Snowpacolypse ‘10 – On People, the News and Panic

I was born and raised in Florida, which means I considered snow an alien life form until I was well into my twenties.  We in Florida, however, have to deal with hurricanes.  The best thing about hurricanes is that they tend to lumber around for a while and give the guys on the Weather Channel days to set you up for the thing.  So you have plenty of time to take care of business, prep the house and make plans as to whether you are going to spend a couple of days in Georgia or ride the storm out.   

From Florida I moved to North Texas and dealt with tornadoes, which are like hurricanes, except they are more powerful for the space they fill, they are more capricious, they move faster, and they can form in a moment’s notice.  As a friend put it, hurricanes are like the first wife that will take everything you have, while tornadoes are the psycho ex-girlfriend who will destroy everything you have. 

So now we come to the “Snowpacolypse” of 2010.  The last I saw, CNN was all wild eyed about how two and a half feet of snow was something like Washington’s version of Katrina.  GROCERY STORES ARE OUT OF FOOD!!!!  DON’T DRIVE!!!! THIS STORM IS A KILLER!!!!  You would think that given this sort of twenty four hour coverage, the end of the world was indeed close at hand.  And it wasn’t just CNN- all the news media jumped upon the bandwagon, whipping up the locals even more.  LOOK! AN EMPTY STORE SHELF!!  IT MAY NEVER BE FILLED AGAIN AFTER THIS KILLER STORM PASSES THROUGH!!! 

Um, no.  It’s a snowstorm.  And out here in the west, the mountains can get four feet of snow and shrug it off on a fairly regular basis.  In fact, there is a cause for concern during winters when a good snowstorm doesn’t hit. So I say to you folks in Washington, to you Wolf Blitzer, to all of you at CNN, Faux News and MSNBC who obviously have nothing worth reporting on-do you realize how much the citizens of Chicago are laughing at you?  The folks in Denver are LOLing hard.  And don’t even get me started about the people in Minneapolis watching TV and asking, “You’re kidding me with this, right?”

As a friend of mine who lives in Crystal City pithily commented “Oh, something finally got them to stop talking about Haiti.”

I know, DC is considered a “southern” city, so the basic snow handling equipment is not there.  Power being out is a drag – just ask those living in LA when they have to go through rolling blackouts, or those of us in Florida who have to live a couple of days or even weeks on generators, ice chests and barbeque grills after the hurricane goes through.  But panic?  Clearing out store shelves?  Breathlessly reporting this to the nation and world?  Snow melts.  It isn’t as if you come home to find a concrete pad and bits of your life strewn over a twelve mile radius. 

So, to all you twenty-four hour “reporters “ out there – Be reporters.  Be journalists.  Trust me, from what I see, there is plenty happening in DC that is not white, flaky and cold.  Use your journalistic skills in uncovering those things.  The snow will take care of itself.   

WordPress Tags: Rant, Life, Panic, Media, CNN, Wolf Blitzer, Idiocracy

Now Playing: Snow Patrol – When It’s All Over We Still Have to Clear Up – Batten Down the Hatch

After Hours Music Club – Mashup Time

Take one part Beatles “Get Back”, mix with LCD Soundsystem’s “Daft Punk is Playing at My House”, throw in a pinch of the Kinks “You Really Got Me” and this is what you get.  Thanks to FAROFF for a great mash.

Thank You. Next…

It is days like this where I feel like Simon Cowell.  For I have seen the iPad audition for American iDol and really, I’m not impressed.  It is a tablet PC, hardly a “Magical & Revolutionary Device at an Unbelievable Price” as the Apple site proudly proclaims.  Then again, maybe I’ve seen too much Penn and Teller to believe in “magical devices”.

As I have told friends, given the media hype surrounding this launch, the iPad could turn water into the finest single malt scotch the population has ever tasted and I would still be yawning.  I wasn’t far off.  So, let’s begin.  It is an iPhone on steroids.  Yes, you can play games on it.  Yes, you can read books with it.  Yes, you can get a cheap-o wi-fi version instead of one that still requires you to use AT&T.  And that’s about all the new stuff.  The reason why the writers in the print game are breathless about it is because they forsee people using the iPad to read newspapers and magazines with.  So the hype there is basically based on self-interest. 

But the point is simple-it is a tablet computing device that has a few more gestures than the iPhone.  Everything that Apple proudly proclaims it can do can all ready be done.  Plus there are some voids.  No web cam, so no video chats or the creation of web videos.  No multitasking.  Are you saying I can’t listen to Pandora while writing a document? I can’t have my Twitter app open at the same time as my browser?  That’s exactly what it means.  Also, no Flash, but then again Apple and Adobe really don’t like each other; so when Flash finds it’s way to an iPhone or iPad, check the weather reports, because hell just froze over.  And oh yeah, no wide screen either.  You want to watch movies?  4:3 screen, baby! Welcome to 1999! 

But the main beef is what I have with all Apple things-a closed eco-system.  The iPad only runs apps from the App Store. The same App Store that is notorious for banning apps for no real reason, such as Google Voice. Sure, netbooks might not have touchscreens, but you can install whatever software you’d like on them. Want to run a different browser on your iPad? Too bad!

While the iPad is far from being a pig, the tube of lipstick is not far away. 

It is not revolutionary.  It is not a game changer.  in the terms of products, it is a step behind the iPod and a step ahead of Apple TV.  The fanbois will eat it up, because.

WordPress Tags: Apple, iPad, Snoozefest

Now Playing: Del Amitri – Some Other Sucker’s Parade – Not Where It’s At

When Technology Delivers

I am going to show my age.  Back when I was young it could take weeks for the general public to get a full view of a region that had a natural disaster.  Sure, you would get some grainy footage with Dan Rather talking grimly about the destruction on the evening news, some daily stories in the newspapers and finally, a fuller story with some eventual Pulitzer prize winning pictures in Time magazine a few weeks later. 

The earthquake in Haiti has shown how technology has destroyed that model.  Within minutes, there were tweets from Port au Prince, describing the damage to the world from musician and hotelier Richard Morse, who tweets as @RAMHaiti. Morse posted his initial tweet around 6:00pm Haiti time, reporting that:

were ok at the oloffson [the hotel he runs] ..internet is on !! no phones ! hope all are okay..alot of big building in PAP [Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital city] are down !

A series of tweets sent an hour later reported:

Just about all the lights are out in Port au Prince.. people still screaming but the noise is dying as darkness sets.

lot’s of rumors about which buildings were toppled..The Castel Haiti behind the Oloffson is a pile of rubble..it was 8 stories high

Our guests are sitting out in the driveway.. no serious damage here at the Oloffson but many large buildings nearby have collapsed

I’m told that parts of the Palace have collapsed..the UNIBANK here on Rue Capois has collapsed

people are bringing people by on stretchers

Also proliferating on Twitter immediately after the earthquake were citizen photos of the destruction.  Sites, such as Reddit and Digg, were circulating stories about the quake and asking where Haitian members of their sites were.  News stations, such as CNN and MSNBC were suddenly playing catch-up to Twitter and Facebook.

Then the big boys took it from there.  You could donate money over your cell phone.  In just the first week of the Haiti response effort, the American Red Cross already has spent or committed $34 million (approximately 25 percent of what has been pledged or received) as of Thursday, January 21.  Telecoms Without Borders deployed two emergency teams to set up satellite facilities for use by emergency responders and planned another network to allow people to make free two-minute calls anywhere in the world to relatives.

On the Web, a number of sites were posting pictures and messages aimed at reuniting families or locating missing persons including the International Committee of the Red Cross’s FamilyLinks.icrc.org and the Haitian Earthquake Registry at haitianquake.com. Google was offering a "person finder" at HaitiCrisis.appspot.com while an "Earthquake Haiti" group on Facebook was providing a similar service and had attracted more than 186,000 members as of Friday afternoon. Google published satellite photos of Haiti to show the damage within thirty six hours of the earthquake.  Bing quickly followed.  For those wanting to see video of the aftermath, Immersive Media  has interactive videos to allow the user to look around the city of Port-au-Prince.  Think along the lines of a video version of Google’s street view.   It is as amazing as it is horrifying.

The Haiti Volunteer Network at haitivolunteer.org brings together volunteers and organizations while Microsoft and Google are uniting with Yahoo! and others in a collaborative online wiki project called CrisisCommons.org. The network collects data like imagery from satellites and information on Twitter and Flickr then distributes the information to NGOs on the ground who can remix it to fit their own needs. Another tool being used is Ushahidi, which collects information through mobile phone, email or Web services such as Twitter or Flickr and uses Google Maps to create an interactive map and timeline.  Satellite images, for example, can help aid groups trucking in supplies avoid blocked roads or locate victims.

Way back when, we would just now be getting a full picture of the epic destruction.  Today, eleven days later, the world not only knows the details, the world can track what is going on.  In the everyday, technology is sometimes seen as a necessary evil, something to be regarded with a bit of cynicism.  But sometimes, it shines.  This is one of those times.

WordPress Tags: Technology, disaster, Haiti

Now Playing: Fugees – The Score – Fu-Gee-La

Interesting Times, Indeed

“May you live in interesting times.”  A line long thought of as an ancient Chinese curse, actually has its ties closer to the US of about forty years ago.  These things happen.  Something you think is one thing, upon closer inspection, is not what you thought it was.  So it has been with Google today.  Out of the blue, the internet search giant made a significant statement on its blog:

“In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different…

…we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.”

A highly sophisticated and targeted attack.  This was not the work of some four chan folk doing it for the lulz.  Considering the targets according to Google, one only needs to ask who would benefit from this type of knowledge?  Of course Google does not mention names, as they are still working with “the authorities” on the matter.  But suddenly things, well, get interesting.

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Excuse me?  Did someone in Mountain View get up this morning, read the line “Don’t be evil” and suddenly take it to heart?   To some, such a move, bringing this information into the open for the world to see, means one of two things-either this is a way to pull out from a market where they are being trounced while still saving face, or else the Chinese government was caught with it’s hands in the cookie jar, big time.

I’m betting more on the latter.  If this was all about the money, Google would still be playing censorship games with the government, while realizing that 15% share of a market as big as China’s is still pretty damn good, plus the fact that things do indeed change in the world of business.  After all, Baidu may be the number one search engine in China today, but in ten years, who knows?  By making this public knowledge plus suddenly de-censoring Google.cn, the message is clear – we know what is going on and we will expose you and your actions to everyone, even your own people.  Make no mistake, this is a gutsy move.  This is a company that just realized that it got played by a foreign government and luckily caught things before matters got out too far out of hand.  This is something that countries can’t do that corporations can, but usually do not.  The next move is in the hands of the Chinese government.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

WordPress Tags: Google, China, censorship

Now Playing: Brian Eno – Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) – China My China

Child, Please

It was an interesting little tête-a-tête between Michael Arrington and Mark Zuckerberg, boy genius and creator of Facebook. And then came the bombshell.  The question was referencing the changes Facebook underwent last month. Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it; it is searchable. More importantly, it is no longer private.  Which is the reason why so many people signed up in the first place.  And now it is not.

"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was ‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’

"And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

"A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they’ve built, doing a privacy change – doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner’s mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."

I’m not too sure that the “social norm” has radically changed that much from two years ago when Zuckerberg proclaimed to ReadWriteWeb that  Privacy control was "the vector around which Facebook operates."  The point is, Facebook has convinced users that their personal info is private under their website. Now after millions of signups, they suddenly would say it’s better if user accounts would be made public because people are used to it by now.  

Child, please.  

It is very obvious Facebook is now hooked into advertising (read: revenue). As they say: "It’s ALL about the money."  The closer the IPO, the less privacy there suddenly is.  Man up Mark, and admit it:  negotiations with potential large investors have centered around reselling user data to third parties in order to make quarterly revenue goals.  Just say it.

This isn’t about social norms or anything like that.  This is about business, plain and simple.  You’re only fooling yourself, Mark, if you think otherwise.  And you’re a bigger fool if you think that anyone else is falling for it. 

WordPress Tags: Facebook, Internet, Privacy, Money

Now Playing: World Party – Goodbye Jumbo – Put The Message In The Box

The Right To Forget – Or Selectively Promote?

I think most of us had had at least one instance in our life where our decisions have not been the best in the world.  Like maybe that night in Tijuana where you got drunk and then arrested for soliciting a police officer? Used to be we could bounce back, learn our lessons and other than a friend or two who would use said information to occasionally put us in our place when our ego would get bigger than the room, no one would be none the wiser.

This is not necessarily the case anymore.  By becoming a person in the social network, we become celebrities so to speak, where our every little move can be recorded and put out for public consumption.  With social networking sites, anyone can throw embarrassing information about you out for the general public and it stays out there, presumably forever.  Plus the fact that any allegation against you doesn’t have to be true.  Just ask Glenn Beck, whose web fight over the summer had him battling those who continuously posted a joke that he had raped and killed a young girl back in the 1990s.  The idea, which seemed plain to many involved, was not to actually suggest that Glenn Beck did such a thing — but to highlight his underhanded and cowardly tactic of making a totally bogus rumor into "news" by stating it, and wondering why there hadn’t been a denial.  And while it was glaringly obvious that the statement was not true, it points out the problem.  What happens if bogus or damaging information about you finds its way onto the web?  After all, anyone looking for information about you, like future employers, can find this information, and possibly use it against you.  Even though that little altercation with the police officer happened back when you, God and dirt were young (and stupid), the point is some people never forgive because the net never forgets.  

So, how do we not become a nation of Spencers?  The first is by realizing that the moment you go Social, you have crossed the line from private to public persona.  This is important because you actually have control over most of what is out there about you.  However, France is considering an additional layer – A proposed law in the country would give net users the option to have old data about themselves deleted.

This right-to-forget would force online and mobile firms to dispose of e-mails and text messages after an agreed length of time or on the request of the individual concerned. Which sounds like a good idea.  A right-to-forget could protect an individual’s privacy and stop them from being permanently held to ransom by unguarded actions from their past.  But with all good ideas, there is a flip side. 

Companies too are coming under attack from competitors pretending to be disgruntled customers leaving damaging feedback on websites such as eBay or Amazon.  Negative buzz sometimes originates from bloggers on specialist sites with a small, but influential following.  Of course large companies usually have a room full of lawyers to handle instances of slander and libel, but the question becomes if one is able to “forget” bad publicity, how does that affect corporations?  Could a corporation selectively promote themselves by forcing the web to “forget” all the bad things they have done?  Could cases like Union Carbide and Bhopal India, simply be “forgotten” by the web?  What about the Exxon Valdez?  Or even Lehman Brothers in a few years time? 

As I said, France is currently debating the idea.  And it is an idea that needs to be debated.  In the mean time, remember that you control the majority of what is out there about you.  Just don’t forget it. 

WordPress Tags: Internet, Law, France, Government, Forgetting, I know what you did last summer, Privacy

Now Playing: The Comsat Angels – Land – Mister Memory

Viva Las Vegas

The Consumer Electronics show hit Las Vegas this week.  The good news: Apparently, people are thinking that the Great Depression 2.0 is almost over.  The other news: If I see another version of a tablet, Be it a computer tablet or another e-Reader, I’m going to throttle people on the spot. 

Oh yeah.  Tablets everywhere in expectation of the Jesus tablet that will be announced later this month by God, err, Steve Jobs.  HP used Steve Ballmer to introduce theirs, then leaked out that they were developing one based on the Android OS.  Nice.  As I have stated before, tablets have their uses.  To expect they will overtake laptops is laughable. 

In case you’ve been asleep over the past week, Google finally brought out the Nexus One with great reviews.  It looks like there is finally an alternative to the iPhone out there.  Oh yeah, the Android OS was everywhere.  Phones, tablets, TV’s, your Great-Aunt Ethyl, you name it.  Google is being all conspicuous about wanting to kill Apple in the Octagon.  The news killed Palm’s announcement of the PrePlus and the Pixi, which really wouldn’t take much to do, as neither phone is really all that special. 

The big crash and burn news came from the world of television.  3-D TV!!!  Yes, I know, Avatar has made a billion dollars, but the fact that a 3-D ticket to the movie cost you up to three times more than a regular ticket to a regular movie seems lost on many people.  The other fact that 3-D give many people headaches is a small hazard.  But the real point was said by The Business Insider’s Henry Blodgett,  “…we’re just not wearing those glasses in our living room.”  Indeed.  Sony may want to push this like a Sushi bar pushes yesterday’s special, since they are the ones who developed James Cameron’s 3-D camera, but I expect this little baby to Beta-Max it’s way into the books.  Not to mention there are plenty of people who have been forking over lots of money for HDTV.  Do not expect them to turn around and fork over even more money for yet another TV.  Geeks might.  The general population will not.  Let the technology mature and maybe in ten years you might have a winner.  Or not. 

Perhaps the most humorous news came from Polaroid, announcing that the company had struck a development deal with none other than Lady Gaga.  A Polaroid rep mused "Lady Gaga’s broad creative talents and the way she connects with her fans in her own unique manner made her a natural choice for Polaroid."  In other words, she’s hot property and could be bigger than Madonna.  All I can say is Hooray Lady Gaga!  If she alone can pull the brand out of the doldrums, then she deserves to be bigger than Madonna.  Out of all the gambles that were placed in Vegas at this show, this is the one worth watching. 

WordPress Tags: Computers, Gadgets, CES, Las Vegas

Now Playing: Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables – Viva Las Vegas

Goodbye Cruel Web 2.0

It seemed a great idea at the time, I know.  All of those social networking sites, all those people you lost track of, all that…fun you thought you were missing.  So you dropped your guard, and joined in and now…

You realize why you lost track with all of those people.  All the drama.  All the boredom.  All the …meh.  After twenty years apart, it only took thirty minutes to realize that Betty Jo Bialowski is still that gratingly overly positive pain in the neck she always was.  That time hasn’t improved others, just made them more so.  And then there are people you must have met in a drunken stupor, because you have no idea who they are.  There are reasons why you hold your real friends close: now you know why that is.

And now you want to get out.  But you can’t, at least not easily.  Social networking is much like the line from Hotel California: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”.  The more friends one has, the longer and more rigorous it is to erase all information about you.  Plus the fact that the sites make it extremely difficult to extricate yourself from their site.  There is a reason for this-you are money to them, literally. So how to get out of the mess you’ve got yourself into?

Enter the suicide machine.  yes, leave it to modern technology to create an on-line Dr. Kevorkian.  As the site says:

Tired of your Social Network?

Liberate your newbie friends with a Web2.0 suicide! This machine lets you delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego. The machine is just a metaphor for the website which moddr_ is hosting; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide scripts are maintained. Our service currently runs with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn! Commit NOW!

Well, for the moment, scratch Facebook, as the social networking site has banned the IP address.  But there will be a version soon enough.  The process though is simple: you just pick one of the networks, start up the machine, and it graphically shows you unfriending your contacts, one by one, and eliminating all your other contacts with your profile. Forever. What could take nearly ten hours for someone with 1000 friends now takes minutes.  Although the now-friendless profile actually survives, the Suicide Machine is designed not to allow you ever to sign on to it again. No muss, no fuss.

But don’t fool around with it unless you’re serious.  Like the real thing, once you step on the path there is no turning back. 

Now Playing: Alice In Chains – Dirt – Rooster

WordPress Tags: Internet, Social Media

Let The Hyperventilating Begin

Oh my.  Word lets out that Apple has something “very big” to announce in January, and right on cue the major writers out there are looking like dogs that haven’t had a bite to eat in the last ten minutes. 

Of course the talk is about the iGuide, or iSlate, or iPad or simply, the Apple tablet.  According to reports, the event will focus on the mobility space, which could actually mean a lot of different things. But of course the rumors for the last ten months or so have been about the tablet.  There have also been reports that Apple has placed an order for 10 inch screens. There are reports that Steve Jobs ate a ham and cheese sandwich!  Just kidding on that one, but come on, people.  Someone hears something from someone’s best friend and suddenly Steve is going to save the world again.  I would swear that we’re a pack of cigarettes and a failed pregnancy test from being back in high school. 

But overall, perhaps the best hyper ventilator out there currently has to  be Ben Kunz for Business Week, who took this unconfirmed story of an announcement and blew it up into a spread on how the Apple tablet is going to change the world, including how the tablet will revive print media, increase telecommuting, lower communication costs, hell, give it a chance and it will win the war on terror and have the Palestinians and Jews singing kum-bay-yah.  

I understand the last big thing out of Apple was the iPhone three years ago.  I also understand that people are hungry for the next big thing.

But come on, it’s a tablet.  It’s not like the concept hasn’t been around.  And yes, Apple will make it better, sleeker, prettier, easier to work with.  But trust me, if they come out and say that they plan on keeping their relationship with AT&T, there are a lot of people out there who will smile, nod, and wait for someone else to do the same thing with another carrier.  I love you Steve, but your choice of dance partners sucks.  And I don’t care how many julienne fries this little baby can make, in the words of Louis B. Mayer, “include me out”.

I mean I want my mobile devices to work, you know, when I’m mobile.

Now Playing: Carly Simon – Anticipation – Anticipation

WordPress Tags: Apple, Hype, Anticipation, Tablet