A Bit Eclectic » Observations

Dorky Mittens

Shawn — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:47:57 +0000

It is starting to get cold outside and I am hoping to have a very white and snow filled winter. The cold air seems to bring back a memory from my childhood. When I was younger, around 3rd or 4th grade, I believed that gloves were cool and mittens were dorky. I wouldn’t be caught dead going out to play with mittens on. All the cool kids wore gloves. At home we had a pair of mittens that were never taken out of the hat and glove box.¹

Then I advanced into middle school and high school. Magically, mittens were cool. It seemed like everyone had a pair of those knitted mittens. They would wear them all the time: indoors, outdoors, summer, and winter.

In hindsight all this was pretty silly. Hand garments aren’t a status symbol. It is crazy how young people put a coolness factor on everything. Mittens are more practical because they keep your fingers together to maintain warmth. Gloves are practical because they allow you to use your fingers. They both have their advantages but I wouldn’t consider either one dorky or cool. People can and have devoted lifetimes to understanding these social trends.

In case you are wondering, I had planned this whole post to be about gloves and mittens. That is dorky.

Photo by kathrynivy

Notice that my family called it a hat and glove box, not a mitten box. ↩

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Google’s Incentive With Chrome

Shawn — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:00:28 +0000

The move to develop a web browser tells a lot about the direction in which Google is moving with its future products.

Google Chrome was set in motion primarily to enhance their web business. They are developing a browser hoping that it will push others to adopt new technology and innovate. They want to spark others to build more advanced web browsers so they can push out better web apps.

Google is currently limited by a bottleneck imposed by the current web browsers. To an extent they are at the mercy of Microsoft/Mozilla/Apple when it comes to how powerful, and useable, their web apps can be. They are making a strategic move to give direction to web browser development in order to further their core businesses.

If you don’t believe that, then look at the revenue source. They have far more to gain from attracting users to new web services than gaining browser market share.

This leaves me wondering what new product Google has that drove them to try and change all web browsers just to release it.

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Would You Like It Now or Later?

Shawn — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:51:47 +0000

Twitter, update your friends now. Facebook, update your friends eventually. People utilize Facebook to find out information about their friends or others they may or may not know. They track photos, hobbies, jobs, etc. The problem is that there is a delay. People need to update their profiles with the newest information in order for their friends to be informed. I rarely update my Facebook profile. It takes time and energy to evaluate my life in regard to interests and happenings. On the other hand, I use Twitter the second an idea pops into my head. The point is the data on Facebook is out of date. On the other hand, if you follow me on Twitter, you will find out things instantaneously. You will get links, rants, and music recommendations. People are always Facebook stalking to find information. Instead, they should just follow these people on Twitter.

Twitter may not have photos and all the features that Facebook has, or does it. Sure it isn’t incorporated into Twitter, but I can just as easily link out to my flickr photos. Post up a tweet that says, “Had a great time at the Field Museum, here are some photos.” Now I have started to pull in some extra features. If you wanted even more fluidness, then go to Pownce. There you can get the photos integrated into the posts. You can also expand further on Twitter/Pownce. I continue to find great people to follow by looking at others. My girlfriend and I constantly update each other with who is posting interesting stuff.

In the end, Facebook needs to change up where it is headed. It needs to learn one important aspect of business, things change and you need to evolve with them. Facebook was the first step, before that you would have to take the time and ask each of your friends what they were doing or if they had listened to any interesting music lately. On Facebook you could just go to their profile and look it up instantaneously. Facebook brought you information quicker and easier. Now there are other services out there that improve upon that.

Not many people know about Twitter yet. I am talking about the general population, not the web geeks. Once more and more people learn about these services, you will see a large shift to instant information. It may not be Twitter, but it will share the instant characteristic. The point is that Facebook needs to evolve or they will see usage dive as people satisfy their hunger for information.

I was inspired by this video from Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. It really sparked my curiosity and opened my eyes to the speed of data transfer. I am not talking about your up/download speeds, I mean the speed in which you can get information about your friends.

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Breaking the Rules

Shawn — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:41:28 +0000

The idea for this post was originally sparked by a post written on Robert Scoble’s blog. The post was about the “10 unwritten rules of twitter” and how he breaks all of them.

I was going to write about how I disagree with almost all of those rules and why, but that led me to a much greater appreciation of the internet. The mere fact that there can be a group of people that uphold these rules, and then another group that doesn’t follow any of them is what makes the internet so great. It is a free for all of ideas and opinions that (for the most part) don’t affect others unless they choose to be affected.

I am not telling anyone anything new here. We all know that you can do what you want on the internet and there isn’t any official governing body. I believe it gets interesting when you look beyond this. Beyond the fact that there are unwritten rules, and look closer at why some choose to break them.

The internet is a medium to distribute art. Everything on the internet is an expression of someone’s personality and creativeness. This is how the dispute of the rules of twitter came to be. Twitter is a means to distribute art. They are short phrases or ideas that can mean different things to different people. You can use those 140 characters (or more) to express what you are doing in your own creative way.

This is why we follow others on Twitter, we are entertained and intrigued by the short pieces of writing published for the world to see. In the same way that photographers portray different scenes in their own vision, twitterers can show their ideas and thoughts in their own unique way.

This begs the question, are these 10 rules bad? Not at all. Some of the best art is created when there are constraints imposed. Just because you are given a 3×3 inch piece of paper doesn’t mean you can’t create breathtaking pieces of art. By self imposing these 10 rules, you are giving yourself a framework in which to create your art. By imposing a rule of no more than 5 tweets a day, it can be argued that each of those tweets should be of higher quality than if you produce 20 or 30. On the same token, people may thrive better when they can do how they please with their own set of guidelines.

Examples are everywhere. The internet is composed of different pieces of art that are manifested in different forms. Each of these forms present their own constraints. They can be websites, tweets, blog posts, photos, web 2.0 apps, videos, screencasts, news articles, books, podcasts, and many more. Each of these have technical or self imposed limitations, yet can produce outstanding pieces of art.

I’m not claiming that this is new in any way. The world around us is full of art. Architecture, decorations of a room, landscapes, cars, advertisements, books to name a few. The internet allows us to transcend the physical boundaries of our world to enjoy art created by people outside of our physical reach. That is the true treasure of the internet. This is what makes our world special.

In the end, break those rules or follow them. When it comes down to it, you are creating art in your own way. There is nothing wrong with either and there is nothing wrong when you disagree. If you disagree, write about it so we can all enjoy your insight and the little piece of art that you are bringing to the internet.