Can F=ma be applied to non-physical objects such as ideas, decisions or thinking?  Not directly, but it can still be instructive as a metaphor.

Ideas (aka alternatives) can be accelerated into reality by the continuous application of thinking force on their decision "containers".  A product is composed of multiple alternatives embedded in multiple decisions, so the ideal product accelerator is one that applies a large (efficient) thinking force continuously and in parallel to all the decisions that comprise its design.

A Decision Network pattern for product development exposes (makes visible) many decisions at once; in a sense it unfurls a large sail that can "catch the wind" to accelerate the ship (the product design).  The more decisions that you can make visible at once; the larger sail you create and expose to the force of good thinking.  If you spend all you time furling and unfurling mini-sails, you won't go very fast.

Such are the perils of the predominately "batch" decision-making approach that most folks use for product development.  Decisions are treated as design artifacts; trade studies and documents to be written off to the side.  They are staffed intermittently and attacked serially, "unfurled" during a meeting and then "furled" again.  It looks like the whole crew is really busy; scurrying around the deck and working hard, but there is very little canvas exposed to the wind.

To mix metaphors, the current design paradigm has a very high switching overhead; engineers jump from requirements to models to PowerPoint slides to risks to project plans to tests to gate reviews.  They don't recognize that all these objects are firmly attached to decisions and could be managed and aligned continuously, efficiently and in context if they just did proactive continuous decision management.

It's hard to change paradigms; it takes early adopters and risk-takers who are willing to experiment with new approaches.  If that's you, give me a holler.

John Fitch

I don't currently have the energy to pull together all the blog posts, comments and FriendFeed threads that have lead to this post so I will be brief.

Stop freaking flogging yourselves about the cycle you go through when you hear about new applications that have the potential to do everything we all believe our current level of technology should allow us to do. It is important that you do exactly what you are doing (OK, one link so you can see a description of the cycle I am referencing).

That cycle is extremely valuable as vets these new products, identifying their weaknesses, shaping their interfaces, determining their value, etc. If you, as an uber-user, who appreciates these new products because you readily see their potential value can't figure out a freaking need for a product WHO WILL? No one.

PS Keep the FriendFeed fire hose on - I've learned more in the past month than in the last 6 combined!

Sticking My Neck Out (Executive Summary)

I think that participants in many technology-enthusiastic movements which carry the term "social" would do well to learn some social science. Furthermore, my guess is that ethnographic disciplines are very well-suited to the task of teaching participants in these movements something about social groups.

Disclaimer

Despite the potentially provocative title and my explicitly stating a position, I mostly wish to think out loud about different things which have been on my mind for a while.

I'm not an "expert" in this field. I'm just a social scientist and an ethnographer who has been observing a lot of things online. I do know that there are many experts who have written many great books about similar issues. What I'm saying here might not seem new. But I'm using my blog as a way to at least write down some of the things I have in mind and, hopefully, discuss these issues thoughtfully with people who care.

Also, this will not be a guide on "what to do to be social-savvy." Books, seminars, and workshops on this specific topic abound. But my attitude is that every situation needs to be treated in its own context, that cookie-cutter solutions often fail. So I would advise people interested in this set of issues to train themselves in at least a little bit of social science, even if much of the content of the training material seems irrelevant. Discuss things with a social scientist, hire a social scientist in your business, take a course in social science, and don't focus on advice but on the broad picture. Really.

Clarification

Though they are all different, enthusiastic participants in "social web," "social marketing," "social media," and other "social things online" do have some commonalities. At the risk of angering some of them, I'm lumping them all together as "social * enthusiasts." One thing I like about the term "enthusiast" is that it can apply to both professional and amateurs, to geeks and dabblers, to full-timers and part-timers. My target isn't a specific group of people. I just observed different things in different contexts.

Links

Shameless Self-Promotion

A few links from my own blog, for context (and for easier retrieval):

• “Social Butterfly Effect”: More Than a Silly Pun?
• Swiss Made Smiling
• Technology Adoption and Active Reading
• Handhelds for the Rest of Us?

Shameless Cross-Promotion

A few links from other blogs, to hopefully expand context (and for easier retrieval):

• the cluetrain manifesto
• Raising standards -- by lowering them
• Web 2.0 != AJAX
• Qu'est ce que l'autorité cognitive
• Les 6 cultures d'Internet
• Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Note to Web 2.0 Companies: Early Adopters are not the Mass Market
• Perspective 2.0: The emperor has designer clothes
• Dissemination of Knowledge

Some raw notes

• Insight
• Cluefulness
• Openness
• Freedom
• Transparency
• Unintended uses
• Constructivism
• Empowerment
• Disruptive technology
• Innovation
• Creative thinking
• Critical thinking
• Technology adoption
• Early adopters
• Late adopters
• Forced adoption
• OLPC XO
• OLPC XOXO
• Attitudes to change
• Conservatism
• Luddites
• Activism
• Impatience
• Windmills and shelters
• Niche thinking
• Geek culture
• Groupthink
• Idea horizon
• Intersubjectivity
• Influence
• Sphere of influence
• Influence network
• Social butterfly effect
• Cog in a wheel
• Social networks
• Acephalous groups
• Ego-based groups
• Non-hierarchical groups
• Mutual influences
• Network effects
• Risk-taking
• Low-stakes
• Trial-and-error
• Transparency
• Ethnography
• Epidemiology of ideas
• Neural networks
• Cognition and communication
• Wilson and Sperber
• Relevance
• Global
• Glocal
• Regional
• City-State
• Fluidity
• Consensus culture
• Organic relationships
• Establishing rapport
• Buzzwords
• Viral
• Social
• Meme
• Memetic marketplace
• Meta
• Target audience

Let's Give This a Try

The Internet is, simply, a network. Sure, technically it's a meta-network, a network of networks. But that is pretty much irrelevant, in social terms, as most networks may be analyzed at different levels as containing smaller networks or being parts of larger networks. The fact remains that the 'Net is pretty easy to understand, sociologically. It's nothing new, it's just a textbook example of something social scientists have been looking at for a good long time.

Though the Internet mostly connects computers (in many shapes or forms, many of them being "devices" more than the typical "personal computer"), the impact of the Internet is through human actions, behaviours, thoughts, and feelings. Sure, we can talk ad nauseam about the technical aspects of the Internet, but these topics have been covered a lot in the last fifteen years of intense Internet growth and a lot of people seem to be ready to look at other dimensions.

The category of "people who are online" has expanded greatly, in different steps. Here, Martin Lessard's description of the Internet's Six Cultures (Les 6 cultures d'Internet) is really worth a read. Martin's post is in French but we also had a blog discussion in English, about it. Not only are there more people online but those "people who are online" have become much more diverse in several respects. At the same time, there are clear patterns on who "online people" are and there are clear differences in uses of the Internet.

Groups of human beings are the very basic object of social science. Diversity in human groups is the very basis for ethnography. Ethnography is simply the description of ("writing about") human groups conceived as diverse ("peoples"). As simple as ethnography can be, it leads to a very specific approach to society which is very compatible with all sorts of things relevant to "social * enthusiasts" on- and offline.

While there are many things online which may be described as "media," comparing the Internet to "The Mass Media" is often the best way to miss "what the Internet is all about." Sure, the Internet isn't about anything (about from connecting computers which, in turn, connect human beings). But to get actual insight into the 'Net, one probably needs to free herself/himself of notions relating to "The Mass Media." Put bluntly, McLuhan was probably a very interesting person and some of his ideas remain intriguing but fallacies abound in his work and the best thing to do with his ideas is to go beyond them.

One of my favourite examples of the overuse of "media"-based concepts is the issue of influence. In blogging, podcasting, or selling, the notion often is that, on the Internet as in offline life, "some key individuals or outlets are influential and these are the people by whom or channels through which ideas are disseminated." Hence all the Technorati rankings and other "viewer statistics." Old techniques and ideas from the times of radio and television expansion are used because it's easier to think through advertising models than through radically new models. This is, in fact, when I tend to bring back my explanation of the "social butterfly effect": quite frequently, "influence" online isn't through specific individuals or outlets but even when it is, those people are influential through virtue of connecting to diverse groups, not by the number of people they know. There are ways to analyze those connections but "measuring impact" is eventually missing the point.

Gone Viral

The term "viral" is used rather frequently by "social * enthusiasts" online. I happen to think that it's a fairly fitting term, even though it's used more by extension than by literal meaning. To me, it relates rather directly to Dan Sperber's "epidemiological" treatment of culture (see Explaining Culture) which may itself be perceived as resembling Dawkins's well-known "selfish gene" ideas made popular by different online observers, but with something which I perceive to be (to use simple semiotic/semiological concepts) more "motivated" than the more "arbitrary" connections between genetics and ideas. While Sperber could hardly be described as an ethnographer, his anthropological connections still make some of his work compatible with ethnographic perspectives.

Analysis of the spread of ideas does correspond fairly closely with the spread of viruses, especially given the nature of contacts which make transmission possible. One needs not do much to spread a virus or an idea. This virus or idea may find "fertile soil" in a given social context, depending on a number of factors. Despite the disadvantages of extending analogies and core metaphors too far, the type of ecosystem/epidemiology analysis of social systems embedded in uses of the term "viral" do seem to help some specific people make sense of different things which happen online. In "viral marketing," the type of informal, invisible, unexpected spread of recognition through word of mouth does relate somewhat to the spread of a virus. Moreover, the metaphor of "viral marketing" is useful in thinking about the lack of control the professional marketer may have on how her/his product is perceived. In this context, the term "viral" seems useful.

The Social

While "viral" seems appropriate, the even more simple "social" often seems inappropriately used. It's not a ranty attitude which makes me comment negatively on the use of the term "social." In fact, I don't really care about the use of the term itself. But I do notice that use of the term often obfuscates what is the obvious social character of the Internet.

To a social scientist, anything which involves groups is by definition "social." Of course, some groups and individuals are more gregarious than others, some people are taken to be very sociable, and some contexts are more conducive to heightened social interactions. But social interactions happen in any context.
As an example I used (in French) in reply to this blog post, something as common as standing in line at a grocery store is representative of social behaviour and can be analyzed in social terms. Any Web page which is accessed by anyone is "social" in the sense that it establishes some link, however tenuous and asymmetric, between at least two individuals (someone who created the page and the person who accessed that page). Sure, it sounds like the minimal definition of communication (sender, medium/message, receiver). But what most people who talk about communication seem to forget (unlike Jakobson), is that all communication is social.

Sure, putting a comment form on a Web page facilitates a basic social interaction, making the page "more social" in the sense of "making that page easier to use explicit social interaction." And, of course, adding some features which facilitate the act of sharing data with one's personal contacts is a step above the contact form in terms of making certain type of social interaction straightforward and easy. But, contrary to what Google Friend Connect implies, adding those features doesn't suddenly make the site social. The site itself isn't really social and, assuming some people visited it, there was already a social dimension to it. I'm not nitpicking on word use. I'm saying that using "social" in this way may blind some people to social dimensions of the Internet. And the consequences can be pretty harsh, in some cases, for overlooking how social the 'Net is.

Something similar may be said about the "Social Web," one of the many definitions of "Web 2.0" which is used in some contexts (mostly, the cynic would say, "to make some tool appear 'new and improved'"). The Web as a whole was "social" by definition. Granted, it lacked the ease of social interaction afforded such venerable Internet classics as Usenet and email. But it was already making some modes of social interaction easier to perceive. No, this isn't about "it's all been done." It's about being oblivious to the social potential of tools which already existed. True, the period in Internet history known as "Web 2.0" (and the onset of the Internet's sixth culture) may be associated with new social phenomena. But there is little evidence that the association is causal, that new online tools and services created a new reality which suddenly made it possible for people to become social online. This is one reason I like Martin Lessard's post so much. Instead of postulating the existence of a brand new phenomenon, he talks about the conditions for some changes in both Internet use and the form the Web has taken.

Again, this isn't about terminology per se. Substitute "friendly" for "social" and similar issues might come up (friendship and friendliness being disconnected from the social processes which underline them).

Adoptive Parents

Many "social * enthusiasts" are interested in "adoption." They want their "things" to be adopted. This is especially visible among marketers but even in social media there's an issue of "getting people on board." And some people, especially those without social science training, seem to be looking for a recipe.

Problem is, there probably is no such thing as a recipe for technology adoption.

Sure, some marketing practises from the offline world may work online. Sometimes, adapting a strategy from the material world to the Internet is very simple and the Internet version may be more effective than the offline version. But it doesn't mean that there is such a thing as a recipe. It's a matter of either having some people who "have a knack for this sort of things" (say, based on sensitivity to what goes on online) or based on pure luck. Or it's a matter of measuring success in different ways. But it isn't based on a recipe. Especially not in the Internet sphere which is changing so rapidly (despite some remarkably stable features).

Again, I'm partial to contextual approaches ("fully-customized solutions," if you really must). Not just because I think there are people who can do this work very efficiently. But because I observe that "recipes" do little more than sell "best-selling books" and other items.

So, what can we, as social scientists, say about "adoption?" That technology is adopted based on the perceived fit between the tools and people's needs/wants/goals/preferences. Not the simple "the tool will be adopted if there's a need." But a perception that there might be a fit between an amorphous set of social actors (people) and some well-defined tools ("technologies"). Recognizing this fit is extremely difficult and forcing it is extremely expensive (not to mention completely unsustainable). But social scientists do help in finding ways to adapt tools to different social situations.

Especially ethnographers. Because instead of surveys and focus groups, we challenge assumptions about what "must" fit. Our heads and books are full of examples which sound, in retrospect, as common sense but which had stumped major corporations with huge budgets. (Ask me about McDonald's in Brazil or browse a cultural anthropology textbook, for more information.)

Recently, while reading about issues surrounding the OLPC's original XO computer, I was glad to read the following:

John Heskett once said that the critical difference between invention and innovation was its mass adoption by users. (Niti Bhan The emperor has designer clothes)

Not that this is a new idea, for social scientists. But I was glad that the social dimension of technology adoption was recognized.

In marketing and design spheres especially, people often think of innovation as individualized. While some individuals are particularly adept at leading inventions to mass adoption (Steve Jobs being a textbook example), "adoption comes from the people." Yes, groups of people may be manipulated to adopt something "despite themselves." But that kind of forced adoption is still dependent on a broad acceptance, by "the people," of even the basic forms of marketing. This is very similar to the simplified version of the concept of "hegemony," so common in both social sciences and humanities. In a hegemony (as opposed to a totalitarian regime), no coercion is necessary because the logic of the system has been internalized by people who are affected by it. Simple, but effective.

In online culture, adept marketers are highly valued. But I'm quite convinced that pre-online marketers already knew that they had to "learn society first." One thing with almost anything happening online is that "the society" is boundless. Country boundaries usually make very little sense and the social rules of every local group will leak into even the simplest occasion. Some people seem to assume that the end result is a cultural homogenization, thereby not necessitating any adaptation besides the move from "brick and mortar" to online. Others (or the same people, actually) want to protect their "business models" by restricting tools or services based on country boundaries. In my mind, both attitudes are ineffective and misleading.

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

I think the Cluetrain Manifesto can somehow be summarized through concepts of freedom, openness, and transparency. These are all very obvious (in French, the book title is something close to "the evident truths manifesto"). They're also all very social.

Social scientists often become activists based on these concepts. And among social scientists, many of us are enthusiastic about the social changes which are happening in parallel with Internet growth. Not because of technology. But because of empowerment. People are using the Internet in their own ways, the one key feature of the Internet being its lack of centralization. While the lack of centralized control may be perceived as a "bad thing" by some (social scientists or not), there's little argument that the 'Net as a whole is out of the control of specific corporations or governments (despite the large degree of consolidation which has happened offline and online).

Especially in the United States, "freedom" is conceived as a basic right. But it's also a basic concept in social analysis. As some put it: "somebody's rights end where another's begin." But social scientists have a whole apparatus to deal with all the nuances and subtleties which are bound to come from any situation where people's rights (freedom) may clash or even simply be interpreted differently. Again, not that social scientists have easy, ready-made answers on these issues. But we're used to dealing with them. We don't interpret freedom as a given.

Transparency is fairly simple and relates directly to how people manage information itself (instead of knowledge or insight). Radical transparency is giving as much information as possible to those who may need it. Everybody has a "right to learn" a lot of things about a given institution (instead of "right to know"), when that institution has a social impact. Canada's Access to Information Act is quite representative of the move to transparency and use of this act has accompanied changes in the ways government officials need to behave to adapt to a relatively new reality.

Openness is an interesting topic, especially in the context of the so-called "Open Source" movement. Radical openness implies participation by outsiders, at least in the form of verbal feedback. The cluefulness of "opening yourself to your users" is made obvious in the context of successes by institutions which have at least portrayed themselves as open. What's in my mind unfortunate is that many institutions now attempt to position themselves on the openness end of the "closed/proprietary to open/responsive" scale without much work done to really open themselves up.

Communitas

Mottoes, slogans, and maxims like "build it and they will come," "there's a sucker born every minute," "let them have cake," and "give them what they want" all fail to grasp the basic reality of social life: "they" and "we" are linked. We're all different and we're all connected. We all take parts in groups. These groups are all associated with one another. We can't simply behave the same way with everyone. Identity has two parts: sense of belonging (to an "in-group") and sense of distinction (from an "out-group"). "Us/Them."

Within the "in-group," if there isn't any obvious hierarchy, the sense of belonging can take the form that Victor Turner called "communitas" and which happens in situations giving real meaning to the notion of "community." "Community of experience," "community of practise." Eckert and Wittgenstein brought to online networks. In a community, contacts aren't always harmonious. But people feel they fully belong. A network isn't the same thing as a community.

The World Is My Oyster

Despite the so-called "Digital Divide" (or, more precisely, the maintenance online of global inequalities), the 'Net is truly "Global." So is the phone, now that cellphones are accomplishing the "leapfrog effect." But this one Internet we have (i.e., not Internet2 or other such specialized meta-network) is reaching everywhere through a single set of compatible connections. The need for cultural awareness is increased, not alleviated by online activities.

Release Early, Release Often

Among friends, we call it RERO.

The RERO principle is a multiple-pass system. Instead of waiting for the right moment to release a "perfect product" (say, a blogpost!), the "work in progress" is provided widely, garnering feedback which will be integrated in future "product versions." The RERO approach can be unnerving to "product developers," but it has proved its value in online-savvy contexts.

I use "product" in a broad sense because the principle applies to diverse contexts. Furthermore, the RERO principle helps shift the focus from "product," back into "process."

The RERO principle may imply some "emotional" or "psychological" dimensions, such as humility and the acceptance of failure. At some level, differences between RERO and "trial-and-error" methods of development appear insignificant. Those who create something should not expect the first try to be successful and should recognize mistakes to improve on the creative process and product. This is similar to the difference between "rehearsal" (low-stakes experimentation with a process) and "performance" (with responsibility, by the performer, for evaluation by an audience).

Though applications of the early/often concept to social domains are mostly satirical, there is a social dimension to the RERO principle. Releasing a "product" implies a group, a social context.

The partial and frequent "release" of work to "the public" relates directly to openness and transparency. Frequent releases create a "relationship" with human beings. Sure, many of these are "Early Adopters" who are already overrepresented. But the rapport established between an institution and people (users/clients/customers/patrons...) can be transfered more broadly.

Releasing early seems to shift the limit between rehearsal and performance. Instead of being able to do mistakes on your own, your mistakes are shown publicly and your success is directly evaluated. Yet a somewhat reverse effect can occur: evaluation of the end-result becomes a lower-stake rating at different parts of the project because expectations have shifted to the "lower" end. This is probably the logic behind Google's much discussed propensity to call all its products "beta."

While the RERO principle does imply a certain openness, the expectation that each release might integrate all the feedback "users" have given is not fundamental to releasing early and frequently. The expectation is set by a specific social relationship between "developers" and "users." In geek culture, especially when users are knowledgeable enough about technology to make elaborate wishlists, the expectation to respond to user demand can be quite strong, so much so that developers may perceive a sense of entitlement on the part of "users" and grow some resentment out of the situation. "If you don't like it, make it yourself." Such a situation is rather common in FLOSS development: since "users" have access to the source code, they may be expected to contribute to the development project. When "users" not only fail to fulfil expectations set by open development but even have the gumption to ask developers to respond to demands, conflicts may easily occur. And conflicts are among the things which social scientists study most frequently.

Putting the "Capital" Back into "Social Capital"

In the past several years, ”monetization” (transforming ideas into currency) has become one of the major foci of anything happening online. Anything which can be a source of profit generates an immediate (and temporary) "buzz." The value of anything online is measured through typical currency-based economics. The relatively recent movement toward ”social" whatever is not only representative of this tendency, but might be seen as its climax: nowadays, even social ties can be sold directly, instead of being part of a secondary transaction. As some people say "The relationship is the currency" (or "the commodity," or "the means to an end"). Fair enough, especially if these people understand what social relationships entail. But still strange, in context, to see people "selling their friends," sometimes in a rather literal sense, when social relationships are conceived as valuable. After all, "selling the friend” transforms that relationship, diminishes its value. Ah, well, maybe everyone involved is just cynical. Still, even their cynicism contributes to the system. But I'm not judging. Really, I'm not. I'm just wondering
Anyhoo, the "What are you selling anyway" question makes as much sense online as it does with telemarketers and other greed-focused strangers (maybe "calls” are always "cold," online). It's just that the answer isn't always so clear when the "business model" revolves around creating, then breaking a set of social expectations.
Me? I don't sell anything. Really, not even my ideas or my sense of self. I'm just not good at selling. Oh, I do promote myself and I do accumulate social capital. As social butterflies are wont to do. The difference is, in the case of social butterflies such as myself, no money is exchanged and the social relationships are, hopefully, intact. This is not to say that friends never help me or never receive my help in a currency-friendly context. It mostly means that, in our cases, the relationships are conceived as their own rewards.
I'm consciously not taking the moral high ground, here, though some people may easily perceive this position as the morally superior one. I'm not even talking about a position. Just about an attitude to society and to social relationships. If you will, it's a type of ethnographic observation from an insider's perspective.

Makes sense?

Pelo que tenho observado, o twitter finalmente está chegando nas massas. Entretanto, acho que esse caminho não será tão fácil como foi a adoção pelos early adopters, já que assim como a tecnologia de feeds (rss e etc), ele não é tão abrangente e útil para as massas. Além disso, enfrentará concorrência indireta de comunidades virtuais como orkut e facebook, que aos poucos vêm implementando o conceito de assinaturas e atualizações.

Minha aposta continua sendo que ele não será um fenômeno nas proporções de myspace e facebook.

Why am I recounting this story now? I was reminded of it when I started reading Why Journalists should use Twitter a couple of days ago.

I recently mentioned to a colleague of mine, who also is a freelance journalist, that I’m researching an article about Twitter. “I hope you really trash this service”, was his answer. “This is nothing else than verbal diarrhoea.”

The early adopters are a fascinating bunch. These are the people who are active on Twitter, sign up for several product betas, try almost every product as time permits, read Technorati/Techmeme/ Reddit/ Digg,/eHub/ Slashdot and countless blogs. They remind  me of the robot in the Short Circuit movie that keeps asking for "Input" and devours vast amounts of information.

These are great people to follow on Twitter, blogs and other forums. If you are start-up, these are your little angels. They will tell you whether your product/serviec sucks, give you great suggestions for improvements and if they like your product will tell everyone who may listen to them.

I still have not figured out what motivates early adopters. Is it because they have a high Curiosity Quotient? Or is it because they have a compulsion to make the world a bit better? Or is it something else? These people are one my sources of inspiration.

Remember when the iPhone first came out about a year ago? People waited in long lines to shell out some $600 for the device, while others reportedly paid up to three times as much on Ebay.

When Apple announced they were cutting the price by $200 a few months later, early adopters were furious. Their reaction prompted Steve Jobs to issue an open letter offering them a $100 store credit.

Now there's this report from Business Week which claims AT&T is planning to offer a $200 subsidy for the iPhone 2.0, bringing the entry-level price down to about $199.

Now poor guys like me can seriously consider purchasing an iPhone while early adopters agonize over the fact they spent three times as much for an inferior version of the same product less than a year ago.

But hey, you sure were cool for a while. ;-)

He argues that there is pressure in China to find more affordable products than those offered by the west, which will inevitably lead to innovation. This will be something that companies need to be aware of, he is quoted as saying.

"Even if you never go to China and your company's never going to have an operation in China, unless you have a product that is completely insulated from China, then you'd better be aware of this [drive] because this will be the cause of a lot of future global competition."

Perkowski said that although China was now the most competitive country in the world, with every multinational operating there, it was still 'the best country in the world to start up and build a business'.

Perkowski argues that there will be opportunities for companies in China and is quoted as saying that he believes China will be an early adopter of new technologies.

"Technologies that have some very interesting characteristics, that may not get traction in US or Europe or elsewhere, they will have a ready market in China. The one thing about China is, if you've got a product that works, it gets into production fast, you don't have to wait around two years for a lot of testing."

You can read the rest of this interesting post at this link.

PHOTO OF THE DAY: This spectacular photograph shows the edge of the Erebus Glacier tongue on the McMurdo Sound sea ice.

Photograph by: Andre Fleuette, National Science Foundation. Date Taken: November 9, 2005

TV-Handy - ich weiß ehrlich gesagt nicht, ob das was für mich ist. Wenn ich vielleicht öfter reisen würde, könnte ich es mir noch eher vorstellen Gefallen daran zu finden. Aber ansonsten gehören bei mir zu einem gemütlichen Fernsehabend eine Couch, Cola, Chips & Co ;-)

Mobile-research.at hat die Ergebnisse einer aktuellen Studie über Handy-TV veröffentlicht. Dabei wurden Early Adopters und der Rest der Bevölkerung getrennt befragt.

Bis zu 15 Euro pro Monat mehr würden frühzeitige Anwender (engl. "Early adopters") fürs Handy-TV bezahlen. 53,7 %  von den Anwendern wären bereit, 5 Euro im Monat drauf zu zahlen, weitere 22,5 % würden dafür bis zu 10 Euro mehr ausgeben. 24,2 % würden fürs Handy-TV sogar "definitiv" den Mobilfunkbetreiber wechseln, 25,7 % "möglicherweise" und für 41,5 % käme dies nicht in Frage.

Die Akzeptanz in der Gesamtbevölkerung zwischen 15 und 69 Jahren ist weniger euphorisch: Generell würden rund 20 %  Handy-TV ausprobieren, bei 35 % hängt es von den Kosten ab. 33,1 % halten nichts von Handy-TV. Fast 60 % wären bereit, 5 Euro mehr im Monat für Mobiles TV zu bezahlen; Kosten in der Höhe von 15 Euro sind nur für 3 % der Gesamtbevölkerung vorstellbar.

Mein Fazit: Ich persönlich denke nicht, dass Handy-TV den Durchbruch schafft.  Vor der EM damit zu werben, wäre jedoch eine hervorragende Idee, aber ansonsten wird es dem Schicksal der Handy-Kameras gleichen: Die Funktion ist zwar da, aber benutzt wird sie selten. Da Handy-TV auch noch extra bezahlt werden muss, wird sich die Benutzeranzahl eher im unteren Bereich bewegen.

This was not even in the Prius or other hybrid we have yet to purchase, but in our 1993 Nissan Sentra. As I was stepping out the door to walk to the church, I realized there was a hard, driving rain. Changing into rain gear would make me late. I didn't want to be either late or soaked, so I jumped into the car for the 3/10 mile journey. Normal in many households; unthinkable in mine.

How would I respond to a 'normal' person's charge of being obsessively PC (politically correct)? Well, my answer is about context and about the dismissive power of labels.

The context is that Portland Oregon (where we live) wins awards for being the Most Sustainable City in the nation. We are 'early adopters' in that arena, with excellent public transit, bike lanes, land use and biodiesel availability. So my household makes choices in a city-state context of sustainability.

Concerning the label of PC or any other label: it's a form of dismissal. For instance, to say that New Yorkers are rude, or Southerners ignorant, dismisses them from further thought. It also makes them lower-than, less worthy than the one labeling them. "Portlanders not wanting to drive? How PC!" -- and the speaker and listener toss away the notion of driving less, without thinking about what they've tossed.

That thing of not thinking is how we've landed in the global warming mess we're in.

My work-day today involves getting input from my statewide transportation-options group about my idea of an Oregon residential energy tax credit (RETC, rhymes with Betsy) for carpooling, and then meeting up with a leader of the state's Drive Less, Save More publicity campaign.

And you can bet I will not be driving to those meetings -- though I'll admit to my colleagues my slip-up last night :).

Get over it.

What is it with early adopters technosnobs who use (mis)use their passion for all things technology as a sort of weapon? The ones who have no sense of history, who think that our generation or the current 15-25 year old consumers are faster, better, smarter, earlier by sole virtue of living in today's era? The ones who ignore or don't remember the Beta vs. VHS, projection TVs, Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), and perhaps even railroads, the cotton gin and the steam engine.  Even the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago had some really cool technology demos (think electricity)  and belly dancing, which is definitely not the norm at the trade shows I've been to lately.  You gonna laugh at them just because it was in a day and age when Buffalo Bill Cody set up an unauthorized side-show?

These INNOVATORS (yes, even the belly dancing and Buffalo Bill engendered some new and adventurous ideas to Americans) are why we are able to have the connectivity we have today... they went first, and we're building on it. The generations ahead of us -- regardless of whether we regard them as quaint today -- were just as smart, innovative and talented as we are. They were "early adopters," they had outside-the-box ideas, they were chided by traditionalists and naysayers, BUT they knew what they had to do -- they had to open their arms to the "edglings" or the mainstreamers in order to bring their visions, products and services to them.  

Yes, innovation has been alive and well in every generation and mostly embraced. Those who truly love technology, the beauty and science of it -- even those like myself who aren't personally smart enough to actual build or innovate any of it -- love it even more when it is scalable and attainable by mass markets.  Some people just move slower, and it's up to the innovators to prove value and mass market capability. Without scalability, the cotton gin is Wang computers, 3G is Improved Mobile Phone System (IMPS), McDonald's are Hot Shoppes and Carrie Underwood is Taylor Hicks.

Being 2.0, being a technology leader is more than looking down your nose at the non-innovators. Most people love what technology can do for their life when it's evident to them.  Real technology leaders teach these people... they don't spend all their time on Twitter or FriendFeed preaching to the choir about how smart they are and making snide remarks about the rest of the world -- you know, all of us needed to climb on board to make something actually stick.

C'mon, get over yourselves.  You think the rest of the world hasn't seen your technology in some 1.0 iteration? Think again.  Make it matter.

So, that's where I was mentally somewhere this afternoon between reading a blogger's self-important description of various wireless apps they were loading and the ad agency's earnest presentation (which was actually good, but just reinvented the wheel). 

If you're looking down your nose at people who aren't "early adopters," you're probably also looking up your a**.

G-g-g-g-g-Get Over It. (You can see the OK GO video here... scroll down for it.)

A common mistake that companies make in consideration of platforms for technology products, is going beyond basic install base size metrics. Sure we all know that there are more PC users out there than Mac users, but how are Mac users different from PC users?

One of the biggest challenges for technology companies is moving from early adopters to the early majority. Looking at social media, you're going to have an audience that skews younger, similar to the population profile of Mac users. Given the popularity of Macs and other Apple devices like the iPhone, this is not a trend that is going to reverse any time soon. So, why then, would Google not launch first on the Mac platform where adoption is more likely than on the PC platform that has the largest install base?

Perhaps Google knows something here that I don't. I'm going here off my opinion and the ten minutes I have between trying to get my Vista install running on Parallels and going to the gym. If anyone else out there has insight, please share it with me. I'd love to be proved wrong here.

Either way, the old adage about less than 10% of users running Mac is not enough to make platform decisions on. It's time to take a deeper look into platform choices. Who is going to adopt your technology? Who is going to advocate your technology?

If you don't have a good feeling for this, just create a simple concept test and tie it to the user's platform. Granted concept tests for amorphous technology products are notoriously bad, so you have to be really careful about their use. You can work around this by framing the problem instead of the solution.

This article will be updated through out the year. To start from the beginning, read the following bullets according to the order as presented, from the top down. Feel free to take the appropriate action when suggested hereinafter.

1. A contract is a legally binding exchange of promises or agreement between parties that the law will enforce. - Wikipedia
2. A subcontractor is an individual or in many cases a business that signs a contract to perform part or all of the obligations of another's contract. - Wikipedia
3. Outsourcing is contracting with another company or person to do a particular function. Wikipedia: Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering firm costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of land, labor, capital, (information) technology and resources.
4. Personal outsourcing is when you ask someone else to do house cleaning, yard work, dog walking, or grocery shopping for you.
5. Offshoring is to do outsourcing overseas or in a separate country. Wikipedia: Offshoring describes the relocation of business processes from one country to another. This includes any business process such as production, manufacturing, or services. Offshoring can be seen in the context of either production offshoring or services offshoring. The economic logic is to reduce costs. If some people can use some of their skills more cheaply than others, those people have the comparative advantage. The idea is that countries should freely trade the items that cost the least for them to produce.
6. Personal offshoring: Offshore outsourcing has transformed the way U.S. companies do business. Now, some early adopters are figuring out how to tap overseas workers for personal tasks. They're turning to a vast talent pool in India, China, Bangladesh and elsewhere for jobs ranging from landscape architecture to kitchen remodeling and math tutoring. They're also outsourcing some surprisingly small jobs, including getting a dress designed, creating address labels for wedding invitations or finding a good deal on a hotel room, for example. Source
7. Offshore professional is a short-term professional worker who lives in another country.
8. Social capital: "Social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so too social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups". - Wikipedia
9. Lifetime offshoring means the lifetime or long-term use of a personal assistant who lives in another country. This is a good way to start building up social capital overseas for later use in life.
10. A servant is one who works, and often also lives, within the employer's household. They are distinguishable from slaves in that they are compensated, that is, they must receive payment for their work. They are also free to leave their employment at any time. For example, a butler is a professional servant.
11. Offshore servant is the subject of lifetime offshoring or long-term personal offshoring. An offshore servant is often a professional for most of the work is intellectual by nature.
12. Ownacoder.com is the first lifetime offshoring website with affordable offshore servants for web design, programming and other types of work whose result can be shipped through the wire.
13. Vision Statement: Our vision is 123x2020, which stands for one website (ownacoder.com), two countries (Vietnam and the USA), and three million new jobs by the year 2020, see One Website, Two Countries, and Three Million New Jobs by 2020.
14. Mission Statement: Our mission is to give the average American more time, more power and a better opportunity for success. This is possible through the use of an educated professional in Vietnam doing time-consuming tasks for you, while you sleep, to achieve your goals.
15. The next four paragraphs will explain in depth why the above mission statement is important to your future. If you do not wish to read further and want to get started with lifetime offshoring right away, feel free and click here to get started with ownacoder.com.
16. Opportunity is the chance for advancement. To create an opportunity for all means to give everyone a chance for success. A simple way to understand what opportunity means is to understand the meaning of opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is when one decision or option is passed up for another, based on the cost of time, money, and effort. An example of opportunity cost is when you invest $1,000 dollars in a company, rather than letting the money gain interest in the bank. One option entails more risk, but also, the prospect for higher return. Taking a chance for advancement in one area will cost you the opportunity for advancement elsewhere. Getting a college education is another example of opportunity cost. An investment of time, money, and effort is made to become educated, rather than devoting time and effort to make money working a full time job. With the opportunity provided by ownacoder.com, there is an excellent chance for success, but first, the definition of success must be understood.
17. Close your eyes and recall the name of your favorite teacher from your youth and you will see the image of a successful teacher. Chances are that this teacher is neither rich nor famous. Success means neither fame nor fortune. It simply means the acquisition of respect by your peers. To have a successful business, you must make many other business owners want to imitate your business model. To gain respect by your peers you must be able to achieve more than what your peers could dream of. In the information age, your classmates are only a tiny fraction of your peers. Through the Internet you must now compete with millions of your age across the globe in the same field as yours. How could you accomplish more than so many of your peers and also achieve success on the world stage without having more than seven days a week?
18. Most of us wish we had more time. More time to spend on earth with our friends, spouses, and children. How can more time be created, while still having the prospect of success? The ultimate way to give all Americans the opportunity to succeed at any level of their choice is to give each and every one of them more time. One of the best ways for a person to have more time is for that person to delegate his or her simple tasks to an employee who is time and again willing and able to carry them out. Here, the operative phrase is, time and again. Brushing your teeth once in a while does not help; you must do it time and again. Having an employee once in a while does not help. You must keep that employee loyal for life if you are to ensure success time and again in competition against millions of your peers around the world and around the clock.
19. To have more time, more power and a better opportunity for success is the reason why college students must learn and do personal offshoring. Remember, the mission of ownacoder.com is to give the average American more time, more power and a better opportunity for success. This is possible through the use of an educated professional in Vietnam doing time-consuming tasks for you, while you sleep, to achieve your goals. This offshore help is affordable even to a college student. For example, an entry-level web programmer is less than two thousand dollars for the entire year starting from the date of membership activation.

I don't have an iphone or a blackberry, because I'm connected enough as it is, but I do now have this blog, and a Twitter account, and I'm trying to get a grip on Digg and Reddit and Sphinn. They seem to be more necessary for my line of work.

Most of my friends aren't even aware of this networking driven sub-culture that could potentially dominate communications over the next twenty years. They still use IE, and manipulating their ipod is the leading edge of their technological expertise (which isn't necessarily bad). I think there's a good chance that the skill of adopting technologies sooner than later is becoming mandatory for success in many ways.

Before computers and swift technology advancement you didn't really need to pick up on things quite as fast. It would be decades before a more efficient way of doing something came to market, so you could learn how to apply your skill and you never really had to worry about learning that new skillset because you would be retired or in management before the innovation changed your process.

Now, improvements are occurring so fast that adopting and keeping current with new efficiencies in your field is critical to not falling behind. This is still a relatively new phenomenon, but it's one that is only going to become more exaggerated over time. So help your friends out, tell them about the tech tools they could benefit from, get them to join LinkedIn, or set them up with a Blog. They'll thank you for it later!

Over on FriendFeed as of late, amongst many of the early adopters and A-listers, much of the discussion has been about leaving Twitter.

Alas, microblogging service, they just can quit you.

The Early (Adopter) Warning Signs

It's not like anyone missed the signs that this was coming. Citing FriendFeed once again-- mostly because that's where the flock with foresight have flown --there have been innumerable posts about Twitter's status noting whether it was up, whether tweets were vanishing into the ether or whether it was so down that nothing was happening and even the fail whale was too ashamed to make an apologetic appearance.

But What About Those Who Came Into the Conversation Late?

As a recent but really curious newcomer to social media, it's been fascinating to actually watch the adoption curve of the trend in action. Because just as the earlies are flying off for more hospitable climates, there are many late adopters who are using Twitter and enjoying the process. For example, it has been a way for classmates to keep each other apprised of cancellations and summarize the substance of classes missed.

Personally, Twitter and I had more of a flirtation than a love affair. I only gave it a whirl (or twhirl?) for a few months before leaving it last week.

I didn't like the fact that its concise nature seemed to encourage or even crystallize narcissism in some cases, or that you couldn't really place a conversation in context.

That's one of the things I like about FriendFeed. You can get the whole conversation and its offshoots in one spot. It often makes for fascinating reading as well as engaging participation.

What Does This Mean For Twitter- and for Its Users?

Poor Twitter - you can't help feeling sorry for the former favourite. Especially as the disappointed and displeased word-of-mouth by former influential fans has spread in intensity and scale faster than a nasty virus at a preschool.

Is Twitter doomed? Or has it merely lost the favour of the tech elite? Is the mainstream still using the microblogging service - or are they leaving in droves also? And where are they going- Jaiku? Plurk? FriendFeed?

I know my chirping days are over but what about you: Will you continue to tweet? And if you do, will there be anyone to answer back at this point?

And if you were Twitter- how would you handle this increasingly dire situation?

In his post, reminiscent of the book that he cites, Crossing the Chasm, he lays out a few points why targeting and solving problems for the early adopter crowd does not ensure success, nor mainstream adoption.

First, let's define the audiences.

Early Adopters are risk takers who actually like to try new things.

Pragmatists might be willing to use new technology, if it's the only way to get their problem solved.

Conservatives dislike new technology and try to avoid it.

Laggards pride themselves on the fact that they are the last to try anything new.

This drawing reflects the fact that there is no smooth or logical transition between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists. In between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists there is a chasm. To successfully sell your product to the Pragmatists, you must "cross the chasm

Some technology trends that haven't reached mainstream adoption:

*Blog Search: A few years ago, blog search engines were all the rage. You had people like Marc Cuban talking up IceRocket and Robert Scoble harranguing Web search companies to build dedicated blog search engines. Since then the products in that space have either given up the ghost (e.g. PubSub, Feedster), turned out to be irrelevant (e.g. Technorati, IceRocket) or were sidelined (e.g. Google Blog Search, Yahoo! Blog Search). The problem with this product category is that except for journalists, marketers and ego surfing A-list bloggers there aren't many people who need a specialized feature set around searching blogs.

Social bookmarking: Although del.icio.us popularized a number of "Web 2.0" trends such as tagging, REST APIs and adding social features to a previously individual task, it has never really taken off as a mainstream product. According to the former VC behind the service it seems to have peaked at 2 million unique visitors last year and is now seeing about half that number of unique users. Compare that to Yahoo! bookmarks which was seeing 20 million active users a year and a half ago.

RSS Readers: I've lost track of all of the this is the year RSS goes mainstream articles I've read over the past few years. Although RSS has turned out to be a key technology which powers a number of interesting functionality behind the scenes (e.g. podcasting) actually subscribing and reading news feeds in an RSS reader has not become a mainstream activity of Web users. When you think about it, it is kind of obvious. The problem an RSS reader solves is "I read so many blogs and news sites on daily basis, I need a tool to help me keep them all straight". How many people who aren't enthusiastic early adopters (i) have this problem and (ii) think they need a tool to deal with it?

Here's an excerpt reminiscent of what I wrote in my post, Blogger v. Reality: Crossing the Chasm:

1. Just because you wish something to be true, does not make it so.

If you think I’m referring to the great twitter debate, it’s probably because I am. (Don’t know what Twitter is?)

However the one overriding theme is that all of these recent entrants is that they solve problems that everyone [or at least a large section of the populace] has. Everyone likes to communicate with their social circle. Everyone likes watching funny videos and looking at couple pics. Everyone wants to find information about topics they interested in or find out what's going on around them. Everybody wants to get laid.

If you are a Web 2.0 company in today's Web you really need to ask yourselves, "Are we solving a problem that everybody has or are we building a product for Robert Scoble?"

That also reminds me of a famed Josh Kopelman quote:

Too many companies are targeting an audience (Techcrunch circa May 2006) of 53,651.

• Go mobile. Let me see which of my contacts are close to me physically in real time.
• Give me the ability to easily message them akin to SMS.
• Let me meet new people based on interests, common friends and proximity.
• Get rid of sheep throwing applications. (I only have time to throw real sheep around not virtual ones.)
• Build some useful applications on top of facebook. (i.e. Yelp {leveraging my friends – people I trust}, couchsurfing {again leveraging my current social network, etc..})

nu steeds meer gedeelten van de internetz dankzij de tomeloze inzet van ons heldhaftige interventieteam niet meer zuchten onder meningen en andere aberraties, zijn de eerste hardwerkende burgers inmiddels begonnen aan de lange reis naar de hen rechtmatig toekomende grazige weides.

zo ook de zestienkoppige familie grutterzwaag. "dat ik dit nog mag meemaken", snikt pater familias durk grutterzwaag, "eindelijk rust na al die jaren van leed en onderdrukking! en kijk toch eens wat een prachtig uitzicht! gaan we trouwens nog iets leuks doen met de krijgsgevangenen?"

Det börjar lite dåligt. I Freaconomics, som jag tidigare har berättat om, handlar ett helt kapitel om vad som fick brottsvågen i New York City att minska kraftigt. I inledningen exemplifiera Gladwell en helt annan orsak till vad som bröt NYCs brottsvåg, att man stoppade graffittimålarna och tjuvåkarna på tunnelbanan, som gav resultatet att större brott minskade. Båda böckerna säger sig ha lösningen men kommer till två hel olika slutsatser. Vilken av författarnas förklaringar ska man tro på? Båda har nog en del med saken att göra, men det gick mig att bli skeptiskt till innehållet i resten av boken.

Boken är indelad i olika kapitel om vad som krävs för att få en trend. The law of the few - några få personer med stor social spridning skapar en trend. The Stickiness factor - buskapet måste fastna hos mottagaren för att få genomslag. The power of context - sammanhanget har stor betydelse, även om det inte finns några patentlösningar på det. Personerna som är viktiga att nå ut till för att få spridning identifieras som Connector - personer med ett stort kontaktnät, Salesmen - de som lätt kan sälja en idé eller vara och Maven - experter eller andra personer som har stor kännedom om saker och ting och som därför trovärdigt kan rekommedera varan.

Genom att använda sig av ovanstående kan ett företag eller organisation sprida budskapet från de tidiga användarna Early Adopters till de övriga användarna Early Majority, Late majority och Laggards. Boken är därför en typ av marknadsföringsbok. Sedan tar boken upp att stor påverkan kommer från kompisar (peers) och tidningar. En ung person som funderar på att prova på att röka påverkas mer av sina kompisar än av sina föräldrars (av)råd. Tidningsartiklar om brott eller självmord kan hos en läsare uppfattas som en indirekt uppmaning att utföra ett liknande brott eller handling.

Boken har bra poänger men den fångade inte mitt odelade intresse, så som freakonomics gjorde. Delvis för att en del av exemplena är väldigt amerikanska och budskapet är inte helt nytt, det mesta har jag hört tidigare men inte sammanställt på detta sätt.

I want to study what early adopters are doing and thinking. Twitter is the best place — by far — to do that.

So to all those Twitter users out there - way to be the wave of the future!

Friendfeed is almost like a virus in that sense, it feeds off other services and aggregates it all into one place. While most bloggers are walking away with the service (didn't we do that with Twitter too when that came out?), I just can't get all that warm about the service. I mean, I like it and use it, but I can easily manage without it too. Friendfeed does a great job aggregating feeds into one place. But that isn't the thing I like about it. I like the commenting system best. Importing feeds into Friendfeed solves a technical puzzle. But being able to comment on the aggregated stuff makes Friendfeed interactive, and therefore useful.

But I still wouldn't trade Friendfeed for anything else at this point. To me it is just another service I use. It isn't the one service that binds them all. No way. Let me give you a few reasons why Friendfeed isn't my favorite service (yet).

My friends aren't on Friendfeed

Say that again? My friends aren't on Friendfeed. Right now Friendfeed is a tech elite's aggregator. It is crowded with early adopters, A-list bloggers (andB- and C- too probably), tech people etc. I follow these people too, just as they follow me. But they aren't my friends. They are peers, interesting people, experts, whatever. But my friends aren't there. Friendfeed at best could be an alternative for an aggregator like TechMeme. A better one too since it allows interaction with the commenting system it provides.

Friendfeed is an echo chamber of tech stuff we already know

I looked at the statistics a few weeks ago (friendfeedstat seems to be down, can't get an update now) and found that the 5 most used feeds were Twitter, Blogs, Google Reader, Tumblr, and youTube. Twitter winning the contest with 51% at the time. So Friendfeed aggregates over 50% Twitter and after that mostly blogs. I realise that aggregation in itself doesn't produce "new" content. But let's face it. These feeds are mostly tech people's feeds. Friendfeed lets us techies sift through the enormous amounts of tech news by letting others (the people we follow) do some of the sifting for us. That is probably why Robert Scoble likes Friendfeed so much. He has taken on more content feeds tan any human can possibily process, so he uses Friendfeed and the friends he follows to do that for him. Which is fine of course, but it is just convenience. It's stuff we already know or could find on other services.

Friendfeed, or any aggregator for that matter, doesn't aggregate important stuff, it aggregates everything

In a previous post I said I didn't like Friendfeed as much as I wanted because it lacks intent. I have gotten a lot of replies on that. People either strongly agreed or disagreed. If Friendfeed allows us to share entire feeds (and many of them) without effort, then we are bound to share stuff that isn't always interesting or important. We might even forget we are sharing it on Friendfeed after a while. It creates a situation where we do not always use intent to share. And when we share because we can, not because we meant to, the shared stuff becomes less valuable. It is precisely for this reason that the Friendfeed team is now working hard on filtering methods. Since everything is shared, users will quickly need filtering techniques to start finding the stuff that really matters to them. The power of Friendfeed (aggregation) quickly becomes it's weak point (noise).

Friendfeed doesn't allow intentional sharing to just a few

What is more valuable to you. A guy named Alexander that creates a Friendfeed entry "Alexander just posted five new images on Flickr", or your best friend Alexander e-mailing you "Hey dude, here are the pictures of the party last night, what do you think?". The entries both point to the same 5 pictures. But these pictures will probably have no value to anyone that hasn't been at the party with Alexander. They do however provide value to Alexander's best friend. The main reason for this is that Alexander used intent to share this. He didn't share it with anyone that wanted to hear anything form him. He specifically sent it to his best friend, because he knew that sharing them would provide them both value. I find that the value of aggregation is highly overestimated. It isn't aggregation what makes things valuable. It is the intentional sharing, often to one or a few people.

Friendfeed is a web 2.0 destination

Despite it's simple and Google-like appearance, Friendfeed is just another web 2.0 destination site. It forces me to register, to leave a profile behind, to go to the Friendfeed portal and get the stuff I registered for, instead of it coming to me. Hugh Carpenter talks about the sharp increase in traffic to Friendfeed, and he uses that as an indication of its early adopter popularity. The battle for traffic, the destination thinking, it most often leads to the web 2.0 freemium business model. Getting something for free makes the service provider leverage network value, instead of user value. It opens up the door for unwanted advertisement as a compensation for free. The web 2.0 freemium business model doesn't set us free, it locks us in. I'd rather have a business model that leverages user value, but such a business model would ave to compete with the freemium model, and that isn't easy. But it will be the next frontier after web 2.0.

Conclusion

I'll be using Friendfeed, just as I use other services. It's a nice service, but I doubt it will ever become mainstream in its current form. Most likely it will compete with services like TechMeme for the most important aggregation source of tech news.

After my experience with betamax, MiniDiscs, LaserDiscs, recordable DVD players and other so-called next big things, I've grown cautious with new technologies.  

I've never had time for patience. But I don't have the money to be impulsive anymore.

God may protect idiots and drunks, but when it comes to a blonde, He goes right for the wallet. Take away the spending money, erase (some of) the stupidity.

If you don't have money to waste,  you can't buy an HD DVD player--which lost its  fight with Blu-rayin February. Nor can you rush out to buy the brand-new iPhone, saving yourself the frustration of watching the price fall from $599 to $399 in less than 10 weeks.

My last major mistake was a first generation recordable DVD player I bought in late 2000. The had-to-have-it equipment cost $2,000, embarrassingly more than it was worth. The machine consistently sputtered and stalled, failing to deliver the quality images it promised despite the excessive price.

I bought that machine less than two years after I invested in a first of its kind digital video recorder. No, not Tivo. I went with nearly extinct ReplayTV, which hit the market two months ahead of what proved to be its more successful rival.

It's taken me years to understand that when you buy too soon, you become an unpaid product tester.

In the rush to market products, manufacturers of everything from high-end cameras and computer software to musical instruments and home appliances have turned loyal customers into consumer guinea pigs.

Take those expensive video game consoles. Consumers spend hours or even days waiting in lines to purchase limited quantities of the newest, highly advertised game system. But a high percentage of the machines have fatal flaws, like freezing, overheating and general failure to perform.

I was burned by an xbox 360 in 2005 and burned again in 2006 by a Nintendo Wii.Neither first generation machine worked as expected. Fortunately, I hadn't wasted time as well as money. I capitalized on a conversation I overheard between two teen boys in a line at CVS and preordered the game console for home delivery six months before its release.

As for the Wii, I considered getting on a line at Best Buy. But an eager group of teens-most unable to sleep from years of Ritalin use-volunteered to go, sparing me the indignity.

Still, I admit, I expected the game console to work when I took it out of the box.

Chalk that up as one more miscalculation, a belief as naïve as the faith I once had in the Apple Newton.

Sure, at first glance, this whole social media thing can seem daunting.  But like anything, once you dive in and start doing it (and learning how to use it right, the first time), it gets easier and more manageable (and actually fun!).  The guys over at the Bad Pitch Blog seem to sum it right for me and give some good tips on how to use social media with your media relations outreach: http://badpitch.blogspot.com/2008/04/thinking-clearly-about-social-media.html.  Keep your head in the game, don't be blinded by all the bright shinies out there and learn how to use the tools to help you and your clients tell the important stories. 

How have you adapted to using social media in your media relations efforts?  Has it changed the way you practice PR?  Let your diva-self (or divo-self, for the men in the house) be heard....

Como breviario cultural cabe señalar que nuestro host utiliza la direccin 127.0.0.1 osea localhost para funciones de loopback, algunos servicios de linux necesitan eso para funcionar, por lo tanto es indispensable que se encuentre en el archivo /etc/hosts.

Comenzamos con la edicion del archivo antes mencionado, yo lo procuro hacer desde vi en la consola :

$ su root

Password : --ingresamos el password del adminstrador

#vi /etc/hosts --llamamos a vi para que edite el archivo

Importante mencionar que en vi la forma de editar es diferente a un block de notas. ejecutando el comando anterior vi nos mostrara el contenido del archivo, para poder editarlo debemos de presionar la tecla 'i' de 'insert' para despues agregar debajo de la linea donde se encuentra la configuracion de localhost, en mi caso defino la direccion local de mi pc y despues el nombre del host, junto con su dominio : 192.168.1.87 gdlmobile.imed, los otros dos parametros no son necesarios.

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost localhost
192.168.1.87 gdlmobile.imed gdlmobile gdlmobile
::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
~
~
~

Type :quit to exit Vim

Al finalizar la edicion tenemos que presionar la tecla 'Esc' o 'Escape' de nuesto teclado para despues ingresar las letras 'wq!' presionando sus respectivas teclas.

De esta forma es como se modifica la configuracion del archivo /etc/hosts y cambiamos el nombre a nuestro computador.

Curiosidad y dudas al respecto:

Manual sobre la herramienta de edicion vi

Quiero saber mas sobre los archivos hosts

Las demas dudas, tu sabes, google te apoya.