Inblognito

Last month Cubans won the right to own personal computers. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Only foreigners (at hotels) and government officials and academics are allowed to access the internet, as the Washington Post reports.

But people are blogging about their experiences and criticisms of the government in Cuba; this blogger dresses like a tourist and sneaks into hotels to blog.

The government is blogging too - to improve Cuba's image worldwide, naturally.

Searching

I recently attended a conference on online advertising. A woman from Microsoft was seated at my table and we made friendly conversation. Around lunchtime, she asked if I knew of any local coffee shops. I didn't, but I had my laptop open so I offered, "Do you want me to Google it for you?" She let out a strained laugh and said, "Or you could Live Search it."
I laughed too, but I was confused. I'm pretty plugged in, but it took me a full two seconds to have any idea what she was talking about. Finally it clicked: Live Search is Microsoft's search engine.

When I got home that night, I decided to compare Live Search to Google. (And I had to Google it to get the URL...) I was looking for a Thai restaurant, so I entered "Thai near 94118." Here are the screen shots of the results:




To be fair, they're both similar content-wise. Google's was more helpful primarily because the map was provided on the search results page. When I clicked into Live Search's results, the map they provided didn't have zoom functionality, a real disadvantage if you live in a city and need a cross street.

Off The Wall

Every once in a while, I hear about one of those phone calls that goes something like this:

"Hello, Joe? Hi, it's me, Jim. You remember...from high school? Well I just wanted to call because I'm feeling really bad about that mean trick I played on you at the tailgate party senior year. That was really dumb of me, and even though it's been fifteen years I can't stop thinking about what an jerk I was. I hope you'll accept my apology."

But these days, the mea culpa doesn't even need to come by way of telephone. Consider this recent Facebook wall post from one high school friend to another:


Now, when I saw this in my news feed the other day I naturally wondered what my friend could have possibly done to her that was so bad before homecoming in '93. After all, we went to the same school and I hadn't remembered hearing about any earth-shaking drama surrounding that particular dance.

The answer came a couple days later:



It's good to see that Facebook can not only reunite friends from the past, but also atone for the sins of youth--and publicly at that!

A Modern Take on Mass-Emails

After being on the receiving end of a recent mass-emailing, I got into a discussion with a good friend of mine about mass-email etiquette. YouAreYou's comment to this was: "How quaint!" It does seem a bit quaint to have an email etiquette conversation; after all, everyone is claiming email is old-school. But I soon realized that my reluctance over being included on a mass-email was actually fairly modern:

With Gmail, the other people on the email will end up in your contact list. That causes trouble when you use sites that scan your contacts for friends (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) or when Gchat updates your buddy list. You end up having all these people in your contact and buddy list that you don't actually know.

Of course I also feel a little hesitant when people I don't know have my email. Who knows how careful strangers are with their data?

However, my biggest beef with mass-emailing is actually pretty old-school: Snarky comments, inside jokes, people trying to be funny...who wants to get tangled in a reply-all thread like that?

Time Travel

All my prayers have been answered. Once again, those clever folks at Google have defied the laws of the universe to bring a top notch product to market: custom time. Just make sure you don't read their terms of use.

Okay, so maybe they aren't quite up to the standards of The Onion, but I give them a grudging smile for the effort.