Writing about tech stuff is very cyclical. The truth of it is that there's a rise and fall in the form of production, interest (the public's and mine), and quantity.
So we're switching gears. I want to blog, but I don't have enough substantial material to do it with the very specific purpose of blogging about tech. Thus, personal anecdotes, adventures, and musings will be included.
I still need an outlet.
In that spirit...
Christmas was a good time. I've spent 25 hours (so far) in a cargo van driving to Denver from Memphis to bring back a dining room set. I've secured one amigo. Another amigo will be procured from Denver International Airport tomorrow. I will pick them up, return the van, and spend the following 3 days shredding the beautiful rocky mountain pow-pow.
I feel like a blog isn't much without pictures and video. I'm going to do a better job at that.
Saturday, December 27
Wednesday, November 12
The Vestigial Organs of Media
Everyone's had a good laugh at the antiquated technology of our parent's generation. Records, bah! VHS, har-har! Even CDs - LOL! But when taking stabs at the baby boomers we don't often consider how we'll be guffawed in the future.
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Last week I signed up for an account at audible.com, a digital audio books website, and with my membership I swept away the last remaining part of physical media in my life.
I grew up in the Napster age. I'm one of those burdens on society that doesn't pay for music because I've never known the necessity to do so. I'll kick Radiohead a couple bucks when they let me pick what I want to pay and I'll throw down good money for concert tickets, but seldom do I want a CD and decide that I've got to run to Best Buy and grab a copy of a new release. Yeah, the physicality of a booklet is nice, but I'm just gonna rip it to my iPod anyway and my sister's gonna let the CD get scratched in her car... not worth it. If I do decide to buy, it's in a MP3 that finds a nice spot to rest on my hard drive.
Movies were a little different. I'm not big on watching anything on my computer, I didn't care for the variable download time across BitTorrent, and the quality was too much of a gamble, so I bought or rented. Then NetFlix happened and now I simply rent.
Books were what remained. When I wasn't as busy as I am today I got tremendous pleasure from walking into a bookstore, taking home a couple of paperbacks, and spending the summer polishing off my investments. There was something tactiley satisfying about flipping pages, about holding the progress in my left hand and the what remains in my right. A book shelf of great reads with worn covers and dog eared corners was a badge I possessed, a trophy case of literature.
Recently the only reading I've accomplished comes at intervals of flights and durations measured in mechanical problems and weather delays. My list of must reads continues to grow while my list of what's read remains unchanged. This is what prompted my new membership with audible. I figured 18 or so hours at work each month can be afforded to listen to a book rather than my normal cocktail of music and podcasts.
I had my hesitations. The price for a monthly membership is double the cost of a paper back. Yet, in this situation, my desire to be cheap wasn't the largest of my hurdles. I had to convince myself that I'd be ok without my literature trophies, that it'd be ok to finish a novel and have nothing but my memory to show for it.
It wasn't easy, but I overcame my dreads because in reality, it's the future.
Hard drives have replaced almost every example of physical media. Photo albums are all but dead, soon to be replaced by digital picture frames (once they stop looking so chintzy). The iTunes store phenomenon has been replaced by the iTunes store having become far too commonplace to be labeled a phenomenon. And even though the most recent winner of the format wars, Blu-Ray, has yet to have it's heyday, I think it will become a thing of the past far more quickly than any of its predecessors due to the surge in online streaming video content we're seeing today (more on that later).
It would seem foolish to exclude print from the list of doomed physical media. Websites have replaced newspapers, blogs updates have replaced press releases, it's only a matter of time before audio and eBooks replace books (just take a look at the Kindle). The transition will difficult and slow, but it's how things have evolved and how they will continute to evolve.
If Apple has anything to say about it you'll soon walk in to your friend's living room and where you once browsed through the bindings in their bookcases you'll instead drag your finger across a screen and experience their library in cover flow mode.
-----
Last week I signed up for an account at audible.com, a digital audio books website, and with my membership I swept away the last remaining part of physical media in my life.
I grew up in the Napster age. I'm one of those burdens on society that doesn't pay for music because I've never known the necessity to do so. I'll kick Radiohead a couple bucks when they let me pick what I want to pay and I'll throw down good money for concert tickets, but seldom do I want a CD and decide that I've got to run to Best Buy and grab a copy of a new release. Yeah, the physicality of a booklet is nice, but I'm just gonna rip it to my iPod anyway and my sister's gonna let the CD get scratched in her car... not worth it. If I do decide to buy, it's in a MP3 that finds a nice spot to rest on my hard drive.
Movies were a little different. I'm not big on watching anything on my computer, I didn't care for the variable download time across BitTorrent, and the quality was too much of a gamble, so I bought or rented. Then NetFlix happened and now I simply rent.
Books were what remained. When I wasn't as busy as I am today I got tremendous pleasure from walking into a bookstore, taking home a couple of paperbacks, and spending the summer polishing off my investments. There was something tactiley satisfying about flipping pages, about holding the progress in my left hand and the what remains in my right. A book shelf of great reads with worn covers and dog eared corners was a badge I possessed, a trophy case of literature.
Recently the only reading I've accomplished comes at intervals of flights and durations measured in mechanical problems and weather delays. My list of must reads continues to grow while my list of what's read remains unchanged. This is what prompted my new membership with audible. I figured 18 or so hours at work each month can be afforded to listen to a book rather than my normal cocktail of music and podcasts.
I had my hesitations. The price for a monthly membership is double the cost of a paper back. Yet, in this situation, my desire to be cheap wasn't the largest of my hurdles. I had to convince myself that I'd be ok without my literature trophies, that it'd be ok to finish a novel and have nothing but my memory to show for it.
It wasn't easy, but I overcame my dreads because in reality, it's the future.
Hard drives have replaced almost every example of physical media. Photo albums are all but dead, soon to be replaced by digital picture frames (once they stop looking so chintzy). The iTunes store phenomenon has been replaced by the iTunes store having become far too commonplace to be labeled a phenomenon. And even though the most recent winner of the format wars, Blu-Ray, has yet to have it's heyday, I think it will become a thing of the past far more quickly than any of its predecessors due to the surge in online streaming video content we're seeing today (more on that later).
It would seem foolish to exclude print from the list of doomed physical media. Websites have replaced newspapers, blogs updates have replaced press releases, it's only a matter of time before audio and eBooks replace books (just take a look at the Kindle). The transition will difficult and slow, but it's how things have evolved and how they will continute to evolve.
If Apple has anything to say about it you'll soon walk in to your friend's living room and where you once browsed through the bindings in their bookcases you'll instead drag your finger across a screen and experience their library in cover flow mode.
Wednesday, November 5
Web Traffic '08
By now you've had your fill of explanations as to why this election was a big deal in historical terms, but as I sat watching CNN on TV with 3 of my Firefox tabs up monitoring CNN.com's election results, my friends' Facebook status', and the Twitter Election stream, I found it a big deal for additional reasons.
As you would expect with each iteration of an election, technology improves. I'm sure that the first radio broadcast election results were remarkable at the time, the same being said for television. The internet brought even more to masses. Yet, this go 'round technology wasn't simply the means it was before.
The first paper, or station, or website to publish "breaking news" was once considered the best. Barack Obama was declared the President elect several seconds after the polls closed on the West coast. You won't ever be able to report more qucikly than in a manner of seconds, putting almost every news organization on an even keel in that regard. Technology has done all it can do as far as useful reporting time goes. The technology in this election was about presentation and interaction.
Regardless of your political views, comparing CNN's election web features to that of FoxNews left you with a clear victor. Information has evolved from spreadsheets and tables with unintelligible numbers and rows upon rows of data to something you can play with. You can click on a map, move a slider, and change a party associated color to satisfy you highest hopes and darkest fears. This is what's drawn so many people to the CNN website. It lets you play God (of Politics).
We've also had Facebook status', digg.com and, recently, twitter abet the "what does he/she think?" curiosity of our culture. Twitter saw record numbers on election night. Tweets came across election.twitter.com in sync if not proceeding what I was watching Live on CNN. I saw once such tweet stating "you broke twitter Obama. Way to go Mr. President-elect". Digg.com recived 35,303 diggs for its "Digg if you voted for Obama" post. Facebook's "Click here if you voted" number topped over 5 million.
These sites all had record traffic on election day because people are fascinated by the ability to get a social pulse on their world. It's hard to imagine what the election of 2012 might bring to the table but the website that best involves the populous will be the one that dominates the traffic. We like being in each other's business far too much for that not to be the case.
As you would expect with each iteration of an election, technology improves. I'm sure that the first radio broadcast election results were remarkable at the time, the same being said for television. The internet brought even more to masses. Yet, this go 'round technology wasn't simply the means it was before.
The first paper, or station, or website to publish "breaking news" was once considered the best. Barack Obama was declared the President elect several seconds after the polls closed on the West coast. You won't ever be able to report more qucikly than in a manner of seconds, putting almost every news organization on an even keel in that regard. Technology has done all it can do as far as useful reporting time goes. The technology in this election was about presentation and interaction.
Regardless of your political views, comparing CNN's election web features to that of FoxNews left you with a clear victor. Information has evolved from spreadsheets and tables with unintelligible numbers and rows upon rows of data to something you can play with. You can click on a map, move a slider, and change a party associated color to satisfy you highest hopes and darkest fears. This is what's drawn so many people to the CNN website. It lets you play God (of Politics).
We've also had Facebook status', digg.com and, recently, twitter abet the "what does he/she think?" curiosity of our culture. Twitter saw record numbers on election night. Tweets came across election.twitter.com in sync if not proceeding what I was watching Live on CNN. I saw once such tweet stating "you broke twitter Obama. Way to go Mr. President-elect". Digg.com recived 35,303 diggs for its "Digg if you voted for Obama" post. Facebook's "Click here if you voted" number topped over 5 million.
These sites all had record traffic on election day because people are fascinated by the ability to get a social pulse on their world. It's hard to imagine what the election of 2012 might bring to the table but the website that best involves the populous will be the one that dominates the traffic. We like being in each other's business far too much for that not to be the case.
Tuesday, October 28
'ello World
Hello, this is my blog.
It's not my first blog. It most certainly will not be my last. You see, that buzzing in my head has reached critical capacity again, and this blog was born of a desire to stop the hum. It's a blog whose beginning is the result of yet another surge in the ebb and flow of motivation and creativity. It may end in the same way others have, but writing would be a futile exercise if I didn't believe it had potential. That's what makes a fresh start fun. Nothing's been screwed up yet.
This is the end of my first post.
It's not my first blog. It most certainly will not be my last. You see, that buzzing in my head has reached critical capacity again, and this blog was born of a desire to stop the hum. It's a blog whose beginning is the result of yet another surge in the ebb and flow of motivation and creativity. It may end in the same way others have, but writing would be a futile exercise if I didn't believe it had potential. That's what makes a fresh start fun. Nothing's been screwed up yet.
This is the end of my first post.
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