Undisclosed Location

I'm a PC?

Really? You're a PC? Is that what you're telling me?

Microsoft's newest ad campaign is a response from a someone who just doesn't get the argument. Interestingly enough, just like the John Hodgeman character in the competing commercials.

The "Mac vs. PC" ads that Apple has been running do not insinuate that PC users are boring and clueless, it insinuates that the platform is boring and clueless. Coming back with a commercial that shows "exciting and hip" people of all ages in all different fields of work all over the world does nothing to combat against this. So many people use PC's that this is an obvious observation. Of course there are rappers and wrestlers and astronauts and businessmen and designers and divers who use Windows. Most of them probably have to because their workplaces don't give them the option to switch or the opportunity to compare against the Mac has never been presented. That's not the issue that Apple is taking up.

Make a commercial where you outline either directly or indirectly (through jest, like Apple) why users would want to use Windows over a Mac. Then you'd be comparing Apples to, well you get the idea.

Apple's not saying that each person using Windows PC's is a boring hapless dolt who wears an ugly and dated tweed-colored suit. It's saying that the operating system/platform that each of these people use is a boring hapless dolt who wears an ugly and dated tweed-colored suit. Microsoft should be happy that at least Apple humanized and made the PC character funny and loveable, because in my world he'd a been a cranky and confused tyrant.

Google is attacking our brains

Looks like I'm not the only person to pick up on the whole "internet has rotted my brain" meme. Similar to what I wrote several weeks ago, the latest issue of The Atlantic has an interesting article on how Google and the internet in general have shaped the way we read and process information. It's a great article if you don't just skim through the first page.

“We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University..."We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

It's inevitable that if you make information easier to find you're going to value it much less and not give it as much attention. If I had to comb through stacks of magazines and newspapers to read the daily news I'm sure I'd remember much more than what I retain clicking through Google Reader headlines. And apart from convenience, part of this has to be related to the sheer volume of information that we are now exposed to. There are things I read every day that without the internet I probably would have never come across through print or even traditional AV media.

Despite the sensationalist title of this post and my previous one on the matter, I really don't think you can blame this on the internet or even Google. Sure, there is a consumer and entertainment bend to much of the world wide web, but it is our responsibility to remain active learners and use the availability of information to our advantage. Time to stop playing the skimming game to get to salient points and really put forth effort to reason and pick up nuance.

It's lonely on the social technology fringe

Social networking web 2.0 goodness just isn't as fun when you don't have all of your real life friends playing along.

That's the problem I've encountered time after time when new service after new service has popped up. Most of the people I'm friends with (in real life that is, admittedly not a huge number) don't keep up with web technology trends in the compulsive manner that I do and are content to stay with their old Friendster and Myspace accounts (with the occassional person who's moved over to Facebook). Meanstwhile I'm joining something new all the time, whether it be Twitter, FriendFeed, Vimeo, or Disqus. If it has some cool social function and a shiny looking page I'm sold.

Most of the time what happens is that I'll join and then realize that I can't use most of the neater parts of the service because I don't know anyone else who's joined. I'll look for new friends the first couple of days and just explore the site, but then I get burned out trying to get started and I end up just going back to visit every couple of days because I'm sick of putting in all of the groundwork. I've been able to wrangle the wife to join a few of these (she twitters way more than I do now), but she's usually fed up with me signing up for "another stupid internet site" and she's not as big of a internet dork as I am.

There's got to be other people out there like me, especially with all of the new web startups that are sprouting up. Do you guys have friends that are "connected" on the internet or do you just go out and make a whole new batch of internet friends on each new service that you join?

The internet gave me ADHD

First Google Reader, then Gmail. Then it's alltop and maybe a little random searching on YouTube or Funny or Die. Those books in my bookshelf collect more and more dust because the internet and TiVo have taken over my entertainment leisure time. I think Steve Jobs hit it right on the head when he was talking about the Amazon Kindle e-book reader.

"It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore...Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore."

I used to read all the time. Hell, half of my childhood was spent in the library with my nose buried behind a book (may explain the pasty whiteness). Now I have an entire shelf of half-read paperbacks that I don't see finishing any time soon. I've gotten so used to processing small chunks of information and moving images that I find it almost impossible to sit and read the same thing for an extending period of time. Scanning headlines through RSS feeds has rotted out the concentration centers of my brain to the point where even studying is difficult. I used to be able to knock out 5-6 hour study sessions. Now I go 30 minutes and my brain starts to short circuit. A good New Yorker article is now a bore because I can't make it past page 3.

I'm considering going to audiobooks because I don't see things improving anytime soon. I would have moved to them earlier but I can't help shake the feeling that I'm cheating if I listened to a book in the car on my iPod.

Using a Flip Video camera with iMovie '08

I have a new toy and at least for now I'm gonna have the bug to use it as often as I can. Julie got me a Flip Video Ultra for my birthday and I've been having fun with it since day one. Dare I say it, but this could be the year of video around here at Undisclosed Location. I'm going to have to get over how much I hate hearing my recorded voice, but I think that'll come with time.

There were a few hiccups to getting the Flip to play nice with iMovie '08 and the Mac in general. I freaked out at first try because all of the videos I had recorded played jerky and with garbled audio. This was even after installing the recommended 3ivx decoder that comes on the camera and updating the firmware after plugging the camera in for the first time. After doing a quick google search I came across a support thread suggestion to download and install Perian. Lo and behold, once I did this everything went smoothly. So if you're having problems with your Flip Video camera and your Mac, give the same thing a try.

Once I got video to show up correctly on my MacBook Pro running Leopard, the next step was getting everything to work with iMovie '08. I've read a few tips on how to get this done, but it seemed like this was going to be a multi-step process. So I simply fired up Automator and used the built in actions to create an application that would take care of the whole process for me. I added this application to my finder bar, and now when I plug in my Flip camera all I have to do is navigate to the "DCIM" folder and drag any videos I want to upload onto my "Flip Converter." Quicktime converts the videos from .avi to .m4v, saves them to my user "Movies" folder, and iMovie '08 Opens up and the import command is selected. You're then in control at this point, and can add your newly imported movie to a new even or an existing one.

You can try out this "app" yourself by downloading it here. And if you're aware of something better please let me know, because anything to make this easier will get me uploading more videos.

Honeymoon Bug Bite from Izzy on Vimeo.

Posting on the go

So it turns out that Typepad has a nifty app for the palm that allows mobile posting complete with pics and categories. Not too shabby...

Go to get.typepad.com on your treo or T/X to download it yourself. It's also available on Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

Breaking into a new social network

So all the cool internet types are heading over to the latest social networking site, VIRB°. Who am I to get left behind right? So I got myself an invite and have spent the last two days tweaking every little thing in my profile and trying to find new friends.

Treo lovin'

Recently I made the move from Verizon to Alltel and took the opportunity to upgrade technology while I was at it. I've eyed Palm Treo models in the past, but never really had a great enough need for one. Now that I've become fully dependent on my Palm TX, however, I thought it was time to take the plunge and combine my pocket tech devices.

Enter the Palm Treo 700p smartphone.

Goodbye Bloglines, hello Google Reader

Why I've made the move to Google Reader and suggest you do the same:

1. It's super easy to mark items and find them later - Google reader has me covered when I come across articles I want to save for closer reading later or I find links I need to quickly reference again. It used to be in Bloglines that I would have to go through a "clip" process that would take several clicks and require drop-down menus. Now all I have to do is hit the "add star" link (or click the star icon and I'm all set. All starred items are kept in a continuous feed that is only one click away and easily accessible from the reader homepage.

2. Sharing articles is easier - I come across articles all the time that I think Julie should read when she gets the chance. Instead of going through the "blog this" link in Bloglines which would again require several clicks, I can click the "share" link and place the articles in a running RSS feed (and article page) that Julie has subscribed to on her computer. Easy as pie and quick to boot.

3. There's more flexibility in viewing options - When I want to breeze through a bunch of articles and quickly browse I can use list view and expand articles as I click on the headlines. When I want to see more information all at once I can use the expanded view and read through the articles one-by-one. Bloglines locks me into the expanded view, which can make reading through a long list of articles a royal pain.

4. Unread articles don't expire - On Bloglines there is a cap of 200 articles kept on any one RSS feed that effectively stops updating once you've hit that limit. This poses a problem with feeds that are constantly updating with high numbers of articles (like news feeds) and prevents me from keeping up with things when I've missed a few days of reading. Now with Google Reader feeds that have large numbers of unread articles are just marked with "100+" and new articles keep getting added even after over 200 are accumulated.

5. The feed homepage is actually useful - On Bloglines all I see is an advertisement or usability tip when I go to my homepage of feeds. Google Reader gives me a page that lists my last starred and shared item, a small sample of the available unread articles laid out in front of me, and messages from the development team that help with usability issues.

6. Articles aren't marked as read until I actually click them or scroll past them - This was the clincher for me when it came to switching from Bloglines to Google Reader. I keep my RSS feeds organized by category and every time I would click on the categories on Bloglines it would mark all of the feeds in that category as read...even if I had yet to get to them. Google reader lets me click on categories and even click on the individual feeds without marking anything as read. It's only when I click on headlines in list view or scroll past articles on expanded view that they are marked as read. Google Reader is sensible enough to know that clicking on a category doesn't automatically mean I've read all the links underneath it.

Old TiVo learning new tricks

Seems like my trusty TiVo has picked up some new features after upgrading itself the other day. I had no idea until I was mucking around with it recently...

- I can now sign into Yahoo and get weather and traffic reports for my zip code. Super useful when I want to quickly look without opening up the iBook.
- Through Fandango I can now read movie descriptions, browse showtimes and purchase tickets...if I could only view trailers this would be a perfect implementation and a very natural fit for TiVo. This feature should have been loaded in from the get go. It also gives me hope that someday Apple will implement a similar feature into Front Row.
- Podcaster allows me to browse through preselected "featured" podcasts and also enter url's to pull up all of my favorites. I'm actually listening to one right now, and if not for the inability to fast forward and rewind this is something that I'd use a lot. For some reason I also got a chuckle out of the fact that Adam Curry isn't a featured podcast.
- Live365 radio streaming is a new feature, but considering that podcast quality is clearer and most stations still load jerky I doubt I'll use this at all.
- Games! Yeah I now have a few games to pass the time away. Can't say that I'll use this all that often, but it's a cool thing to have nonetheless.