In the tradition of reviewing my ‘performace’ I hit the big items on my list here: http://hippeelee.com/blog/2011/07/the-solo-week/. I didn’t get to climb but everything else got the attention it needed. Some notes for the future. Staining is messy. I’ll need to pressure wash the windows and deck furniture … the wind blew it everywhere. The wood looks good though and i’ll touch up on a cool day this fall. The Wall is built but I need one more big block and then three or four more toppers. No pictures, I think I may switch to Google+ picture albums and just link to them here. A social network is not really the place for these kinds of posts but the picture manager I am using isn’t as slick as the plus picture interface. Speaking of plus - the coolest thing was supper easy. I got an email notification from the Erie, CO website for a police alert. It seems that 7 homes were bergled over the weekend and it was quick and easy to share that and target only the people who would be interested in it. More and more, what I like, is a well thought out UI/UX. From looking at things that break on my car to targeting my personal message and presence on the web - make it easy for me and I will be a happy customer. Make it hard for me and i’ll just be lazy. I read an argument that was made to defend facebook because of all the attention (I’m hesitant to say press because I’m not sure the sensationalistic, soundbyte standard is really press). The gist of the defense was something like “All google did was put a nice interface on very similar services that facebook already provides. Sort of true, depending on how you classify and use the services. However, isn’t that what Apple is famous for doing? The ipod+itunes system was launched in late 2001 and I recall people saying something similar - it’s just an mp3 player with a nicer UI. We know how that turned out for both Consumers and Apple. By offering a system that substantially improved the experience of buying and managing digital media Apple got a huge number of people to join their ecosystem. For me, this is where facebook goes wrong, The few times I tried to use it, the facebook ui felt unintuitive and foreign, it led me down blind ally’s, confused me with what my current state was and how my actions would change or update that state and never made it clear who could see my messages. If everything is public then why do we need facebook when we have websites and blogs?. For me, when it comes to managing a free service I realize that I am the product and that I cede some control in exchange for a free account. But if the service isn’t easy, if your policies are ever changing or conflabulated with a bunch of legal jargon that rivals eulas, i’m lazy and I’m not going to put in the work. I’ve gotten by pretty well the last 35 years … facebook hasn’t made it better or worse, just different. The first few times I tried to use it it sucked hours from my life and I was just trying to get it set up. It became more like a job to understand and manage the network. Since I am lazy and I loathe wasting my free time keeping on top of policy changes and updating my state so it’s inline with my personal opinions and preferences - I put the minimum viable information needed to represent myself and stopped wasting my free time on the site. With google’s interface, in less than a day I have already done what took me hours? days? to try and do before. But that’s just me I am coming to believe that t e”social networking wars” much like editor, programming and holy wars are really arguments about preferences. And people are full of preferences, just like they are full of phenotypes. Most genes are expressed in ranges that go from one extreme to another. That’s what’s interesting here - google+ is a similar concept to those that came before it, in some ways its an evolution to attract the part of the range of people who want a different way to create and manage their online messages and relationships. The other thing that bugs me about twitter/fb is the mareting aspect of it is really just the same. The more things change (technology enabled social media marketing efforts) the more they stay the same (large entrenched businesses pushing their version of reality instead of interacting and adapting based on the feedback from the service.) Take facebook - most large companies have set up accounts, put links on their websites and ask you to friend them or thumbs up them. Why should I do that when Big Co still can’t supply enough help to interact with me personally? Can you have a 1-to-1 discussion with a company representative on fb or twitter? So far, not so much for me. In addition, I don’t believe care what Big Company’s mission and values are - they will always put their interests above mine. Thats ok, big companies are all about synergy and efficiency which saves them (and me) money at the expense of personalized service. The older I get the more inclined I am to pay more for the attention to detail though. It is not free nor is good service easy.
7/11/2011 ~ 5 min read
