IT Director for a non-profit in Washington, DC. Man About Internet.
xkcd has updated their map of online communities
Caption: Best trivia I learned while working on this: 'Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize it's the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD?' Then you wait for the listener to do a double-take.
Benjamin Stein made a great post about the evolution of geeks and their choice in technological tools and how they, as early adopters, affect mainstream adoption AND how this evolution has changed somewhat in the past few years.
But then something strange happened. Nerds switched to Apple laptops. Then lots of people switched to Apple laptops. But the nerds didn’t move on. My nerdiest programmer friends use the same MacBook model as my wife.
Marco Arment responded to Benjamin's post, referring to a post he had written several years back:
Part of my own transition was what I called grown-up computing five years ago, after a year of “adult” life:
Grown-up computing is, put simply, the way I use computers and my attitude toward them now that I’m out of college and settling into the 9-to-5 world. It differs greatly from “young computing”.
[…]
The last thing I want to do is figure out why some program isn’t working or reinstall my operating system. I see these as zero-gain activities: generally, I learn nothing new, I don’t enjoy myself, I’m not being entertained or enriched, and my effort only results in maintaining the status quo.
I’d rather get a computer that didn’t require any maintenance and simply allowed me to do productive work. I’d like to have something to show for all of my clicking and typing instead of simply making information balloons go away. I’d rather write an article for this site than type my serial number again. I’d rather search the internet for interesting or entertaining information to read instead of looking for the solution to an obscure problem for which I only have a useless generic error message. I just want things to work.
It’s likely that most geeks that Ben and I know are in or near our age group, and are probably “computing adults” in a similar sense: they’d rather use computers and related technology to accomplish a goal greater than just messing around with their computers.
But what if this effect, on a larger and less age-specific scale, is the bigger trend that Ben’s seeing?
What if most geeks today really are just buying Macs instead of building their own overclocked Windows PCs from Newegg parts?
What if PC gaming really is on a decline because only a very small slice of the population is willing to pay $500 for a giant, hot, loud video card and endure the Great PC Gaming Pain-in-the-Ass Trifecta of drivers, patches, and copy protection, leaving almost every gamer to just stick with game consoles for a fraction of the cost and hassle?
And what if a big slice of even the most hardcore geeks have abandoned their netbooks for iPads because they just work so much better most of the time?
Even geeks (like us) have their limits of reasonability. At some point, we often decide that what we’ve been doing or what we think we should enjoy just isn’t worthwhile.
Marco largely put down on pixel what I was thinking in my head.
Video from a camera attached to a weather balloon that rose into theupper stratosphere and recorded the blackness of space.
A homeless man & two kermits sing Under Pressure. Epic.
This past weekend my wife and I went to see The Social Network at our local movie threatre in our neighborhood. Being a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Sports Night & Studio 60) I had high hopes for this movie. I've loved all of Sorkin's previous work as someone who appreciates when a movie or tv show doesn't stoop to the lowest common denominator in order to try to get ratings. Sorkin is unapologetic in his use of witty dialog that forces the audience to pay attention to keep up with the film. I knew this wouldn't be an episode of The Jersey Shore (which, by the way, is clear evidence that the human race is doomed to idiocracy).
Now, before I go any further... Have you seen The Social Network yet? If not, go see it now. Do not read any further. Go ahead. I'll wait.
Okay, back now? Good. Let us continue.
As a movie, by itself, disconnected from reality? Fantastic. Amazing. Phenominally good. Aaron Sorkin at his best. I want to watch it again. I will buy this movie immediately when it comes out instead of ripping it from a DVD I got from Netflix in the mail. Oops, did I just type that out loud? Anyway, go see this movie. It is worth it.
Like any Sorkin screenplay, this film's dialogue was endlessly witty. As an asshole-in-training myself, I greatly appreciated the intellectual wit that Sorkin portrayed Zuckerberg's character as possessing throughout the film. In my opinion, the most hilarious, stand-out line of the film was when Zuckerberg's character refers to the two rich douchey Winklevoss twins as the "Winklevii". Yes, quirky geek humor, but I loved it.
I also loved how, throughout the film, the story would cut from the past to the future legal testimony of Zuckerberg and the two parties who were suing him. The back and forth time travel from the past events, as they were happening to the testimony served as a nice way to narrate certain parts of the film in order to tell the history as it was portrayed to happen over a several year period.
Now, all of that being said....the film was grossly inaccurate. I love Aaron Sorkin's work but major parts of the storyline were incorrect and most of the inaccuracies came about because of Sorkin's inherent biases. Rather than try to explain these inaccuracies and Sorkin's biases, I will let Lawrence Lessig someone else whom I greatly admire, do so for me:
Sorkin vs. Zuckerberg
...But as a story about Facebook, it is deeply, deeply flawed. As I watched the film, and considered what it missed, it struck me that there was more than a hint of self-congratulatory contempt in the motives behind how this story was told. Imagine a jester from King George III’s court, charged in 1790 with writing a comedy about the new American Republic. That comedy would show the new Republic through the eyes of the old. It would dress up the story with familiar figures-an aristocracy, or a wannabe aristocracy, with grand estates, but none remotely as grand as in England. The message would be, “Fear not, there’s no reason to go. The new world is silly at best, deeply degenerate, at worst.”Not every account of a new world suffers like this. Alexis de Tocqueville showed the old world there was more here than there. But Sorkin is no Tocqueville. Indeed, he simply hasn’t a clue to the real secret sauce in the story he is trying to tell. And the ramifications of this misunderstanding go well beyond the multiplex....
I recommend you read the rest of his piece, in its entirety for the full rebuttal to the premise of The Social Network's story. That being said, please do see the movie too. Both the movie, and Lessig's article, are worth seeing and reading.
And finally, if you've gotten this far and still haven't went and seen the movie (despite my earlier advice) here is the trailer:
From Jason Kottke:
One of the first things that Steve Jobs did after taking over as Apple's interim CEO in 1997 is to get Apple back on track with their branding. In this short presentation from '97, Jobs talks about branding & Apple's core values and introduces the Think Different campaign.
That might be one of the best five minute explanations of good branding out there. The campaign was very successful in rehabilitating Apple's image with the press and public.
What's interesting is how the iPad and iPhone advertisements focus almost entirely on the product. Apple no longer has to infer that their products are the best by showing you pictures of Albert Einstein and Amelia Earhart...they just show you the products and you know. But I don't see Jobs doing a "fake it 'til you make it" branding presentation anytime soon. :)
The official video is out for “F**k You” by Cee Lo Green, a follow-up to the original typographic themed video for the song that came out last month. It’s off his upcoming album The Lady Killer, which is now available for pre-order.
The new video
The original typographic themed video that went viral last week, in case you missed it: