Gchat Status Messages, Part II

This is the second of two-part post on Gchat status messages. In the first, I discussed the major categories of status messages. In this post, I'll address some of the dos-and-don'ts of a proper status message.

1. Recycling. I know this is asking a lot, but I really find it tiresome when someone recycles an old status message. In the case of "class" or "work," yes, that's appropriate. But your friends will thank you for giving them something new. I took the time to read that long quote a week ago; I won't do it again.

2. Fishing. This is a sensitive one. When someone makes a cry for help on his/her status message - "This sucks!" - s/he is asking you to message them. I know we all cave to this impulse from time to time, but if you want to talk about something - chat someone. That's what IM is all about, right?

3. Never changing your status. Feed me! Your status message has read "dingleberry" the entire time we've been chat friends (over two years). I'm ready to move on.

4. Ever changing your status. Some people scroll through messages constantly, sometimes several times in one chat conversation. When you're chatting with someone, they receive the changed status as a line of IM. I find this distracting and confusing. Is our conversation not enough for you? It's like watching someone else channel surf.

Conclusions: Give your friends a good reason to mouse-over your name and read your status. Value their time and net-attention span by giving them something fresh and creative.

If you can't think of something that fits the bill, leave it at Available. As far as status goes, there are worse things to be!

Live Blog - Net Neutrality 2008

Visit the conference webpage, www.netneutrality2008.org, for full information and schedules.

You can also click HERE for a live video stream of the event. Updates will be posted below the post-modern, self-referential photo:

Session 1:

AT&T's Richard Clarke began by stating that one's definition of fairness "depends heavily on where one sits in the Internet ecosystem." While this may sound reasonable, I can't help but believe that there is an objective notion of what is fair in terms of net neutrality. After discussing (briefly) his opposition to the proposed Dorgan-Snowe legislation, Clarke abruptly ended his presentation by stating the following: "By trying to satisfy all sides, as politicians often do, they end up taking the most extreme position."

I was glad that Tim Wu challenged this "classic framing technique" employed by Clarke which made AT&T's stance seem reasonable while making proponents of net neutrality seem more fringe.

It's easy enough to say that "fairness" is a matter of perspective, but that's a cop out. Clarke should consider reading up on his John Rawls (and specifically the "veil of ignorance") before imposing his (company's) take on what is "fair."

Final note: Lawrence Spiwak seems to think that commoditization of the internet will lead to fewer carriers and, therefore, higher costs. I challenge him to present a single economic model in which commoditization encourages anything other than lower prices and increased market competition.

Session 2:

The rock star here was clearly Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America. Overall, I thought the panel was a bit lopsided, with three libertarian-minded, anti-regulation economists taking most of the spotlight. But their PowerPoint presentations could not match up with Mr. Cooper's informal remarks about the history of a regulated telecommunications industry and the importance of providing correct incentives for companies like AT&T to open up their networks to non-discriminatory practices.

Mr. Cooper also wins the award so far for best extension of the toll road analogy: "It's appropriate for a toll road cashier to count the wheels on your truck, not what you're carrying."

What I don't understand yet is why nobody is talking about the fact that ISP's and content providers are often one and the same entity, or subsidiaries of a parent company, or so deeply entwined in content distribution agreements that they cannot be trusted to police themselves. The anti-regulation crowd would have you gloss over this little detail and ask you to believe that companies like Time Warner, AT&T and Comcast would willingly cannibalize their revenue streams in the interest of public welfare.

Keynote:

Rachelle Chong wins the award for quote of the day (so far): "You've heard of serial killers? Well, I'm a serial regulator."

Session 3:

Richard Bennett introduced his discussion by saying, "I'm against net neutrality because my job depends upon it." Enough said.

Fred von Lohmann put the smack dab on Comcast and AT&T for controlling innovation (a la BitTorrent) and invading privacy (a la copyright enforcement). I hope that someone produces a rough transcript of his remarks because they were that spot on. A new blog entry will be necessary for Fred's analysis of this little gem alone.

I would be remiss if I didn't commend one of the few female voices on today's panels, Colette Vogele, who illustrated beautifully the importance of net neutrality in stimulating innovation from upstart content producers such as Alive in Baghdad and Political Lunch.

The biggest takeaway from this session is the reinforcement of something I've long suspected: innovation comes from the fringe...always. Even in large corporations, it is the self-motivated "intrapreneur" who breaks from the pack. If we are not willing to support and defend innovation from the fringes, then we might as well be overt about our complacency and love of corporate mediocrity.

UPDATE: Maybe the highlight of this session (though for reasons not intended) was the fiery teleconference by Scott Cleland in which he basically concluded that proponents of net neutrality are all "naive and potentially disasterous" in their thinking. The best part was looking at the larger-than-life portrait of a smiling Mr. Cleland as he referred to Fred von Lohmann as a "two-year-old tantrum thrower." Had Mr. Cleland actually been here in person, he might have noticed the subtle but important difference between people laughing with him and laughing at him.

Session 4:

Well, since I still need to pack for a trip to London tomorrow, I will leave it to my colleague to summarize the highlights of this session. (I'm sure this is profoundly disappointing to the two people out there who are reading this blog!)

Residuals

Now that the WGA and AMPTP are resuming informal discussions, I thought this was a curious app to find on Facebook today. Note that the description explicitly states "this is not an official app of Comedy Central." And yet it allows you to "watch the latest nightly episode or any older clips tv-commercial free."



Hmm...I wonder what the odds are that "tv-commercial free" is the same thing as plain old "commercial free." But if there are web-commercials embedded in the app, and it's not an official app of Comedy Central, then how do you suppose they'll calculate those residuals?

Gchat Status Messages, Part I

In Gmail's chat feature (or independent chat client Google Talk or "Gtalk"), users have the option of creating a status message that appears below your name. In traditional IM programs like AIM or YIM, this would be the Away Message. In Gmail, however, the status is constantly there and has taken on some of the qualities of Twitter ("What are you doing right now?") and of social network "headlines" (as in MySpace).

I present the categories of Gmail status messages:

1. Strictly Utilitarian
The person's status reads "class" or "at work." Technically, there's nothing offensive about these status messages, except that they're pretty boring. They did get interesting around the holidays, however; I saw quite a few indicating the person's location (Austin, TX or Detroit, MI), which led to new insights on where people come from.

2. Quotes
These can be either stuffy (philosophers writing before Christ) or irreverent (TV shows). Entertaining, but the quote better be good. Otherwise you're forced to roll over their name to expand the quote to read it, and feel dissatisfied, having wasted precious internet surfing seconds. You also have to be careful using these because friends may read deeper into them than you anticipate. Avoid any quotes about love!

3. Inside Jokes
Totally incomprehensible except to another person. These are wholly annoying, unless you're in on the joke, in which case they're delightful and flattering. My friend's status the other day: "Let me put my poems in you." Thought-provoking, anyway.

4. Shout Outs
These reference another person and are cousins to Inside Jokes. Often, however, at least some fellow friends will understand the reference. For example, my friend's status read "Katz cheats," and I knew he was referring to an ongoing Scrabulous game on Facebook with our friend Katz.

5. Blanks
No status message at all, so it reads "Available." Boring! Occasionally indicating laziness, but there are worse things. I'd rather leave mine blank than bring an offensive status message into the world.

6. Busy
Coupled with the red dot with the white line, like a Do Not Enter/Wrong Way sign, this status conveys real foreboding. Sometimes combined with #1, which may help alleviate the curiosity of others.

This is Part I of a two-part post on Gchat status message protocols. Part II.

Grammar 2.0

Perhaps it's just the residual English major coming through here, but does it bother anyone else when software apps are blatantly lazy about grammar? Consider a recent Facebook news feed:




Sure, it may seem innocent enough. After all, it's merely the substitution of a third-person plural possessive pronoun where a more gender-specific and singular "his" or "her" would have been the grammatically correct alternative. But where does it end?

It may be a computer geek's world out there, but let's not forget that a good copy editor is also useful when writing code, and it just so happens that there are a lot of talented writers looking for some non-union work these days.

Does That Ring a Bell?

After more than three years, I finally got a new cell phone. It's my first phone with video/camera functions and a QWERTY keyboard. It does not, however, contain the more than 200 contacts I'd acquired over the years.

[Quick story: I went to Tahoe with a friend and his girlfriend, who doesn't snowboard. While we were on the slopes, she borrowed my phone, because she'd lost hers the week before. She did some slipping on the ice...and my cell didn't leave Tahoe.]

I forgot how disorienting it used to be to pick up a phone without caller ID! There's a mix of anxiety and anticipation particular to picking up a mystery phone call.

It got especially interesting a few days ago on my birthday when the anonymous text messages flowed in. I found myself wondering things like, 'Who calls me cutie? And kiddo? Where's an 858 area code?' I realized that I had exactly one cell phone number memorized: my own.

The new phone came with a free app from Verizon that automatically syncs my contact list to their network every night.

iBugs iStand Corrected

UPDATE: Sansserif has pointed out that iPhone's failure to notify Gmail users that their messages would be deleted is technically not a "bug," per se, as the software update still does exactly what it was intended to do. However, the damage control statement issued by Gmail indicates, at the least, an iGaffe on the part of Apple for not disclosing the change.

I was glad to see that Apple's software update 1.1.3 for the iPhone has implemented the new application which cleverly substitutes for a true GPS system. However, the first round of iBugs has arrived. In case you missed Gmail's public service announcement to iPhone users, I bring it to you in full:

Attention iPhone POP users

If you configured Gmail access on your iPhone by tapping the large 'Gmail' icon in mail setup, please note that installing software update 1.1.3 will automatically convert Gmail on your iPhone from POP access to IMAP access. This means that actions you take on your iPhone will now sync with actions in your Gmail web interface (i.e. messages you read on your iPhone will show up as 'Read' in the web interface). This also means that messages you delete on your iPhone will be moved to the Trash folder in the Gmail web interface, and thus deleted after 30 days. Please exercise caution when deleting messages, as this behavior is markedly different from POP access.

For more information regarding IMAP, visit our IMAP Access topic.

For additional information regarding this change, please visit Apple Support.

If you wish to use Gmail IMAP access without deleting messages on your iPhone, please follow these instructions.

If you wish to continue using POP access on your iPhone, please follow these instructions to manually configure POP.

DWT

Welcome to the 21st century. From the makers of Driving Under the Influence (DUI) and Driving While Intoxicated (DWI), we proudly present: Driving While Texting (DWT).

The Washington Post reports that Virginia's General Assembly "is considering a pair of bills that would ban texting while driving a car, bicycle, motorcycle, moped or even an electric wheelchair."

If this sounds absurd, consider the fact that six states have already considered anti-texting laws in 2007, with New Jersey, Washington and the city of Phoenix passing resolutions outlawing the practice.

I'm no fan of texting drivers, but this trend in lawmaking sounds more like a post-modern fad than an actual public service. After all, have you seen some of the things people do while driving? Just because it's technically not illegal to eat with chopsticks while operating your vehicle at 70MPH, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

So remember, if you're walking down the sidewalk and see someone in an electric wheelchair trying to multitask with their cellphone, don't be afraid to make a citizen's arrest. Together, we can keep the streets safe from efficiency.

A Welcome Return...

I'll just say it: strike or no strike, I'm glad to see Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert back on TV.

I think they both handled the awkwardness very well by making it explicit that they were ad-libbing the entire show. Colbert was brilliant, even without the use of his teleprompter. And Stewart, true to form, was able to make fun of both sides of the issue. Just as he would normally be pointing out the idiocy of Republicans and Democrats alike, Stewart managed to walk the tightrope by ribbing his executive bosses and pot-smoking peers equally.

(NB: It's ironic that the links above take you to a Comedy Central owned page with internet advertising, which is exactly the dispute in question with the WGA writers).

The "A" Word

In case you missed it, the Bay Area got hit with the fiercest storm in over five years on Friday, leading to over 1 million power outages throughout Northern California. Around noon, the lights flickered valiantly as the power lines fought against hurricane-force winds, but ultimately I was left in the dark.

My first reaction was, of course, to grab my iPhone.

I looked on the list of available wi-fi networks and, finding none, deduced that the entire neighborhood was affected by the outage. It was then that I knew it would be a long day alone with AT&T's lackluster EDGE data network.

Hours passed, and I eventually stopped trying to be productive. It was nice (for a while) to read by the window, but as twilight settled in and the battery on my phone reached 20%, I knew that I had to take some serious action.

Fortunately, my brother's friend had invited us over for dinner. We forgot to ask if we could bring a bottle of wine or anything, but we did bring our laptops and cell phone chargers to plug in once we got there. While our host cooked, we would periodically check email or idly surf our favorite sites just because we could. At that point, I was just calling it a "guilty pleasure."

It was only when we went to a movie later in the evening that my brother mentioned the "A" word. I contend that it was his fault.

Two minutes before showtime, he said he didn't believe me when I told him that both Michael Cera and Jason Bateman (of Arrested Development fame) were starring in the film we were about to see. Clearly, I had to pull out the iPhone to correct him before the opening credits rolled. So once again, I found myself slogging through the EDGE network, searching IMDB for the cast of Juno (very good movie, BTW).

"I think you might have a slight internet addiction," my brother said. I didn't bother to look up as the Safari taskbar edged ever so slowly across the screen.

The verdict: I was right, but I had to wait for the opening credits to prove it.

Picking Scabs

Contrary to popular belief, the first great political event of 2008 is not happening tonight at the Iowa caucuses--it already happened last night on Jay Leno. A number of blogs sympathetic with the WGA strike are suggesting that Leno broke strike rules when he admitted that he wrote his own monologue.

"That's a huge problem," according to Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily, "because it violates the strike rules of one of his unions." As a WGA member, this makes Leno a "scab."

This is not only a potential problem for Leno, but also for Republican Presidential Candidate, Mike Huckabee, who similarly crossed picket lines to appear on the show. Though I suspect he was willing to sacrifice the union vote for the free publicity. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, performed a pre-taped appearance on Letterman. Unlike Huckabee and Leno, Clinton and Letterman come out on the right side of this argument. Letterman's own company, Nation Wide Pants, owns the rights to both the Late Show and the Late Late Show and was therefore able to strike a deal with the WGA.

This demonstrates the true value of owning your own company in this volatile environment. As Letterman climbs from #2 to #1, the Writer's Guild of America gains leverage against NBC to strike a deal, or watch their bread and butter Tonight Show fade into the background as new late night options arise (umm...Daily Show, anyone?).

Apparently, Hillary's appearance on Dave didn't have quite the desired effect in terms of poll numbers. But the ratings will speak for themselves. The first great political battle of 2008 has begun, and it's NBC's move.

The Great Debate

You might have noticed a new application on your Facebook homepage announcing the upcoming ABC News-Facebook Presidential Debates. Erick Schonfeld at the TechCrunch blog has some interesting analysis of the debate format, which apparently will not be similar to the CNN-YouTube Debates. "The exact tie-in details to the televised debate are in development," Schonfeld quotes an unnamed Facebook spokesperson as saying. "But this will not be a case where there will be direct questions from users like you've seen in other debates."

So what's the point?

Well, from a marketing standpoint it's sheer genius. After all, ABC will gather real-time data on how many people are watching the live debates from the Facebook demographic--which just happens to be the prized mid-20's, highly educated, young professional. Not a bad day's work, really. At a time when many young people are abandoning the reruns on TV for streaming content online, I'm sure that ABC was able to sell some nice ads for that little Facebook partnership.

But that still doesn't answer the question, what's the point?

I'm torn. In spite of the highly public nature of adding and dropping apps on Facebook, I am planning to add the "New Hampshire Debates" application in the name of social science. In my view, the real question is whether television executives actually have the stomach to utilize the internet for what it's worth. My hunch is that they're too worried about cannibalizing their traditional revenue streams to view the web as anything more than a means to an end. In the meantime, the question of when and how truly convergent content will reach our TV screens remains the great debate.

UPDATE: I suffered through a portion of the Republican debate, and there was no tie-in with Facebook other than branding. Same is true for the ABC News page on Facebook. There's no obvious reason why the partnership really matters to anyone other than the corporations.

RTFMS

My first conversation with my dad in 2008, and the subject was none other than how he really, seriously, honestly and truly, no joke, was going to take a shotgun and blow up his Mac. His language was a little more colorful, but it would certainly make this blog NSFW.

Speaking of acronyms, when I realized that all he really wanted was free tech support, my courteous response was RTFMS.