Now, that's determination.
Link: Hungry seal hits bonanza at fish hatchery - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe:
Misty Niemeyer, a team member, estimated the enterprising seal had to waddle nearly 2 miles over land to reach the hatchery, traversing a stretch of the Sandwich Boardwalk, taking a tunnel that goes under Route 6A, and then slip-sliding across a mini-golf course before arriving at seafood nirvana.
from the Boston Globe
I've moved to a new neighborhood and there's a forest nearby. Today, to get a better idea of all the trails, the dog and I wandered every trail we could find. I also has Sports Tracker on to see what a trace of the ramble might reveal.
The resolution of the GPS kept some paths that I walked over more than once from being overlaid, showing two parallel paths.
But, for me, it gives me an idea of all the paths I can walk there.
Henriette Weber Kristiansen and Duarte Velez Grilo have a little show called Geek Army Knife. I see it as a wander through the collective mind, talking to interesting people. One interesting feature of the show is that each interviewee needs to come up with who might be the next person to interview, sort of like passing the baton.
Alex de Carvalho was the previous person interviewed, and spoke about social objects. I was absolutely flattered when he passed the baton to me.
So, yeah, I got interviewed last night and it's already up. I spoke about lifestreaming and how it led me to thinking about semantics. I mentioned a bunch of folks along the way, including Friendfeed, Socialthing, Socialbrain, Lovelysystems, and Tagcrowd.
I've also names a few potential folks to pass the baton to, but pressed for my first choice, Stephanie Rieger.
Let's hope she accepts. If she doesn't, you might want to listen to the podcast to see if you made the list of alternates (and no offense if you did, I could only pick one and I like so many of you, heh).
Image from Philo.
Heh. I've noticed recurring imagery of super-heroes crouched on a building rooftop, on the ledge, usually in the rain, usually moping. It is also usually followed by the hero jumping off to do their thing.
So far I've seen it in:
And some non-super-heroes that are almost super-heroes to me that jump off buildings:
I think part of this is the super-hero looking over the city, as an unwanted, un-thanked protector. The standing at the ledge is a symbol of fearlessness, a standing on the precipice, yet ready to confront what is at the bottom. And the Leap is a suicide, through which the hero comes out like a pheonix reborn, once again to do their Thing.
Have any of you seen this too? Any other movies or comics or books where this metaphor is used? Indeed, in some of my own stories, I have the hero jumping off the building, mostly due to the dramatic nature of plummeting from a building but surviving.
*Huh. Just realized that most of these super-heroes are unloved, tragic heroes. I also like heroes who really are not content with their marginalized existence, who get the krap beaten out of them all the time, and who despite it all still get up in the evening to do their derring-do (in a Philip Dick sort of way). Anti-hero anyone?
Images from IMDB (Underworld), IMDB (Daredevil), IMDB (Spiderman 3)
Ty Burr is great.
Link: Yabba-dabba-don't - The Boston Globe:
How can a film that features a poorly shot attack by giant tree-climbing killer chickens be said to be good? Which rippeth off the ending of ‘‘Apocalypto,’’ pyramid and all, such that the great shaman Mel Gibson could sue?
And I saith to you, verily, it is a bad movie, with foolish racial politics, and indeed it may someday be spoken of as the worst of the year 2008. But I also saith to you that I had a strangely good time, and whether that is from laughing at ‘‘10,000 B.C.’’ or laughing with it I knoweth not, although I strongly suspect the former.
And it should be pointed out that Roland of the clan of Emmerich, who hath fashioned this tale, hath not ascended once more to the level of ‘‘Independence Day’’ but hath instead settled comfortably in the Valley of the Saturday Matinee B-Movie, a land once inhabited by giants named Roger Corman and 1950s special-effects magician Ray Harryhausen, whom the giant killer chickens doth seem to honor in their stop-motion jerkiness.
So, yea, it is a stinker. But it is prophesied that in six months time you shall come across ‘‘10,000 B.C.’’ in the land of Pay-Per-View. And you shall say: ‘‘Pass the popcorn.’’
Gosh, I've been using Flickr for ever, but I still find it frustrating to go through my contact's photos. I have searched for all sorts of tools to make it easier but none of them satisfy me. I have seen bits a pieces of what I want from different apps and hacks, but none have them all.
Any suggestions? Anyone want to build one with me (I can't code to save my life)?
"Emerging sub-culture"?
My ass.
I've been chowing down on burritos for a very long time, along with many others.
And in my day, it was hard to come by in Boston. I remember when Anna's Taqueria opened, just before we moved out of town. It was close to work and I'd sometimes pick a set up for the family on the way home. Back then, my boy would share with us. Now he can eat more than one Super.
Every time I'm out in San Francisco, I make sure to pick up a burrito. I have my regular places, but I like the random one I might run across. Of course, I also head to the Mission.
When I was in grad school, out in Amherst, there was a tiny burrito place in Northampton called La Veracruzana. The owner was a hard-working bugger, from El Salvador, I think. Dang, my wife was there every day (I think I would never have married her if she didn't like rice and beans). In short time, La Veracruzana crossed the street to a bigger and brighter place. Eh, the food was still great, but it lost some of that scrappy, desperate feel.
Boston.com tested a sampling of burritos from around town. There were a few names new to me. Looks like they preferred Anna's. Now, why they didn't get a burrito from Forest Cafe in Cambridge, beats me.
Link: Burrito panelists judge local chains' burritos - Boston.com:
There is an emerging subculture dedicated to the unique and varied delights of the burrito, that most egalitarian of foods, which provides your protein group, your tortilla group, and your salsa group, usually for less than six bucks.
Robert Scoble was at LIFT and I saw him using an N95. He and I had crossed at many an event and have many folks in common, but I had yet not introduced myself to him.
Well, partly because he was using an N95 and partly due to wanting to tell him my new role, I walked over to say 'Hi'.
He then whipped up his phone and started recording live, with questions coming from his audience.* I basically told him what we were up to in Social Media Communications and such.
In any case, I got a ton of emails and SMSs soon after the broadcast. For those who missed it, here it is (below).
Alas, I haven't seen it yet, only now sitting down at my computer since the interview. And qik is not being quick and I'll just have to trust the positive comments from others until I get a chance to see it for myself.
Finally got to see it. Not half bad. Lays out our vision. Let's see now if we get to see it all.
*Heck, this was real interactive TV and no one is calling it that. Interactive TV dies and then was reborn and no one noticed.
For the past year or so, Nokia has been posting product and other videos (and other media) onto the Web, albeit, here and there. Now, as part of my new role, I'll be posting a lot of things to the Web, too.
Indeed, even though we are building a site to put up some of our own content, we're going to make use of tools out there to provide multiple channels for folks to find and recombine the material we produce. We will also, of course, scour the Web for cool things produced by others and link to them from our site.
We don't have a name for the site, but you can guess what we're thinking. We also don't have a site, though we are in the process of getting it up and running.
In the mean time, we are still making and finding and pointing to stuff already out there.
Today we put up our first videos from the team (one of them embedded below), showcasing two phones that were launched today. As we produce more, I expect things to look better, feel better, sound better, and smell better.
Enjoy.
Link: YouTube - NokiaConversations's Channel:
This is the YouTube channel for the Social Media Communications team at Nokia. We'll be posting as many videos on Nokia stories, products, services, and people as we can get our hands on or produce ourselves.
It's a new year and I am looking at my Spring 2008 conference schedule.
This year I had no interest in CES or Macworld. I did want to go to Digital Lifestyle Day. But, again, I could not make it due to conflict and running out of travel days (watching myself).
I did find out today that I am more likely to hit other conferences, though now my _wife's_ schedule is conflicting. Bugger.
I do think I can make LIFT and will bug Laurent as soon as I know. And I thought I could make World Mobile Congress, but may have to pass. Ugh.
Not the same shutout as last year, but not so different yet. Hm.
Link [from last year's whining]: Lifeblog: There goes the conference schedule:
I wanted to go to CES.
I wanted to go to Macworld.
I wanted to go to DLD.
I wanted to go to LIFT.
But I can't.
Long story.
Yep, it's the end of the year again. And what a year it has been for me, especially tacked on to the year I had in 2006.
I'm looking forward to next year, since it is promising to have a little bit of everything for me. Many interesting things cropped up at the end of 2007 that will have repercussions far into the next year, if not longer. With a Zen Calm, I await to see how things develop.
As for all of you, thanks for stopping by. I expect to show up in more places next year, so I hope I can catch up with many of you.
Ah, I hear the Date Line rapidly approaching (indeed, my tweeps are popping off in synch). I'm going to step away for a bit to set off some fireworks, sip something nice, and think of what 2008 will bring.
Happy New Year. Feliz Ano Novo. Onnelista Uutta Vuottaa.
And see you on the other side.
I also got a shoulder tap about some shady dealing (see link below) from an online publisher. It not only bugs me that this gives other publishers a bad name and erodes trust in the openness of relationships built over the Web, but that he did this to folks I know, worse yet, GOOD and TRUSTING folks I know.
I've been a writer for a long time and have valued my work, so I am always on the look out for those who would take advantage of me. I am not saying that my friends could have seen this coming - you really can't - but I suppose we need to talk amongst ourselves to make sure this doesn't happen too often.
Alas, a previous guy Oliver dealt with had proposed I join his publishing network. The guy tried to stroke my ego, as if I were some online n00b writer, but the deal was so krappy that I turned it away.
Oliver and gang, I wish you the best as you guys pick up the pieces and move on.
I also wish you the best in getting this guy canned.
Link: David Harper’s Different Things » Blog Archive » What’s Up With Blognation’s Founder?:
Several friends of mine were affected by questionable business practices of Blognation’s founder. Please see Oliver Starr’s “Open Letter to Sam Sethi” (Reposted in full below with permission of the author.) Then head over to Debi Jones who continues the story with “Blognation: The Blogger’s Prelude and Tale.“
I thought this was funny - a 'Web' tab. It leads to iGoogle.
It was funny, because we have an Internet group (that deals with Internet enablers on our devices) and we all thought it odd to extend their offering to the Web. I mean, who would offer an 'Internet' tab on a service that is offered via a Web browser?
I guess Google does. So it must be good. Nobody got fired for buying Google.
Anyway. I just thought it funny to see that tab there.
As some of my regular readers might know, I find it useful to 'pause for station identification' so that it's clear who I am and what I do.
We be jammin'
My name is Charlie Schick, I am a product manager for Ovi.com, by Nokia (see details for more).
For the past few years I have used this site mostly to philosophize on the fusion of Internet and mobile devices. Hopelessly peripatetic, my thoughts and actions have lately been wandering farther afield (sorry folks) ranging from biomedicine, molecular manipulations, indiscriminate writing, the long now and a post-electronic age, various forms of performances thespian and corporate, and forcing myself to be more creative and do the story telling I want to do.
In the past, I've tried to not put too much of this other stuff here on this site. But, as I've hinted a few times in the last few months, I expect my writing and links of interest (found in my side bar) to start reflecting these interests.
Thanks
As I've said before, thanks for reading my stuff. That so many keep coming back to this site, suggest that I do have something of value to you all. I hope that does not change as I drift from the topics that originally brought us together.
Standard Disclaimer (riffing off of Cringley)
Everything I write here on this site is an expression of my own opinions, NOT of my employer, Nokia. If these were the opinions of Nokia, the site would be called 'Nokia something' and, for sure, the writing and design would be much more professional. Likewise, I am an intensely trained professional writer (heh), so don't expect to find any confidential secret corporate mumbo-jumbo being revealed here. Everything I write here is public info or readily found via any decent search engine or easily deduced by someone who has an understanding of the industry.
On the flip side, this is my personal site. Please don’t flood me with ideas that you think Nokia might be interested in. Better to leave a comment or trackback relevant to one of my posts (emphasis: relevant). Or go visit one of the Nokia blogs.
Every so often, I find it useful to 'pause for station identification' so that it's clear who I am and what I do.
Whois
My name is Charlie Schick, I am a product manager at Nokia (see details for more). I use this site mostly to talk and think about the fusion of the mobile and the Internet. Lately, my writing (and Web reading) has suffered on all fronts and backs, mostly due to my project here at Nokia, which I thoroughly enjoy and is exactly what I want to be doing,
Lately, my forward-thoughts have been moving to other interesting areas, such as the long now, how our second life on the 'net can improve our first life in the real world, and forcing myself to be more creative and do the story telling I want to do. I'm not sure how that will affect the nature of my writing here, though I don't expect changes any time soon.
For the hundreds of you on feed readers, my site also has a side bar with a link to my WINKsite (I'm a winkster), my del.icio.us links of note (sporadically showing up here as links of the day), and a link to some of my creative writing that I've put on the Web. I also have a running list of Tired Words, you might find amusing or not (feel free to suggest others).
Thanks
I also want to take the opportunity for all of you who read my site. I try to not repeat what is out there, since so many of you are great writers and in many ways have your thumb on the pulse of the Internet and mobile world much better than I. And, that so many keep coming back to this site, suggest that I do have something of value to you all.
I hope to keep it that way, regardless of what I write about.
Standard Disclaimer (riffing off of Cringley)
Everything I write here on this site is an expression of my own opinions, NOT of my employer, Nokia. If these were the opinions of Nokia, the site would be called 'Nokia something' and, for sure, the writing and design would be much more professional. Likewise, I am an intensely trained professional writer (heh), so don't expect to find any confidential secret corporate mumbo-jumbo being revealed here. Everything I write here is public info or readily found via any decent search engine or easily deduced by someone who has an understanding of the industry.
On the flip side, this is my personal site. Please don’t flood me with ideas that you think Nokia might be interested in. Better to leave a comment or trackback relevant to one of my posts (emphasis: relevant). Or go visit one of the Nokia blogs.
I wanted to go to CES.
I wanted to go to Macworld.
I wanted to go to DLD.
I wanted to go to LIFT.
But I can't.
Long story.
And it looks like TED, SXSW are now also at risk.
Sigh.
The story is not all that sad, really. I'm missing all these opportunities to rub elbows with smart folks to do something I am passionate about with some really energetic and smart folk. That counts for something. Nah, that counts for a lot - hence missing all these cool conferences.
Oh, and in case you are wondering, I had not planned to go to 3GSM anyway, though I would have loved to gone to Rudy's shin-dig.
Anything else exciting I'm missing?
embrace the Internet, excel with software applications and services
Yep. That's my job.
Positively, enlightening.
Link: Russell Beattie Notebook � Random Tech Thoughts.
Here’s a bunch of stuff that I would normally blog about individually, but don’t have the energy right now.
He's has a good hit rate in the past few years, so at least listen to what he has to say.
Can you tell I've been home today reading, writing, and thinking?
I need a new gig!
They've just started me on some biz opportunity research (can't tell you the domain, it's hush-hush). Biz opportunity research is what you do in a venture organization when you're between ventures, and it's not bad if you're at that stage. But, since I've been doing it on my own all summer, I'm ready to act.
Sigh.
I wonder if they need a mobile guy like me. I could use a few of those bucks.
Link: Om Malik’s Broadband Blog � Google Sells and Market Yells.
The Bay Area housing market is all set to “kick-it-up-a-notch” as many newly minted Google millionaires are going to go shopping for palazzos. TheStalwart has details on the insider selling. For those of you who missed out on the Google IPO, here is your second chance. The company plans to raise $4 billion. Its not going to be risk free, according NYU finance professor Aswath Damodaran tells Fortune.
Elizabeth is sure making waves in Australia using mobile phones (and Lifeblog) for learning.
Link: Education tool a phone call away - Technology - theage.com.au.
"We need to explore what mobiles mean for learning, and begin thinking of these phones as capable of supporting us in many aspects of communication,"
Link: Om Malik’s Broadband Blog - For mobile carriers, moblogs mean cash money.
Business 2.0: While users seem to love the ability to post pix on the fly, the real beneficiaries will be carriers, who’ve been looking for ways to plump up their flat revenues-per-customer. Here’s why. Everyone expected camera phones to unleash a flood of photo sharing and, with it, growing demand for bandwidth. But that didn’t happen because sharing pictures with your cell phone is a real pain in the neck: Uploading them is awkward and often doesn’t work. But moblogging relies on technology that makes it a snap: Sign on with a moblog service like Flickr and start e-mailing photos from your phone to that account.
Thanks, Om, for stating this. Maybe now they will listen.
But, here's an exercise: Go to the operators and talk about posting pics directly (over IP) from the phone. I bet you can't find one who will not, at first, complain about MMS cannibalization. Fortunately, most of them come around (some sooner, some later) and are willing, reluctantly, to give it a try. Then their next comment is how to get money off each posting, not being satisfied with 'just' traffic. Then they try to figure out how to lock in their customers with their own (home-grown and weak) blog service.
Sheesh.
I tell them always:
Paul Whitaker says,
I want widgets. I want widgets that are similar to what I have on my lovely new Mac.
Great idea - I think of these as single purpose applets that are easy to figure out and do their job extremely well. Only thing for me is the UI. With a large screen, it's easy to pepper the desktop with widgets or to find them quickly with Exposé. But what about a phone?
Microsoft was the first to have an active idle screen. Sendo put it first on Series 60 with their Sendo X. With the Nokia 6680 (Series 60 2.6?), there is now an active screen on all of Nokia's newer phones too.
But, is it extensible? Can I write an app that registers info on the active idle, as does the calendar and to-do list? Then I could see having a line up of widgets I could scroll through somehow to get weather info, ticker tape of news and such, status of my whatever, and so on.
Uh, I think Paul could actually answer that better than I.
Also, I didn't know Paul had a blog. Shouldn't be a surprise. He's an interesting dude. I had the good fortune to meet him a long time ago.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking this summer. There’s a whole lot of really smart folks out there, saying a bunch of stuff that is spot-on. I’ve also had many interesting discussions from which I have picked up further insights (meaning, some of this is mine and some of this is from others). Along the way, I’ve been collecting what I think are attributes for a compelling product (or service) which in my mind is a fusion of the Web, PC, and mobile (especially the mobile part). I’m not saying the product has to have all these attributes, but I think these are important things to consider when creating a product.
Here’s the list (in no particular order).
- Simple – the simpler and easier to use, the quicker to deploy, the quicker it can be adopted.
- Geographic diversity – keep in mind local specificities and regional sophistication.
- Disruption – think differently.
- Consumer electronics – still where the money is at.
- Mobile multimedia – my preference in tech space.
- Connecting people - collaborative filtering, profiles, making your social network work for you.
- End to end user experience – think of the whole solution, but not necessarily on a single device.
- Non-cellular – so we don’t make everything have to go through the network.
- Internet everywhere – sort of true, something to tap into.
- User-created content – where I think the value to the user is.
- No boxes – make it easy for the service provider partner to adopt and integrate.
- Enabling product recommendations – let your users do your marketing.
- Play shifting – don’t lock user media to a single device or format, freedom to the user!
- Play – tie this in and you have an addictive product.
- Mobile communication rituals and social capital – tap into the user psyche, they want to communicate and share, not sit passively and consume, think also of the mobile lifestyle.
- Business of non-consumption – a term from Clayton Christiansen describing an innovation that caters to something that previously could not be done.
I want to keep working on this list, add or remove some attributes, understand what they mean in relation to each other. Of course, I also want to understand what attributes I, myself, could pull together to create a compelling offering. At the same time, I am looking at different companies to see if they are ignoring one of these attributes, to understand the outcomes and consequences.
What do you think? Am I full of it? Clueless? Spot-on?
In my recent trip to Brasil, I met with some of the leading Latin American media companies. It was impressive how much they took to blogging. One thing I noticed was that a few of them had separate photoblogging (usually for the mobile) and text blogging.
Here's UOL's text-based blogs. Here are their mobile blogs (and mobile access!).
I was a bit put off, since I keep saying that blogging is blogging, whether you do it from a phone or a PC. But, these guys taught me a small something.
By having different versions of blogging - mobile or fixed, both for posting and viewing - you are able to actually segment the offering and also segment the marketing so that you better serve and inform the customer. What this tells me that it might just be that folks who like posting have their preferences and usually keep it that way.
This makes sense. You've got folks who just use Flickr for the photosharing, then you have the folks who use TypePad for text blogging and light photosharing.
TypePad has started segmenting their offering by providing mobile-multimedia-friendly templates and text-friendly templates. I have already figured out a bunch of things TypePad should do to be more mobile-friendly, but I keep thinking in terms of the whole TypePad service. This last tip from Brasil helps me understand what kind of segmentation can be done and how far to be able to better serve the different type of bloggers.
In the past few years I've seen a whole load of social mobile apps, such as Sensor (was a bit involved in that one), and more recently fotochatter and 6th Sense.
I think most of them are clever and work as advertised. But, all seem to be based on a Symbian or Windows Mobile app for a smartphone and thus suffer from a crucial weakness - density of devices.
All of these apps (they are not services, yet) require that a person be nearby with the same app running. Therefore, there needs to be a high enough density of folks with the right phones in the right places with the right app.
Uh uh.
Having used various of these apps, I have felt very lonely, even in the mobile crazy halls at Nokia. There just isn't any penetration of these smartphones to a significant degree to make these apps useful.
I've seen some ideas of how to get around this limitation, but all of them still expect someone to have a smartphone.
Here's my proposal, forget the smartphone and deploy something that can be used with simple Java phones. Indeed, I've seen some cool stuff there, too, but nothing out in the wild, yet.
It's so easy to make an app for a smartphone and say you've got a winner. But the reality is that there are about, oh, 600 million phones out there being sold this year that will not be smartphones (which themselves should amount to no more than 10% of the total market for new phones).
What say you?
One thing I realized after Les Blogs was that it was an amazing get-together of the folks who are actually leaders of Web 2.0 and that the close and collaborative feeling was not harnessed. I mentioned to Loïc and others that the next conference should have something concrete come out of it.
Well, seems like others are thinking the same thing.
Stowe Boyd is pulling together another gathering of Social Media people and realizes that something concrete needs to come out of it.
That's great.
And I want to explore Marc Cantor's contention (see here) that this has to be more than just a brief real world event: it needs to be an ongoing community, with continuing virtual activity after the symposium is over, and leading up to the event itself.
Yes, it's neat that Apple made podacasting part of iTunes. But, did anyone notice that their podcasting library was via the Music Store? That means that it's a sinch to start charging for podcasts.
Now, that's a wickedly cool - subscription narrowcasting, anyone? - TiVo for your ears. Money for the content doobies.
Link: Apple - iTunes - Podcasting.
Welcome to the Golden Age of Podcasting
I'm a bit peeved and don't feel like waiting until Monday to find out:
It's one thing for a publication like TheFeature to fold - that's just the way things are. But, it really stinks when 5 years worth of content are gone in an instant.
Sure, someone has to pay to keep all that conent up and the same reasons that made TheFeature disappear are the same ones that don't permit it to just keep the contnet live - even that costs money.
In all the talk around the web, sighing about the end of TheFeature, I don't think anyone cried for the content. But, isn't permanence what it is all about?
Will TheFeature content ever be made available again? Heck, I have links to some really great articles.
I think I need to have a chat with the lads from TheFeature.
As an aside, I used to write for a site that vanished. I contacted the site and they sent all the content files to me on a DVD. Can something similar be available for TheFeature that others could keep or serve from elsewhere?
