Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

Snackr Will Chomp Away At Your Life

Ok, the warnings were explicit everywhere I looked. I picked up this from rexblog.com, who picked it up from Read Write Web. I guess that makes both sites pushers.  I should have listened. I didn't. I downloaded and installed Snackr, which is an Adobe Air app that creates a river of news that scrolls up or across your screen from an opml file of feeds you provide. Yep, it is addictive.

Click on a feed as it scrolls (streams?) by, and the scroll stops and you get a popout window with the info you're looking at (full text if that is what is available in the feed, partial if not.)

Damn. More time lost.

Technorati Tags: Snackr

Scoble and the Noise System

Noise. It can really bog you down. I know it does me at times. It's warm weather here in the Shenandoah Valley and when warm weather comes we frequently hold some small (one on one, one on two) meetings outside in front of the theatre to enjoy the weather. Unfortunately that brings noise with it. I'm not just talking about the cars and loud trucks that sometimes pass us by. Other employees and even some of our neighbors see us standing around talking and assume they can just walk up and chat. A polite, 'please excuse us we're in a meeting', usually does the trick, but the noise as already jumped into the conversation and interrupted the meeting flow.

Now, this isn't the passersby's fault. It is ours (or mine) for holding the meeting outdoors.

In my view there's a certain similarity here, though there are differences, with Robert Scoble's search for a noise reduction system whether it is brought to you by Twitter, FriendFeed, or pick your social network. Yes, I'm sure there will be some sort of noise reduction system in the future for these kind of things. The early adopters who have loads of followers will demand them, and the companies that build them don't want to see the Scoble's and the Calacanis's saying they've moved on because of too much noise.

But eventually, even with noise reduction systems, the only way to reduce the noise in any of these circumstances is to acknowledge it and know when to shut it off, whether it is Tweets, replies, comments, email, or what have you. It isn't easy, I know for a fact. I'm not talking about Scoble's first point here (choosing to remain ignorant) because that's a one way street to shutting yourself off, and as Scoble points out, all too well, can lead to those who do choose to swim in what's going on controlling the conversation in an ever decreasing cycle of cultural doom. I guess I'm suggesting that the best way is some sort of personal control and selecting when to swim and when to keep yourself on the beach, (or upstairs in the office.)

As my grandfather used to say,

"Just because the phone rings, you don't have to answer it. You do have a choice."

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Friendfeed,Robert Scoble

Social Networking for the Dead

Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor wants to do for obituaries what he did for classified advertising for jobs. He's starting up a new company called Tributes.com. Supposedly, the last web page you'll ever need, it has funding from the Wall Street Journal, and to my eye plays to the ego in all of us as well as the emotions of those grieving the loss of a loved one. The idea is to sell this to funeral homes who will then use their high mark-ups to package it to customers.

The Wired.com article where I found this says that online grieving is certainly on the rise, and I'm thinking that makes a lot of sense. I'm just wondering how Twitter will fit into this.

Charmin Turns Stall Surfing into Social Networking with Google Sharing Feature

Following on the heels of Google's announcement of Share Anything. Anytime, Anywhere., industry leading toilet paper manufacturer, Charmin, announced today that they've added Google's sharing feature as a social networking component to their latest new products. According to a Charmin spokesperson:

"The essence of social networking is sharing. Sharing things you find on the web, pictures, videos, news articles, all sorts of information. With the advent of smaller and more mobile devices, we've seen an uptick in the trend of Stall Surfing, where an individual will carry his iPhone or other mobile device to the restroom for a little browsing while they are taking care of business. So, we've added Google's new share component to our latest products, to allow you to share any information with other users who might, or might not be stall surfing at the same time."

"It is simple really. Our new toilet paper dispenser is equipped with a WiFi connection that hooks into your home network. When you see something you wish to share with a friend or your followers, you simply choose the Charmin Share button on the dispenser, which immediately sends the item over the web to your Google shared feeds, as well as prints it out on the next sheet of toilet paper. Share on the web, or keep a hard copy for yourself or someone in your household."

The spokesperson continued, "Of course you can plug into the Twitter API, as well as other social networking tools, so that all of your followers can see what you've just shared right from your toilet seat. Share Anything. Anytime. Anywhere. Just don't squeeze it."

Technorati Tags: Google,Twitter,Social Networking

Twitter Weirdness

Twitter is acting up in a very strange way and has been doing so all weekend. Some tweets get through, some do not. It makes it look like an entire wave of Twitterers that I follow have gone on a Twitter vacation. I see Tweets from some and not from others.

What's weird, as MG Siegler points out is that we're not (as of the moment) getting any real communication from Twitter on the matter. It is amazing how addictive Twitter is, and I use it as my news stream throughout the day.

Hopefully things will get straightened out soon, or the withdrawal pangs will start to get pretty intense and drive the addicts elsewhere.

Technorati Tags: Twitter

There's a gapingvoid on Twitter

Looks like Alpine, Texas just lost their biggest promoter on Twitter. Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid blogged that he has deleted his Twitter account. No more gapingvoid tweets. No more Alpine, Texas updates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hugh says he found Twitter too easy and his time will be better spent drawing cartoons and writing books. I'm looking forward to the book, I always love the cartoons, and I will miss the Tweets.

Wonder if this will start a trend?

Technorati Tags: Twitter,gapingvoid,Hugh MacLeod

TwitterLocal Yields Few Twitterers In My Hood

I picked up the news on TwitterLocal from Kevin Tofel at jkOnTheRun this week and thought I'd give it a whirl (Twhirl?) to see how many folks are twittering in my immediate area. Given our rural surroundings I set it up to look for Tweets in a 30 mile radius. I didn't expect to see a bunch of Shenandoah Valley Twitterers, and so far the yield is four other folks using Twitter. There is a desktop client based on Adobe Air, that seems to be having troubles, so at the moment I'm using it via the RSS feed and checking it out through my feed reader. We'll see how this goes.

Technorati Tags: Twitter,TwitterLocal

Loren Feldman Is Becoming the Jim Henson of Internet Interviews

Sometimes you just need to laugh. Loren Feldman of 1938 Media (an acquired taste if ever there was one) has been puppetizing Shel Israel and his interviews lately and I find them pretty hysterical. Perhaps that's just my weird brain these days. Here's one he did with Steve Gillmor of The Gang and NewsGang Live.

 

He's also puppetizing Robert Scoble and this interview with Gabe Rivera of TechMeme is beyond silly fun, just for watching Gabe's reactions. Listening to puppet Scoble's accent go ghetto is hysterical.

Puppets and the Internet. Who knew?

Original Blog Thoughts, The End Is Near, and Other Navel Gazing Curiosities

Arrogance is the ultimate in shortsightedness. It is also the ultimate in unoriginal thought. The blogging/twittering/friendfeeding/ world is navel gazing again. This time the lint that is getting pulled out is all about the lack of original thought in blogging as opposed to linking and piling on and page view hunting, and on and on and on....

First, there hasn't been much original thought in any sphere of human endeavor that involves writing in  a long, long time. And the trends and patterns are just the same. The only difference is the method of sharing the stories. Heck, I'm not sure what history will look on more kindly, oral communication and its ways of morphing an original idea, or blogging, and twittering, and etc... and its way of linking and changing a story. At least with blogging, etc... some of the time the original source gets credit.

And this whole social graph, networking thing? About as new as talking to your neighbors at the post office, or at the market, or over the mastodon kill, or over the just about anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the world is smaller because of the Intertubes but no matter the size of the pub the suds still flow the same way.

Oh, and the characters that populate this ongoing play that the Internet is just another scene in? You could pick them out of a Greek tragedy by Euripides, or a Roman comedy by Plautus. The characters remain the same, the actors just change. Shakespeare did. But that was back in the days before perpetual copyright.

The end isn't near and don't everyone break a sweat looking for original thought, even if you are unafraid it might bite you in the ass.

When you view the world from behind your nose it is tough to look behind you and see that you're looking at what others have already seen. And the bald spot on the back of your noggin is just part of the view.

Technorati Tags: Blogs,blogging

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

Everybody is talking about the social networking thing this week on a number of levels. Loic Le Meur says he's looking for some centralization and back on his blog. I have to agree.

Michael Arrington weighs in on this on TechCrunch, with a focus on FriendFeed. I'm hot and cold on FriendFeed right now in and of itself.

Louis Gray on Internet Addictions. He thinks calling it an addiction is silly. I do too.

Meanwhile a judge says Facebook friends aren't real friends.

Ed Bott on What's Wrong with the Blogosphere.

Russia wants a tunnel between the Motherland and the US.

They are still caucusing in Texas?

Newsweek proclaims a "new" Super Tuesday ahead. Give me a break.

I'm not sure how I feel about all the talk about giving the US Treasury more power. On one hand we do need some system to keep the thieves and greedy buggers from crashing things down around us as they steal our money. On the other hand, there are times I just say "let her burn."

Dave Winer is talking to Pigs. They are talking back.

George Will waxes somewhat rhapsodic on baseball. He says one reason we like it is that there are 3 strikes and you're out and no lawyer can help you. Unless you dope up to play the game.