's done on his webservice Favstar.fm which aggregates the "stars" or favorites marked on tweets by users who follow his @favstar account. Tim has put A TON of time and hard work in that, and deserves a big thanks from all the people who use and enjoy it.

So why did I do it? Why did I delete an account I started right after twitter launched and enjoyed so much? A lot of reasons. But NONE because I don't think it's a neat service or that Evan Williams and Biz Stone haven't done a great job with it.

No, it's a "user error" on my end... I was finding myself living too much on that grid, if you will. Ironically, in many ways, my twitter page had become what I always wanted this blog to be... a continuous thought journal, a collection of what I find interesting and funny, and more. The only problem was it was too real time. Too real time for me, anyway. When you start living and caring more about it than the people in your day-to-day life, that's when it's time to step back.

And that's what I had to do.

I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings but I've kind of come to the conclusion that happy, well balanced people likely don't depend on websites or social networks for their happiness. It was getting to the point where twitter was the main thing making me happy, and I didn't like that.

So, back to life I go. I've had this blog since I started coming to the web seriously in the post-broadband era and I have no intention of closing it or stopping my postings.

I do intend on trying to give my family and my God more.

And when I post here, I intend on being trying to be thoughtful, or at least as authentic as I can be.

Intimacy is a big deal to me. It doesn't just mean revealing sordid details to people, and certainly not to a group of strangers, however friendly, who come and go and express affection by clicking on images of hearts and stars. That's not meant to be a sleight or a slam to those who think that it is, just what's in this dork's heart.

It's probably really corny, but the lyrics to this song are how I feel about all my twitter efforts right now:

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
'Till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older too

Oh, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down

If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down

Those accounts are closed and permanently deleted.

Comments here are closed

Apple Tablet coming this week - my predictions on it

So the big tech news on the internet is all the anticipation for the debut of Apple's upcoming "Tablet" device.

There's no shortage of handicapping and conjecture going on, so why not through my hat into the ring with a couple of predictions:

-Despite how fancy the thing is and all the things it will do, the real economic story is still going to be a continuation and extenstion of the iTunes/AppStore business model. Think: "iBooks" or at least LOTS of books are coming to iTunes. Movies are already, but expect even more, at various prices points and in packages or bundles (of TV shows, Movies, etc) 

The WSJ journal cited an source close to Apple quoting Jobs as saying a big part of this device was going to be giving "the old guard" (Media and Publishing companies) new distribution channels, and to literally "help them out" 

The success of iTunes in the music industry is self-evident. They are beholden to it as it's the single most successful distribution channel for them in the digital age. It would stand to reason that Jobs would like to duplicate that success with other "content" businesses, as well. They're certainly hurting right now, and having the ability to bring their stuff, legally, to his device makes it more attractive too.

In terms of physical or technical stuff, I look for it to be "always on" in it's connection to the web, and to rely on the web for more software and functionality than a desktop does. Analogous to a netbook in that regard. There have been rumors of an 'iTunes in the cloud' coming, so that would be interesting (your stuff stored on their servers over the internet instead of locally on the tablet)

Other sites and blogs have already talked about the expectation of a virtual keyboard, virtual sticky notes that can be left for other family members, etc, but on thing I haven't seen talked about is photos and photo-editing. 

I can imagine this having a stand on the back that can sit upright when not in use, like frame. Screen savers with family photos, and digital photo frames are far from revolutionary, but editing, syncing, and linking them up with *other* people's photo albums over the web on a digital photo frame, is. I would imagine something like this will be in-built so it can act as a cool dynamic photo display when the device is not in active use.

Lastly, games and apps. The rumor mill is abuzz that Apple is going to do more with games on this thing than they've ever done with any of their other devices. I'm not a gamer, but this makes a lot of sense to me. Some of the most popular apps on the iPhone are games. If the interface is as immersive as people expect it to be, games would be a big driver in getting people hooked on the thing.

Bottom line, I expect it's going to be a really neat, multipurpose device that does cool stuff, but ultimately is going to be really controlled (like all Apple products) and will further try to condition us to pay for things web and net users are accustomed to getting for free. 

Good for the content business and Apple, maybe not so great for users (especially if you end up paying for stuff twice - for the privilege of being able to enjoy it on this device)

I guess we'll know on Wednesday!

When cynical becomes evil

Forbes has a story on how Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer gave a speech to Oil industry executives Thursday, "Calling Google out over it's stance in China"

From Mr. Helman's story (quoting Ballmer to Oil Execs)

"People are always trying to break into other people's data," said Ballmer. "There's always somebody trying to break into Microsoft."

The Government of China isn't just some "people," Mr. Ballmer, which you full well know. Furthermore, the reason they have not attacked your company is because, by your own admission, you will give them whatever they want in exchange for a chance to sell their people some of your shitty software. (which incidentally is one the primary holes responsible for these attacks)

Certainly you must think that your company will be the ones to outsmart the Chinese Government. That yes, while they are using you, you are using them. And that their government will never back a company wanting to produce a clone of your shitty software then dump you.

Or, perhaps you do realize this but figure you'll personally be rich, retired, and cashed out by then. Who knows?

I'm certain that you've let the Chinese put whatever backdoors they want into your software, and you readily admitted to those Oil execs that:

"If the Chinese government gives us proper legal notice, we'll take that piece of information out of the Bing search engine,"

Why?

"The U.S. is the most extreme when it comes to free speech,"

This doesn't sound that radical to me:




Glad you have the right to say that, Steve.

Most 'smart money' sees China as the future of global economic growth & opportunity, but the most innovative company on Earth just said 'No'

God Bless Google, and God Bless America.

Biggest drawback from jailbreaking the iPhone is an appreciable decrease in battery life.

Multitasking is the culprit, even running only 1 or 2 apps in the background.

I already wore a charge off pretty fast before, but since jailbreaking, I practically need to keep a charger on hand with me at all times.

I've set up this blog to accept updates via SMS, so posts will likely continue in a shorter format, but with greater frequency.

I will likely update and edit these after the fact, but should be able to capture more ideas, thoughts, and findings initially than I otherwise would. We'll see how it goes.

let us give you our bit.ly api key

The major twitter clients do a great job, but I don't think any of them allow for a bit.ly/j.mp api key that would allow you to keep track of the links you have shared.