Am I making a “tone” argument? Yes, I think I am. I sincerely believe tone matters. Articles that take on the tone of attack pieces or fluff pieces lower the quality of dialog for everyone. Internet comments are notorious for being terribly <insert your own>-ist and it’s a reputation that’s well deserved. Another kind of comment that is becoming pervasive is the sycophantic comment. It’s a comment that adds little to no value to the discussion, no new information, and is usually an attempt by the commenter to ingratiate themselves with the author. So we end up with two kind of comments: vile and vapid. I’m probably guilty of this myself, but after this week, I’m going to take a long look and see what I can do to avoid the “vile or vapid” paradigm.
To some, my complaints might sound like I think everyone should be nice and fuzzy, and never have a dissenting word. This is very much untrue. I’ve been in multi-hour arguments with people who I vehemently disagree with without ever needing to raise my voice or resort to ad hominem attacks. I did it many times on my podcast. I have a very rare confluence of political and moral beliefs so it’s very rare that I’d ever come across someone else who agrees with me on everything. I’m almost always in disagreement with whoever I’m speaking to on something, whether it’s my lack of religion, my belief in small government, my veganism, or cavalier attitude about what people should be able to do in the privacy of their own homes. I’m not against conflict, I’m against bad dialog caused by the desire for page views and aggrandizement.
So what are my preferences and suggestions? The simplest one is stick to facts, things you know. All to many times in blogging and in “response post” blogging, authors assume and extrapolate facts that can’t be determined, without stating the speculation in the post. The next suggestion would be, if you read a blog post and you have some violent disagreement with it, email or call the person for a deeper explanation if possible. Countless times over the last year, I’ve seen response posts attacking people without ever taking the time contact the author over the offending post. Response blogging is perhaps one of the worst forms of communication, just barely above not communicating at all. And my last suggestion is simple: keep blogging. I don’t think people should stop blogging, I think they should get better.
At various times over the last month, I’ve thought about deleting all my tech and skeptic blogs out of my reader, and uncircling them all on Google+. The skeptic blogs have almost had me decide to not go to TAM2012 this year, an event I never thought I’d ever miss again. Well, I’ve stepped back off the edge from that one, and will go again, but I hope TAM 2012 can improve upon last year. We’ll see. Also, there are so many wonderful bloggers out there, some of my favorite ones are Steven Novella, Barbara Drescher, Mike Elgan amongst others, that I don’t want to sound like a blogger hater. Just something I wanted to say, since two of my “worlds” have been having the same problems for a while.
Enjoying Google TV via the Logitech Revue more than I expected. I’m not certain I could call it ready for my parents, but collecting video/music content from around the world of tv, streaming and satellite is not an easy task.
In any case, I’m very tempted to get a second one, but first I need a new switch. Running out of ethernet ports in my office!
Based on my wife’s success with her Tumbr blogs, I’ve switched my main blog over to Tumblr as well. I will move all my old content over to this new platform in time.
With the release of the Galaxy Nexus, there is finally an offically supported phone running the latest and greatest version of Android. I’m not going to review the phone really, because, unlike in the iPhone world, you have many choices for Android, and you should pick the one that is most comfortable for you. For me and my large hands, a 4.6” screen is no big deal, but for others, it might be. Some might like a keyboard, some may want an LED notification, and some may not care. So for this, I focus on Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).
The overall look and feel of ICS is a vast improvement over Gingerbread and Honeycomb. The new “soft buttons” which change according to context have really grown on me. Swipes between screens are smooth, scrolling is smooth, and pinch zooming is smooth. Key word: smooth. Menus and options feel really polished, while the look of modals really looks clean and crisp. This is not your G1’s Android. If you’ve ever used an Android phone before and didn’t like it, you should try ICS, preferably the pure Google experience. The launcher in ICS is so good, you may never want to use a third party one.
From here on out I will highlight different apps and features:
* Gmail
Gmail is simply awesome in ICS. It looks great, many mail functions are exposed without needing to go to a secondary menu, and of course, it’s powered by a cutting edge email cloud service that millions of people use every day. I don’t spend a second thought worrying about accessing my email, it’s always a browser or phone app away. Everything, as always with Android and Gmail, is synced instantly across all my devices.
* Calendar
Pretty much the same as Gmail really. Google Calendar was always a strong point. I update an event on my phone, and the next time I log into my calendar from the browser, everything, again as always in Android, is synced.
* Widgets
Widgets are awesome. I really don’t know how iOS people use a phone without them. With a few flicks of my thumb, I can scan all my email and my calendar, without ever needing to enter an app. They’re resizable now and allow scrolling from within the widget. All my audio apps have widgets too, and it’s not unusual for me to go hours without ever entering an app since I can do so much from the homescreen.
* Battery life
You mileage may vary with battery life, because some apps just suck with battery usage. I’ve used Touchdown to access exchange email for years and it’s always been great. However, in ICS it’s a battery pig. I had to drop it and use the built in Exchange support, which is now both excellant and great with battery. I’ve played music over wifi for 9 hours and only used up 25% of the battery. It truly sips at battery power.
I was able to find out that Touchdown was the battery pig due to the great new battery tools you have that allow you to really nail down which app sucked down all your battery. Invaluable tool.
* Cloud integration
While iCloud has stolen a lot of the recent cloud thunder, I think Android has always been a step ahead. My photos, email, calendar, chats, music, and books are all stored in the Cloud with Google’s cloud services. Wherever I am, I can get to my things. I can edit documents on my phone, save them to the cloud, and then continue updating on my desktop. I’ve done this a couple times with spreadsheets I use for work. I think if you want the true cloud solution, you want Google. To borrow a phrase from Apple, it just works. You’re not locked into an Android device either, as all your data can be access via a browser, and if you’d like, downloaded to your machine with Google Takeout. It’s a story Google has not sold enough or mentioned enough.
* Final thoughts
I’m not an Android fanboy, I’m somewhat of an evangelist. I think iOS is a good OS and the iPhone is a good phone. For me, and I think a lot of people, Android has always provided a distinct experience better in many ways than in iOS. With ICS, though, it has clearly moved the bar farther than iOS 5 did. ICS proves you can have widgets, true multitasking, cloud integration, and polish, all without killing the battery. I invite everyone to check it out when Galaxy Nexus’s are finally on sale in the US.
At this week’s F8 developer conference, Facebook changed their game. The kind of updates Facebook is enabling and streamlining are no longer true social interactions. They are bits and pieces of our daily lives that aren’t so much about being social as they are about cataloging yourself for Facebook. The new “verbs” only add mundane context to what you’re doing, the new “Share first, regret later” mode of “lifestyle apps” aren’t a form of sincere sharing, and do we really need to go over the new design? It’s awful. I’m so sick of Facebook, and not in a mid-thirties hipster wannabe kind of way. I’m worn out of Facebook. How did I get here?
I was not a particularly early adopter of MySpace, and I never used Friendster. I dabbled with Twitter before I started using Facebook a few years ago. I switched from MySpace to Facebook because it was a cleaner looking site. MySpace was so awful with terrible design, Flash, and audio it became unusable for me. In that respect, Facebook was a welcome change and I enjoyed using it to share and read what other had shared. It was fun and <strong>social</strong>.
New Facebook designs came and went, apps were introduced, and new world of social games were introduced. I played a few, but I never got into the Farmville games and I never spent a dime of virtual currency in the Facebook universe. I would post links to paranomal related things, skeptical stories, libertarian stories, and maybe a baseball story or two. Once I started podcasting, I started promoting it via Facebook as well. It was a normal and typical interaction with the most dominant social network.
There were some things that I never liked about Facebook, though. My Facebook Wall was dominated by Facebook game updates. I’m a vegan and even I got sick of reading about turnips and virtual crops being picked. I blocked a ton of apps from being able to update my Wall and that eventually cleaned up the experience. Also, the Facebook mail/message system was underdeveloped.
This year Facebook has started to make significant changes. They changed their mail system to something called Messenger, that now is a merge between instant messaging and email. It’s terrible. Email is something I send when I don’t want/need an instant response. In the new Facebook Messenger system all messages, IM or Email pop up an annoying window immediately. People close the pop up and forget about the message. As I said, it’s terrible.
So what now? Well, now that Facebook is basically a MMORPG where the name of the game is creating a better/more interesting/more learned/more contrarian version of yourself and broadcasting it, I’m bowing out. Sure, I’m as guilty of social network vanity as the next person, but I know when it’s time to quit. I’m moving and staying with Google+ and Twitter, two social networks, that you know, are social. Google+ conversations are great, Google Hangouts is a killer feature, and Twitter has its own universe that is interesting and valuable. Facebook has too much clutter for me now, and I haven’t decided of it’s trying to create voyeuristic, stalker, or vicarious existence for its members. But as I said, I quit. Perhaps I will quit Google+ at some point, who knows.
I’ve posted a number of links to articles about Facebook better written than this post I’m sure, and I encourage anyone to look at my feed at: profiles.google.com/shane.p.brady to get the articles I’m referring to.
