OpineBox

On blogging and representation

2010-08-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

No one posts their thoughts online so they will not be read. However the opposite should also be true. No one should posts things online just to be read. What do I mean? I know that if I re-share or rephrase what another person has said about X social networking site or application I will get more interaction online than if I post about whatever non tech thing I am interested in at the time. The people who like this and subscribe to my feed (I don't like the term follower) are not really following me. They are following my idea of what I think they want to read. I see a lot of this online.

The most gratuitous example is demand media. Where for ad impressions a website will find out what people want to read and post that. In some sense this is satisfying a market demand. In every other sense it is fakery and sleazy.

My focus is not on businesses but on people. I am not making any money for blathering online. I just post things I am interested in and if enough people find that appealing they will read me. I have looked on Google Buzz for subjects that I like and found a few new people who are talking about that thing. This is kind of a turn on the "if you build it they will come" idea. If you write it they will read. Or they will not... and then what? If you are a tech journalist you will whine and throw a tantrum on twitter and Buzz. If you are just regular person who was not marketing but just conversing it does not matter.

To para-re-phrase Emerson, a rose does not bloom because it thinks someone is watching! A rose blooms because it is in a rose's nature to bloom. It blooms regardless of the audience and it does not become a dandelion because that is in fashion this season.

That is blogging/posting/tweeting but what about representation. Well that is the link that made me want to write about this subject. Politicians love to monitor the polls to see what the electorate thinks about an issue. That is pandering as much as demand media panders. In the USA we have a representative republic and not a democracy. Politicians should state what they believe and give us a record of principled consistency. With this record, we will trust their judgement and send them to represent us in government. If they do things we do not like we vote them out.

The same goes for us online. For people online our poll numbers are the number of readers (followers is our pejorative title on most sites) we have. If we post things that are not acceptable we get less readers. If we post things that people like we get more. If we really really care about that over the content we produce we are nucking futs. Write about what moves you and attract the people who agree. That builds community.

The problem with Heaven and Facebook

2010-08-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about how well Google Buzz does groups. I posted some pictures and videos yesterday to just family and friends and then some things for everyone else and it was easy. I guess my family could re-share that with the world but it is fairly compartmentalized.

I remember when I used Facebook one issue was that everyone sees everything. Last night I thought about how similar that is to heaven. I remember hearing as a child when someone died that they "are watching you from heaven". That always made me uneasy.

When you are graduating from High School or College, winning a contest or a race etc... The idea that the people you love are watching is really beautiful. However, in your lower moments you kind of do not want them to look. I'll give one fairly tame for instance. Lets say you are in the bathroom... wait I'll go tamer... Lets say you flip someone off in traffic. Maybe a moment you are not proud of and you would like to set that little scene to private instead of public. Too late though, since your grandma died she was treated to your little outburst. (That also makes me wonder how great heaven is if you are constantly treated to scenes of your loved ones acting badly or, well you can imagine.)

Facebook has the same issue in that you want to keep certain things from everyone. So, you ask, why post something you want no one to see? Well you wouldn't! But, anyone can post an unflattering picture of you and tag it for your entire face-book community to see. Now with Facebook Places, you can say you saw someone at the bar when maybe they just posted that they were going to the library.

Hopefully if I get to heaven a google engineer will have beat me there and set up some filters. I would want to check in on my brothers but they would need heavy filtering. I am sure heaven has a great API. Don't me wrong though, I am not saying that Facebook is exactly like heaven. I can think of at least one difference. I would not be caught dead in Facebook. :p

Learning with technology (Back to Romper Room)

2010-08-20T16:11:00.000-07:00

I was listening to twit.tv 's macbreak weekly and they were talking about the iPad and the change in the way people consume content. // Consume content? I don't know why but that term has always seemed obscene to me. It sounds like fat gluttons on a couch always asking for more content, more content! Oh, well I guess it is a perfect term, never-mind. //

But I digress... The thing that got me thinking was how books (or plain text) are giving way to multimedia and interactive content. That really fills me with hope. The reason why I am hopeful is because of what I learned about how we learn.

When I graduated high-school (early 90's) it was common to hear people say they were happy to be done learning. "No more school for me." When I think of it now, that sounds like the most willfully ignorant thing I have ever heard. That same student went into school at kindergarten looking forward to learn.

What happened?

When we are very young school is something we look enjoy. As we get to be 10, 11 etc... it becomes a chore and the reason may be that we are no longer coloring or interacting. We listen to lectures, read text, write text and learning is not multimedia anymore. When you are singing songs and making things while you learn you learn better. You see, hear and do everything so that increases your ability to recall and it makes the experience more enjoyable.

The tablet devices, for now just iPad, have the potential to make learning something teens and adults will look forward to once again. That can only be good.

Everything in moderation

2010-05-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

Everything in moderation is great advice that I never take. I jump from one fanatical craze to another. The list of things I get too into is endless. Currently I am not fighting a severe addiction to Google Buzz. In the past it has been installing one after another linux distros. I have had an addiction to chess and specifically reading chess books (since you can't lose when you don't play). I also had a basketball addiction and a workout addiction (just to toughen up my uber geeky list of addictions).

Whenever I get into something new I can't understand why everyone is not into it as well. As a result, I bore family, friends and strangers on the street about the wonderful benefits of _____________.

I joined www.redhotpawn.com a long time ago (a great chess site with a good developer and community) and made a donation before they started charging for their service. That made me a lifetime member with no concurrent games limit. It is a great website for correspondence chess and a lot of fun if taken in moderation. When I was in the throws of my chess fixation I made the mistake of overbooking myself on that site to the point where I had over 60 games going concurrently. My chess rating looked like the Nasdaq recently. I would win a lot of games and then timeout on a bunch more and lose twice as many games as I won.

With Buzz, I am following over 100 people and I feel compelled to read everything that is new. It is a similar feeling to when I was overwhelmed with the correspondence chess or live chess at www.freechess.org aka FICS.

The big difference is that I do not have an obligation to read every post and every comment. I think I am writing this to admit to myself that I need to calm down and allow Buzz to become part of my daily routine. The Buzz community is something special mainly because it is what you make it. You choose who to follow and people who like your contributions follow you. I am sure there is a dark underbelly of trolldom and negativity to Buzz but I will not see that since I have the good ol' block button.

So, I have said just about nothing once again. If you want to beat me in chess feel free to contact me. For all my effort I am still not very good but I play on chess.com when I can. As for my level of participation of Buzz, I spend most of it reading and maybe 30% of it commenting and 10% posting. I am going to have to start to consider it a reward for productivity instead of a place to hide from my Next Actions list. That way it will become less of an anchor and more of a sail.

Let me know if your experience is similar or if I am just Nucking Futs.

Obsecurity

2010-05-11T17:38:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is my made up name for my old strategy for security by obscurity. Otherwise known as the "it can't happen to me" plan. It works well for most Zebras but it will not work for you for long. I wanted to write about this not to promote the plan and catchy keyword but to talk the other people who use this strategy into circling their wagons.

This does not just apply to online security but that is the focus on this writing. I had also implemented this plan by hiding a key outside of my house, maybe in an obvious fake rock or under the planted pot on the back deck. Not great ideas either.

The online version of this is the obviously guessable password. Maybe dress up password with a few unguessable characters. For instance p4$$word or passw0rd, because no one is on to that one! In addition to this, obsecurity experts will have the same dictionary guessable password on every website they log into. That makes it easier for criminals since they only need to get your login on one site. So your entire online identity is only as strong as your weakest unlock question.

Unlock questions are the rusty single hinged screened back door to your home that has a safe door on the front. No matter how good your password is you are vulnerable if your unlock question is your mom's maiden name. Especially if both you and mom are identified on facebook as mother/son and she included her maiden name so her highschool hearthob will know it is really her.

Security is by definition inconvenient. If you can make security a little easier you will become more secure. Using a password generator is helpful. For example my Chevy Chase account password is hHkk*7wq324&-q. No one is going to guess that!

You can find many password generators online and some services will remember them for you. lastpass.com is a good program for password generation. It is important to keep these passwords in a safe place and keep them encrypted. You also want a different password on each site. For your security question... LIE! no one will know that it was not really your real first dog. Just remember what you set as your first phone number, dog or hometown. Maybe keep that in your encrypted file as well.

Take the time to review where you log in on the internet and make sure your unlock settings are not guessable and that your passwords are secure. It is a bit more work but it is much less work than cancelling your credit cards or explaining to everyone in your contacts list that you did not send that infected file.

I am sure the comments in Google Buzz will have even better suggestions.

Happy Mother's Day

2010-05-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

My Mom passed away on September 26th 2009. Today is my first Mother's day without her. In her honor I wanted to share my eulogy to her that I delivered at her funeral.

I suppose for most people and certainly for me, your mother is the closest person we have on earth. She gave me life and then taught me it's value. What I respect most, as I think of her today, is that she did not micro-manage. She hinted but did not demand or judge. Left to my own devices, I found my own way. I made mistakes, but they were mine and I learned from them.

I think the best present you can give your mother is to try to reach your potential. I'm still trying but I believe I gave her a few things to brag about while she was here. Most memorable was my graduation from USMC boot camp. My Grandmom, Mom and siblings came to see me march. That was a good day. If you string enough good days together while you can, you will have something to hold on to when you have to part. We did plenty of that.

My Mom is gone but not forgotten. I hear her voice when I need advice and I see her face in my children. I have enough memories and stories to last a lifetime.

The only way to avoid the sadness and loss of death is to never love. I know that would be a much worse fate than my melancholy Mother's day. So if you are not bummed out enough yet... This was my eulogy to her last September.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLcSp5yTMRs&feature=player_embedded

Eulogy for Judy Cronmiller

The time filter

2010-05-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

I think that time is a good filter. I always tell my kids who are too fast to flip past black and white movies or TV shows that they should pause and watch them for a few minutes. Movies have been in color for over 70 years and all movies have been in color for about 40 years. For a b&w movie to still be shown on TV today, it must have something to it.

I can think of many of movies that are my favorites today that were classics when I was born. It is interesting to watch a movie or TV show from as recent as the 1980s. We must have been different people then or we have been trained to be different now. Today a TV show jumps right into the story. If we don't get an explosion or a dead body in the first 2 minutes, most people change the channel. Shows like Magnum PI or Matt Houston would lead off with a 4 minute intro before we get any new content. I was watching Foul Play with my family and I had to talk them through the Barry Manilow song and the long coastal drive that makes up the first 6 minutes of the movie. There is no way they would have waited that long. I'm even nervous that you have stopped reading already before I have gotten to my point!

So here it is... Old books and movies are more than just the place where new books and movies steal their ideas. We need to visit the source material and watch and read original works.

Old civilizations have crumbled but their ideas survive in books. The things they learned and thought are the real monuments. Nothing we have ever built on earth is as majestic as a mountain or as grand as an ocean. People who make things that last forever are trying to be a little immortal. By reading their work we help them and ourselves. If we do not benefit from their existence it is as if they were never here. We think of ourselves as advanced because we use all of tools and toys that most of us cannot build ourselves. When we read about the people of the past we see ourselves. If we do not explore these ideas and share these experiences we might as well be cavemen.

One of the more recent books that I think much of this post is borrowed is Walden. In one of my Buzz posts I linked to a great reading of this book. This excerpt that most applies to this idea and perhaps says it better than I just have.

In Plato's The Republic, Socrates argues that it is the duty of every man to improve on his trade. If a man did not have to work his job was to be a better person and become more educated. I would go a bit further and say that it is the duty of every person to be better at their career or change careers if they cannot. Plus, we all have a responsibility, given our free and open access to the world's information, to learn as much as we are able to understand, run that information through our genius and improve on those ideas.

I am hardly the best example of this but when I see an example of genius and originality it inspires me to be better.

Titan the life of John D. Rockefeller - by Ron Chernow is instructive for our times.

2010-04-30T19:22:00.001-07:00

Titan is very well written and John D. Rockefeller's life was long and interesting. I think the best way to learn history is through the people who lived it and shaped it. Few people shaped the late 19th and early 20th century as much as John D. and his impact is lasting. He was the richest American who ever lived. He did not quite have 1 billion all at once since he gave so much money away. He had amazing insight and business savvy. Standard Oil was a monopoly. When today's companies are accused of having monopolies it is noteworthy to compare them to Standard Oil.

Standard Oil shipped so much oil that the railroads would pay Standard Oil a kickback when they shipped oil for another company. Sound familiar? John D. retired early and spent the rest of his life working on his charities and trying to give the money away faster than it gained interest. It was not easy. In the process he did a lot of good. He ended hookworm in the US and started the University of Chicago amongst many other things.

Interesting life and a good book with more than a few similarities to the companies we know and ~~loathe~~ love today.

Would music be better if it was free?

2010-04-30T13:58:00.001-07:00

I was thinking today that for most of the thousands of years humans have been making music we did not have a music industry. I am sure that being a musician a few hundred years ago was not a picnic. With no radio or internet for exposure or recordings to sell, it would have been difficult to make a living. Today, anyone can produce music and distribute the music worldwide. After the initial cost of production the marginal cost of reproduction is zero.

I am sure you could fill books with what I do not know about the music industry. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure they have. I just think that a lot of the music that is made today is horrible. I know this is mostly because I am in my late thirties and becoming a curmudgeon but it seems worse than ever. My kids watch Disney Channel and I have noticed that anyone who is a cute kid on Disney will eventually have an album. Every year the American Idol contestants that place 2nd to 20th put out an album. A lot of that music is derivative and redundant and it is more about the video than the music. I am sure some of these artists would be successful without being pushed by the music industry. Those are the people that would be freed from the crowd of imitators.

I am purposefully sidestepping the arguments for and against DRM. I have my opinions about this but I think that it is a side issue. My argument is that if there was less money in the over commercialization of music we would have better quality music. The main argument in favor of DRM is that if the money was not there many people would not make music. I don't disagree, I'm just saying that it may be a good thing.

Getting the hang of Buzz

2010-04-28T20:13:00.000-07:00

I never used twitter except as a way to get a news feed and I have just ended my second run on Facebook this week. I am giving Buzz a good try because I see it as an open forum on any subject. I like this better than the Facebook model. I hope google is better on the openness and privacy fronts (despite a bad start) since I have more than just family pictures riding on my google account.

Bud Gibson made an interesting post about teaching his students how to create a web presence. Before I read that I was content to just post on Buzz directly but I was inspired to start this blog instead. I imagine I am not helping the critique of Buzz as a link dumping ground but I think that analysis misses the point. Buzz seems to be the place where you can talk about the things you find or create elsewhere. I like that I can see everything the people I am interested in following share. Plus, I can also search the subjects that excite me and comment on those as well regardless of who posted them. You can do that on twitter but you do not get the clarity that comes being able to go past 140 characters or the cohesiveness that threaded conversations allow.

I still have much to learn and a few suggestions. For one I have no idea how to properly @ someone. I think they have to be in my contacts. If that is the case it should be easier to add someone to my contacts from inside Buzz or a Google Profile page.

I would like a way to track comments that I have made without having them hit my email. I have the buzz filter set to help keep buzz from my inbox. I guess being alerted to peoples comments as well as their posts would be a bit spamtastic, maybe a second tier option to see comments would be useful. We should have a way to "like" comments. I think comments and threaded discussions with people not in my feed are what separates Buzz from twitter and facebook.

I am looking forward to seeing Buzz as a platform mature and hopefully expand. I will also need to find more people to follow. I know I look at what someone has posted already before I add them to my following list so I think my followed list will grow after I have proven my worth. Looking forward to it.