It's like a Mach piece, really.

It's hard to disagree that This is Spinal Tap is one of the best comedies made (but if you do disagree, I will be too flabbergasted to even argue with you).

What I wonder is, just how many rock 'n roll bands Rob Reiner observed before being inspired to write this opus? So much of this film's beauty is how insanely well it identifies common themes among rock bands.... truly making this phenomenon stranger than fiction [a small sampling; (1) the ridiculous lyrics; (2) the frustrated manager; (3) the absurd outfits; (4) the divisive spouse].

I propose that we are at that point with technology entrepreneurs. This month alone has featured a preponderance of stories on two well-known Silicon Valley founders and it's easy to see some common themes emerge...: a genius since childhood....a few failed projects early in the career....an insane dedication to the endeavor....an incredible vision. When I read the latest in today's New York Times, featuring a photo of the entrepreneur as a 5 year-old, I had two thoughts: (1) Why in the world do I care what this person did at age 5?; and (2) This proves it: the time has come to create a Spinal Tap for Geeks.

I'm not sure we can ever match the brilliance from 1984's epic piece but....kind of curious what Rob would think....

And, if you don't know what this headline means....

That Thing, that Thing, that iPad Thing

Way back in technohistorical January, The Onion gave us a glimpse of just how insanely amazing the upcoming Thing Apple was preparing to launch would be....


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

My favorite quote: "if it's shiny and from Apple, I want it!"

Now that the infamous iPad has launched - and subsequently skyrocketed - I want it. I want it. I don't know why, but I just KNOWS I wants it!

Of course, there are real business and consumer drivers behind this demand. iMedia Connection did a nice piece on just why the iPad is really a big deal. And I even personally corroborated in the froth by serving as one of the coordinators of an iPad developers' event last month.

But I have yet to really USE an iPad, and yet my knee-jerk reaction to a friend's "Sent by my iPad" signature was nonetheless: I WANTS ONE!

We always knew Steve Jobs was a genius. But many in these parochial Silicon Valley technodigerati circles don't realize that Lauryn Hill got it first:

good luck with Your Nonsense

In November I got to hear Henry Cho do standup; when querying the audience about current vocational pursuits, he proceeded to wish one member in grad school "good luck with Your Nonsense."

Fast forward to this week: the world was riveted by the climactic launch of Apple's iPad tablet...and a flurry of developments around geolocational services led to l'il ol' me somehow serendipitously talking to a BusinessWeek reporter about why I love to "check in" to places so much....why being "The Mayor" is so addictive and hoarding Virtual Collectibles so satisfying....and other momentous topics of the day.

When my head stopped spinning from the giddiness of it all, I wandered through the various Ferry Building shops, trying to check in to each one, and was paralyzed by the 5-minute limit that Yelp happens to place on checking in to different spots (in contrast to Gowalla which lets you "faux"-walla into as many places you want regardless of when you do so - as long as you are proximate of course yadeyadeya...).

I only regained lucidity when, not knowing what to do with myself because I was unable to check in every second, I meandered over to a bench because it was located next to some sorely-needed power outlets for my Apple products and struck up a conversation with Eddie.

Eddie was enthralled by all of my gadgets. He had no idea why I was (unsuccessfully) trying to log in with a wireless card, why I needed to use my phone and laptop at the same time, and why I needed to sit 3 inches from a power outlet in the first place. This is because Eddie is unwired. And as it turns out, he also happens to be the Real Mayor of the Ferry Building.

Untethered and free. What was all that stuff I was trying to tweet, log in, check in and post to again?

May I have some opiods to chase my dopamine, please?

My highly social nature + my incessant need to uncover truth has traditionally been a source of pride, enabling me to be a journalist, sleuth and master of no trade (aka "generalist").

But pride cometh before the fall: thanks to current networking technology, I can now feed my social and search beasts at alarming rates. It started slowly with email....escalated with Facebook....and was fueled to whole new levels by IM, Skype messaging and Twitter. Now I have services like FourSquare which text my phone to immediately notify me who is going where and subsequently permit me to research, add tips, stalk others ... the ADD possibilities for those seeking external stimulation are endless!

Specifically, I'm noting that my capacity for reading and writing beyond a short email or tweet is eroding; that my Facebook activity steps up considerably when I am forced to read through a document longer than one page; and that I must multitask with my human-computer interface when encountering a simple human interface, lest I neglect my extroversion of any possible input.

So it was with great relief that I had the patience to read all of this piece (yes, first seen as a friend's post on Facebook but actually a normal-length article from Slate...which still writes articles vs. being pure post redux). It neutralized my neurosis by stating it in concrete and physiological terms.

And that's good enough for me. Just proud that I finally finished this post!

This very post is a cry out for intervention. Sponsored by AT&T.

Open to correction

Really, that's all we can ask of us imperfect beings right? Based on a crazy turn of events this evening, I hereby recant (half of) my cynical life-motto: "If it seems like it can't get any worse, it will."

The sordid deets:
It's 5pm and my friend A is demoing some software on my new idol-worship Macbook, and I log back into my Gmail account only to find this incomprehensible error message:

Lieber Nutzer,

in Deutschland heißt unser E-Mail-Service Google Mail, nicht Gmail.

Sie können Ihre E-Mails in Deutschland direkt unter http://mail.google.com

abrufen.

Ihr Google-Team

Der E-Mail-Service von Google ist in Deutschland nicht mehr über die von Ihnen eingegebene URL abrufbar.

Allgemeine Informationen zu Google finden Sie in Deutschland wie gewohnt unter www.google.de oder www.google.com.

Um....this is disturbing, to say the least. I'm convinced I've been violated by a trojan. I'll stop there.

But sit tight: the incredibly audacious thing is that (even more than the fact that "Lieber Nutzer" means "Dear User" and not, as A prefers, "Dear Nutcase") this is...LEGIT!

My gmail was truly "rehubbed" and all I had to do was use mail.google.com vs. gmail.google.com

All on Google servers. All legit. All clean.

So in this case, things didn't get worse than I expected.... they actually got BETTER! C-raz-y.

My Lieber Nutzer message makes me want to break out the Sacher Torte!

Forgiveness

Easter is just 'round the corner, so let's hear it for the virtues Jesus came to instill. Today: I hereby forgive AT&T!

Yes, in a turn as dramatic as Sally Field changing personalities, this beloved telecom bane of my existence has shown a radically different face and, as such, garnered my forgiveness.

So wha'happend? I had to pinch myself today when I, with trepidation, walked into the store where I first purchased my iPhone last summer (part 2 came later). I was hoping that the retail staff would be willing to deviate from any policy requiring proof of purchase and take subjective pity on the fact that my car charger wasn't working.

What then transpired was none other than awe-inducing: boom-ba-da-ding, the floorperson pulled up a record of my purchase within seconds, and the return was not only seamlessly executed, but even upgraded (or, as I like to say, Upgrayedd-ed) to a better model.

As long as "this" AT&T is talkin', I'm forgiving.

Breakups

Often I encounter a turn in a movie where I simply can no longer suspend disbelief and, consequently, part ways with the entire movie. Few top-of-mind examples:

V for Vendetta. When the Masked Man's cave is exposed, the absurdity of the whole pretext of the film suddenly becomes clear. The scales fall from my eyes. It's over.

The Kite Runner. 2 scenes conspire here: First, when it's revealed that the childhood friends are really brothers (="Luke, I'm your father!"). Second, when the one offending Taliban character they encounter in the entire city of Kabul just happens to be the same tormenting bully antagonist from childhood. Statistically astounding! Again = over.

And now, this same intolerance threshold just kicked in for Facebook, my once-beloved platform of self-expression.

The trigger? A friend invite from Phil Ting. When I saw the invite, I KNEW that name was familiar. A college friend? Work?....and then I realized: none other than ....the San Francisco City Assessor-Recorder!

I think Phil realizes that, like the meter maid, a letter from him is never fun. So he's trying to make up for it by a Facebook Friendship? I don't think so.

It was a beautiful thing while it lasted, Facebook. But I think it's over.

.

Regressing... in the name of progress

I knew something just wasn't quite right when I observed the downfall of the musical instrument.

It seemed to be an unfortunate extension of the same trend that has us no longer lathering our soap, pulling the paper towel or turning the sink handle as part of that handwashing ritual of yesteryear. As we kiss our motor skills goodbye, we also seem to be letting go of something on the cerebral front:

“Humans evolved with amazing navigational abilities in our brains from an evolutionary perspective,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive.....Neuroscientists have discovered that people who have occupations that require them to maintain complex mental maps of the world, like London taxi drivers, have an enlarged hippocampus.

What happens when our hand-held computers become extensions of the way we think?

...With this sort of map it is possible to see a three-dimensional view of one’s surroundings, including the annotated distance to objects that may be obscured by buildings in the foreground. For starters, map-based cellphones simply translate paper maps into a digital medium, but future systems will probably begin to blur the boundaries between the display and the real world....

“I have wondered about the fact that we might as a culture lose the skill of mapping our environment, relying on the Web to tell us how to navigate,” said Hugo Spiers, a neurobiologist at University College London. “Thus, it might reduce the growth of cells in the hippocampus, which we think stores our internal maps.”

Small brains attached to increasingly-morbidly obese bodies. What would Marshall say?

Life is a continuum

From euphemisms...to marketing...to outright deception.

Once again, the boyz from Redmond just go ahead and merge 2 & 3*.



Of course, it's not surprising..but I sure do resent the branding.

LinkedIn Partner Message from Microsoft BizSpark

Hi Diane,

I’m Jacob Mullins and I work on the new BizSpark program at Microsoft. BizSpark offers you the chance to use the latest software design, development, and production tools from Microsoft for up to three years with no upfront costs. All you pay is U.S.$100 when you exit the program.

Jacob Mullins

Startup Development Manager, Microsoft BizSpark
@jacobmullins

P.S. If you’re interested in learning about how Microsoft works with Open Source, or want to meet the team, you’re invited to the Third Annual Microsoft Open Source ISV Forum on Monday, March 23, 2009 at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, California. Hope to see you there.

*hint: since when does "open source" entail pre-qualification and "exit" fees?

It's a word thing

"Someone got access to [CheckFree's] account credentials and was able to long in," Wade said. "There was no breach in our system."

Maybe Wade thinks "access" is not a "breach" so long as it's done knowingly?

...or that "breach" only involves violence?

...or that "system" only involves software?

...or...?

I'm trying, Wade, but these clarifications aren't making me feel better.

Geek adulation o' the day

Current prophetic flava: Marshall McLuhan.

While he is most known for the "medium is the message" tagline, I'm learning that this man indeed left us with a vast treasure-trove of advanced and prescient observations with respect to media.* Space and A.D.D. constraints prevent us from doing justice to this man's thinking, so for now, let's apply his sagacity to some media du jour -- namely:

Facebook...and yes, a Palinesque shout-out to the beloved Blogger you find yourself currently reading. These partially constitute "Web 2.0"..."social networking"...which is likely now just a part of our daily lives (even for us luddites), and are creating whole new ways of engaging and interacting.

Of course, this is not news. That is, until you realize just how significantly the protocols and nuances of our communication are changing because of these new media:

1. The development of what some social scientists have termed “ambient awareness" which is "very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye"...only digitally so via "pokes", news feeds and posts.
2. The realization that this sort of micro-broadcasting -- like other forms of free speech -- will create conflicts. Even the idealistically liberterian founders of Facebook were confronted with that this week.
   

And so what?

So when I post something on Facebook, it gets "fed" - or pushed - to many many people who may or may not be up for seeing what I have to share (see video clip at the bottom of this post for a comedic but accurate portrayal of just how special "Facebook friendships" are :-). But, on the other hand, if you choose to "come" to this blog, that is more of a "pull" than a "push" kind of thing. Subtle? Makes all the difference. This became all too clear this election season, when people posted news articles, clips, videos, etc. that took ambient awareness to all sorts of levels because they were prolifically fed on "friends'" feeds with just one click.

But enough of my bumbling: I'd rather defer to my new flava Marshall, who used 4 questions ("the tetrad") to evaluate in a more lucid and structured way what the implications are of such media innovations. They follow here; my suggestion would be to fill in the blanks as you see them with respect to our current "Web 2.0" platforms....with a particular emphasis on #4:

1. "What does it (the medium or technology) extend?" In the case of a car it would be the foot, in the case a phone it would be the voice.
2. "What does it make obsolete?" Again, one might answer that the car makes walking obsolete, and the phone makes smoke signals and carrier pigeons unnecessary.
3. "What is retrieved?" The sense of adventure or quest is retrieved with the car, and the sense of community returns with the spread of telephone service. One might consider the rise of the cross-country vacation that accompanied the spread of automobile ownership.
4. "What does the technology reverse into if it is over-extended?" An over-extended automobile culture longs for the pedestrian lifestyle, and the over-extension of phone culture engenders a need for solitude.

* McLuhan predicted over 40 yrs ago that the world would be "connected" as a "Global Village"; analogous prophetic discoveries of late include Roubini for economics....de Tocqueville for Democracy...Mike Judge to America....

And the promised video clip:

Avert the eyes

When something or someone tries to be what they aren't it's like roadkill.

In this case: an epic (multi-million dollar) demonstration that MSFT Really. Doesn't. Get it.

Microsoft Corp., engrossed in multi-million dollar marketing blitz to counter comical ads from rival Apple, Inc., is now using a portion of its budget to fuel guerilla retail tactics near the Mac maker's stores.

Painful.

Did they have to drag Jerry into this?....

Knowing more than we should - part 2

The double-edged sword of knowledge.

There's the element of knowing stuff in advance, the pros & cons of which are expounded upon earlier here.

Then there's the element of simply knowing what perhaps just isn't meant to be known.

I mean...ew....Taking "TMI" to new levels: at Pennsylvania State University, a professor of engineering has captured a cough on film. The image was created by schlieren photography which “takes an invisible phenomenon and turns it into a visible picture.”

Stu Sutcliffe...Pete Best...

...and HUBERT CHANG!

Stu and Pete were "5th Beatles"....and Hubert: the "3rd Googler"??? Be sure to watch the video - freaking hysterical!

Geeks marketing to geeks

Maybe it works?

Sometimes I actually encourage denial

Not only is it so much more alluring than reality....but I'm finding that in certain cases, it may yield positively for society!

1) "Sen. Barack Obama has widened his lead over Sen. John McCain, according to CNN's latest "poll of polls." - yeah, while this may not be the case in November, this is TRUE as of 9:18 a.m. EDT, Fri September 19, 2008 so I'm sucking the marrow out of it and snuggling it close as long as I can so I can be in my happy place if only for just a little while longer.

As promised, the following two cases of denial may actually yield some real, positive societal results:

2) “I’ve got to be honest with you,” Christopher Gruber, a vice president who oversees admissions at Davidson College, told me. “I’m not spending a ton of time navigating those student-driven sites. It’s too much to manage. My sense is that the traditional big players, like Princeton Review, are the major sources for online information too, in part because those are the names that parents still recognize.

Don't stop believin', Christopher. We won't go into the fact that parents aren't the only market segment, and they're certainly not the ...future...one...

3) "“SVG support is something that we have been evaluating for some time,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We recognize the demand for vector graphics from Web developers, and realize this is a high-priority demand.”

As Matt said...

“We recognize the demand for vector graphics from Web developers, and realize this is a high-priority demand…” but we just don’t care.

...and thank Someone for that: perhaps MSFT's resistance to creating usable products will, in fact, finally be met by justice, and Apple in fact wasn't so wrong to exclude IE in its MobileMe strategy???

Microsoft's IE market share drops again

September 3, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer lost nearly a full percentage point in market share during August, the browser's biggest drop in three months, a Web metrics firm said today.

IE's rivals -- Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox, Apple Inc.'s Safari and Opera Software ASA's Opera -- all extended their shares at IE's expense last month...

....IE's August drop was the second largest for the year, lower only than May's 1.1-percentage-point fall.

"I can't really explain what happened," admitted Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing. "Perhaps there was some relationship with the launch of IE8 Beta 2. If users are looking at IE8, maybe they're looking at other browsers at the same time, trying to decide which one to use."

Vince, I know you're a marketing guy and have to say that - and that's great! Don't stop believin' either!

is it "Me" or....

...isn't one of the purported benefits of MobileMe integration with your office (as in CAPITAL "O" ....MS Office ...yeah, had to type it ugh) apps? You know, the Outlook calendar integration and all....but when I try to log in to MobileMe at work, it tells me I need to use Firefox or Safari.

Now of course we know IE is inferior as are most MS products but again, wasn't this kind of integration the benefit of MobileMe? Did anyone do a workflow analysis?? I propose AAPL start addressing that before going on to get a more serious name for the product.

The changing user interface of life

I never fully grokked why my friend is *so* passionate about his iphone and, well, all things Apple in general. Sure, they're brilliant at product development and execution. Yes, Steve Jobs is a marketing genius with an unparalleled ability to create an upswell of consumer demand.

But to bring the latest SDK specs with you on a vacation to Thailand? :0)

Now, however, I get it. I at last have the latest-greatest elite toy and for starters, all the pent-up demand for music that my ipod-less experience to date (Shuffle doesn't really count folks) is alone transforming my reality into an immersive, escapist delight.

And I KNOW I haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to appreciating the elegance of the device's integrated design and to leveraging the Brave New World of AppleStore applications being promulgated as I type.

The horror of it all is that now that I can access Facebook 24X7, the reactionary makers of the beloved Mr. Potatohead I referenced in an earlier post have pulled an RIAA and decided to use the courts rather than customers to decide what products we have available to us. What will I now do with my insane amount of discretionary time??

Let the market decide!!!

Are we going to party like it's 1999?

A few weeks ago I posted a question on LinkedIn asking how the current Web 2.0 "bubble" is different than the first one. Many respondents feel the lessons learned 7ish years ago won't be repeated and took issue with me calling our current market activity a "bubble."

I won't argue....I'll simply instruct them to go* here and see if they still disagree!



* ok, maybe not "go" but you know what I mean

What's real?

I came across an absolutely hysterical - or is it tragic? - parody of Linden Lab's Second Life. It's one of those things I keep looking at over & over because I can't stop laughing (albeit the irreverence).

I remember when SPINNING first came out - I thought, "How absurd! Why would anyone prefer a dark, stuffy, confined room over the real thing?" And here I am, (x) years later, subjecting myself to that very instrument of torture I was so quick to condemn earlier.

[Is it just me, or is it actual lipids I wipe off of the floor at the end of class??].