BLADAM: Life, Liberty, Love and Stuff - (Full-text feed)

Knott’s Berry Farm—For shame!

2009-06-15T07:51:32Z

Okay, this is not a rant on junk food. I think when people eat Cheez-wiz, they aren’t misguided enough to assume they’re eating healthful real cheese. When people eat a double fudge brownie, I doubt they’re confusing this with an apple. And when people eat Cap’n Crunch cereal, there’s no way they’d assume they’re consuming real fruit. Oh, um, wait a minute, someone did? Er, well, anyway, you get my point

But seriously… sometimes there’s an absolute nasty & unhealthy food paired with such obnoxiously, blatantly misleading marketing that I can’t help calling a spade a hyrogenated [sic] artificially flavored spade.

First, the marketing that, by all means, should condemn some marketer to eternal dietary hell:

“In 1920, Walter and Cordelia Knott began selling fresh produce, berries, and preserves from a roadside berry stand in Buena Park, California. Their family business earned a place in history in 1932 when Walter Knott cultivated a lucious new fruit, the boysenberry. The farm that started it all has also become a family amusement park that delights millions.

The Knott family is pleased to extend their tradition of quality to include premium shortbread cookies. Richly flavorful, these classic favorites are prepared using popular Knott’s Berry farm fruit fillings.”

Let’s dissect this, shall we?

> In 1920, Walter and Cordelia Knott began selling fresh produce, berries, and preserves from a roadside berry stand in Buena Park, California.
...and boy, would they be horrified to see how their heirs have sold them out!

> ...when Walter Knott cultivated a lucious new fruit, the boysenberry.

...which you’ll find all of likely one-tenth of a gram of in this plasticfood monstrosity.

> ... premium shortbread cookies
... where “premium” means “premium profits for us, utter crap for you.”

> ... Richly flavorful
... from lots of high fructose corn syrup

> ... these classic favorites
... if you call a frankenstein concoction of chemicals “classic.” Maybe a classic case of deceit.

> ... using popular Knott’s Berry farm fruit fillings.
... oh, wait, we meant popular dental fillings!

* * *

But enough pre-commentary. Without further ado, let’s take a look at these charming ingredients, shall we? (and out of kindness, I’ll substitute normal text for the ALL CAPS printed)

Enriched wheat flour [artificial vitamin enrichment crap omitted], margarine (liquid soybean oil, partially hyrogenated [sic] soybean oil, water, salt, whey, lecithin, mono and di-glycerides, sodium benzoate a preservative, artificial butter flavor, beta carotene and vitamin A palmitate), raspberry topping (high fructose corn syrup, red raspberries, apple powder, fruit pectin, citric acid, natural and artificial flavors, calcium chloride, FD&C red #40 and blue #1), sugar, eggs, baking soda, natural and artificial flavor, baking ammonium, and salt.

Mmmm… delicious, no? Just like Grandma would have made it… if she had access to a chemistry lab *and* passionately hated your guts.

Oh, and lookie here, (unsurprisingly) almost no redeeming nutritive qualities at all… little fiber or protein, and a charming 3 grams of trans-fat (I didn’t even know there were many packaged goods that still had this stuff in ‘em nowadays!)

For comparison, let’s take a look at a typical recipe for berry shortbread cookies:

1 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam
GLAZE:
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons water
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

(from AllRecipes.com)

Notice a difference? Yes! You recognize and can likely pronounce the ingredients, and there are fewer than a dozen of them.

* * *

Look, as I said, I don’t have a problem with companies making utter junkfood. I do, however, have a problem about them so blatantly misrepresenting their product. Even an intelligent acquaintance of mine said (without any prompting from me) that she used to eat these cookies every day for lunch, figuring that they were relatively harmless. Oops!

P.S.—Might think twice before buying any of Knott’s Berry Farm jams or other products, eh?

#geekfail—Valuing immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding

2009-06-14T21:11:08Z

Yesterday, I learned about the turmoil in Iran… from the blogosphere. Some have argued that the immediacy of news on this and other breaking topics is a sign that mainstream media has failed and online media—specifically “real time” components of online media—have triumphed. I believe such an assumption is not only dead wrong, but dangerous to society.

Today, I can get more information—and more importantly, more *verified* information—about the situation in Iran from mainstream media. And in a few days, I’ll no doubt be able to get some insightful background information, valuable context, and more-likely-accurate news from weekly magazines.

Even online, let’s compare, one day later:
- http://search.twitter.com/search?q=iran
- http://news.google.com/news?q=iran

Some would argue… but Adam, don’t you want information right now? How can you wait a day or even a week to learn what’s going on?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!1

To that, I’d reply with the following question: Why do you value immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding? Or, better yet, what difference will it make in your life to know about the Iranian election mess one day sooner? Will you be able to change anything? Help anyone? What will you and the world lose by waiting a few more hours?

* * *

So why do I believe this increasing predilection towards immediacy is actually dangerous, and not just misguided?

It’s pressuring news media and politicians to report, respond, and act before they have all the facts, before they’ve had a chance to digest what is correct and what is right. While I doubt that people with access to nukes won’t be relying on twitter “reporting” to make that crucial decision, I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more and more decisions painfully botched due to a reliance upon “what’s happening right now.”
While there’s a chicken and egg scenario here, I wouldn’t be surprised if push towards “real time” is further feeding and exacerbating society’s collective ADD, dulling our interests and abilities in long-term thinking and planning. What are people reading? What are they thinking about? If, as we’ve noticed, fewer and fewer people (including me) are taking the time to write (and listen) beyond soundbites, what does this mean for the peaceful progress of our society?

Yes, I know I’m sounding like your grumpy neighbor who perhaps just got on the net (via dialup). No, I don’t think my griping alone will make a whit of difference.

But perhaps if enough people say, well, ENOUGH!... immediacy != value, then perhaps the tide will start turning. Not gonna hold my breath, though.

P.S.—I realize that there IS value in real time. In the case of disasters (natural and manmade), services like Twitter have helped with the mobilization of protests and rescue efforts and so on. So for the citizens of Iran, I have no doubt that tweets may well have served as valuable inspiration and coordination. But this is not news, this is broadcasting. And for the rest of the world, I stand by my assertions that there was little value in seeing a flurry of micro-messages about events happening in other places of the world except as—and I hate to label it as such—entertainment. But unsurprisingly the impulse to be entertained, to be un-bored… is now clearly more powerful than the desire to be patiently enlightened.

On public displays of affection—but not that kind

2009-06-02T19:19:14Z

Today, we send and receive notes publicly in a way that seems shocking when viewed by communications standards just a decade ago. Expressions of friendship, social plans, etc.

“I miss you!”...
“Hey, are you going to Fred’s party tomorrow?”...
“Save me a dance this Wednesday!”... etc.

Why do we like this, why do we post rather than e-mail? Bonding? Convenience? Insecurity? Is it just an extension of the old “You’re the greatest!” scribblings we got in our high school year books?

I feel torn about this.

On one hand, I must confess to being oft-delighted by both the chance to quickly share warm feelings or make arrangements with friends and acquaintances all over the world, many of whom I might not otherwise have a chance to more formally or personally converse with. But on the other hand, this almost seems like a narcissistic and lazy version of friendship, and a behavior that’s not particularly seemly in someone who is nearly four decades old.

I’m almost past feeling bad about not handwriting letters anymore. I still feel awful that I have unreplied-to e-mails in my inbox from dear friends that I’ve put off for “when I have time,” yet here I am writing a blog post.

Have we become a culture of relationship snackers? Has the ease of publishing, of communicating, of virtual hugging (not to mention cow-throwing) resulted in an exciting and perhaps overall-positive broadening of our social circle… but at the expense of deepening relationships?

What do you think? Why are we so drawn to this micro- and public communicating? What does it mean for us? What does it mean for relationships?

Dependence on the Internet

2009-06-01T04:14:36Z

Just going through some of my old files, and I came across an unpublished journal/rant thing re: my frustrations upon loss of Internet connectivity. This was from back in *2001*. Amazing how some dependent at least I was on the Internet back then!

Okay, I feel as blind as a bat right now.

My internet connection has been flakey for the last week or so, and that’s been frustrating, but now as I write this my connection is completely down, and I feel both furious and helpless.

I’d like to put postage on a few packages I put together for friends, but I can’t print postage when I can’t connect to the Internet, so I’ll have to drive to the post office and wait in line.

A friend from out of town is coming out to visit today, and I promised to take her around to some tourist traps, er, I mean tourist attractions. But without the net, it’s a lot harder to figure out driving directions, get parking information, find out attraction prices, and so on. I’m picking her up from the hotel she’s staying at in San Bruno, and I don’t even have a map of that city. So I’ll have to call the hotel to get directions. Except that I don’t have the number of the hotel, nor do I have a yellow pages handy. Guess I’ll have to call Directory Assistance and pay 50 cents.

I was supposed to order some travelers checks and Swedish currency this morning for my trip, but I can’t compare rates online or even order the stuff without my net connection.

I had hoped to research and order some tourist guides on Stockholm and London, but I can’t do that either.

Before heading out with my friend today, I wanted to check on the latest weather report, but that’s a no-go as well. Guess I’ll have to turn on the radio and sit through a bunch of crap in the meantime.

I wanted to look into some travelers insurance and health insurance for my trip, but I can’t imagine doing that without the Internet.

And of course, I can’t access any of my new e-mail, nor can I send any e-mail, and that drives me nuts.

Heh… wow. Remember, I wrote this more than eight years ago! And after re-reading it I got to thinking… my goodness… what would happen if the whole Internet went down for even just a day (particularly a businessday)? And just to be fair, imagine that the SMS network was down, too, so teens couldn’t text each other. Would people be panicking in the streets? Curled up in a ball in bed? Actually discover a book or sit down to play piano for a while? Maybe actually talk to other people in cafes instead of clickety-clacking away? I wonder.

Picking a domain name—a helpful list

2009-05-10T23:15:02Z

My friends have been telling me that “BLADAM” is a yucky name. Bummer. So I’ve shopping for a new domain name, and it’s not easy! So many things to think about, and so many damn evil squatters (but that’s a different issue).

And I thought hmm, I’ve been mulling over so many guidelines and best practices in my mind, I might as well share them! So, without further ado, here are some of my thoughts.

Clear pronunciation: You—and many others—are probably going to mention the domain out loud. Is it blADAM or BlaDAMN? Is it PenIsland or… ahem :o.
Spellable: Is it lasnik or lasnick? spendia or spendea? Mind your homophones, too. Was that 4you or 4u or foryou.whatever? q or queue?
International meaning: Do you want your domain to mean “smelly” in a popular non-English language? Probably not.
Brevity: osteoporosishealing may convey exactly what your drug does, but—forget spelling—try fitting that on a business card!
Unspamminess: No matter how clever you think you are, some-domain-name-like-this.whatever will look like spam. Honest.
Got .com?: You may have found a fab .net domain name, but what if your clients/potential customers keep mailing the .com version? Uh oh! Try to get both, at least if you’re in the U.S. Old habits die hard, unfortunately!
Brand matching: If everyone knows you or your company under one name, choosing a cute marketing word as your domain name may not fly. People will probably still type in companyname.com into their browser.
Cost: Some random TLD (e.g., .ly) may have their registrations on sale this month, but what about when you renew? .com and .net (and the TLDs of big countries) will likely stay reasonably affordable. .vanity TLDs? Possibly not.
Legal stuff: Using a major (or even minor) brand’s name in your domain name may seem like flattery, but it may get you nowhere but in trouble.
Expandability: Isn’t it a good thing that Amazon.com didn’t start off as books.com? This also means “BlogOfFred.com” may be a bad idea if you think you might add a wiki or forum later. Or, more importantly, if your name’s not Fred.

Any items I forgot? Post YOUR thoughts and ideas below

P.S.—If you’re searching for domains, check out DomainTools and domai.nr, two of my favorite sites in this space.

[Overheard] - “How do I get balls?”

2009-04-10T23:58:41Z

Officemate: So I got everything all set for the event. Computers, powerstrips, food. Only thing I forgot was chairs! [smacking forehead]
Me: Why don’t you use these instead? [pointing to one of the inflatable balls we have in our office for sitting on]
Officemate: [looking intrigued, yet uncertain] Hmm! How do I get balls?!
Me: [incredulous pause, then uncontrolled laughter]

Luckily my officemates have a good sense of humor

Pandora Mobile highlights awesomeness but also severe lame-itude

2009-03-28T01:17:33Z

Do you know Pandora? If you’re in the United States, where Pandora is legally available, you may have come to enjoy this awesome uber-customizable music radio over the past years. If you’re not in the U.S., perhaps you’ve discovered the beauty of anonymous proxies :cough:, which I’m not going to mention here :p.

But perhaps you didn’t know that Pandora has become available on mobile phones! More good news: It’s available for free on phones that run the Windows Mobile operating system, free on Sprint phones, and free on (some versions of) BlackBerry phones. Ironically, it’s also free on the iPhone, and I say ironically because AT&T apparently is charging—I swear I am not making this up—$8.95 per month to its other mobile customers for the privileges of using Pandora. I mean, I love Pandora and all, but even if I were insane enough to be contributing to the income of the evilness that is AT&T, I sure as heck wouldn’t fork over that much dough for Pandora. For an on-demand mobile music service? Perhaps. But for streaming radio? You’ve got to be kidding.

One other note on the Pandora Mobile offerings: Apparently, I’m not supposed to be able to access Pandora Mobile because T-Mobile phones are not supported. Which is odd, because I’m enjoying streaming music via Pandora on my BlackBerry Curve (on T-Mobile) right now. Go figure. I also shouldn’t mention that I was also able to do this while in Ireland a couple of weeks ago (listening to, appropriately enough, The Corrs on St. Patricks day ).

* * *

Anyway, if you’re an iPhone user or a non-AT&T subscriber, give Pandora Mobile a go! If you’re an AT&T subscriber, well, heaven help you, and for reasons way beyond this Pandora issue.

[Gee, Adam, tell us what you really think about AT&T :D]

* * *

Okay, okay, I’m thinking I should flesh this entry out a little bit

Some stuff I like in the mobile app:
- Seems to work internationally (though I can imagine this being “fixed” [sigh])
- Works as a true background app on my BlackBerry!
- Can play through my BB’s speaker (actually sounds decent!) or a headset
- Song-to-song time isn’t bad
- Nice graphics, simple, intuitive interface.
- Access to all my stations
- Can even view “Why [did Pandora play] this song?”
- Thumbs up / thumbs down works.

Some stuff I don’t like:
- Takes a while to start up the app
- No way to see detailed info on artist or song

* * *

All in all, pretty damn cool!

My experiment testing user engagement on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter

2009-03-15T00:32:56Z

What did I do?!

I posted an identically-phrased note on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter at around 1:30am PDT Friday morning. Specifically, I posted this: “Could you kindly help me with a super-quick experiment (takes less than 30 seconds)? I’ll share results Thanks!”

Why?

I was curious to see which set of friends/subscribers (henceforth referred to as “contacts”) would be more apt to read my note and reply.

What happened?

As of nearly 40 hours after posting…

So does this mean Facebook is better than Friendfeed and Twitter?

No. Is a particular service a better fit or a more powerful promotional vehicle for some people or for some needs or interests? Probably. But my experiment doesn’t prove that. This is based upon my sets of contacts, and was limited to a single test. I know it would make for a far more popular blog entry to trumpet this with a title of “[servicename] the [other servicename] Killer?!?!?” or “[servicename] Beats the Pants Off [other service name]” or—best yet—“[servicename] Set to Trounce Google?!?”—but I refuse to support such memes or pageview-increasing tactics. At least until I receive a very lucratic offer and then decide to sell-out :D.

So what does your little test suggest?

It means that—with my sets of contacts—I’m significantly more likely to get engagement and actions from my contacts on Facebook.

Huh?

When looking at contact interaction, I think we have to take a few things into account:

What’s the contact acquisition rate? e.g., how many folks subscribe to / follow you each day?
What’s the contact retention rate? How many people stick with you (vs. defriend or unsubscribe)
What’s the attention rate? How many actually read what you post?
What’s the engagement rate? How many click on your links?
And lastly, what’s the action rate? This is just subtly different than engagement, but I mean this to distinguish between clicking on a blog post link and actually posting a comment there.

And, from my limited test and experiences, here’s the more detailed comparison:

Acquisition: I’ve found that I acquire contacts on Twitter far more rapidly than on either of the other services.

I’ve been gaining followers at a much faster rate on Twitter than on Friendfeed... typically more than 7-10 a day on Twitter vs. 1 a day on FF. In fact, I even plugged Friendfeed to nearly 100 of my buddies via a friendly (albeit form) e-mail, and got a sum total of zero friends subscribing to my FF feed from that. Bummer :-(. FF’s a much harder sell, at least amongst my non-geek friends, than I previously assumed. Balancing that, though, two friends I personally referred to FF a while back are now two of the service’s more active users . Also, note that my Twitter subscriber count got a HUGE boost because I was recently subscribed to by the wildly popular Google account on Twitter.

Retention is a bit harder to assess.

For a while, I used the third party service Twitterless to let me know who unsubscribed from my feed each day. Seemed like I lost about a follower a day on Twitter, which was a little depressing, so I’m glad that feature of Twitterless ceased to function a while back. Though I’ve culled my own Facebook friend list, I haven’t really noticed if/when my friends have unfriended me there. And I’ve also not tracked/noticed people unsubscribing from me on Friendfeed, though I’m sure it’s happened, despite the consistently scintillating quality of my FF posts (HAH!).

Attention: Not sure how I could possibly measure that. There’s no user-available “analytics for Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter” that I know of. Bummer.

Engagement, or click-thru rate… in the past, I’ve found that I’ve gotten proportionally the most clicks from Twitter contacts, followed by Facebook and then Friendfeed.

Contemplating Attention and Engagement… I’m guessing that Friendfeed’s generally-helpful/intriguing “Friend of Friend” option could nonetheless be substantially diluting the total attention that feeds-of-friends get. In other words, when someone subscribes to me on Friendfeed, they then start getting (by default) a stream of not only my content, but also the content of my friends’ items I comment on or Like. More to look at means, understandably, attention spread across more items = less time looking at my items. Then again, one could argue that this is balanced out by the fact that people who aren’t subscribed to me are likely to be seeing my items in their feeds when their friends Like or comment upon my entries. Hmm.

I’m not quite sure why Facebook engagement seems to be proportionally so much higher than on the other services, but I think it has to do with the friendship-vs-content orientation of my respective contacts. More specifically, I believe my FB network consists of more strong / moderate friendship ties, whereas people following me on Twitter and FF may be more apt to be reading my stuff because, well, they like my stuff (funny comments, links) vs. liking me personally. So given this, when I asked for a quick favor, it makes sense that I’d get a higher response rate from friends vs. fans.

Action is where things get a lot more complicated.

When looking at the magnitude of action—that is to say, getting a single reply (minimal action) vs spawning a lengthy thread of comments (extended action)—then the services are quite different from my experience. On Twitter and Facebook, I’ve found that I quite often get one reply or a small handful replies to my posts. On Friendfeed, more of my posts go without any comments, but… on Friendfeed, I’m more likely to see a post get a large collection of comments. This isn’t surprising to me. Though Facebook has moved more towards facilitating a Friendfeed style of item+comment, Friendfeed’s been IMHO by far the strongest service in town for conversations. In contrast, on Twitter it’s quite easy to post an @ response, but rather frustrating to follow a conversation. I think this explains why I tend to see more robust conversations on Friendfeed, but more frequent (albeit less voluminous) replies on Facebook and Twitter.

The tone and content of a post also plays a large role in determining the extent of replies for me by service. Examples of post-types that are most likely to elicit replies on the various services (again, for me; your mileage may vary!)

- Facebook: “Having a rotten day, could use a hug!” [expression of emotion, change in personal status, in-joke shared amongst friends]

- Friendfeed: “Whoa, check out this robot who recites poetry! WANT! You, too?” [early link to article highlighting a new geek toy or popular geek meme, profound observations or statements of concern, anything about the Kindle, Apple, or Obama]

- Twitter: “At big electronics store in Japan. Should I buy digital camera here or wait ‘til Korea?” [questions that don’t demand a complicated response, simple but unexpected notes (e.g., “Now in Bora Bora for 3 hours!”, “Just got engaged!”)]

General caveats:

Interconnection: Lots of interconnection between the services! Twitter is integrated into FF and FB, for instance. However, I don’t import my twitter feed into my Facebook account, and I also immediately deleted the twitter-post in Friendfeed to help mitigate this issue.
Facebook UI change: Facebook just switched over to a new format. This could have increased or decreased attention to my link.
Timing: The timing wasn’t necessarily optimal. Posting it so late on Thu night meant that—by the time most people accessed their account on the various services—they likely already had a ton to look at… e.g., my post was no longer “fresh” at that point.

Personal caveats/notes:

Difference in contact symmetry:
Anyone can follow me on Twitter and FF (assymetry / self-selection), but I pick (and am picky about) who I friend on FB (due to both its symmetrical friends model and my own preferences).
Difference in contact type:
My contacts on FB are far less geeky than my contacts on the other services. They also tend to be typically personal friends rather than acquaintances or fans. In contrast, my contacts on Twitter seem to be largely online marketers, SEOs, and geeks. Same on FF, but with a much higher emphasis of online marketing / uber-geeky folks who are deeply excited about stuff online. Many of my FB friends just dabble a little bit online and most tend to be buddies from school, work, dance, etc.
Why Friendfeed / Facebook / Twitter and not [blah blah blah]?
Because these are the social networking/broadcasting-type services I predominantly use. I have also tried Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, Tribe, Multiply, Jaiku, and likely many other services I’ve forgotten about, but the three above are the ones I’m active on.

And now for some notes from the respondents:

In addition to the main survey question asking people where they clicked on the link from, I also invited people to leave a freeform comment. I’m not sharing all of them (due to privacy concerns), but have excerpted (and replied to in brackets) some below:

Did worry it might implode my computer with malware, but hey, I’m leaving the company in two weeks!
[Yeah, I hadn’t even thought of how my impersonal-sounding click-here request might be misperceived. Wonder if that lowered the clickthru rate?]
You’re my hero, Adam!
[Aw, and you wrote that even before you read this blatheringly long blog post. Hope you still feel the same way ]
Uh, it’s WAY too soon to be talking engagement—I mean you just confirmed we were FRIENDS yesterday!
[What if I added you to my Top Friends app list in FB? Would that win your heart?]
When you write up the results, please keep emphasizing that these are just your friends and try not to generalize.
[I hope I’ve suitably emphasized that!]
Although I clicked through from FB because I have FB chat turned on in Pidgin and it shows me status updates right there.
[That’s a very good point. I wasn’t thinking about how use of third party tools could skew this experiment.]

Good idea Adam, though I wonder if it may be slightly different results for others. After all, you are “the Adam Lasnik”.
[I doubt my micro-celebrity status (in the webmaster world) would affect things one way or the other. Might be responsible for getting me more subscribers on Twitter and Friendfeed, but that’s why I listed proportional results above ].

I also got another interesting comment which further accentuates the complication involving the use of third party tools with these services… and also touches upon the frustration of data silos:

Hmm, I think you’re missing a subtlety. I selected Facebook because that was the source of the thing I saw. However, where I actually saw it was in Google Reader. I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to get Facebook stuff *out* of Facebook and into the applications I prefer to use. FB does not really make this as easy as it should be. Also, I usually end up getting stuck with two copies of things when someone, for example, imports their Twitter posts to FB. But at least in Reader I can really quickly scan all the updates in a list, skimming over the duplicate or uninteresting ones. (I just wish I could get a FB feed for a friends sub-list!)

Oh, and Vinny… thanks for the hat!

Wow, that experiment was neato! Can I do that, too? Should I do it? Are you gonna repeat it to see how things change?!

Yep! Technically. Probably not. Unlikely.

Frankly, I’m guessing my friends would get highly annoyed with me if I identically repeated this experiment, and—worse yet—I bet that people in the webosphere would get really pissed at you (and me) if this experiment was duplicated ad nauseum. So sorry, I’ve got first-mover advantage. Take solace in the fact that I likely won’t get rich and famous from this, though. Unless I’m offered a book deal along the lines of, “A Completely Unscientific Experiment Exploring User Engagement With Three Darlings of the Interwebs—The Untold Story” for one MILLION dollars. But that also seems at least somewhat unlikely.

Thanks for reading, though! And hey, while you’re at it, go subscribe to my Friendfeed and Twitter streams :D

* * *
P.S.—You’re welcome to check out the click-thru data of my original request via bit.ly .

* * *

And now… YOUR turn!

Do my experiences match yours? Do you see similar demographic differences in your friend/follower sets amongst the services? What kind of response rates have YOU seen? Other thoughts?

A short tribute poem to Dr. Seuss on his birthday

2009-03-03T13:19:16Z

My colleague Sha-Mayn noted that today is Dr. Seuss’ birthday. I originally penned the short poem below to post as a facebook comment, but I thought I’d share it with you all instead. With deep apologies but much love to Dr. Seuss…

—-

I hadn’t known this fact before
I miss Dr. Seuss now even more
I read and re-read all his books
‘til my parents gave me funny looks!

“Green Eggs and Ham” still rocks today.
I wish for more like that, I say!

In a hat, on a moat, with a cat, on a boat,
In a car, on a plane, with a star, on a plane!

I would not could not write like Seuss.
So now I’ll stop the poetic abuse.

[Video below is of two girls lipsync’ing to Moxy Früvous’ awesome a cappella take on “Green Eggs and Ham”]

Another crazy international work trip… and my thoughts on work travel

2009-02-17T01:07:34Z

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be traveling internationally for work once again.

And boy, I certainly do have a love-hate relationship with work travel!

Why work travel rocks:
- Get to know colleagues better.
- Much easier to get collaborative projects moving when in person than over VC or e-mail!
- Frequent flyer miles!
- Experience little fascinating pieces of foreign cultures and learn more about my own in the process.
- Get to see wonderful far-away friends.
- Acquire lots of photos and fun stories to tell

Why work travel sucks:
- Tons to do ahead of time (in addition to “regular” job)! visa, vaccinations, presentation/interview prep, etc.
- Away from local friends; often not there when they most need me.
- Expense reports in multiple currencies (this time: seven!). Pure hell. No seriously, doing calculations with various exchange rates, credit card fees, etc… really really sucks.
- Screaming babies and loud morons in 15 hour economy flights.
- Jetlag (seven different time zones in 30 days).
- No pause button for e-mail.
- Traveling can be lonely.

On the whole, though, I’m grateful for the opportunity to travel for work. Unlike some of my friends who have to dress up to face frustrated clients when they travel, I typically have the pleasure of working on awesome projects with friendly and fun colleagues when I travel. And I also am damn lucky with the cities I get to visit: Sydney, Stockholm, Seattle, and even super cities that don’t start with ‘S’. Granted, I suffered through crazy-freezing Stockholm and icky-damp London in the heart of winter, but still… .

* * *

So where to this time? Here’s where!

Tue Feb 17:  Departing for SINGAPORE (via Hong Kong)
Thu Feb 18:  Working with teammates in Singapore Office, doing an interview with press about Search; grabbing dinner with friends and heading to a jazz club
Fri Feb 19:  In the Singapore office, then in the evening, flying to HYDERABAD
Sat-Sun   :  Exploring Hyderabad (it's my first time in India!), prepping for the week's upcoming conferences
Mon Feb 22:  Working on projects with Hyderabad Search Quality colleagues
Wed Feb 24:  Flying to BANGALORE, doing interviews with press, prepping for two conferences
Sat Feb 28:  Doing three presentations at a Search conference; in the evening, flying to CHENNAI
Sun Feb 29:  Attending an informal Search conference in Chennai; flying to TOKYO in the evening (overnight)
Mon Mar 02:  Working on projects with Search Quality Googlers in Tokyo
Sat-Sun   :  Visiting KYOTO with a friend to unwind a bit
Mon Mar 09:  Speaking at a TOKYO Google press event re: search issues
Tue Mar 10:  Flying back to the U.S.
Wed-Sat   :  Undoubtedly trying to get over jetlag and attempting to catch up on e-mail
Sun Mar 15:  Flying to DUBLIN (thankfully direct this time!)
Mon-Wed   :  Working on projects with Search Quality Googlers
Thu Mar 19:  Flying to REYKJAVIK (via London) for a marketing conference
Fri Mar 20:  Giving a presentation on Google and Search at the conference
Sat-Sun   :  Exploring Iceland, then flying back to the U.S.
Mon Mar 23:  In BOSTON, likely visiting Google's Cambridge office; also hanging out with friends
Tue Mar 24:  Flying HOME!

Whew! Maybe I’ll even get around to doing a journal entry about the places I visit this time? Though given that I still haven’t posted detailed thoughts about my time in Brazil, Mexico, China, Korea… {sigh}... writing is hard!

Anyway, if you’ve been to (or live in!) any of the places above, feel free to share your recommendations for things to see, place to eat, etc. .

* * *

I’ll leave you with a photo of a train station from beautiful Howth, Ireland, where I spent an uncommonly sunny weekend day in between work days in Dublin last year. Feel free to check out more of my photos of Howth .

A music solution that’s so brilliant, no wonder why the music industry has shunned it

2009-02-14T02:56:01Z

The other day I got a (yet another) piece of inbox spam on the otherwise cool service last.fm. And no good can come from spam, right?

Not sure what got into me, but I actually went to the site (which I’ll not name, so as to not potentially give them any customers). And you know what? They were doing something brilliant: they were selling high-fi music tracks for 20 cents a piece. No, that’s not in itself brilliant; Russian sites doing the same thing are and have been a dime a dozen. What struck me as brilliant was their way of allowing music lovers to explore the *full length* of songs while still enticing them to buy the track.

How did they do this? It’s ridiculously simple yet, IMHO, likely to be remarkably effective: they overwrote parts of each track several times with a moderately annoying audio blip (sort of a “chirp”). Only the truly desperate would possibly stream and copy and store such a track as an mp3, and, as we know, the truly desperate are not one’s potential customers. Had this firm been even more enterprising, they would have instead added once after each minute of song: “Sample brought to you by [companyname]; uninterrupted tracks just 20 cents!” If they wanted to be both enterprising AND deliciously devious, they’d have seeded a ton of torrent sites with those tracks :D). Or, at minimum, made it crazy-easy for bloggers to embed any track or album AND receive a cut of all proceeds from people clicking through to the site.

Maybe I’m naive or missing something glaringly obvious, but it seems like everyone would stand to win with such a situation:
- Music lovers would get to sample full-length (albeit slightly interrupted) songs, instead of dealing with the 30 second samples found on iTunes and similar sites.
- Musicians would be happy to see samples of their work passed around in a way that wouldn’t damage their potential for earning revenue on the same tracks.
- Bloggers and others distributing the tracks (especially if done so out of real passion for specific artists or songs) would be delighted to get commissions (though it’d be hard to grant commissions on just the bare passed-around MP3s).
- The legit music sites hosting MP3s in this way would probably enjoy greater sales and profits.

Your thoughts?

25 Things About Me

2009-02-01T03:14:00Z

[ I resisted for a while, but after spending more than an hour reading friends’ “25 things” on Facebook, I’m sold, and feel obligated to contribute to the meme - Adam ]

I had never seen snow coming from the sky ‘til college (grew up in S. California, went to school in the midwest).
I have not eaten fast food in a decade, except for In’N'Out and (rarely) Subway.
I started studying music at age four, wrote my first song around age six, and have always had perfect pitch (which is both a blessing and a curse).
I began e-mailing in 1987, before there was a public internet (on Prodigy Online Services) and was (I’m embarrassed to admit this) a forum leader on AOL in the early 90’s so I could avoid the high per-hour charges.
Except for a friend’s wedding in Canada, I had never ventured out of the U.S. before age 27.
I’ve now been to more than two dozen countries. Found the friendliest people in Brazil and Denmark, best food in France, best ocean in Australia…
I got a D in “Arranging [music] for Wind Ensembles” from a professor who was angry that I ditched a review session to do a 30 hour Dance Marathon.
I conducted a (small) orchestra for dozens of performances of the quirky, awesome musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”
I ran my own singing telegram business in high school.
I ran a web server (O’Reilly’s “Website”) in my grad school dorm. I think I spent more time with that and other geek playthings than with my (often very very boring) law school books.
I love a cappella music... both the serene and the hard-hitting kinds and everything in between.
I am Google’s only Search Evangelist, named such largely because my boss (who recruited me) couldn’t think of another title for me to put on my job application. I actually focus on webmaster outreach and I still love my work.
I was apparently viewed as somewhat of a slacker/loser by my law school colleagues and an amiable and savvy networker by my business school colleagues.
Even though I love chatting with, learning from, hanging out with people, I am far more introverted than most people realize.
I have always really really wanted to be taller. Only recently have I more or less made peace with the fact that we shorter guys suffer real discrimination. Can’t do anything about it, have to move on.
I LOVE food. I’m trying to tone up a bit, and believe me, I’m far more delighted to rachet up the exercising and dancing vs. forgoing “sinful” foods like dark chocolate and gelato.
I have composed dozens of songs, but not much of anything in the last decade. I recently bought (expensive!) music notation software to encourage me to get back into the composing world.
Yes, I’m a geek, but I’m mostly interested in how technology makes us more productive and (genuinely) brings us together socially. The latest-and-greatest-shiny-thing doesn’t move me.
I used to have horribly awful posture, and now I just have mildly bad posture. Still trying to work on it.
I learned most of what I know and love about lindy hop from two teachers who moved far away and now openly have divorced themselves from the dance world. This still makes me very sad.
I was voted “Most Studious” in my HS senior year (despite rarely studying), sharing the award with a girl I had a massive crush on (who, last I heard, dropped out of college).
I have traveled internationally a ton for work and am grateful for the professional and other opportunities this has given me, but few believe me when I emphasize the stressfulness and un-glamorness of it.
I only keep up with one TV show (“LOST”) and don’t even own a TV.
I’m probably one of the few straight guys who loves musical theatre, enjoys step aerobics, doesn’t drink beer, and yawns at the thought of car shows and football games.
I recently discovered yoga and now love it. My lower back initially protested, but has now seen the light, too .

Facebook’s Frustrating Friending… and my reluctant choice

2009-01-25T23:27:01Z

I have over 500 Facebook friends. That’s a statement to help you understand my predicament, not a badge of honor. Of these, a handful are close friends, a big bunch are “regular” friends, a ton of ‘em are colleagues with which I have varying degrees of social contact and interest, and an even larger ton are “acquaintances or less.” From that latter category, I still value many of those admittedly “weak ties.” I may not know someone well, but perhaps she and I connected strongly even after just a brief meetup. Or… maybe I don’t chat with that one fellow much anymore, but he used to be my best friend in high school and I still care about how he’s doing.

But then there are the other “friends.” People I met once at a conference and exchanged pleasant pleasantries with. Someone from college who was the girlfriend of an acquaintance. Or someone who… uh… who is that guy?

* * *

The biggest and most painful flaw in Facebook’s friend-system is that it assumes that two people in a “friendship” see the relationship in the same way… and thus have the same interests (or interest level) in both sharing and learning about each other. I have no doubt that there are people I’m interested in hearing about (and from), but who absolutely couldn’t give a rodent’s posterior about my latest blatherings or photos. On a related note, I have work buddies that I enjoy chatting with, but would probably not to subject them to my occasional angst, drinking photos, dating whines, and so on. As a friend of mine once commented, “You don’t want to see your boss in Speedos” or, more intellectually, many people understandably feel uncomfortable sharing or reading “out of social context.” You get my point.

* * *

Sure, Facebook’s “friend lists” can ameliorate some of these issue a bit. But not completely. And the UI is so awkward, so confusing, so annoying, it almost makes setting up friend lists more trouble than they’re worth.

What Facebook needs to do is break the friend-reciprocity requirement. Just because I’m interested in following a person’s photo stream or reading their latest musings doesn’t mean they want to be forcefed AdamInfo. More specifically, Facebook needs a “subscription” model, just like what we have for blogs, on Twitter, on Friendfeed, and—for crying out loud—in real life.

Each person has two rights in this far-more-ideal non-reciprocal friends model:
1) The right to set privacy boundaries, dictating who (individually and/or by group) can access what aspects of their space (profile, activity stream, etc.)
2) The right to follow or subscribe to whatever or whoever he or she wants, subject (of course) to any applicable privacy boundaries mentioned in #1… WITHOUT the other person having to indicate the same level of interest.

There’s also a #3, which I find to be a strongly desirable albeit not required component of this model:
3) The right to more keenly control sharing, so that it’s aligned intelligently not only with the interests of the sharer (as in #1), but also with the interests of the potential reader (related to #2).

#3 might seem redundant, but it’s not.

* * *

A hypothetical example:

Pat has buddies Fred and Jen. Fred and Pat are fast friends. In contrast, Pat has a crush on Jen and want to know everything about her, but she doesn’t have the same interest in Pat.

- Clearly, Jen’s gonna want #1 here. She doesn’t want Pat to see her stuff at all, so she either blocks him or gives him limited privileges.
- She may, however, want to keep tabs on the fellow to see if he’s spreading rumors or going from creepy to threatening, so she takes advantage of #2 above.

Under the current model, the latter part wouldn’t be reasonably possible. Jen would have to friend Pat, and wouldn’t that be awkward?! (and potentially hazardous, by sending absolutely the wrong statement).

So then we have Pat and Fred. As fast friends, they really want to follow everything of each other. There should be a system, perhaps not only algorithmic (which I believe FB already has in place) but optional-manual as well, which enables the two to indicate, yes, turn on the firehose; let me know when my best friend sneezes. Again, Facebook has some functionality along this line, but it doesn’t scale well within an account, it’s confusing, and it’s basically a pain in the ass.

This is where #3 comes into play. Facebook should enable folks to more easily share smartly… e.g., “pushing” those conference photos or blog entry on technology to colleagues, but not gym buddies or high school chums. Of note, this is NOT the same as privacy; I’m not suggesting that this should be used as a substitute for effective privacy controls or filtering, nor even that the untargeted folks in the above scenario couldn’t view those items if they wanted. But rather, it’s an issue of respect and priority; it’s less that those folks would be offended and more that they’d be simply bored. What I’m calling for is a sharing that respects not only boundaries, but likely interests.

* * *

And lastly, we return to the most painful part of Facebook’s current friending model: the increasing noise to signal ratio. In other words, when I view my homepage feed, a lot of it is uninteresting to me. And, alas, I miss tidbits about friends that I am interested in hearing about. Yes, again, I could use friend lists (and do), but this doesn’t help streamline many other reading or transactional activities on FB; I still have to wade through 500+ names when recommending friends to friends, for instance.

So today I’m finally making that hard choice: I’m being selfish and reclaiming my addressbook. I’m removing a not-insignificant-number of folks from my Facebook addressbook (read: de-friending them) not because they stole my girlfriend or poked my eye out with a bb-gun or made me lick Grand Central Station with my tongue (though, indeed, all of those would be good reasons for de-friending), but rather because we don’t really chat so much any more or have drifted apart or never really chatted much socially in the first place, etc. etc. etc., and the benefit of those weak ties is outweighed by the collective—I hate to use this word—clutter.

Offended? Blame Facebook. Or, better, yet, if you’re bummed that I’ve de-friended you, do one or both of the following:
- Contact Facebook and let them know that it’s high time they update their friending system to improve sharing & privacy and reduce awkwardness.
- Follow me on FriendFeed (and, obviously, feel very welcome to engage in conversation with me there).

* * *

Thanks for your understanding . Also, why not share your thoughts below on how Facebook Friending works?

A cappella birthday silliness—much of it composed by me

2008-12-08T13:53:01Z

Back in high school, I was not only a band geek, but a choir geek as well! But I did far more than just sing your standard choral music . I loved composing, arranging and teaching, and often performing short songs in vocal quartets, and I founded my very own singing telegram business (“The Birthday Brigade”) to support this habit.

For $3, students could hire us to sing a special birthday song to one of the friends—in class, no less! We even had teachers and administrators hiring us to sing for other non-students. And by the end of our two year run, we earned enough money to purchase a sizable first-ever music CD collection for our school library (and back in the 80s, this was a big deal!). Oh, and we also sang the national anthem at various school sporting events; one of the trios even got to sing at Dodger Stadium!

Anyway, in the middle of our second year, we decided to sit down at my place and record a bunch of our songs. We didn’t do many takes, we didn’t use a fancy studio (just my dad’s old tape recorder!), and the results were certainly not perfect, but I think we did manage to capture a lot of the fun and also show off our love-of-singing .

And alas, the “album” below (from 1989!) is missing some of my favorites, including “Mr. Roger’s [Neighborhood] Birthday” and “A Muppet Birthday” and no doubt others I’ve forgotten about. But I hope you enjoy the songs nonetheless. [and feel free to see more detailed notes below the player widget]

(I’m singing on all of these except “Love Me Tender”; I think tenor on all tracks)

1) “And Why Not!” - music and lyrics composed by me.
2) “Ole!” - lyrics (as they are) composed by me, and music arranged by me (original melody from “Mexican Hat Dance”)
3) “Love Me Tender” - not sure who composed/arranged this one; the girls might have arranged this one themselves
4) “Star Spangled Banner” - composed by Francis Scott Key, not sure who did this arrangement
5) “Beethoven Birthday” - all composed by me, with deep apologies to Mr. Beethoven
6) “Celebrate!” - music by me, and I think (but am not sure) that I wrote the lyrics, too
7) “Merry Christmas” - sung to the tune of “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” with a tiny bit of lyrical substitution. I think I did the arrangement for this one.
8) “See ya!” - composed, um, on the spot

* * *

Edited on December 20, 2008 to add:
I’ve gotten in touch with most of the people in this recording, which I previously didn’t list because I wanted to make sure my memory wasn’t failing me! My fine co-singers were Robin (bass), Jen aka “Moose” (alto), Stacey (soprano) and Cathy (soprano). Oh, and Robin insists that it was *his* tape recorder. I’m still not convinced of that [and, yeah, I should ask ‘em if they’re comfortable having their last names here, and if so, I’ll add ‘em so they really get their fair notoriety )

Environmentalists selling sex

2008-11-17T12:35:01Z

Think green, think sustainable, think sultry and sexy?! You may laugh, but the “Hot Chix Dig” crew shows that environmentalism is hot, and I’m not just referring to global warming.

So what’s the deal here? These women believe that awareness is the key to getting people to make real, substantive improvements in the way they treat our planet. And—as I’m sure you’ll agree—communicating wisdom about conservation and sustainability is a whole lot more engaging (and memorable) when it’s delivered by scantily clad and attractive women. Or at least it is for straight men and lesbians (hey, ladies, don’t just complain; I bet hotstudsdig.com is still available!)

Not only can you visit the Hot Chix Dig site and learn about xxxxx, you can also buy their 2009 calendar and show off your fine eco-aware sensibilities to your friends and (if you’re in a particularly easy-going workplace) your colleagues.

If you’re curious, you can learn a bit know more about how the site was born, or you can contact the hot chix dig women yourself with questions or feedback.

* * *

So why am I writing about this?

I personally know and respect the founder of the site (“Avida Verde”).
I think it’s an intriguing and pretty humorous idea, selling environmentalism with sex and/or vice versa.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts. What do you think the site will accomplish? Are you inspired? Offended? Impressed? Annoyed? Something else entirely?

I’ll be happy to alert Avida Verde to any comments below.