Need to Take a Detour?

In their continuing demonstration of why they are the greatest thing in the world, Google has added the ability to drag routes in their maps. When you get directions somewhere, you can click and drag the blue route line around and to other destinations. This means that you can get your basic start and destination put in, and then make adjustments to avoid traffic, take a detour, or just realize you need to go somewhere else. The entire route can be changed after your first plotting. Start point, end point, and everything in between. It’s yet another one of those features that makes you love Google all the more.

Apple Hates Your Company

I knew from the get-go that the iPhone was not going to be a big hit with business customers. Apparently, Apple is taking extra steps to make sure that it won't be. Don MacAskill of SmugMug says that when he tried to get he and his staff iPhones to use, that he was told that wasn't possible. According to everyone he talked to, in order to get one, it has to be tied to a personal account, not a corporate one. Now this means that if you have your own account that you use for business and just get reimbursed for, you'd still be able to nab one. If the account is completely a corporate one, though, then you're going to be out of luck. All of this might be a good thing, though, given that Gartner has encouraged IT people to not allow the iPhone onto their networks.

Not Pouncing on Pownce

Kevin Rose announced yesterday his new venture. It's called Pownce, and is an application for sending files, photos, and messages to others. It is built on the Adobe AIR platform, so it can be used either as a web app, or downloaded and run from the desktop. Kevin's two previous endeavours have been quite successful. Digg has recently surpassed Facebook in daily visitors, which given Facebook's success shows just how popular the social news site is. His other business is Revision3, which does online media. It is just like a television channel, but with on-demand, online service. The most popular show on it is, expected, Diggnation.

This new undertaking, though, is a bit different than his previous things. The space he's entering is already fairly crowded. Also, it doesn't seem to provide anything that is terribly different than what you can do with other services. It seems to be a combination of email and Twitter, almost. I'm not really sure why you would use this instead of just shooting people an email. Here's one example they give of how you could use the service.

You might send an event out to a dozen of your friends letting them know you're
hosting a party this Friday. They could easily get the event details you
entered, respond with questions or comments and then quickly rsvp.

Hmm, sounds an awful lot like email to me. If I want to send a message to multiple people, there are countless services already for this. I can do it on Facebook. I can IM them. I can email them. Why should I use this new service? On top of that, they will all need to be on this service too. So now I have to convince them all to sign up for yet another thing.

The other thing is that this is an ad supported service, which you can pay to upgrade. Once again, where's the benefit here? Why do I want to use something with ads when I can get the same functionality out of other things without them?

Given the amount of Digg fanboys, I'm guessing that this service will at least get a good amount of buzz, and probably a few die hard fans. However, I personally don't see how this is going to set itself apart from other services out there, and why I should use it instead of something I already have.

Ads Will Be Shot on Sight

After reading a post about putting ads on your site, I got to thinking about ads on mine. For the longest time, I didn't put any up for a few reasons. First and foremost is that I had ads. Second, and not by far, is that my readerships is so small that I really didn't think I'd gain any benefit from having ads. Well, I finally decided that I'd stick some on here, and the second part of my reasoning has held true. My readership really is so small that I don't really see anything from them. As for my hatred of ads, I think I've done an alright job there. Also, the same day that I put the ads on I linked to browser plugins to disable ads. Adblock for Firefox, and IE7Pro for IE. The ads themselves are fairly small and out of the way, I think. Honestly, though, I don't even see them. I have them on more as an experiment than anything else.
Really, though, I am always amazed at ads on websites when I surf somewhere with my ad filters turned off. I don't understand how anyone can posisbly stand to visit those places and see the ads. The other thing that I think is funny is that I often don't even know that a site uses many annoying ads until I turn off the filter. I went for the longest time thinking that Facebook didn't have banner ads. I'm hopeful for the day when everywhere will just limit themselves to text only ads. I really don't think I'd mind if that is all that was used.

Kid Sues SMU for Saying He's a Rapist

Ah, my good ol' Alma Mater. SMU has been on the receiving end of a lot of issues lately, with this one being a student suing for them accusing him of rape. My completely biased opinion of the matter makes me assume that this kid probably did have sex with this girl when she wasn't in her right state of mind. It also makes me assume that this girl probably wasn't being responsible at the party, and shouldn't have left with this guy. Now, that's not to say that I am blaming her, I'm just saying she was probably careless. Personally, they should have just had the guy whacked and been done with it, but I suppose that's why I'm not allowed to make those types of decisions. The girl probably got drunk, he probably took advantage of that. My heart goes out to her, and my wrath goes out to him.

Musical Choices of Morons

In the ongoing aftermath of Danah Boyd's paper about MySpace and Facebook users, Mashable looks at some interesting data from the two. They've taken the top music picks from the two sites and compared them. In a disclaimer, they say that they only have access to the Maryland stats on Facebook, not the entire site. Their intent was to be fairly unbiased, and just to report what they found. I don't find their results too surprising. The music preferences on Facebook are what might be considered "classier," in that there aren't rappers in there with songs about shooting people and humping like rabbits. That might not be the best term, but you get what I mean. Taken in a purely stereotypical view, the contrasting musical choices play along quite well with her paper, and with my opinion of MySpace users.

iPhone Encourages Evil

I love Lore Sjöberg.

Another feature provided by the iPhone is the ability to play videos from
anywhere in the world. Think of your child gazing into this device, viewing
events taking place elsewhere on the planet and even looking back through time.
The device itself has a "friendly" rounded look to it. Is this Apple's way of
introducing children to the concept of a crystal ball? Will the next iPhone be a
perfect transparent sphere? Very likely.

Dell Takes a Midol

Dell announced a while ago that they are going to be allowing customers buying certain models of their machines to not have all of the pre-installed crap pre-installed. They will still be installing a few items (antivirus, Acrobat Reader, and Google Toolbar), though, which is unfortunate, but a step in the right direction. Of the three things they are leaving in there, the one from my favorite company is the one that really doesn't have much merit being left installed. I hate Norton Antivirus, and am not a big fan of Adobe's reader, but at least they make a bit more sense. Most users are too stupid for Dell to leave an antivirus client off there. As for the PDF reader, I suppose that if Dell is going to be providing documentation in PDF format that I can forgive them for pre-installing the software needed to view it. Even though I don't like it.
What I find to be the most interesting thing about this is that, as someone points out, Apple doesn't put all of this crap on their machines. Given that other makers do, and receive money to do so, you would think that this could play a part in Dell systems coming out so much cheaper than Apple's. However, I couldn't seem to find any price difference from having the crap pre-installed or not. Does anyone else have experience otherwise? I'm interested to see how a decent subsidy being taken away could affect the pricing.

Semi-Scientific Study Proves My Point...Sorta

I first found this article earlier this morning, but just now have had time to read it. The piece is by Danah Boyd and is titled Viewing American Class Divisions Through MySpace and Facebook. It's a pretty interesting piece, and I encourage you to read it. Personally, I don't feel like I necessarily learned anything new, per se, but it was definitely a good piece. Her basic premise is that the "higher" socio-economic class teens go to Facebook, and the "lower" ones are on MySpace. To this, I say, "Well duh." The interesting part is to see this being said by something that has spent over six months talking to teens around the country and logging thousands of hours online looking at social networking sites. My opinion of these sites are basically based on a few minutes of surfing, and talking to a handful of people. Yet, her conclusion mirrors mine. One of the interesting tidbits she has is a good summary.

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to
Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and
going to college. They are part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are
primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking
forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens,
"burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer
kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity
paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to
get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into
the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a
band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially
ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

While I don't think I'd necessarily call the kids on Facebook "goodie two shoes," and she does go on to say she's seen more debauchery on Facebook than MySpace, I think that the point is accurate.

It is very interesting to look at the development of the different social networks, and where they are now. When Friendster first came along, I got my hands on an invite and created my profile. After a few months of being one of two in my network, I started to realize that no one was getting on there.
I avoided MySpace for a long time because I never had a high opinion of it. The ugliness was just too much to make me want to be associated with it. When I finally did create a profile, I immediately replaced the default theme with one that was much cleaner and wrote about how much I hated the site. I even gave links to examples of horrible profiles, and why MySpace should be outlawed. I've since erased everything on my account, and have blocked the MySpace domain. Many of the people I found on MySpace were people that I knew from high school who did not go to college, and with whom I wanted no association because they were morons.
Facebook was a very different story. I was one of the people pushing to get my school added, and once it was I was the 8th person from it to sign up. Upon joining, I already had about two dozens friends there, and this was when there still weren't that many schools. Trying to convince my school colleagues to sign up was a bit harder, though, since when they thought of social networks they thought of MySpace. Now, though, my school has thousands of people on Facebook.

I think that what it comes down to is who got on there first. As Danah mentions, Facebook was founded in the Ivy League schools. It makes sense that it is going to attract the upper educated crowd because likes attract likes. By the same principle, the urban kids that were in bands on MySpace are going to attract their friends.

Brad Feld is an Idiot

Brad Feld, as well as many developers of Facebook apps, seem to misunderstand how reality works. They think that simply creating an app on Facebook and getting a bunch of users is magically going to give them money. The thing they're missing is that they have to actually have a business plan that works in order for them to get money. Going out and signing up hundreds of thousands of users is great and all, but if you haven't thought about how you're going to make money off of them, then that's your own dumb fault. All that Facebook provides is a platform. It's not their job to get you users or money. This is akin to a software developer getting mad at Microsoft because they made a Windows application but no one bought it. If your product has no value, of course you're not going to get any money from it. You have to be able to see how you can monetize the benefit that Facebook provides. Getting a huge user base really quickly on Facebook is, relatively speaking, a simple thing. Once you get them, you have to use them to either generate revenue through a service you have, or via targeting advertising. If you have 200k users, and haven't made a single penny then one of two things is true. Either you don't have any sort of plan, and your lack of revenue is your fault, or your plan sucks and your lack of revenue is your fault. Either way, you need to reevaluate your approach and stop thinking that your problems are Facebook's fault.

Excuse My Tardiness

So apparently I am really behind the times here. I posted something this morning about the AMA wanting to classify video game addiction as a mental disorder. Well, I guess I was a bit late on that, as I've seen multiple things today that tell me the AMA has backtracked and said that they don't believe this should be labeled as an addiction. According to one Dr. Stuart Gitlow of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, "There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn't get to have the word addiction attached to it." So, uh, my bad. I don't take back what I said, though. Bad parenting and lack of self-control lead to spending too much time playing games. That's all there is to it.

Good Data Doesn't Support Your View? Use the Bad!

This is just awesome. Ars reports that a Parliamentary committee in Canada may be supporting the industry to create a Canadian version of the DMCA. What's so great about it, is that rather than use up to date, legitimate data, the industry lobbyist used a ten year old report with figures that are noted as being not based on hard facts. The OECD, which is the source they cited, says that it regrets having the figures constantly attributed to it. OECD actually got the figure form another industry source, which stated it was shaky as well. So one group came up with a number from thin air, another group says that this figure was given, but wasn't based on anything, and then lobbyists come along and cite it as truth. Good going guys. The best part is that it seems like the Canucks bought it. You know, if the Canadians want to create horrible laws, they should at least be trying to do it based on real information. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the OECD has put out another report (PDF) with recent, more accurate data. This report puts the number significantly lower than the one being presented.

Addicted to Video Games? Then You're a Moron

I just read an article saying that the AMA wants to classify video game addiction as an official psychiatric disorder. This is a load of BS. Seriously, people, come on. Kids that spend all day playing video games, and forgoing other things don't suffer from a psychological problem. They suffer from a lack of self control, and parents that probably don't discipline them. If the kid learns that he or she can play games instead of doing homework, and the consequences aren't that bad, he's just going to keep doing it. The other thing is that these kids are getting some social interaction, just not in the traditional sense. Sure they aren't meeting up with people in real life, but if they're logging eight hours a day on WoW, then that's eight hours that they're talking and interacting with others. Don't get me wrong, they still need to have some real life socializing or else they'll be weirdos, but you can't claim that they're being reclusive if they're playing an MMO. Obviously, if they just play single player things it's a different story. Also, people need to understand the video game culture. A lot of people that spend a lot of time playing games are good people. Just because there are some that don't know the meaning of the word moderation doesn't mean that this is some sort of illness.
Parents these days are pansies when it comes to making their kids obey them. And kids these days are filled with the notion that adults aren't meant to be obeyed. There are quite a few clips out there of some 12 year old yelling at his mom and calling her all sorts of horrible things cause she's trying to get him to stop playing a game. And she does nothing! Instead of unplugging the computer and smacking the crap out of the kid as she should, she just takes it. It's no wonder kids are "addicted" to games.

RIPL Only a Drop in the Bucket

A friend of mine mentioned that she had an invite to the social networking site RIPL and was wondering if I knew anything about it. I did some digging around, and found that there really is not a ton of information out there about this site. What I did fine, though, did not make it seem too appealing.

They are pretty big on the idea of customization, to the point that I’d think they are on the path to MySpace’s horrendousness. Also, the screenshots that I did see of it show a lot of advertising, which, as you know, I hate with a burning passion. The one bright side of the advertising is that they allow you to choose what gets displayed on your profile. The downside is that they’re treating this as content, which I think many would disagree with. The other thing they are proud of is their privacy system. They say that you can have very granular control over who can see you, and what they can see.

I think that RIPL’s biggest problem is that most everything they tout as an advantage for them is now easily available on Facebook via applications. Having your playlists and such automatically displayed on your profile is now as easy as installing the Last.fm app. RIPL did start at the end of 2005, though, which was well before Facebook apps was known. Today, though, I think that they are going to just be another wanna-be in the market for social networking.

RIPL is currently only availble to students of the University of Washington and the University of Central Florida, or if you have an invite.

Google Gears Breaking Reader?

I am a huge fan of Google Reader, and think that the new Google Gears add on is a wonderful idea. I'm looking forward to when more websites are making use of it. However, today Gears seems to be causing Reader to not load. Uninstalling Gears seems to have fixed the problem for me. Anyone else having any issues? Given the still experimental nature of Gears I'm not too upset, but it is a bummer to see a bug crop up.

A Picture's Worth Nothing

Anyone that spends more than five minutes on this site will quickly realize that I don't do pictures. I don't put them in my posts, I don't take them, I don't pose for them. However, if you are the type to want to put some pictures up, and actually care about copyrights and such, then check out Read/Write Web's review of some search sites for free stock photos. I couldn't get xcavator to work, but that's more likely something in my settings that a problem on their end. Yotophoto did work, though, and I was able to grab this picture in a fairly quick and painless manner. Those are the only two I tried out, but play around with them and see what you think.

Good News for High-Speed Data

Props to Verizon for saying that they're willing to take the cost of rolling out better data networks. Though, I can't say I agree with their choice of intro music for when they talked about this. I'm glad that they are willing to spend the upfront money that is required to deliver faster speeds to customers. The U.S. is so far beind in the race for low cost, high speed data that it is laughable. We need more companies that will do this.

Stone Beats Shuffle

Ars has a review of some alternatives to the iPod Shuffle. The two he looks at are the Sansa Express and the Creative Stone. I'm a fan of SanDisk's MP3 players, and would probably recommend the Express, though I admit I've never used it. Based on his review, the Stone looks pretty good too, for what it is. I thought it was funny that he questions how it can be $40 less than the Shuffle. I don't think there's really any mystery there at all. Apple like to mark their prices up to way more than is justifiable. All of their products are like this, and the Shuffle is no exception. People make the case that the iPod costs more due to the UI and such. The Shuffle, though, lacks any of this. Push a button, play a song. That's all it does. Somehow, to the idiots of the world, that is worth 80 bucks.

Again, You Can't Copy That DVD

I am too tired and not in the mood to write a full post, but I did want to share this. To it, I say "That sucks." First, people are going to find a way around this anyway. Second, if you have a few hundred DVDs, having to find the one you want every time instead of just having your library stored on a computer is a real pain.

Intarweb Making Us Stoopider?

Andrew Keen just put out a book trying to persuade people that this Web 2.0 thing is dumbing us down. His arguments include thing like, due to the inability for many amateur content producers to do proper research the content they create won't be as good as Big Media. Also, the funds that drive much of traditional media are required for really good work to be achieved. Then there's the thing with people watching clips of people getting kicked in the balls, or monkeys throwing their poo over and over again. I don't know if I agree with everything, but he does make some valid points. Personally, though, I'd have to say that the internet does just the opposite for me. I often times see something mentioned in the main media, and then use the internet for further research. True, you can't trust everything you read online, but there's a lot of it that does come from reliable sources. Reliable in that in the past they have been correct. I also think that the things offered from the Web 2.0 concept allows Big Media to become even better. If you consider something like PC Mag or the ilk to be part of Big Media (they are a print company, after all), then they have benefited greatly from blogs and the like. Instead of having to wait until the next issue goes out, they can break stories as the happen.
I think that the reason the internet might be making you dumber is if you take everything you read as fact, and don't acknowledge that blogs are a good supplement for professional things, and not necessarily a replacement. Relying solely on sites like mine is probably not a good idea. There are high caliber ones out there, though, such as TechCrunch or Ars Technica. These are basically professional journalists using an online format instead of a traditional one.
I'd also argue that the internet is a little bit late on making people stupid. People have been getting more and more dumb before the internet became popular.

Dry As a Bone

Partly due to Zelda, and partly due to my mood, I haven't been able to come up with much of anything to post lately. I'm reading the news, but nothing is just jumping out at me. I mean, Apple has made a fool out of themselves twice recently. I suppose that's something. Apple really grinds my gears. They are so full of themselves it's amazing that they are taken seriously. They are also treated so differently from other companies by the public, I'm always left wondering. Speaking of this, Apple announced that the iPhone is going to get up to 8 hours of talk time. I'm skeptical, at best. However, if this turns out to be true, then props to them. Maybe others will figure out how they did it and we can all start having incredible battery life on our electronic devices. Another thing about the iPhone: Jobs has said that it is the best iPod yet. I don't see how a portable media device with as little as 4 gigs of storage can be the best yet. Part of me really wants to see the iPhone fail horribly, just to knock Apple down a few pegs. The problem is that that won't happen. The over-hype about the phone will mean that it will be a success at launch, regardless. After that, even if it does start to fail, Apple will be forgiven and the masses will forget about it. Personally, I've got a few things I dislike about the iPhone, but only two that would keep me from buying one. The biggest is the price tag. People many places are saying that there hasn't been any firm evidence on what price will actually be, but I beg to differ. The slide at MacWorld 2007 seems to show that the $499 and $599 price will be with a required two year contract. Which brings me to my second item. There is no way I'm becoming an AT&T customer. I've heard horrible things about their wireless business for many years, and their latest bit about spying on people means that I won't be counting myself as any type of AT&T customer. I realize that the price is all but guaranteed to drop after a while, but I'm not talking about buying one later. Plus, I seem to remember seeing something about the AT&T exclusivity being five years. I could be wrong on that one, though.
Really, though, the iPhone does have some compelling features, but nothing that makes me think it deserves the price. They give their little comparison chart, but leave key features that many find important off of it. I also wonder how happy users of their onscreen keyboard will be. I think that the iPhone is a step in the right direction towards what people want, but I think it's a far way from the best thing ever. I know that none of this is new, but that's never stopped me before. I guess that only time will tell. Well, maybe. There just might be enough fanboys out there to keep it alive even if it does suck.

Movie Piracy Killed My Brother and Raped My Mother

Apparently piracy is way more damaging than other, more pathetic crimes because it causes something like infinity billion dollars in damage. Ars reports that NBC/Universal's Rick Cotton claims that law enforcement wastes too much time on things like bank robberies when they should be focusing on piracy.

"Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned," Cotton said. "If you
add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from
theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16
billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of
dollars] a year."

What Cotton seems to forget, as Ars points out, violence associated with things like burglary is pretty bad, whereas you don't really see anyone getting shot while downloading a movie. On top of this, the claim that intellectual property crime runs in the "hundreds of billions" is completely ludicrous. If that were true, it would mean that piracy costs the entertainment industry more than its total revenue for 2006. I wholly believe that there is some lost revenue by people downloading stuff instead of buying it, but the vast majority of pirated content would have never been purchased and can't really be counted as lost revenue. However, even if you did count it as lost revenue, I don't know if you would come up with hundreds of billions a year. This just goes to show that the industry is seriously out of touch with reality. Maybe we'll start breaking into their homes, but stop downloading movies. After all, based on their numbers they'd be doing better off if we did that.

Clarification

I just wanted to clarify something from my last post. I'm not for people cheating. I was just trying to use an example of something that isn't good, but is also something that you don't want a big company spying on you to see if you're doing it. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't sending the signal that I want people to cheat without getting caught.

Thank You for Choosing ATT, How May I Screw You Today?

First it was the NSA, and now AT&T is going to start working with the RIAA and MPAA by turning over customer information. They are going to try to help track down pirates, and make sure that they get punished. Now, if you're an AT&T customer, even if you're not a pirate, I'd strongly encourage you to get off their network ASAP. If this is any indication, they are on a slippery slope downwards to having no regard to their customers' privacy. By actively helping to track down customers that are pirating things, AT&T demonstrates just what kind of company it is. If this was some sort of move to track down child molesters or something I could see where they might have a defense, but as it is they are basically just telling their customers that they don't care what they want. Even that would be a bit questionable. Duncan Riley is correct.

There's something very, very wrong when a company starts conspiring against
its users.

What's next? Are they going to start sending letters to spouses if it looks like their partner is cheating? How much monitoring are customers going to allow before they jump ship?

Updated: No, really, I can spell.

Could We Extradite Paris to Iran?

Yesterday, the Iran parliament voted for a bill that could conceivably mean the death penalty to those involved with adult entertainment. This means that the producers, directors, actors, and camera operators could all find themselves in a world of trouble if caught. They already can face problems in the country, but the bill would move to label them as "corrupter of the world," which is one of the worst possible offences under the Quran.
Now, I'm all for some morality, and not letting society go down the crapper, but I don't think executing the people involved with porn is really the right way to go. Except, perhaps, for Joe Francis or Paris Hilton.

Do You Like iLike?

It seems like everywhere I turn I'm reading about how fast the iLike application is growing on Facebook. In about two week's time they have garnered over 3 million users on the site. It is currently the second most popular application. I am not one of those 3 million, but many of my friends are. I don't plan to speak for the application, as I don't know if it is good, bad, or what. I'm more interested in the speed in which it is growing, and the amount of attention it has received. Its growth rate, as has been mentioned a number of times, is largely due to the viral nature of Facebook's applications. When someone adds one, an entry is added to their mini-feed and posted to their friends' main feeds (depending on settings). This means that if you have a good number of friends, the simple act of adding an application advertises it to a large number of people. On top of this, these are not just ads that are on the side of the screen. These have your implicit endorsement, which means other people are more likely to add them as well. If they do add them, it is posted to their feeds, and just propagates out. This means that in a matter of a few hours, thousands of people can potentially see an application multiple times simply because one person added it.
The rabid adoption rate is a double edged sword. In iLike's case, they outgrew their servers very quickly, and had to scramble to get more. If you don't have the ability to scale exponentially in a very short amount of time, you're screwed. On the other hand, it means that the time it takes to make it big can be cut drastically. If you have something that you can monetize, the lead time for it will be shorter. This is definitely a good thing.
There is something interesting here, though. How quickly will the saturation point be reached? When the growth rate is practically a straight line going up, it is near impossible to keep that up for long. Not for any fault on the application's part, but simply because they run out of people. This means that once they hit this point, there is no way to grow other than to offer new things to existing users. When your growth rate is slower, you have more time to plan for this, and to roll things out to keep people interested. Will something like iLike be able to do the same on a faster basis? Will they need to? People can be finicky, and like things that are new and interesting. If everyone is using the application from day one, I would think that a boredom factor would begin to set in. The novelty factor can only carry on for so long. Is it possible that iLike will get the same grace period as other apps that take longer to become popular? I am really curious, I have no idea. Part of me wants to think that this thing could skyrocket up, and then be forgotten within a few months. The other part of me thinks that they will be able to keep people interested long enough to offer something else. Either way, it will be interesting to see what happens. Their growth can only go on for so long (after all, there are only so many Facebook users), but I imagine there will be a while longer where we see this happening.
The other interesting part of all of this is the coverage that this is getting. The success of iLike is being told and re-told, and will likely serve as a blueprint. The coverage also just helps to drive more people to look into what iLike is, and what other applications Facebook has to offer. It also is making sites like MySpace scramble to come up with something to compete. This is all free publicity for both Facebook, their new platform, and applications like iLike. It is definitely the hot topic right now.

All of this is pretty exciting stuff. I'll continue to read about it and pass along info. Also, I share a lot on Facebook that I don't necessarily write about on here so take a look at my posted items there for some more info.

The Sad Irony

Perhaps I am a horrible person for not immediately thinking how sad this is, but rather having the thought, "I guess he failed the exercise." The story is that a soldier at Ft. Hood was taking part in a solo training exercise to test map reading and navigation skills. He had been missing for four days before his body was found. While it's very unfortunate that this guy died, I can't help but find the irony that it was because he got lost during a test to see if he could avoid getting lost.

Another Confirmation of the Reality Distortion Field

There were a couple of announcements that came out of WWDC yesterday. One is that the Safari web browser is now available for Windows, and the other is that the iPhone has an "innovative" way of allowing third-party development. You would probably think that these two announcements should be more unrelated than they are, and you'd probably be right. This innovative solution is nothing more than running a web ap via Safari on the iPhone. This means that developers can make AJAX apps for the phone. I think this pretty much fails to even come close to a comparison of being able to properly develop applications. Jobs calls this solution "new" and "sweet." I call it "stupid" and "lacking." This is yet another example of why so many people bash on Apple. They keep such a closed system that it limits what anyone can do with their devices. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but don't claim to allow outside delevopment via a web browser. Just come right out and say that you are not going to allow third-party apps and leave it at that. Telling people that this is a "sweet solution" is just insulting our intelligence. Worse, though, is that people are buying it! Alex Hung claims that making a proper SDK is "hard," and that Nokia and Sony Ericcson are exaomples of this. I'm sorry, but last time I checked neither of those companies are in the business of software. Apple may say that they are a hardware company, but they are heavily involved in the software side of things. The reason they didn't release an SDK is not because it is hard, it is because they don't want to open up their device to the potential of being unstable. By allowing outside development, they allow the possibility of someone making an application that could cause problems on the phone. This would create the perception that there is something wrong with the phone, which Apple wants to avoid. Hey, I don't blame them. Like I said, I just think they should be honest about it. A better take on this, in my opinion, comes from Ed Burnette at ZDNet.com. I think he sums it up nicely with this.

“You can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps!” Thanks Steve, we’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.

Yeah, allowing Web 2.0 apps on a web browser: Genius! Oh yeah, and don't forget that any Flash app is out of the question. Maybe that "fully functional" web browser on a phone isn't so full after all.

Keeping Our Borders Safe for Crossing

I'd like to congratulate Bush on his plan for placing Guardsmen on our border in order to "protect" us from illegal crossings. Three Texas Guardsmen were just arrested for smuggling over illegals, and taking them as far north as Dallas. The article doesn't say how many total people were brought across, but it seems like they were doing about 20 a trip. When they got caught, they had 24 in the van. The van was even leased by the National Guard. I'm glad to see our money going directly to assist the crossing of the border by migrants. See, not only do we pay for the guys to drive you, we even pay for the vehicle!

This Will Be the End of Mii

My good friend that stayed with me last summer has returned. I’m not sure how long he’ll be on my couch this time, but at least two weeks. This means a couple of things. One is that my apartment has been transformed from a neat, clean, roomy place into a cramped disaster zone (Dude, if you’re reading this, no offense but you know it’s true). Second, and more importantly, is that with him came his Wii. I have been a fan of the system ever since I first heard about it years ago. I’ve managed to keep myself from buying one because they’re still hard to find. Also, I really don’t have the money to spend on a big timesink right now. Before this weekend I had only played about 5 minutes on the Wii. After this weekend, I’ve played about 5 hours on there. I’m hooked. The crazy thing is that I haven’t even delved into his more time intensive games, like Zelda or Paper Mario. Almost all of my time so far has been spent playing the sports games. I’ve become pretty good at the golfing, which is a little funny since I’ve never actually golfed in real life. I’m decent at bowling too. My big problem right now is baseball. I get more foul balls than Paris Hilton. One funny thing they have on there is your “Wii fitness age.” I tried it on Saturday, and really did poorly coming in at 48. I did it again on Sunday when I was a bit more accustomed to the controls and it said I was 28. I think that this age assignment is fairly arbitrary, it is a game, but it’s still funny. The biggest thing is just how much time I’m spending on there. I was on my computer for maybe 10 minutes all day yesterday. If you know me at all, you know just how insane that is. I have a feeling that this summer is going to see a significant drop in my online time.

I'm Sorry, I Forgot Your _______

I know that this particular topic has been talked about a lot, but I thought it was interesting. In today’s world, the need to remember certain bits of information is really not what it used to be. Phone numbers are the obvious example. It used to be the case that speed dial meant you didn’t have to dial your closest friends all the time, but for anyone not in one of your few slots you had to have their number. Now, though, with cell phones able to hold hundreds, or even thousands, of phone numbers, why should you bother trying to remember someone’s number? If you’re like me, you may not even see or hear someone’s number. I often just give the person my phone and have them call themselves so that they’ll have my number too.
Email address books enable this too. It used to be a pain to have to select someone out of an address book in an email program, but with auto complete coupled with names, I can start typing the first couple letters of a person’s name and it takes care of it.
Favorites/bookmarks allow you to be lazy for websites. You don’t have to remember what the actual URL for something is when all you do is click the shortcut. With programs now allowing you to keep your bookmarks remotely and accessible anywhere, you don’t even have to worry about forgetting one while away from home.
This age of convenience makes needing to keep track of all of this type of information a thing of the past. Quite frankly, I love it. It’s not that I have a hard time remembering these types of things; I just love things being easier. Sure, it may have some sort of impact on people’s memory ability, but there’s always other things to remember that replace these bits and pieces. What are your thoughts?

I know I’ve been pretty quiet this week, but things have been pretty busy. Mostly due to it being the beginning of the month. The next week or two should be a lot better.

Seen Anything Good Lately?

When I first bought a domain and started writing, I would give little reviews of movies quite often. This was largely driven off the fact that I watched an insane amount of movies. This meant that I wasn’t really spending time doing much of anything else so I didn’t have anything else to write about anyway. In more recent times, though, I’ve really cut back on how many movies I watch. I have that Blockbuster Total Access thing, and have actually had it for a few years now. I love that they do the change your envelope for a rental thing, that basically means that if I wanted to, I could be watching about 2 or three movies a day. That’s crazy. I have been going out less lately, but I still haven’t been doing many movies. I probably only watch less than one a week now. I do miss watching and reviewing, though. Even though my reviews usually just consisted of me pointing out all of the negative things in the movie. I guess I shouldn’t say I reviewed as much as I criticized. The problem was that there are just so few good movies. Especially this crap that they put out now. There is so much wrong with these movies that it is really easy to just tear them apart. By contrast, I recently watched The Philadelphia Story with Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and James Stewart. This is a movie that was made in 1940 and is leaps and bounds better than what we have today. There is great acting, good humor, and a really good story. Why is it that we don’t have quality stuff like that anymore? Look at this summer. Nearly every movie that is coming out this summer is a sequel to something, or looks so horrible that it probably should have never been made in the first place. Those two aren’t mutually exclusive, either. Why do so many people say how disappointed they are in the crap that Hollywood gives us, yet this stuff is still getting made and making millions? Why are we having record breaking movies coming out that really aren’t that good? Stop going to see the crappy movies, and maybe then we’ll stop getting them. If you feel like you just have to go see something, at least wait a few weeks so the theater gets the money instead of the studio.

Chalk up One for the Good Guys

If you haven't heard, the RIAA decided that it didn't want to risk fighting a case in court, and the case of Atlantic v. Andersen (PDF) has been dropped. Both sides agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice. This is a great victory for everyone that has been falsely targeted in the RIAA's carpet bombing approach of filing lawsuits. Ars makes a good point.

What's unusual is that the RIAA has stipulated to a dismissal with prejudice,
completely exonerating Andersen. Next to a negative verdict, an exonerated
defendant is the last thing the RIAA wants. When faced with an undesirable outcome, the RIAA's tactic has been to move to dismiss without prejudice, a "no harm, no foul" strategy that puts an end to a lawsuit without declaring a winner and a loser. Dismissing a case with prejudice opens the RIAA up to an attorneys' fee
award, which happened in the case of another woman caught in the
music industry's driftnet, Debbie Foster.

This is especially great news when you consider that. It is close to the RIAA admiding that they were wrong. True, not exactly the same thing, but it still exonerates the defendant, which is wonderful. I hope that Andersen is able to fully recover all of the fees taht she's had to pay during this two year legal battle. I also hope that she can serve as inspiration to others to stand up against the RIAA when they knew that they've done nothing wrong.

Something for a Rainy Day

I got to thinking, and figured that it would be a good idea to keep some sort of backlog of things that I write so that on weeks that I’m just super busy I’ll still have something to put up here. The problem is that so much of what I want to write is about something that is a current event. Also, I have this odd complex where if I don’t write about something right away, then I lose my thoughts on it, and forget what I was going to say. If I do go back and take a stab at it, I usually don’t come up with something that is nearly as witty or interesting as the first thing that I had. I’ve tried taking notes to use for later, but that doesn’t always work. Also, I feel compelled to keep up with the current things (remember my obsession with new information?), and that doesn’t go well with keeping things in a backlog. Granted, there are a few rants that I have that I can use. Again, though, I tend to not go off on things unless I’ve somehow been prompted by something else. Oh well, we will see. I know that I said I read the article that said not to be too upset about not posting often, I also don’t like to have days of just emptiness. Especially when I’ve got so many friends that are bored at work and rely on me to keep them entertained…

Grumpy Young Man

I took the Real Age test a while ago, and it is supposed to tell you your age based on different factors. You answer this little questionnaire that covers your basic health and lifestyle. It then takes all of these and comes back with what your “real age” is. When I did it, it told me that my age is 32. I’m only 23 so this seems to indicate that I don’t lead a really healthy lifestyle. I can’t say that I have really great habits when it comes to health, but I didn’t think I was that bad. Really, based on the questions they asked, I would have put myself much younger than 32. Ironically, however, had the questions been about personality rather than lifestyle, I probably would have been in the 60s or 70s. When it comes to my personality, I’m quite the curmudgeon. I’m the guy that was telling kids to get off my lawn when they were actually older than me. I think it’s largely due to my wisdom and my cynicism. OK, so probably more of the later than the first. That doesn’t stop me from being cranky all the time. Not only cranky, but more than happy to inform you of how stupid you/your idea/that totally random thing is. I can only imagine what I’ll be like when I’m in my 60s.

Careful, Your Stuff Might Have Your Name on It

In case for some reason you haven’t heard yet, Apple is now offering iTunes Plus, which has the EMI music catalog DRM-free. This is definitely a good thing. The DRM-free part, that is. Granted, you’ve been able to get unprotected tracks from a variety of other sources for quite a while now. The difference is that iTunes has the following of the masses. I don’t want to talk about the fact that there are DRM-free tracks now, though, it is the reaction that people are having to them. More specifically, the reaction to what these tracks contain. Embedded in the music files are the name and email address of the person that bought them. This makes people uneasy, and they are all upset that this information is in there. Now, two things. First, this is not something that is unique to the iTunes Plus tracks; it is in every track you buy on iTunes. Second, this information can only be seen if you have access to the file. Now, in theory, shouldn’t the only person that has access to your music on your computer supposed to be you? Are you worried that you aren’t going to be able to share these files with everyone because they have your info in them? I could be wrong, but isn’t distributing music out to a bunch of strangers still a no-no? Don’t get me wrong here, I’m a firm believer that the idea that illegal music sharing creates horrible things is complete BS. I’m just saying that I don’t see why you should be upset that these tracks contain your info. Is this really different than the file properties on a Word doc you make that have your name in the created by item (assuming you’ve registered with your name)? It is just pretty stupid to be upset about having your personal information in something that is, for all intents and purposes, private.

I’m in Your City Photographing Your Buildings

I’m sure you know what I think about the people upset over Google’s new Street View. The stupidity is not just contained at an individual level, though. The U.S. government is shaking in their booties too. They are trying to tell us that terrorists can use services such as Google’s or Microsoft’s to plot out future escapades. My question is, do they really need these tools to plan attacks? Terrorists don’t seem to have any problems getting into our country. Why is it that they can’t just run down to the gas station, buy a map, and then drive around town with a camera? Then they could send this information to their friends back home and they would have exactly the same information that is available to the rest of us. This would even allow for a more specific look at things than the current services offer. I mean, do I think that terrorists can’t use these services, or won’t consider using them? Of course not. I just think that these services aren’t giving them anything they couldn’t already get.

The Google Van. Quick, Hide the Cat!

I can't say I always agree with Scoble, but I think he's on the right track with this one. People have been making a huge fuss about the privacy concerns due to Google's new Street View on their maps. If you aren't familiar with it, you should definitely check it out. Head to New York, NY for an example. The feature allows you to look around the streets with a pretty decent amount of detail. Anyhow, a lady raised a big ruckus because you can see her cat sitting in her window, and she felt like this was somehow a major breach in her privacy. What she, and all these fearmongers that are jumping on board with it, seem to forget is that it is perfectly legal to photograph things that are visible while just driving down the street. It is amazing how many times people rise up to defend photographers that get told they can't take pictures of people in public, yet fail to see how this is the same thing. Do a little research next time, OK?

On a side-note, Scoble talks about not wanting marketing firms to have all this info on him and what he buys. Personally, if an advertiser knows all about me and will start sending me coupons about things I need or like instead of just getting spam, I'd be all for it.

Drink Coke? Stop Saying There's Genocide in Dafur

When I first heard that Sudan had threatened to cut off the world's supply of Coca-Cola I thought it must be some kind of joke. Sadly, it doesn't look like that's the case. The ambassador, John Ukec Lueth Ukec, spent an hour denying the killing that is going on in Dafur. He claims that there is nothing wrong going on, and that his country is actually building the world's best democracy. Johnny said that the U.S. is the only country in the world that claims there is genocide happening, and that the sanctions imposed must stop. His threat if the U.S. doesn't back off? Sudan will stop the export of gum arabic, which is required in the production of Coca-Cola. His country accounts for 80% of the world's supply. I guess that they have us beat. How can we survive without our Coke?

Want to Meet a Nice Girl? Sue!

Apparently when you find a business that doesn’t sell what you want, you sue them. At least, that’s the thought process of Linda Carlson. She is suing the online dating site eHarmony because they don’t offer Man seeking Man or Woman seeking Woman options. She sees this as discrimination against gays and bisexuals. She and her lawyer are hoping to get this as a class action suit and seek damages for all those who were denied the service of the site because they were gay. To all of this, I say, “What?” Does this not strike you as absurd? The site caters to a niche market of heterosexual daters. How is this different than sites that cater to gay daters? What about racial specific dating sites? Should all us honkies sue Asian Friend Finder too? The ridiculousness of people today just makes me mad and sad at the same time. Why is it that today everyone sees litigation as the first and best option?