Today has been an extremely busy day in the tech world. Let’s do a quick recap:
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I’m not going to lie (even by omission) - what Microsoft (shudder) announced last night sounds awesome.
They’re calling it Surface, and that’s exactly what it is: a surface. More precisely, it is an entry into a new product category - not a tablet PC, but a table PC. Microsoft Surface is basically a glorified coffee table that uses what looks like a pretty high-quality multi-touch interface that lets you draw, move around photos and resize them, and interact with the display in a ton of ways using different gestures. It’s not for the typical home consumer, that’s for sure, but I can see it being a cool conversation piece for the wealthy, and perhaps effective in some office settings - particularly in creative fields. Word on the street is it could be three or more years before this is available in the general consumer market (and as of right now, it’d be priced between $5000 and $10000. Ouch.).
Check out their website and demo videos here. More info and demos here.
Naturally, the timing of this announcement is just a little suspect, with Apple’s iPhone being released mere weeks from today (and Surface won’t be first emerging for sale to special people until “Winter 2007”.) Even so, it looks pretty awesome for what it is, and I especially appreciate the fusing of technology with an object as ubiquitous and familiar as the coffee table. Moving into the future, I imagine we’ll see more and more everyday objects being enhanced by technology - if not always such fancy schmancy interfaces.
Okay, I need to go wash my hands, now. That’s enough Microsoft love for at least a year.
As you can probably tell from the first title alone, this is a pretty eclectic collection of interesting links this afternoon. But it’s some good, thought-provoking stuff.
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Popular social-networking site Facebook dropped a bomb on the tech world last week by opening up its doors to applications built on top of what they call Facebook Platform. Here are ten quick thoughts on Facebook, social networking, and the future.
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advertising,
facebook,
future,
myspace,
social networking,
web,
web20
Only in America could this be true about a holiday meant to honor those who have died in military service:
One of the longest standing traditions is the running of the Indianapolis 500, which has been held in conjunction with Memorial Day since 1911.That is from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry on Memorial Day. Absurd. For most Americans, today is a day to picnic, barbecue, party - to celebrate the beginning of summer and the opening of the beaches. It is a day off work, a three-day weekend, a time to catch up on sleep or go visit relatives.
Dearest Readers,
I’ve decided to change up the way comments work on Frivolous Motion in an attempt to make things easier and more awesome.
First, comments are open to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Leave your (real or fake) name, leave your site, or sign in with your Google/Blogger ID to have your name link back to your profile.
I don’t believe in censorship except under the most extreme circumstances, so if I delete your comment there’s either something seriously wrong, or I made a mistake (in which case a quick email to me will usually fix things). The only comments I disallow are blatant Spam. Otherwise, I’m inclined to believe that open discussion is the best choice. But what am I saying? You Frivolous Motion readers don’t need me to tell you what’s allowed! You guys are awesome!
All comments from here on out have the NoFollow attribute removed, which means that links within them (and links to your profile/website) will be followed by the Search Bots. Think of it as thanks for contributing to the discussion. And as an incentive to comment more - especially if you’ve not done so before!
I got rid of the word verification, because in my experience it was too finnicky and unreliable, and I hated having to type the word in several times (even when commenting on my own blog!).
To balance things out, I have added comment moderation, which means it’ll take a little bit for your comment to appear. Basically, I’ll receive an email when you submit a comment, and as soon as I have a chance to approve it (which will usually be immediately - I try to keep on top of things), your comment will appear on the site. I might turn this off from time to time as a test, but we’ll see.
Like any system, it’s bound not to be perfect, but I think it will be a nice improvement over what came before. Let me know if you run into any problems or have some suggestions (by email or in the comments!).
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being such an important piece of Frivolous Motion.
~Kevin
Another way to beat the heat this summer (or have an awesome life any other season!) is to eat ice cream.
I’m a big advocate of ice cream from pretty much anywhere, with the exception of places like ColdStone and Maggie Moos, which serve up a nasty, pathetic excuse for my favorite frozen treat.
To put you in the mood I’m in right now, here are the first 10 Creative Commons-licensed photos on Flickr that show up when searching for “ice cream.”
Enjoy!
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For the holiday (in the US) weekend!
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Summer is hot. And that sucks. Beaches are lame.
Here are 10 great ways to spend your summer if you agree that hours in the scalding-hot sun spent getting sand in all of your unmentionable crevices is NOT a good time.
Note: If you are into that, I suggest you try these out anyway because there is likely something seriously wrong with you.
The “coming soon” page for Better This Way (the newest Deliberate Motion multimedia performance extravaganza) is now online! The show - a reimagining of the myth of Persephone - will premiere at the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival, and if you’re in the vicinity of NYC this August, we’d love to see you there.
Check it out now, and check it out often. All dates and showtimes and additional info will be announced here and there as soon as they are available.
For now, enjoy the juicy Pom.
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deliberatemotion,
theatre
Google has done a couple things this week that have people screaming their heads off in fright. First, CEO Eric Schmidt said this:
We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation.And then it was announced that they are buying Feedburner (which I use for subscriptions) for $100 million.
“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’?”
In fact the first sign of this approach is how GMail marks the sender of emails “me” instead of “you”. It’s subtle, but having some background in processing semantics of the natural language and psychology I spotted it right away as soon as I logged in for the first time. It’s a way to erase the boundary between the person and a machine.I noticed that, too, and what he says about it is true. The boundaries between man and machine are increasingly becoming blurred. Or, at least, our understanding of those boundaries is becoming blurrier. Who’s to say we know what we’re talking about?
I’m also surprised how surprised everyone was about what Schmidt said. This is what I always imagined Google would be, and would do. In fact, the whole concept of the Web seems to be moving this direction - infinite data, shared across infinite systems, usable by everything that can benefit from it.I’m not afraid of Google for two reasons:
I’ve always wanted a company like Google to help me analyze my finances - at least I’d be able to see and work with and analyze the information that credit card companies and banks keep to themselves (when they’re not selling it to marketers).
Ultimately, we’ll make sacrifices to our privacy because sharing data will benefit us. And we will trust someone, because otherwise we’ll lose our minds. We already trust plenty of people who don’t even ask if we want them to track and sell our data (Internet Service Providers!!, banks, credit companies, the government). At least Google does us the courtesy of asking first.
As you can tell, I’m a tad less cynical about this than many. Maybe you’re right - perhaps it’s because it is “me” doing it.
The fault for the most part lies with an individual’s failure/reluctance to take responsibility for themselves, their lives, and their data. The privacy concerns (and security ones) are real, and any such system should by default be harmless - let users “opt in,” let them delete things and set limits on what information is collected. Amazon does pretty well with its recommendations - and they’re a store whose sole goal is to sell you more of their stuff. Google’s info-gathering, while larger in scale, might at least be useful to us in more ways than the commercial. As with anything, all Google needs to do is show that they can offer more value the more of your data they have access to, and we’ll see folks gradually giving over more and more. And being okay with it.
I’m reminded of the outcry when Facebook introduced the News Feed last fall. Every last bit of information they showed was visible prior to the presentation of it in one place. A lot of people thought a bit harder about what they chose to make visible after that. And that’s how it should be.
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I get a lot of emails asking me about the giant tag cloud hanging out at the top of my site. So many, in fact, that I thought it’d be a great idea to make a post out of it, as a bit of a mini-tutorial. So, without further ado, here’s how to get an awesome tag cloud in the New Blogger (formerly Blogger Beta).
(UPDATE 24/08/2007: Obviously there’s no tag cloud up there anymore, since I redesigned the site. I’ve posted a screenshot below of what it used to look like. Click it for a larger version.)
Okay, back to the regularly scheduled tutorial.
First start a new blog in Blogger. Got one? Cool.
Now, navigate in Blogger to Template > Page Elements (clicking Layout from the Dashboard will get you there, too). You’re looking for the screen that says “Add and Arrange Page Elements.” Now, in the sidebar of this representation of your blog, click “Add a Page Element.” You’ll get a nice pop-up with a ton of options. Click Labels, cause that’s what you want to add, after all. Keep it alphabetical, change the name if you feel like it, and click “Save Changes.”
Save your template.
Now click over to “Edit HTML.” Definitely a good idea to “Download Full Template” here, to be safe, before you start editing the code. I’ll wait.
Backed up? Good. Moving on.
Search through your code for a line that looks exactly like this:
<b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'/><b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<div class='widget-content'>
<div id='LabelDisplay'>
</div>
</div>
<script language='javascript' type='text/javascript'>
function zoomStyle() {
var max = 0;
var min = 10000;
<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
if (<data:label.count/> > max)
max = <data:label.count/>;
if (<data:label.count/> < min)
min = <data:label.count/>;
</b:loop>
var display = "";
<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
var delta = <data:label.count/> - min;
var size = 80 + (delta * 100) / (max - min);
display = display + "<span style='font-size:" + size + "%'><a expr:href='data:label.url + "?max-results=100"' style='text-decoration:none;'><data:label.name/></a></span> ";
</b:loop>
obj = document.getElementById('LabelDisplay');
obj.innerHTML = display;
}
zoomStyle();
</script>
<b:include name='quickedit'/>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>
My friend Ben doesn’t like the new Bank of America Online Banking icons and interface that I wrote about yesterday. In his comment, he wrote, “i actually hate them and wanted to turn them off, but that's not an option.”
Now this post isn’t about whether he’s right or I’m right, because something like this is very much a matter of personal taste, but his comment brought to mind something I think is pretty important.
Change is scary.
Change is inconvenient.
Change isn’t always a good thing (or at least it doesn’t always feel that way).
If you are a company as large as Bank of America, it’s important to let users of your website know that change is on the way. Give them clues, tell them why (beforehand!), add new things incrementally, and, as Ben mentioned, give them the option to change back to the old design (at least for a little while). Rather than force users to learn a new interface, however similar it may be, use a redesign as an opportunity to teach them something new, to show them how to do something cool they’ve never done before. Take it slow. Don’t ambush us.
Google does a great job of this, with recent changes to Blogger, Google Analytics, and iGoogle all offering the opportunity to use the previous version. In fact, the old Blogger interface and templates were available for months before Google started making all new folks use the Beta version, and even now, there is a way to revert to what they call the Classic Blogger. For the most part, users could see that the new was better - that it offered them more functionality, was easier to customize - and they made the switch on their own time.
Bank of America’s changes weren’t so drastic as Blogger (or even the new Google Analytics), but the fact remains that people get used to looking at their data in certain ways. They have to train themselves to read it, and even the slightest change can trip them up. Sure, eventually it’ll be faster and give them more information, but for the time being, it’s an inconvenience at best, and a major annoyance at worst.
Trick your users into thinking it was their idea.
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I’m a big fan of Bank of America’s Online Banking services, and with its recent updates, I love it even more. They’ve added a bunch of features that help you better understand and manage your finances, and extended the availability of statements from six months to a full year.
But by far my favorite part are the awesome little icons they’ve created to help give you an at-a-glance look at the types of transactions made in your account. If you know me, you won’t be surprised to hear that most of mine, by far, have the little check card icon next to them. Muggers take note: I don’t carry cash.
Check them out:
Nice work, team.
Simple:
To Whom It May Concern:
It’s probably my own fault, really. I knew not to bring liquids in containers greater than 3.4 fluid ounces (though I admit confusion over whether the ban is on the amount of liquid or the size of the bottle), but I did anyway. It was a mistake caused by doing the bulk of my packing the morning of the trip. I packed the requisite plastic bag (oops! a gallon instead of a quart), because I knew I’d need it for my tiny bottle of eye drops and perhaps a tube of chapstick (which a year ago - prior to the “one bag, three ounces” rule - was confiscated). But of course that’s not all I put in it. In a few glorious moments of not-thinking, I shoved in my 5-ounce glass container of Marc Jacobs cologne (mostly full), and a brand new 4-ounce container of Garnier Fructis hair gunk - stuff I pack on pretty much all my weekend trips to Hartford or Boston. My bad, as “they” say.
But that’s where my faults end and yours begin. It was horribly nice of you to let me keep my cologne (even though it was sketchily double-wrapped in a black grocery bag) because you “know it’s just cologne.” Uh, don’t you also know what hair gunk looks like? What gives with this absurd and arbitrary application of Federal regulations? How can you say “it’s cool” in the same breath as “but I’ll have to confiscate this green container, sorry”? Um, dude, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but who’s to say my Marc Jacobs cologne wasn’t actually a hard-core acid that could melt the skin of small children and flight attendants? Or that the couple drops left in my bottle of eye drops aren’t infected with a particularly awful strain of conjunctivitis, just waiting for my seat-mates to drift off to sleep? Or that I plan on using my beard trimmer to rip the neck-flesh of the copilot after I’ve blinded him with a spritz of cayenne-peppered cologne? I could go on, and I’m not even a terrorist who researches and plans and plots for months. These thoughts just came to me in my less-than-awake post-redeye-flight state.
Please have the decency to apply these regulations consistently. Any exceptions risk exposing these regulations for the frivolous, non-response that they are. You and I both know that these rules do nothing to protect us, but can’t we at least pretend that they do, so we all might feel a little better?
Just because I dress “professionally” and seem “nice” does not give you an excuse not to do your job. The blood is on your hands, dude.
Your friend and fellow patriot,
Kevin M. Keating
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I have been writing for Frivolous Motion every weekday (and some weekends) since September of 2006, now over eight months and nearly 400 posts, and as I sit here this morning, about to fly “home” to Las Vegas, I can’t help but think, “Whoa.” To me, that’s a long time. But I can easily see myself doing this for years to come. Or something like this. Like Twitter, or Tumblr, or YouTube, or podcasting, or something so new and innovative I don’t even know about it yet. Something, though.
But why? Is it delusions of grandeur? Do I see myself becoming the next big superstar of the Web? Do I think I will influence presidential elections? Get a huge advertising deal with a hot tech company? Nah. Do I think thousands of people will start emailing me to do design work for them based on my posts about iTunes and controversies sweeping the blogosphere? No again.
I blog because I believe in connection, and I believe in the power of technology to help make and highlight the connections that exist infinitely in life. I am far from the camp of skeptics who think the internet and other technologies are pulling people apart, distracting them from making “real, meaningful connections” with others. These individuals just haven’t discovered how to make it work for them, in the same way that not every person who attends a frat party or a concert is able to connect with other people there (yeah, I used to be that guy from time to time).
There are connections to be made everywhere, and an infinite number of ways to make them. The internet allows you to touch and be touched by individuals who, in a pre-Web age, you might never have known. In the shrinking of the world enabled by cyberspace, we experience life as one great piece of fabric; each one of us making tiny ripples in the sheet that have a profound (if at times unfelt) effect on the global equilibrium. In day to day (non-networked) life, it’s much harder to see that every action, every decision, changes the world. With the internet, you can feel it just a little bit more, and that is hugely important. Your tiny blog posts about tiny things significant to you are discovered and read by individuals all over the world. And in this act of reading, two lives, two histories, two experiences intertwine in the present. Connection is made. Life is shared. A relationship, previously hidden, becomes visible. Becomes felt.
Many of my “real life” friends and family members read this blog, and as a result, they have a much stronger idea about the things that I care about then they might get seeing me from time to time. This blog has strengthened my relationships with those close to me, and built relationships with those far away, many of whom I’ve never met (and may not ever meet).
I believe, and I want to believe that technology has a human soul. I believe it isn’t cold and distant by nature, and see it getting warmer and more organic every day. I can’t even begin to imagine what the next ten years will bring, but I know (and I have faith) that it will be nothing short of astounding. Call me a crazy ignorant optimist, but I trust that humanity will learn to use these tools appropriately and conscientiously for its own sake.
I blog because I like to write, and because there are too many interesting things happening in the world not to try to make sense of. If my sense-making makes sense for another person anywhere, I’d consider this whole endeavor to be a success.
There is no difference between blogging, iChatting, or forum-posting and the Real World. It is all the same, and the sooner we see this, the greater our perspective will be. As long as we persist in making arbitrary distinctions, as long as we continue to treat technology as some alien presence that somehow magically exists outside of what is real, we will be unable to accept and understand it and use it wisely. Everything is real. Everything is natural. Everything is true.
The world is changing. And you are changing it.
That, above all, is what this blog is about. That is why I’m doing this.
Thanks for reading. Thank you very much.
(Note: No new stuff until Monday due to my trip home. Have a wonderful Friday, and a great weekend.)
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Google rocks. That’s all I really want to say this morning. Just go to the homepage (www.google.com, duh) and do a search. Notice anything?
Also, via Mashable!: YouTube to sponsor an official Democratic debate.
And I haven’t watched the finale of America’s Next Top Model yet, but I will just say that the results (winner: Jaslene, runner-up: Natasha!!??) have me very concerned. Very concerned.
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In case you weren’t quite sure exactly why traditional media outlets are dying (hint: it’s not that the internet is killing it - Web content is just filling an ever-larger void), consider this nugget: ABC is actually going to air a sitcom based on the cavemen from the Geico Insurance advertisements. It’s been rumored for awhile now, but I never thought they would actually go through with it. Kevin==wrong.
Commercials turning into television shows? Aren’t the lines blurred enough already, with rampant product placement, and a 3:1 ratio of programming to ads? I can’t imagine any circumstances in which this show could possibly be funny. The commercials, sure, were amusing (the first time), but they lack any real substance - something that could make them really funny. It’s just lame situational humor that not-so-subtly pokes fun at the politically correct times in which we live in (grammar joke, couldn’t resist).
I’ve thought for some time that the divide between programming and advertising will shrink - as shows become shorter to fit on the Web (and our attention spans), and commercials become longer, more sequential, in order to entice an audience to watch them when they can just as easily skip past. TV shows more like commercials, and commercials more like shows. The caveman ads did this (now that they’ve become a show, however, I’m not sure what that means - what happens if Geico advertises during it?), and the much loved/loathed Mac vs. PC spots do, too. People actually get excited when Apple releases new “episodes” in this campaign. Doesn’t that go against all conventional wisdom? And hasn’t it been tremendously successful?
There are so many interesting questions here. As the networks struggle to stay afloat while their viewers’ eyes drift away to newer, more exciting, more original programming on the Web, I think we’ll continue to see crazy stunts like the one ABC is pulling with the caveman sitcom. Desperation has definitely set in.
But this might be the tipping point. We all know, of course, that once the cavemen arrived on Earth, they killed off all the dinosaurs for good.
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future,
television,
web
The United States Postal Service has just raised the price of first-class stamps from $0.39 to $0.41 - that’s two cents per stamp (or roughly 5%). This hike is just the most recent in a series of increases in recent years that seem to be coming with less and less time in-between.
Lame, yes, but there’s a slight catch: the USPS is also releasing what they’re calling a Forever Stamp. The Forever Stamp costs only $0.41 right now (though its price will increase with the base price in years to come), but it will always cover the first-class rate, no matter how high it climbs. Now, that’s pretty nice, especially if the price continues to increase at such a fast rate - buying a ton of Forever Stamps right now seems on the surface to be a worthwhile investment.
But is it really?
I’m no economist (and I don’t have time to figure out a fancy equation), so I won’t be able to calculate projected savings based on the current rate of increase, and adding in all those fancy controlling factors and stuff, but I did a little thought experiment of my own that I found rather illuminating.
Suppose you send exactly 100 letters a year (I send fewer than 10, but that’s another story - let’s assume you’re nice and send a lot of Christmas cards), and every three years the price of a stamp increases by 2 cents. This means that after 13 years of buying $41 worth of stamps, you will have saved just slightly more ($43) than the price of a single year. It also means that to do this, you’ll have had to purchase $533 worth of stamps at the original rate. Lots of money just to get “one year free!” if you ask me. But some of you might be so frugal and splurge this year.
But how long before you start “making” money? Or rather, at what point will your cumulative savings be more than the price you paid to begin with?
Long list of great stuff to check out today. Be sure to watch the amazing video of John Cage’s appearance on the 1960s TV gameshow “I’ve Got A Secret.” He’s amazing in the way he takes his work so seriously yet appreciates the hilarity and absurdity of it all. The audience seemed to like him, and enjoy his performance, which is more than you can say for most “experimental” artists, who come across as pretentious jerks.
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Below is a list of some of the bloggers who have lost their minds (though I can’t be sure they had them to begin with) and believe that Ron Paul (running for the Republican presidential nomination) is the last hope of the Free World. Not all of them are crazy. But some definitely are. Especially the registered Democrats who plan to switch parties to vote in the Republican primaries.
Much of this stuff is rather amusing and seemingly written by folks not yet old enough to vote (notice how I encourage democratic debate by posting these, while subtly undermining the message contained by infantilizing the authors?). This list is also a great primer on the world of MySpace blogs, which you may not have had the privilege of checking out. And don’t forget to check out the 2nd Republican debate tonight. It’s sure to be...amazing. Or something like that.
Bloggers (mostly MySpace) on Ron Paul
Every now and then I hear a person say something like this:
“I’m not sure if God exists, but I figure it’s better to believe in Him/Her and go to church just in case He/She does.”
Here are my questions:
Wouldn’t He/She know you’re thinking that? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? What the heck are you talking about?
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philosophy,
questions,
religion
