Category Archives: Web/Tech

I believe that to understand you must use.

I didn’t understand Twitter when I first heard about it. Now that I’m using Twitter actively, I’m still confused but less so.

Twitter, for the uninitiated, is a free service to which you send text message or web-based updates about where you are and what you’re doing. Connect with friends and you will soon be receiving their updates on your cell phone. It’s designed to be used on-the-go.

Here is my Twitter page.

Why in the world would you want to post that you’re in the coffee shop down the street? And why would you care what exactly a friend is doing at a given moment in time? Well, I’ve already had one experience where I read that a friend was physically near me and we were able to connect.

For friends who aren’t physically near me the value is only in maintaining our relationship through yet another dimension — namely short, frequent, "what-I’m-doing" kind of updates.

I have no idea how long I’ll stick with Twitter but for the time being I’m enjoying using it and find it fascinating.

While the rest of the country’s streets are filled with protesters trumpeting abortion rights, gay marriage, Iraq war, foreign aid allocations, and other worldly issues, here in San Francisco we have our priorities straight: We want free wi-fi and we want it now! A grassroots, pro wi-fi protest was held today in front of City Hall. Free wireless internet is a right, not a privilege, and we won’t stop our activism until every boy and girl has access to clean, fresh, sanitary wi-fi.

I’m moderating a discussion next week on the ethical implications of science. How will our society prepare for future science breakthroughs? We’ll discuss bio concerns like cloning, longevity, and designer genes, and macro concerns like privacy.

If anyone knows of good articles or ideas around this (very broad!) topic, please let me know. Thanks.

Over the past few weeks I’ve undergone a serious upgrade in my IT infrastructure, thanks in large part to the wizardry of Ross Carlson. Always good to do some spring cleaning.

Domains: All my domain names and DNS hosting now reside at GoDaddy.

Mobile Device: It was time to put the trusty BlackBerry 7750 aside. I’m now using a T-Mobile Dash as my SmartPhone. So far I’d give the Dash a 6 out of 10. Windows Mobile 5 is pretty slick and integrates fine with Mac OS X via The Missing Sync. If you get a Dash, be sure to spend $25 and buy a “shield” for it to prevent scratches.

Porting my phone number from Earthlink/Verizon to T-Mobile took a lot of work — after several days of fighting clueless Indian call center reps from Earthlink, I started filing a lawsuit against Earthlink in California Small Claims Court. Amazingly, they woke up, ported my number, and refunded nearly $1,000.

Handsfree Headset: Since I’ll be driving so much next month, I got a Bluetooth wireless headset. With voice commands I can dial into my address book without touching the phone.

Email Server: This is the most substantial. I’m now off my POP3 accounts and on a Microsoft Exchange server. Pushing my data to the sky makes sync much easier. My Dash, webmail, and desktop email are all synced with Exchange. If you use POP3 now, I highly recommend asking around to see if you can get on Exchange — especially if you tote a mobile.

Spam: Spam is no longer part of my reality. Up until this point, I received a few hundred spam messages a day. I used a local spam client to manage this, but this still meant my mobile device and webmail would be inundated. Enter Postini. With Postini laying on-top of the Exchange server, spam is gone. Toast. See ya later.

Email Processing: This is a process issue. I keep my emails. Most people don’t. I like having an archive. I finally got around to archiving my messages since toting 25k+ emails and 30k+ sent items in Entourage was slowing me down. On a going forward basis I will be much more judicious about keeping emails. Most quick messages I will delete. I hope I don’t regret this.

Next up? Consolidating my web hosting onto one Linux box.

Steve Boyd did a great presentation recently titled “Overload, Shmoverload” where he shares some thoughts about the new “Continuous Partial Attention” world we live in. I’m fascinated by time management, energy management, the attention economy, the costs and benefits of being always-on, and all the rest of it.

Quotes from Steve:

• We are transitioning to a new ethos, in which remaining connected to those most important to us is more imporant (and more valuable, in the final analysis) than personal productivity. This seems counterintuitive, since people talk about time stress the way that people in the agricultural era talked about backache. But the productivity of the network — those that matter to you — is more important than the piecework in your lap.
• We have to spand more time scanning the horizon — keeping up with all your friends’ status updates on Twitter, reviewing the newest posts on techmeme, etc. — than people used to, because the rate of change has increased. The hypothetical value of focusing on one thing and getting it done as quickly as possible has decreased.
• In an era of flow you can ignore things that don’t look threatening or critical. Important stuff will be signalled in a bunch of ways: critical breaking news stories will show in Twitter tweets, RSS, emails, IM. But you can just ignore transient stuff. That’s why etiquette around IM has to be based on ‘it’s ok to ignore IMs’ because otherwise it becomes a chore demanding foreground attention.
• Flow Strategies:
  1. Time is a shared space — your time is truly not your own
  2. Productivity is second to Connection: network productivity trumps personal productivity
  3. Everything important will find it’s way to you many, many times: don’t worry if you miss it
  4. Remain in the flow: be wrapped up in the thing that has captured your attention
• How do jugglers juggle? They don’t focus on the balls, the movements, or timing. They unfocus: it is a field of all three dimensions and their attention is distributed. Good jugglers can also sing or tell jokes while juggling. Unfocus.
• The New Balancing Act: “For the average person, linked in a dense, cascading social network of collaborators who depend on your timely response to critical events, it will prove increasingly difficult — if not impossible — to veer away from continuous partial attention. We will have to learn a new balancing act, and it will be strongly canted toward spending more cycles scanning the horizon and fewer looking down at the piecework in our laps”