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Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Too much to chat, too little time

An article in last week’s Wall Street Journal showed how Linkedin is struggling to compete with Facebook. It pointed out that for the month of October, Linkedin visitors spent about 13 minutes on the site, while visitors to Facebook spent about 213 minutes. (MySpace visitors spent about 87 minutes.)

This is a problem for Linkedin. A problem of money. That’s because membership (and therefore profitability) is a function of time spent per person. The implication is that for Linkedin (53.6 million users) to attract members the way Facebook does (350 million members), users need to be given reasons to spend more time there. (More apps. is being suggested as the solution.)

Funny how in social media is measured by time spent. For me, social media is a technology (though not only a technology) – and I’m more likely to gauge its success in terms of time saved rather than time spent. Obviously using social media takes time. But I expect that, at some level, I’m getting more for my minute using social media than some other means of achieving the same goal.

On the other hand, TV is a technology and the more time spent (and wasted) the better. Which makes me wonder: Is social media more like TV than it is like Word or Google or even calculators or typewriters or printing presses?

It’s all got me thinking about the relationship between social media and time. How much time does social media consume? Where does that time come from (what are people doing less of)? What is being achieved in that time? And how is social media affecting our actual experience of time?

How much time does it consume?

In a blog devoted to exploring the use of social media by museums, the author – Nina Simon – suggests in a post called What can you accomplish in one week of web 2.0? that about 1.5 hours a week gets you participant status – looking around, checking things out, perhaps doing a basic Facebook page and Twitter feed. For 5 to10 hours, you can be a “content provider”– writing a blog or doing podcasts. And at 10 to 20 hours per week, you’re a full-fledged “community director” – someone who undertakes online projects that are bigger and more sophisticated than simple blogs. (A recent Neilsen report found that Internet users spent an average of 6.7 hours per week online.)

This is probably a conservative estimate at the heavy usage end. While the following estimate is about institutional rather than individual use, Amber Nasland’s article Social Media Time Management: Resource Allocation (in Social Media Today) suggests a pretty significant investment is needed to run a social media program. She forecasts 4 and 9 full time equivalents to cover the spectrum of listening, engaging, and measuring. That’s between 150 and 337.5 hours per week.

Is it television watching (as one would probably think)? Apparently not. The same recent Nielsen report found that television viewing time has actually risen – to about 140 hours and 20 minutes per month in the U.S. That’s about 35 hours per week or 5 hours per day. (People are also spending about 3 and a half hours per month watching videos online.) It represents a marked and fairly steady increase over the last 20 years.

What about reading books? According to a 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts, book reading is indeed in decline. Fewer than half of Americans over 18 read ANY novels, short stories, plays or poetry. It found that Americans between 15 and 24 spent about 7 to 10 minutes a day on voluntary reading. (That’s about a half hour or so a week – compared with 35 for TV.)

What is being achieved in this time?

Since most of this blog is devoted in some form to exploring this issue, just a few questions rather than conclusions. Is social media making people smarter? Is reading online doing for us what reading books does? (That same Nielsen report says that, while internet use rises, literacy scores fall. Both writing and reading scores correlate directly to amount of time spent reading books for fun. As of 2006, less than one third of high school seniors in the U.S. were found to read proficiently – compare with 40 per cent in 1992.)

What about our experience of time?

A huge question – but some quick observations:

1. Social media compresses time. In the SM world there is no waiting. There is no night and day. There is no rest. One is always on, always available, always there. Immediacy is taken for granted. Email is a generation old because it doesn’t allow you to connect instantly. It doesn’t tell you whether your contact is there, ready, instantaneous. Time is obliterated. Gratification is instant. If you can’t get it done in minutes, it’s not worth doing. (This blog post is way too long.)

2. Social media accelerates time. Because all time is shared and social, the need to stay in touch just to keep up with the events of one’s community mean that there is no rest, that a day away from a computer can actually feel like weeks.

3. Social media flattens time. In the Web 2.0 world, the world of constant beta where there are no phases, no stages, but constant and consistent improvement, waiting becomes unacceptable. Time is no longer seen as divided into periods. There is no first and second. There is only now.

So much more to think about here. But for now I’m out of time. And so are you.

[Via http://earlyrelease.wordpress.com]

Highlights of the Decade

Image by Timothy K Hamilton (Flickr)

2010 is finally here and as part of New Year’s Resolution, I’m going to try to update more often. In my effort to do so, I decided to start out the year by starting the decade. Many people have looked back at 2009, and pinpointed the highlights that made it great (and not so great). I could do that too, commenting on Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. But I feel to generalize more, looking back at the decade. In some ways it’s easier to talk about a decade, because it’s more about the trends than the specifics, but than again, we’re talking about a ten times longer period of time (that’s why it’s called a decade). After much thought (mostly in the shower and sometimes in bed), I pinpointed what made this decade what it really is: Web 2.0, Google, and iTunes on Windows. Those three things are the sugar, spice, and everything nice of 2000s’ tech. Let me explain further. Web 2.0. For some, it’s the biggest buzzword of the 2000s. Before Web 2.0, the internet was about static webpages filled with annoying GIFs and awful background music. It seemed like almost everyone had one. It was the dot-com boom, but unfortunately (and in some ways, thankfully), it burst. Nowadays, we live in the era of Web 2.0 – dynamic webpages that personalize to us. Login to Amazon, and somehow it knows what we want, giving us personalized recommendations based on what we saw, just like a personal shopping assistant. Web 2.0 is also about interaction between you and your peers. With a click of a few buttons, you can share that adorable video of your kitten (or your heavily sedated child) on YouTube. Want to connect with your long-lost cousin somewhere in the middle of Africa? Facebook is your answer. Speaking of Facebook, these last few years of the decade also gave rise to a new social gaming economy with games like Mafia Wars and Farmville. Web 2.0 realizes YOU are important, and will do anything to recognize that. No wonder YOU were Time’s Person of the Year back in 2006, you’re just too important. The twenty-tens will be about reaching Web 3.0. There’s no exact definition of what that is, but I think it’s safe to say that it will involve the web knowing you better than you know yourself. Obviously, Google’s probably already there. Sometime during 2009, the popular, funny, and fake news source The Onion, released a video about the imaginary Google Opt-Out Village [link]. It was a Google Service where you are sent to a remote village in the middle of nowhere, a quaint place where Google couldn’t track you. Of course, you aren’t able to use the internet because that defeats the whole purpose. Eventually you would realize that you need Google to survive, and you were let out. The Onion pinpoints exactly where Google is today. If you have “gone Google,” like 60% of the Fortune 500 companies, Google practically owns your life. The search box we all of have grown accustomed to probably tells more about ourselves than our very own diaries do. If you use every single Google service, than Google probably has your search history, e-mail, calendar, documents, voice mail, videos, foreign language homework, photos, videos, health records, website, blog, financial portfolio, and credit card information, just to name a few. In the next couple of years, if not months, Google will also have your computer with their new Chrome OS. And it’s free. All supported by their monstrous AdSense economy that infects the deepest places of the interwebs. The only thing saving us from the mighty force that is Google is their famous motto: “Don’t Be Evil.” So far I have discussed the technology of the decade (Web 2.0) and the company of the decade (Google), but the last question is: what is the product of the decade? My answer is simple: if you have been paying attention, you would know it is the bloated, resource-hogging, piece of Windows freeware made by a fruit company on 1 Infinite Loop, iTunes (with a lot of emphasis on the Windows version). Why didn’t I choose the iPod? Because the iPod and Apple achieved their success because of the Windows version of iTunes. If iTunes wasn’t released for Windows, there probably wouldn’t be as many iPods as versions of Vista and 7 combined. iPods would flop, primarily because I wouldn’t be willing to pay $1000 for a computer just so I could get a personal MP3 player, when my “Windows-supported” Walkman works just fine. In a sense, iPods are like the infamous Lite apps of the App Store. They are feature limited (the one that acts like a phone is almost a computer) and significantly cheaper (couple hundred vs. couple thousand). Maybe Mr. Jobs only created iPods as a marketing stunt for their higher end products – if they were, it worked. Almost everyone has an iPod perfect for them – touch screen, colorful, talk-a-full, thick, thin, lots o’ memory, practically no memory, etc. If the rumored Apple Tablet eventually does come out, it would help Apple get more people to switch to Mac, as our lives become more Apple-centered and less Microsoft-cluttered (of course, Google would still own our lives). The 2010s have finally come (and still no flying cars or teleporters, hmmm). What this decade has in store, no one knows. Google will continue to do its thing, and Apple as well. Web 2.0 might mature and evolve into Web 3.0. As our society advances, so will our connections to those around us. Hopefully, gadgetonix will be there to report on it.

[Via http://gadgetonix.wordpress.com]

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Friend-Padding

I’ve got several lingering friend requests on Facebook. On the one hand, I feel kind of badly leaving anyone hanging. On the other, I don’t feel too badly, because I know the likelihood of me running into any of those people out here in the real world any time in the next few days is really, really, really small, so it isn’t like they are going to call me out for ignoring them.

I need a little time to come to terms with that sneaking suspicion that I’m not really a friend, but just part of a friend-padding strategy.

In the euphoric wash of whatever chemicals are released by high school reunions, I friended some folks I’ve not seen since graduation. Several of my FB friends are college students I was connected to only briefly for a project—they were the ones who brought me to FB, actually—who now probably wonder who I am and how I got connected to them.

Rarely does anyone admit to friend-padding, but I do think that my relatively modest 238-person friend list supports my contention that I have, for the most part, only friended people I actually know and could interact with unhesitatingly in the real world.

I’ll probably accept the friend requests, even if having me on their lists is more about them reaching critical mass for their message than their longing for a deeper connection to me. After all, I’m not afraid to defriend if push comes to show. Plus, now they’ll have to feign interest in my natterings and arch observations. And maybe they can help drive traffic to my blog . . .

[Via http://nonsequiteuse.wordpress.com]

Deactivated & Loving It

So I consider myself to be a little “tech-savvy” and up on current technology. I’ve been on every public networking site you can imagine: MySpace, BlackPlanet, hi5, Facebook, Twitter and the like. I can confidently say that these sites are addictive and time consuming. There was a segment on the Tyra Banks show that featured a teenage girl who didn’t graduate high school due to being online so often. She began gaining weight, not going out as much, her boyfriend had to make time to come see her at home due to the fact that she was glued to her computer. She’s an extreme case but you catch my drift.

Fast forward to earlier tonite, I’m on Twitter and my friend tweets this “ok so every time I get on fb (facebook) I think….now why do I still have this”. To be honest I was thinking the exact same thing! I used to claim it helped me stay in touch with friends and family, which it did for a short time span. However I found myself with over 800 “friends” 90% of which I didn’t talk to on a consistent basis. It dawned on me that Facebook served me no real purpose anymore. With this new found knowledge I happily found the deactivate button and deleted Facebook from my life.

Goodbye Facebook, hello real world and human interaction =)

[Via http://bedspringsandbookbags.wordpress.com]

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Errant Chinese smoker stops world's fastest train

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) – The world’s fastest train hit its first speed bump in the form of a disobedient smoker less than a week after it began running in southern China.

A cigarette triggered an alarm that forced a two-and-a-half hour stoppage, nearly as long as the train takes to cover the 1,100 kilometer (684 mile) distance between Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, and the central city of Wuhan.

Managers of the bullet train, which debuted on Saturday, were unable to catch the smoker who fled the scene before the alarm sounded, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

“Smoking is strictly forbidden on the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed train, even in the toilet,” a spokesman with the Guangzhou Railway Group Corporation was quoted as saying. “It could trigger the alarm and even cause equipment failures.”

The train was in the Guangzhou rail station when it was delayed and had not yet begun its 350-km-per-hour journey, Xinhua added.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BT2TK20091230?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=69

[Via http://ramanan50.wordpress.com]

There are a Few Things I am Thankful for but Make 2009 Go Away

Maybe it’s just me, but 2009 was a difficult year. I am not sad to see it go away and be logged into the history books. As I have reviewed this past year, I have noticed that so many of my posts have been directly related to the things that I was experiencing or thinking about at the time. I have never written a post to get or gain attention. I write to clear my head and it relaxes me. With that in mind, I have attached links to previous posts to the various experiences I have encountered this past year. Please feel free to click on them and re-read some of my favorite posts of 2009.

It has been a year where I have had to deal with some serious health issues. A few surgeries later, I am in still in recovery mode, trying to deal with the results of the operations. Sometimes the cure is worse than the problem. More importantly, this year was a time when I had to endure the loss of the two of the closest friends I have ever had on this earth.

Within a short span of three months, I lost Bob Emrich and Bryan Blakely. Bryan was my closest childhood friend growing up in Oak Harbor, Ohio. There wasn’t much that happened to either of us from the time we were 6 to 18 that we were not involved in together. As life happens to all of us, after high school we went our separate ways. We always stayed in touch but we both lived in different parts of the country and we were on different paths. However, Bryan was part of a foundation in my life and when we were able to get together over the years, it was just like old times. Thirty years may have passed but it would only be a few moments and we were just like we were when we were 18. Good times. He was taken way too soon.

Bob was my mentor and he was the one person that could always point me in the right direction. He was an example to me of what it means to live a life that would bring honor to his family and to his God. He showed me how to truly live as Christian in this world. He taught me more about God’s grace than any preacher that I have ever heard. No, he was not perfect but he was a perfect example of what God can do in a person’s life if they allow Him to work in their life. Bob wasn’t a preacher but a truck driver. I cannot tell you how many times I would call him and he would be winding his way through the mountains of Tennessee or making his way through the corn fields of Iowa. He always made time for me and always had a good word to say. I still cannot bring myself to delete his phone number off my phone.

Performing the eulogy at their funerals was the most difficult thing that I have ever done. I cannot express to you how much I miss them.

This year was also a time where I had to deal with some major health issues. Without boring you with the details, I had to have two operations. The second surgery was much more serious than I was really prepared for and I am still dealing with the results of the operation. Those results have hindered my ability to write and to do many of the things I did and enjoyed so easily in 2008.

For example, I have completely lost hearing in my left ear and have a 60% loss in my right. I am on the fast track in becoming deaf. Anyone who knows me, knows that I love music. It is something that I have enjoyed my whole life and it is slowly being taken from me. I have also lost most of my ability to taste food. Most of my tongue is numb and I have limited ability to even taste what I am eating or drinking. Finally, my right hand is still asleep. This hinders my ability to write and typing is much harder than ever before. The doctor says that while there is no chance that my hearing will come back, I may experience some improvement with some of the other issues. So, while I am waiting to recover from this surgery, I am trying to do what my friend Bob would have done. He would have called me to talk about the things we were thankful for in spite of the circumstances that we are in.

In honoring his life, I am trying to put into practice what he would have done. In that process, I realize that I am extremely thankful for many things in my life, in spite of the difficulty of this past year. One thing in particular that I am thankful for in 2009 is this blog. Over the year, I have had over 150,000 visitors. Now I know not all of them read my blog and some visit my blog just to read what new ridiculous and stupid thing comes out of my mouth and spills out onto these pages. Like I always say, I love to write…I never said I write well.

One post that went viral this year was a post about things I am thankful for called “A Few of My Favorite Things… . This post has by far has been my most popular post with over 20,000 hits and still growing. I wrote that after my first surgery and just posted a few of my favorite things and things I was I was thankful for. I would like to update it and add to those things and really be thankful for what God has allowed for me to be a part of in 2009.

So here are a few of my favorite things to be thankful for 2009…

I am thankful for my lovely wife Pam, who always believes in me and allows me to be me. She is wonderful, beautiful, my favorite and my best friend. She is and will always be “My Exception”.
I am thankful for my children, Crystal, Nathan, Adam and Cassidy. I love them unreservedly and they bring me more joy than I could ever express.
My Mom. I am without question the biggest “momma’s boy” ever.
My Dad. Thank you for showing me, by example, what it meant to take care of your family and the importance of having a good work ethic. When the bell rang you answered and went to work.
My Grandfather, James Russel Lee, the only real hero I’ve ever known.
I am thankful for Clay, my son-in-law. Not just because he loves my daughter and treats her well but because he is my friend and he loves the Lord with his whole heart.
I am thankful for my in-laws. Hands down the best ever.
My Brother and Sister in Law. Mark and Lynn have been there for me and have supported me and will always be the one I turn to in difficult times.
Luke, Leisha and Colton, my favorites…I always will be there for them.
I love to listen to Cassidy sing, I will always be thankful for that.
I love it and am thankful when my kids call just to say Hello.
I am thankful that I am not the man I was 20 years ago. I am more than I have been.
I am thankful that God is still working to make me a better person.
I am thankful for good parents who told me “NO” sometimes.
I am thankful for family and friends that have stuck by me when others walked away.
I am thankful for God’s grace. I am a really, really, really big fan of it!!!
I am thankful for the Salvation I found in Jesus Christ. I am thankful that He never gives up on me, even when I fail.
I am thankful that I have a whole new day stretched ahead of me with its new opportunities and blessings, with my family and my friends and my God. I am thankful that I am forgiven and clean and that God stretched his love out towards me and rescued me from sin and separation from Him and brought me into His family.
I am thankful for my church and a Pastor who pursues God and His ways. He always presents God’s message with love and encouragement.
I am thankful that I have a Bible – that I can read the promises of God and discover who He is and His great love for me.
I am thankful for music and worship that draws our heart towards God.
I am also thankful when I get to see people come to know Christ – there is nothing like it in the world.

And finally, in no particular order, here are a few of the maybe or maybe not so important things to be thankful for…

I am thankful for a morning cup of coffee.
Dark Chocolate - MMMMmmm chocolate.
Fall – the best season. (the best weather, colors and the smells of the year)
Air Conditioning.
Harold “Mac Attack” McGilton – #81 My favorite Race car driver.
A nice Writing Pen (Black Ink only).
The Music of the Beatles.
Bernie Lutz – A teacher that inspired others to be more than average.
Cleveland Browns / Cleveland Indians (even though they frustrate me to death).
One victory over the Steeler’s every six years.
Paul McCartney.
A Good Working Water Heater.
Remote Controls.
A comfortable Chair.
The Tom Hank’s movie “That Thing You Do” (never get tired of watching it).
A glass of Cold Milk.
My MDR-NC7 Sony Headphones.
Being Young and in Love (Young Love)
Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant (Fremont, Ohio).
A good Pillow.
The ability to turn right on red.
Christmas Morning.
Diet Pepsi.
My 1976 Ford Pinto (if that car could talk).
A Three Dollar Box of Chocolates and the Valentines dance of 1975.
Eisley and Rooney (My granddogs).
High Speed Internet Access.
Parking spaces near the front entrance.
Jerry Falwell and Liberty University.
FACEBOOK and re-connecting with old friends.
MVP Baseball 2003 – My favorite PS2 game.
Indoor Plumbing.
Aretha Franklin.
Growing Up in a Small Town.
The State Highway Patrol Officer that showed me a little grace one day.
My Ipod (8,456 songs on it and still growing).
The Ability to Give Back.
Caller ID.
Motown Music (The Temptations, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, etc.).
The arrows that show you which way to insert the batteries.
Ronald Reagan.
A clean blank sheet of paper.
Re-runs of Tommy Boy on TBS.
You Tube.
Little League Baseball.
Chili from Wendy’s.
The Whopper from Burger King.
Seinfeld.
The acting ability of Tom Hanks.
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.
Randy Pausch and his “Last Lecture”
A good Steak.
Blogging and Writing.
The delete button on the keyboard and white out for paper.
Childhood Memories.
Sarah Palin.
Ohio State Football.
Golf.
Teagarden’s Swimming Pool.
The number 22.

So there you have it… a list of a few of my favorite things I am thankful for in my life. No, the list is not complete and I am sure that there are more things I am thankful for if I would sit and think for a few minutes. However, that is for another time.

In closing, I will not be sad to see 2009 go away. I am looking forward to what God has in store for me in 2010. The slate is clean and anything is possible.

I will not be surprised by anything that may happen…but then again, maybe it’s just me.

[Via http://thelegacybuilder.wordpress.com]