Oct. 30

Ian thinks microblogging is pretty sweet.

Ian doesn't think it's indicative of an excessive amount of narcissism or self involvement.

Ian doesn't think it's a waste of time like the marketing dudes seem to like to call anything they don't participate in already.

Ian likes to look at it more romantically, Twitter posts and Facebook status updates are like little blips on the radar, little ripples on the pond. They're small, short and quick little ways for people to reach out to each other and the world around them.

Ian thinks that is valuable.

Ian likes Facebook status updates and actively uses them but has never used Twitter before.

Ian's cell phone is cheap and crappy so he only uses it for calls and the occasional text message.

Ian wishes he had a smartphone and enough money to pay for service.

Ian feels kind of poor and slow without one.

Ian doesn't want an iPhone, though. They're neat but too status-symbol-y.

Oct. 23

This was a bizarre discussion. It was strange and frustrating hearing all this weird criticism and worry around the cell phone habits of teenagers. I mean... Jesus... how old are most of the people in the class? Most of us are in our twenties or younger. It wasn't that freaking long ago that most of the people in the class were teenagers themselves and were most likely guilty of similar habits and priorities and yet here they are, harping away like old folks at those crazy youths. The kids will be fine, quit whining about their text messages and attention spans. The moment you start actually expressing FEAR and CONCERN about the way teenagers behave you begin to fossilize yourself. You might as well start whipping out the dates and metamucil. I don't think there's anything to worry about. They'll grow up, they'll be just like you. It's never a good sign when sitting through a class makes someone who doesn't smoke feel like he needs a cigarette.

Oct. 16

I'm considering using Del.icio.us to replace my normal bookmarking habits considering how disorganized they get, how I can't share them easily between my laptop and desktop, and how I usually lose them or just forget about the backups I make when I reformat. But I'm lazy so I doubt I'll actually end up using it. Plus, Del.icio.us is pretty ugly. Like craigslist, it's one of those weird, anacrhonistic looking gross Web 2.0 staples. It's gotten to the point that it's jarring when a web app doesn't have a snazzy and fetching interface like Flickr or Gmail.

Collaborative tagging is cool but I don't like the idea of forcing people to adopt a static, predetermined lexicon for tagging. Trying to shoehorn the vocabulary doesn't at all seem like the proper way to go about solving the search problem. Seems to me that the burden should be placed on the search function itself, not the user. The search engine should work like a thesaurus a little bit and have knowledge of related terms to the one you searched under. So someone searching under "red" could also get stuff tagged with synonyms like burgundy, vermillion, ruby or whatever.

Oct 9.

Oh God what a subject. I can't help but find the paranoia about predators online a little amusing. At least the subject gets less play these days but for a while is seemed like there was this unending deluge of sensationalist media attention on the idea of how the internets can harm your children. Not how the internets ARE harming children, but how they MIGHT be harming children. It's not as if you see news of a kid getting whisked away by a perverted, naked man-child they met online every 24 hours, but the kind of attention the prospect of such an event gets/got would certainly give you that impression. I love this local Fox News report on predators using Pictochat to target children. I reeaally doubt there has ever been a single reported case on harm coming to a child resulting from someone 30 or less feet away from talking to them on a DS but the report is certainly trying to make you think it's an inevitability.