Kimi

Recently I caught a Tweet by Demi Moore heralding Foursquare (p.s. Am I the only one getting tired of trying to figure out if proper names these days are all one word, or broken out ie ‘Foursquare’ vs ‘Four square’?). I immediately found myself flabbergasted at the very idea that Demi Moore thinks she should be broadcasting on a minute to minute basis where she is. I mean, that almost makes ME want to stalk her, where it was never a thought that crossed my mind before.

Flash forward to today and this post by (oddly enough) the Fort Worth Business Press: “What’s Next In Social Media”, which I figured is appropriate enough, considering the recent completion of SXSW. “Location, location, location” was the idea. Read the article, a very solid case is made for the powerful business marketing uses of applications like Foursquare (one word) and Twitter.

Nicely juxtaposed to this is all of the recent ‘protect your privacy’ press pointed towards users of Google, Facebook, most social media apps. What I can’t figure out is how it is innocuous to have the world know where you are, what you are doing, in some cases with whom, but at all expenses and at the same time be protecting who you are. Can someone help me figure this one out?

Google is the man. And, I’m excited to have (yet more) back up of my assertions from another (perhaps reliable) source. This week our Aussie friends at The Beast have posted an interesting video interpretation of Google. ‘Consumer Watchdog’ (I’ll call that reliable enough for me) posted the video on behalf of The Beast as licensing rights don’t extend to viewing to the US. I bring this up as this has been a topic I’ve been meaning to get into for a while and will probably post about soon. However, for now I’ll stick to the topic at hand.

Just a short synopsis of the video: Google has it’s hand in phones, email, cables, electricity, and health care. Health care? 97% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. Think about it. Just a company, like any other company. One who has interest in all of these areas and more. They have money in genetic testing. Genetic testing. What if tobacco giant Phillip Morris owned a company that had money in all of these things? Of course, who is to say they don’t.

My big question is: why? What I’d like to see, and would love for someone to share with me, is an expose on why they have interest in all of these areas. They already know where we are, what we are doing, what we spend our money on.

The only thing that makes me more nervous is Google merging with Facebook. As a final thought, check out this article, ‘How I Got Groped by Facebook’, also posted on Consumer Watch. I just keep thinking ‘Where’s the James Bond to this Dr. No’? This time we’re talking about a different virus.

This topic is probably not news for many, but the recent unveiling of Computer Engineer Barbie, from Mattel has been the topic on the blogs including the New York Times Blog ‘Bits’. I don’t know what it is about this topic that keeps sticking in my craw, but I’m hoping it will all come to light as I bang this blog post entry out (sorry, for those of you who actually choose to read it).

Gizmodo reports ‘Computer Engineer Barbie has a PhD in FUN (And Breaking Down Stereotypes). Mind you, I have worked with hot tech women (and currently in our London office we’ve got a woman who probably increases conference attendance by a good 10% when she registers), albeit not many of them. I’ve also worked with good looking tech guys. I sort of wonder if there’s any really point in, well, pointing out that there exists good looking IT folk out there. Who cares?

Even worse, or more to the point in my opinion, is that back in my day of feminist rabble rousing (college days, early 90s), Barbie was an icon most women were trying to break away from. From checking various sites on the interweb I found these statistics:

- If Barbie were life size, she would stand 7 ft 2 inches and have a neck twice the size of a humans
- Her measurements would be: 39-23-33
- She would have to walk on all fours in order to move

Today’s career woman, let alone ‘computer engineer’ or tech chic has enough to live up to as it is, respect in the industry, trying to achieve equal pay and work/home life balance, etc without adding on to it the impossible to achieve ‘look like Barbie’. I’m grateful for the women in our industry in whatever form they come in and throw out an extra woot woot for the ones who can hold their heads high, hot or not.

It’s one thing to run the risk, using the internet, of being hacked or being somewhat exposed in general over the worldwide web. To me, it’s quite another to feel comfortable about Facebook after learning about the unethical and underhanded practices of CEO Mark Zuckerberg (while still recognizing the tendency towards college hijinks by college students). Revealed today in Business Insider, Mark Zuckerberg used Facebook login information to hack into the accounts of writers’ at Harvard’s Crimson. This would be during an ongoing investigation into whether he had stolen ideas from fellow classmates while commissioned to build their site ‘UConnect’. I parenthetically comment on ‘college hijinks’ because at the time of these ‘scandals’, Zuckerberg could not have been more than 20 or 21 years of age, and hacking into email accounts for some might seem sport, particularly at that age. Given the amount of press and commentary the past months (perhaps years) over Facebook security, very little has been mentioned of FB users’ privacy concerns against FB itself.

Great, one more thing to worry about.

I don’t like to get to stat heavy unless I can tie those statistics to something interesting or useful, but the latest released statistics from Mashable on internet usage and social media was pretty mind blowing and the video was well done and good to watch. What I would like to know is what it all means for communication between humans in the physical world. Interestingly enough, I was watching a commercial on tv this weekend (who watches live tv anymore? This girl.) for an upcoming film release with John Cusack, ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’. I happen to love John Cusack, not for nothing, no matter how many crap movies he makes. The movie takes the four main characters back in time, to 1986, via a…wait for it…hot tub time machine. The reference between technology would obviously run deep (as with Back to the Future), but within the course of a 1.5 minute trailer at least 5 or 6 social media references are made about face to face communication and how ‘exhausting’ it is. Laugh at me if you want but I think it will probably be a fairly interesting commentary (accidentally or on purpose) on communication and social media. I plan on seeing it and wonder what we’ll be looking back on in 10 or 20 years.

I know, I know. I like talking about Google being ‘the man’. But it seems that everywhere I turn my favorite sites are talking about the latest addition from Google, how google is king of the universe and wants to deliver us from evil. I am wondering, more than a little now, if Mashable has a partnership with Google or some sort of major investment because I can’t read five tweets of theirs without at least two of them being about Google. Are there no innovators out there besides Google? Today’s news sites (InformationWeek, Mashable) report that Google has just received the ok to buy wholesale electricity. When they start buying water reserves (not that you can do that, that I know of) and islands I’ll really be concerned (it’s all sounding so very 007 to me at this point).

In other news, I saw a post/poll on ReadWriteWeb about MySpace that got me thinking again about the future of the interweb. The question was ‘What would it take for you to start regularly using MySpace again?’ My initial tongue in cheek response was ‘Change their name to Facebook or Twitter. But not Buzz’. However, if MySpace really wanted to make a go of it, the only thing that would truly interest me is if they did what I would like Facebook to take a stab at: building in a Second Life type of interface. While Second Life is mostly just creepy as it’s own entity, I can imagine a completely different experience with Facebook. I’m telling you folks, you heard it hear first, it could be massive. If MySpace made the first stab at it, I would give them a shot.

Finally, I’ll wrap it up on a Google note. Changes and adjustments to Buzz, to Google’s credit, have been quick. Not quick enough to get me using it, but I am glad to see they are making changes based on user feedback. When I find that they’ve made posts collapsible (lordy, if you follow mashable you can pretty much forget about seeing anything else on screen), they’ll have a good chance of getting me to take a second look. I would much prefer, also, of choosing my view, by user, by date or by popularity. Finally, if they really don’t want to make enemies they will not make Google profiles dependent on whether or not you use Buzz.

Ok seriously. You turn your head for two seconds and there it is: another product from Google. As it happens, I was thinking about creating an entry based on an article I read about Googling v Binging when BUZZ, out of seemingly nowhere, pops up. Following the Tweets and FB comments along the way, the biggest questions seem to be ‘What is it?’ and ‘Are you going to use it?’

Upon its release and my discovery of said release, Buzz had not been activated on my Gmail account, but within about an hour it was (upping my Google paranoia). Since then (it’s been three days) the majority of posts I’ve seen have come from Mashable. Mashable and I are really developing quite a relationship, I’d say. Good old Pete. I commented on a couple of their posts, read a bunch of the articles about Buzz that they have posted, read a couple more articles from other sources and have basically been sitting on the topic for a couple of days.

I must admit that I’m starting to feel anxiety over the pressure to ‘get’ new products and understand their usefulness. This anxiety is greatly reduced as I read comments on FB status and within Twitter – my personal fave at the moment is from John_Cleese: ‘Do not, I repeat, do not, confuse me with this Buzz stuff’. You said it, John. First reviews indicate that it doesn’t integrate with FB, as Twitter does, and as AOL is starting to as well. However, Buzz does integrate with Twitter so your Twitter posts can automatically go out to your Buzz contacts, but that’s not 100% integration so you still have to have both accounts. The question remains, why would I start using Buzz when I already have Twitter? Because it’s integrated into my gmail? Well…hmmm. I’m already annoyed that the few responses to comments I have made have gone directly into my email (you can set up a filter and that won’t happen, but I think messages should, by default, land in a separate location. This makes me want to treat Buzz like email, or IM. And, as if to illustrate this, when I posted ‘Why would I use Buzz over Twitter?’ the response I got was from a friend (who doesn’t use Twitter) saying ‘So we can talk like this now, too’. I had to explain that if she wanted to talk, we could IM through gmail, email through gmail, or even speak through gmail, but that Buzz was meant for a different purpose. The purpose that Twitter has already established, I think. Why didn’t Google just BUY Twitter? Furthermore? Visually, Buzz is messy. Following Mashable means that I have to scroll, forever, to get to other posts from my other contacts. On top of Mashable’s posts, I also see all of the 458 comments on said post. Seriously? No thanks.

Interestingly, while Twitter’s inception was based on the question ‘What are you doing?’, it seems to have evolved into ‘What’s going on?’. That seems to be where it’s most useful. Not to digress TOO much, but this morning, from the window of my hotel room, I could see a massive plume of smoke (that was precipitated by a huge flame) and wondered if it was a fire or if I was seeing things, again. Within 10 minutes of noting it, Newyorkology retweeted a post that there had been a transformer explosion, causing a fire in the exact location where I had seen the smoke (and fire). Further proof I can be as nosy (and lazy) as I want from the couch of the hotel room.

All this to say that if Twitter can deliver that to me – faster than a Domino’s pizza? Why would I switch to Buzz. Just so I could start saying “I’m going to Buzz that”, I guess. I never have been a fan of the Twitter usage of the word ‘Tweet’.

Back to Mashable again today, it’s quite the addiction, like Huffpost or Apple Rumors. I was reading through the media updates for the day and came across an entry on Bccthis, a new way to incorporate or add BCC conversations to Twitter and Outlook.

I admit I have only come to really use Twitter in the last year, though I’ve had my membership for almost three years. In fact, I just went through my posts (the first from April, ’07), it’s interesting watching the evolution of ‘status update’ a la Facebook to posts with actual content with references and links. I can see from looking at those early day posts that the reason I didn’t use it so much before was because I couldn’t see the point of it when I can use email and FB. I usually find myself asking ‘Why?’ and ‘What’s in it for me?’ whenever something new comes along. And admittedly it can take me some time to come around or find an application useful to me. Certain applications, though, like Skitch, a great screen capture tool that came out about three years ago, I was so interested in I was on message boards trying to get someone to give me one of their invites. Looking back, I can’t really imagine why I was that anxious to have it, though at least I use it often. Come to think of it, I’m a bit of a glutton for new apps, even the ones I don’t use. I loved xoopit (it compiled ALL of your pictures in gmail for easy access), I gave a real shot at using ‘Remember the Milk’ (only I never remembered to use it), and if I could remember that I have Ubiquitous installed and could remember the commands, I am sure I would be a lot more efficient in sending maps, events, pictures and doing random other things. But, yes I am a geek and yes, I have too much time on my hands.

But, here I am again and I’m wondering about this new app, Bccthis. My initial thought was that it looked pretty cool, not difficult to use (though really, do I need yet one more plug in on Firefox so it can crash another two or three times a day) and definitely rates on my ‘cool new tricks’ meter. But. Here’s the thing. Bcc already exists. And, so does forwarding. And, to boot, doesn’t the very nature of Twitter make it seem sort of silly to be sending specific bcc messages? I can see branching off being a cute thing to do once in a while, but if you are going to start a message as a bcc, why not just use email. I mean, people do still use email, right? The application looks more useful within Outlook, where you can add a bcc within an email. In any event, I installed and tested it, but if I have to be on bccth.is in order to see my responses, it’s really not worth it for me. I already tend to have two browsers and ten to fifteen tabs open at any given time. When it comes down to it, I WANT new apps, but I want them to be so integral to the way I work that I can’t live without them. And if they could make my coffee, too, all the better.

As a follow up to my post from Tuesday, we see the release of the IPad. Not for nothing, I don’t much care for the name and look forward to spoofs like the one done by Mad TV,  The I-rack.  However, the post yesterday on Mashable, “What the Web of Tomorrow Will Look Like: 4 Big Trends to Watch’, that I mentioned in my post How Far We’ve Come Since the ‘Busy Signal’ was just in time! It would appear the IPad is the first step in the direction towards our internet future. I have doubts that the first release will be worth the purchase – who wants to admit they wasted their money on the first IPod or the first IPhone – but I look forward to its potential in future (there’s that word again) releases.

I was joking with some friends last week about going retro on communication for a week. No mobile phone, no internet. Just the house phone and me. Fortunately for me, my job depends on being connected, and there’s no way I can be on the internet and not do personal stuff (on my own time, of course). This got me and my friends joking about how we never left the house when we were waiting for a phone call back in high school. We’d sweat over sisters and brothers ‘tying up the line’ and making it impossible for us to speak with our boyfriends. Those were the days.

Flash forward 25 years. Communication has changed to the point that we are starting to rely less and less on our phones – even if we can take multiple calls at once from anywhere in the world. Today Mashable.com posted a piece called “What the Web of Tomorrow Will Look Like: 4 Big Trends to Watch’. As someone who loves anything tech, anything futuristic and tech and most things internet related (just not my complete inability to get OFF of it), I thought this would be very interesting for me to check out.

Once I read through it, I got to thinking. The one prediction that got my mind running was number 4. Social Media Will Be Its Largest Component. This lead me to start thinking of cool scifi movies I’ve seen and their predictions and which, if any, ever come true. There’s ‘Minority Report’. I think we’re getting to a point where we will be identified and personally addressed by ads as we walk through train stations, yep. BladeRunner has the video calling. Oh, by the way, I am certain there are many examples that pre-date the movies I’m mentioning, but that’s not the point. From there I got to Videodrome. Virtual/Reality.

Born was a kernel of a thought. What if Second Life had been introduced more recently. Let’s say two years ago. I wonder momentarily if it would have taken off but it was just seconds before its time. Per Wikipedia, the highest number of logged in avatars at the same time was in January ’09 – a paltry 88,200. Comparatively, Facebook states that more than 35,000,000 FB users change their status daily.  Having joined Second Life and logging a total of 3 hours on it, in toto, I can say that I don’t think so. It’s a really cool application and my mind raced at the potential and possibilities. But, in the end it was too hefty for me. Facebook, on the other hand, has got me hook, line and sinker. What I would like to see, and here I am going to make a prediction of my own that this will in fact happen, is a merging of a Second Life type of application with Facebook, or the development of something like it by Facebook. How many hours do your friends (and you, admit it) spend on Gangster Wars, or Farmville, or CafeWorld. To me it seems a natural progression. So, you heard it here first, folks. Too bad I don’t get paid for correct predictions.

What disappointed me about the forecast? That there wasn’t a feature that locks you out of your own devices under certain circumstances. I’m saying that if you are too drunk to be out in public, you are too drunk to be on Skype, IM, or even email. Of course, leave it to Google to have ‘Mail Goggles’. A tiny lab add-on that allows you to indicate after what time of night and on what days you will be required to take a short math test in order to send your mail. You can indicate how difficult the test is meant to be. I found it more annoying than useful, but to be truthful on more than occasion I had to complete the test several times before I could send the email. They should have a ‘maximum attempts’ setting in there, too. These seem like such simple, yet important, features that should be included on any device that can access the web.