October 19th, 2009
My new 13" MacBook Pro
Apple understands consumers better than any other tech company. While other companies change, tweak, adjust, and re-design on the outside, Apple redesigns on the inside. With a Mac, you get a nicer paint job, stylish new grillework, and something that will impress your friends when you drive up in front of their house. But, when you turn it on, everything is familiar. You’re driving the moment you put the keys in the ignition. But it’s faster and better on the inside.
Last week, I got a shiny new MacBook Pro. Because it’s so familiar, I was using it right away. Apple’s innovative approach to set up using Time Machine backups mean that your new computer has everything your old one did before you even log in! Essentially, there is hardly any setup or configuration or hardly any thinking to do. Yet, every day I discover things. Better battery life, faster processing, better bluetooth behavior. I didn’t have to learn about them, read the manual, or even delay my work. So, instead of mastering a new machine, I have a sexy new MacBook and keep smiling as I discover new things about it.
Our house is filled with computers we’ve owned in the past. I did a little walkaround today and looked at my old Compaq laptop, Grace’s old HP, my old Toshiba. They all look so foreign in their design, and all look so different. Plugs, sockets, connectors… they are all in different places with different symbols. It really makes me appreciate our switch to Apple four years ago.
October 17th, 2009
If you’re visiting my blog right now, I am in the middle of merging a bunch of content from the ancient Trial By Fire blog into this one and getting ready to shut that one down.
Having my blog on TypePad was becoming painful. There is so much I want to do, and have a lot of computing resources at my disposal. Using a hosted platform like TypePad was very limiting. I have to also say that WordPress is one amazing little blogging platform. Already I am enjoying using it, and that’s a big motivator for me.
A lot of the old posts here are from my “grumpy era”, so be patient with me. New stuff will be on the way, and I’ll try to recategorize to keep the grumpy posts out of the way unless you’re feeling grumpy yourself and need some fuel for your fires.
December 13th, 2006
I vote for Clay Shirky as the president of the new Second Life Cynics Club because of his reactionary A Story Too Good To Check, just posted on Vallywag. I agree there is a need for scrutiny, but Clay’s article is just another paddle whacking at balls on the ping-pong table of hype. Even so, his article is worth a read. I agree totally that the hype about Second Life is ridiculous. I also agree that the stories about Second Life visitors and "success stories" are greatly exaggerated. But Clay’s article shows how hype and confusion can affect clear vision of the negatives as well as the positives.
Unfortunately, I am not "good enough" to add comments to Valleywag myself (read their comment FAQ for proof that elitism is truly alive and well in the blogger world). So, please check out Clay’s article, and I’ll add some of my comments here…
First, one thing Clay fails to clearly recognize is that virtual experiences are improving. His justification for slamming Second Life involves a variety of comparisons to earlier incarnations of virtual environments. In his reaction to Howard Rheingold’s description of MUD’s in 1996, he says:
This was a sentiment I believed and publicly echoed at the time. Per
Howard, "MUDs are living laboratories for studying the first-level
impacts of virtual communities." Except, of course, they weren’t. If,
in 1993, you’d studied mailing lists, or usenet, or irc, you’d have a
better grasp of online community today than if you’d spent a lot of
time in LambdaMOO or Cyberion City.
This reliance on hindsight ignores the possibility that people have indeed learned alot from failures of the past, and predicting the value of current virtual worlds based upon 12 year old outcomes is simply illogical.
His final paragraph highlights the main reason why I decided to comment:
There’s nothing wrong with a service that appeals to tens of thousands
of people, but in a billion-person internet, that population is also a
rounding error. If most of the people who try Second Life bail (and
they do), we should adopt a considerably more skeptical attitude about
proclamations that the oft-delayed Virtual Worlds revolution has now
arrived.
Clay’s conclusion that "most of the people who try Second Life bail" may be true. His posting comprises a lengthy set of explainations for why this might be. But the biggest justification is mostly missed: The motiviations of many new Second Life users are currently not based upon their desire to engage in a virtual world but rather they log-in because of their interest in the Second Life phenomenon itself. And this interest is fueled by the hype of course.
The problem is observer bias. Because of the hype, everyone expects to get a quick glimpse of this new incredible phenomenon. They are disappointed, mainly because their expectations are based upon misinformation. So, while the real Second Life enthusiasts continue to explore and discover a truly advanced virtual world experience, they are being deluged by "newbies" who have neither the time nor the incliation to engage in the activities needed to understand and appreciate Second Life.
This is having a tremendously negative impact on Second Life itself. Consider:
- Over 300,000 new users are signing up every 4-6 weeks. Most of these are probably searching for the "secret" the press is talking about, and are cluttering up the environment.
- Companies such as General Motors and McDonalds are taking their commercial brands into Second Life with ill-defined purpose. Their investments are causing a supply-and-demand problem which is skewing the economics of island and private land purchases. The result is that those creative individuals who have built the Second Life world are becoming disillusioned, and corporate "developers" are building pointless (but well funded) experiences because of a corporate investment mandate rather than true creative insight.
- Strange side effects (such as the Second Life Liberation Army) are causing inworlders to change their behavior drastically because of hype-driven investment and traffic. The SLLA, for example, hires "hitmen" to attack commercial brands who are "polluting" the purity of inworld life.
Human nature is so confounding. Unless people calm down a bit, Second Life may well become yet another Internet traffic accident with curious bystanders loitering on the sidewalk as it slowly bleeds to death, or worse, goes public. That would be tragic, because although there is clearly no "virtual worlds revolution", Second Life is one of the most remarkable steps heading in that direction.
October 12th, 2006
Australia launched a newly updated "Music Industry Piracy Investigations" site today and sent us all an email which claimed that one of the big features of the site was helping you to determine if YOU are a music pirate. This type of site is yet another "let’s criminilize the public" website, just like the SPA.
Featured on the site is an "Am I a Pirate?" page which invites us to ask ourselves questions which should, hopefully, reveal whether we have been infected with this little-understood disease. Plus, they encourage us to report anybody we spot!
I think their list is missing some items. So, in the interest of the public good, I put forward my own…
Questions to Ask Yourself If You Think You Might Be A Pirate
- When iTunes tells you to insert any CD into your computer and makes it playable on your iPod, are you tempted to believe what you are told and click "yes"?
- If your phone comes with software that lets you take a CD you own and make it into a ringtone, do you try it?
- When you buy music from iTunes, and discover it won’t play on your PSP,
are you tempted to convert it to a format that allows you to play it?
- When a television program you love is released two years later in your
country than it is in the rest of the world, are you tempted to go to
Google and search for it?
- When you go to a band website and there is a music download, are you tempted to click on it without hiring legal investigators first?
- After losing digitally purchased music several times because of "software bugs", are you tempted to make back up copies?
- When a video starts playing on a MySpace page you visit, do you continue to listen, or instantly close your browser?
While I am certainly an advocate of legal media use, it’s important to realize that the industry is sending consumers very mixed messages. Stakeholders like Apple, Microsoft, and Nokia have a lot to lose if consumers "avoid" their new media features, so they encourage consumers to copy, encode, create ringtones. In addition, none of the promises of technology are panning out for consumers. So, people buy something, then discover the things they bought don’t work where they expect them to. No wonder people seek alternatives, and no wonder the integrity of "industry promises" is in doubt. Consumers are just behaving normally, following the path of least resistance, and glad to open their wallets if they get something useful for a reasonable price.
Most people are inherently honest. Let’s start giving them credit for that. If there are problems to fix, they’re problems with the industry, not the consumer.
October 8th, 2006
I care about spelling. That does not necessarily mean I am good at it. But, when I am about to type an unfamiliar word, I pause momentarily and ask myself "is that the correct spelling?" and will consult a dictionary. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That’s how my spelling improves. I did this the other day when I was about to write the word echelon, and in doing so have concluded that everyone should avoid this word at all cost. I believe it triggers the yet-to-be-discovered "bad spelling gene" that infects so many careless spellers.
Let’s start with simplicity itself. The Echelon Corporation. You can find them at www.echelon.com, just where you’d expect. Nowhere on their FAQ do they mention how to spell their company name, nor do they make any apologies or explanations for choosing such a name. Why should they? They spell the word correctly. I applaud them.
As far as I can tell, it seems they do not have a wholly-owned subsidiary called "Echelon Telecom", though even the FCC, Reuters, and the Department of Justice seem to believe they might. They (and many others) refer to "Echelon Telecom" in financial, business, and legal documents. Is Echelon trying to hide something? Oh wait! No, those are just mistakes! They are documents written by educated people who know how to spell echelon. But really, they meant to say "Eschelon Telecom"!
Eschelon Telcom (of Utah) has dibs on www.eschelon.com. Here is where things get interesting. When I went to their website, I was thankful that, right at the top, they have a link titled "Why Eschelon?" Thank God, I thought, they’re going to explain! But, alas, nowhere do they answer the vital question "Why not Echelon?". The page simply talks about their business and ignores the pressing issue of the name itself! Nowhere on the "Eschelon’s History" page do they talk about how they chose the name. They only mention that it was founded in 1996 by Chairman Cliff Williams.
In fairness, if you look back in history, today’s word echelon has its origins in the Old French word eschelon. However, no dictionary I can find lists eschelon (or even eschalon) as alternative or even "incorrect" or "archaic" spellings. The word is echelon, folks. My guess is Cliff can’t spell, or his branding advisors can’t. I claim that they chose their name poorly.
In defense of my claim, I call your attention to Docket 01-2263-01 issued by the Public Service Commission of Utah which "replaces a previous Order issued on October 4, 2001 and corrects the spelling of
the Applicant’s name". What was the incorrect spelling? Eschalon! So, when the Utah PSC misspelled Eschelon, they tried Eschalon. I at least give the Justice Department credit for "misspelling correctly".
Eschalon Telecom is in Utah, too! Coincidence? I don’t think so. A quick search of "utah spelling errors" in Google reveals the truth: Utah has trouble with spelling. It goes way back I think. Early copies of "Life in Utah" (Beadle) when archived, require special considerations by the archivist such as "I have retained the original spelling for most of the incorrectly spelled words". A blogger notes that fans at his Provo event did not know how to spell "Kick Their Asses" on the signs they were holding up. Worse, while driving home after the game he encountered the road sign "Icey roads ahead". And, as if that weren’t enough, when searching for freelance proofreaders in Utah, we get the
unfortunate result "0 Utah Proof Reading Specialists Found" from www.freelancedesigners.com.
Such tales, both historical and apocryphal, speak volumes for the state that not only spends the least per pupil on public education and had the highest percentage of voters bring Bush into office, but also gave us the "cold fusion" debacle. Suffice it to say that I believe they’re aware of the problem. Provo knows about its misspelled street signs, and even mentions in their home page general policy that "Spelling errors will reflect on the image of Provo City". It’s unclear whether they meant that as a positive or negative.
But, I digress. There may be worse offenders.
For example, what about Upper Eschelon Music Production Services at www.uppereschelon.com? Is that an intentional misspelling designed to make us think they’re "kewl"? Ya think?
Certainly anybody trying to use Google to determine how to spell this word better look pretty hard. If you search for "upper eschelon", you’ll find thousands of apparently literate people who don’t know how to spell the word. I note the complete absence of the FCC, Reuters, and the Department of Justice in these searches. They were the ones who felt compelled to refer to the Echelon corporation. Maybe it renews my faith in government and media. At least they can spell.
A word of advice, though. If you’re choosing a company name, why not pick one that people won’t have any trouble spelling? You’ll save filing fees to correct misspellings, and avoid having a dozen or two Google searches for your name taking you elsewhere. I know that I’ve probably opened myself up to criticism here. Go ahead, I welcome you to check my blog entries for spelling errors. I’m sure I’ve made a few outstanding mistakes.
If you report one, I’ll be thankful. I’ll correct it. At least I won’t have to change my domain name.
