Disruptive Conversations

Recently in a bit of frustration, I decided to shift from using an Adobe AIR-based Twitter client on my Mac over to using Nambu, a native Mac OSX app. My frustration is due to the fact that all of the major AIR clients - Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck and Twhirl - seem to suffer from the problem of consuming a serious amount of CPU usage on my MacBook Pro. I don't know if this is an inherent issue of using the AIR abstraction layer, which is another layer sitting on top of the operating system, or if the problem lies more in the programming of the applications themselves.

Whatever the case, in frustration this week when my CPU was yet again high and the Activity Monitor showed that the second highest app was one of the Twitter clients, I went off and installed Nambu to give it a try. (The application which is inevitably sucking up the most CPU on my Mac is Firefox... which is why I'm dearly waiting for the real build of Chrome so that I can find and kill off tabs of poorly-written web pages!)

So far, I've been very pleased with how Nambu works. Most importantly for me, I can use multiple Twitter accounts. (I tweet from both @danyork and @voxeo and occasionally a couple of others.) All in all the experience is very similar to that of Seesmic Desktop or TweetDeck. There are, though, some differences which I thought I would note here while I think of them:

• "Compose" field is at the bottom of the screen, versus the top as in TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop. (Not bad, just different and takes some getting used to.)
  
  
• "Compose" field doesn't stay open after you tweet. So if you flip to the Nambu window you can't just click in and start typing. You have to either click the "Compose" button at the top or press Cmd+N to start a tweet.
  
  
• Both TweetDeck and Seesmic (and other Twitter clients) have this UI component where you can go over the picture of someone and have actions right there to either reply, retweet, direct message, etc. In Nambu you have to either click the gear icon on the opposite end of the tweet and then go down to a menu choice... or click on the tweet and click on one of the buttons on the menu at the top. (For me, one value in a desktop Twitter client is speed and the ability to just quickly scan through and act on various tweets. Single-click action buttons are nice for this.)
  
  
• Inability to resize the columns. Ideally I'd like to see more columns on the single page (so that I can visually monitor a bunch of searches at the same time). I'd like to make the columns smaller if I want. (Note that I can't really resize the columns on Seesmic or TweetDeck, either.)
  
  
• "Sent" column doesn't differentiate between tweets/replies and direct messages. All are just shown as "sent". It would be nice if there was a visual clue as to which ones are direct messages.
  
  
• When you click on someone's twitter name, such as "@danyork", you get a list of their recent tweets - but I couldn't see any way to reply to a tweet from that window. I had to click a button to go to their Twitter page to do that.
  
  
• That I could see, there was no "in reply to" feature that would show that a tweet from someone was in reply to another tweet. Now... Nambu does have a VERY cool feature that replies to a tweet are threaded underneath the main tweet... if you can find that original tweet. If you can't find that tweet, though, you are left not easily knowing what the original tweet was.

Again, overall I've been quite pleased with Nambu in the few days that I've started using it... I'll write more here as I use it more.

Comments are, of course, welcome.

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Technorati Tags: twitter, nambu

Are you interested in the disruptive role that Twitter is playing in the media / communication landscape? If so, are you planning to head to Jeff Pulver's 140 Character Conference next Tuesday and Wednesday, June 16 and 17, 2009, in New York City?

Alas, my schedule takes me elsewhere (Orlando, Florida) next week, but if I were available, I'd definitely try to be there at the event. The schedule looks great and the speaker list (aka "cast of characters") is a veritable "who's who" of the social media space.

It truly does look like Jeff has put together a great show... and I expect we'll see LOTS of twittering early next week! (You will be able to watch here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=140conf )

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Technorati Tags: 140conf, twitter, microblogging, jeffpulver

Back in November 2007, I wrote a post here called "Twitter is Terrific for Thieves - The Dark Side of Status Updates" about the danger in giving away too much information on Twitter (and Facebook, etc.) and how that could potentially lead to someone burglarizing your home. At the time it led to some interesting conversations on Twitter and in the comments.

Fast forward 1.5 years and many million more Twitter users... it appears (and I must emphasize appears) that precisely that kind of thing did happen in Arizona:

Home burglarized after owner 'twittered' he was leaving town

The homeowner very unfortunately was robbed of thousands of dollars of equipment. The Twitter connection was mentioned here:

"Every one of them that reads my tweets that I sent out knows that I was heading out of town," said Hyman, "I've got it set-up where Twitter goes into Facebook, so it could be someone I know about on Facebook."

However, and this is the part that needs to be emphasized, there is really no way to know if the thief/thieves were watching Twitter or if it just happened to be a random theft. As the article says:

Unless the crooks are caught, Hyman said there's no way to know for sure if this was a random act or if he was targeted.

And that's exactly right. It might have been someone who saw equipment in the house through windows. It might have been someone who knew there was a tech business operating out of the house. It might have just been someone randomly breaking into homes.

Or it might have been someone monitoring Twitter.

We may not ever know. As I mentioned in my original post, though, it's important to think about what you say in Twitter or Facebook status updates. Do you really want to tweet that you home is going to be vacant for the next two weeks? Do you want to post the update that you had to leave the 72" plasma TV on the back porch until you could clear up the wall space? :-)

Ah, the brave new (open) world we all live in...

P.S. Hat tip to Todd Van Hoosear for re-tweeting about this Arizona article

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Technorati Tags: facebook, twitter, security, privacy, microblogging

Given that I'm using Apple's iMovie software for my Emerging Tech Talk video podcast, I was intrigued by the idea of the new "image stabilization" feature in iMovie '09. The concept is simple enough - iMovie simply compares one frame to the next, finds the matching patterns and adjusts the frames so that the patterns line up from one frame to the next. This will either remove or reduce the "shake" that happens when you are recording with a handheld camera.

After recently purchasing Apple's iLife '09 (admittedly primarily for the iPhoto improvements), I thought I'd give the iMovie stabilization a test. I chose one of my Emerging Tech Talk videos that I recorded with my little JVC camera down at ITEXPO earlier this year:

I just recorded this with Transnexus CEO Jim Dalton out in the hallway outside the conference rooms. I was holding my JVC camera in my hand and trying to brace it against my body to keep it stable.

I honestly didn't really realize how much the image was moving around until I watched it carefully afterwards.

Now here is the version after iMovie '09 image stablization:

What do you think? I thought the stabilization turned out rather well.

From a workflow point-of-view, performing the image stabilization was just another step in the iMovie '09 post-production process. I selected the video clip (the entire segment is one "clip" in iMovie), clicked on the "gear" icon, chose "Clip Adjustments", clicked the checkbox next to "Smooth clip motion", pressed "Done"... and waited. It did take several minutes on my MacBook Pro... I'm not sure exactly how long, but it was a number of minutes.

I've not yet imported any video from my camera since moving to iMovie '09, but it appears that there is a checkbox during the import that you could check so that movies go through the stabilization process during import. Obviously this will lengthen the import process, but would then get you on your way to editing with a smoothed out image.

I'll have to try it out on some other clips, but so far it looks like it could be a useful tool for working with movie clips shot with a handheld camera.

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Technorati Tags: video, imovie, apple, mac, macosx, ilife, imovie09, imagestabilization

As you have no doubt noticed, my last post here was April 23rd... what happened? Well, our second child was born April 24th, and as any parent of a newborn can tell you, you enter this wonderful yet challenging vortex where your time is entirely in the service of the wee one... ;-)

I'm slowly getting back up to speed now, though, and so you'll see more posts appearing here and across all the other blogs where I write...

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For those of us who have been around blogging for a while (crossing over the 9-year-mark myself in a few weeks), blo.gs was a site we all knew not only as a very creative domain name but also as one of the earliest "ping servers". (Courtesy of today's announcement, I learned of this great post that gives some of the early history of ping servers and services.)

Then blo.gs was purchased in 2005 and nothing much seemed to be done with it. Other ping services emerged. Many of us just started using Ping-o-matic rather than trying to keep up with all the various services. And over time blo.gs didn't seem to get any mentions anywhere, really.

So today it was rather cool to learn that Yahoo is transferring blo.gs over to Automattic for "safekeeping and further development". Automattic, if you aren't aware, are the folks behind the hugely successful WordPress blogging platform/software, as well as the Akismet blog comment anti-spam service and other tools.

It's great that Yahoo did transfer the service and thus one of the older domains can live on. Now it will be interesting to see what Matt Mullenweg and the rest of the Automattic crew do with blo.gs....

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Technorati Tags: blogging, ping servers, social media, tools, wordpress, automattic, blo.gs

Is the concept of "family identity" dead in terms of communications?

As I was thinking about my talk tonight over the weekend and how the ways in which we communicate are changing, one of the themes that kept emerging was what I'd call "The Death of Family Identity".

Think about it... once upon a time, there were primarily two ways that people would communicate with members of a household (outside of the obvious one of knocking on the front door):

1. Postal mail
2. Telephone

In both cases, there was one "address" for the family... either the postal address or the phone number. In either case, you could contact "the Yorks", for instance, by sending a letter to the address or by calling the family phone number. The mail or phone might be picked up by any member of the family, but it could be shared or passed along to other members of the family. Mom, dad, brothers, sisters, friends or whomever lived there... anyone could potentially see the mail or get the phone call.

YOU HAVE REACHED "THE YORKS"

Let's take the phone. My parents have had the same phone number for 35 years. Growing up, anyone could have called that number and reached either of my parents, myself or my brother. That was the number to call us on. Period. End of story. And while there were certainly some disadvantages to this approach... busy signals (pre-call-waiting), messages not being delivered, people listening in on extensions... there was also a solid sense of "identity". You could leave a message there and someone in the family would get it. If it was urgent, someone could try other ways to reach the person - or could provide info about where the person was.

Fast forward to today... mobile phones are ubiquitous and traditional "landlines" are being shed at a rapid pace. As today's mobile-phone-using college generation starts to buy homes, will any of them actually bother with a landline? What's the point? The mobile phone lets you receive your calls wherever you are. No more messages that aren't communicated to you by a family member... no more busy signals because your sibling is on the phone...

Personally, I wouldn't invest in the landline biz... sure, many of those who have them in their houses today will keep them until you pry the handset out of their cold, dead fingers... but that's a market that's capped. And many of us who have them may move... if I can eventually figure out a solution for fax and 911, I'll probably cut the cord, too.

But let's think about that in terms of "family identity":

• Mobile numbers are individual - Each person has a mobile phone. Mom, dad, brother, sister... everyone has their own phone with their own number. For families who have "cut the cord", how do you just leave a message for the family? Say you want to invite them over for dinner... how do you just leave a general message? You can't... you have to call one of the individuals. Or maybe you call a couple. (Or maybe you just text them all.) It's no longer simple.
  
  
• Mobile phones are less reliable - Your ability to reach the family members assumes, of course, that their mobile phones are reachable. Batteries die and need to be recharged. Phones are lost. Someone is traveling in an area with bad coverage (recall that I live in the wireless backwater known as the United States). Voicemail messages may not be delivered in a timely fashion. None of these were generally issues with traditional landlines.
  
  
• Mobile phone numbers change - How many mobile phone numbers have you had in the last, say, five years? Some of you may still have the same numbers, but odds are most of you reading this have gone through several numbers. Either because you switch carriers and cannot move your number... or it's just too much of a pain in the neck and it's just easier to get a new one. Or you wanted that shiny new phone that another carrier had and so you wound up with two mobile phones? Regardless of the reason, there is more churn in mobile numbers. Anyone seriously think they'll have the same mobile phone number for 35 years?

So in a world without home landlines, how do you reach "the Yorks"? Sure, you could set up a "family number" through an abstraction layer like Google Voice that would ring all family phones... but how many people are actually going to do this?

SNAIL MAIL

Do I even need to discuss it? When was the last time any of you reading this wrote an actual "letter" to someone and mailed it in the postal service? When is the last time you received a personal letter?

Messages are sent online... either through "e-mail" or IM or increasingly through services like Facebook, etc. And all of those media have the same issues as mobile phones: they are almost always individual, they are less reliable, they change.

Gone are the days of the sending a letter to "The Yorks". Now you have to cc a bunch of email addresses and hope they all get there... or rely on someone in the family to send it to everyone.

(And sure, some of us, myself included, still engage in this quaint, anachronistic custom of sending "Christmas cards" to a family, but even there I've increasingly seen friends and family reciprocating with "e-cards"... that time is probably limited, too.)

SO DO WE CARE?

Is "family identity" dead in our brave new online world of 2009? Does it matter? Are we better of with the convenience we have today and the ways we have to connect as individuals?

I don't know the answer. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it does. Maybe it's just another aspect of the changing fabric of our society where we don't yet understand the full ramifications as we continue our evolution into the cloud... Part of me feels like we are losing something... but the pattern isn't fully clear.

What do you think?

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Technorati Tags: identity, internet, telephone, landlines, email, family, future, trends

UPDATE: Just confirmed that the start time is 7:00pm versus 6, which is what I thought it was, but I was writing my post based on info on the library's web site. ;-)

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If you are in the area of Keene, NH, tomorrow night, Monday, April 13, 2009, you are welcome to swing by the Keene Public Library at 6pm7:00pm to hear me speak on: "The Big Disconnect - How Communication Is Changing All Around Us" where I'll be talking about who the ways we communicate and the tools we are use are changing... basically the topics I write about here, over at DisruptiveTelephony.com, in my FIR reports and essentially in most of the other places I write. The full abstract of the talk is below.

This whole thing started off innocently enough. Another parent at my daughter's school knew about the kinds of things I do and asked if I would be willing to talk to the library board (on which she sits) about changes in communication technology. They are apparently doing some long-range planning over these next few months and she thought my input would be helpful. My first response was (and still is) to suggest they talk to my neighbor and long-time Keene resident Jon Udell who has, among other things, created the LibraryLookup Bookmarklet Generator. She appreciated that info but continued to also want me to talk to the board.

Given that this is the kind of presentation that I do on an ongoing basis anyway, I agreed. Then somewhere along the way it seems the library board morphed this into a public presentation... when she asked me for a headshot and bio for flyers, well, I knew it was getting a bit bigger... ;-)

Ah, well... it didn't and doesn't matter to me. If I'm speaking to five people or 20 and private or public, it should be a good conversation regardless. Having this presentation has also been helpful in that it has helped me synthesize some points that I'd been thinking about for some time into a more coherent form.

So at this point it's a public event to which anyone can go. If you find yourself in Keene tomorrow night, feel free to stop by. Here's the abstract of the talk:

Is the future of our inter-personal communication a 'tweet'? Are we going to become 'friends' with everyone through sites like Facebook? What are all these 'feeds' people are talking about? And what is going on with all these e-books?

We are living in a time of great change both in terms of the technologies and tools we use to communicate but also in terms of the changes those technologies are making to the fabric of our society. Traditional media outlets are under severe stress. Newspapers are folding or stuggling. Television audiences are fragmenting and moving online. Radio empires are collapsing. Email is dying under the weight of spam. Landlines are being cut in favor of mobile phones. In the midst of all this change, people are sharing details of their lives in social networks like Facebook and MySpace. They are 'tweeting' with Twitter. They are posting video to YouTube. They are collaborating using documents 'in the cloud'. They are networking on LinkedIn. They are blogging and podcasting. They are sharing and creating information in so many new forms and ways.

In this talk, communication technology expert Dan York will discuss these trends and technologies and look at how both the ways in which we communicate are changing as the underlying technology changes. What is fueling those trends? How are people changing the way they consume information? What does it mean for each of us as we blur the contexts in which we interact with people? What are both the challenges and opportunities for organizations and businesses? What are some of the societal impacts? What about privacy? (Or is there such a thing?) And how can people most appropriately participate? Come with your questions and join in the conversation about how communication is changing all around us.

P.S. I don't know that I'm entirely comfortable with the label "communication technology expert". I suppose some people may consider me that, and I have been working with online communication networks and tools for pretty much 25 years at this point... but from my perspective the more you know, the more you know you don't know...

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Technorati Tags: keene, danyork, dan york, social media, communication, communication technology, facebook, twitter, trends

As I noted today over on the Voxeo Talks blog, I'l be speaking out at this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention OSCON on the topic of "Building A Corporate Blog Portal Using WordPress MU". I'll be talking about the challenges and lessons learned while building blogs.voxeo.com using WordPress MU, much of which I've documented over on the "Behind The Blog" weblog.

In my Voxeo Talks post, I included the abstract. I'm looking forward to passing along what we've learned and helping others build blog portals on top of WPMU. The more who use WPMU for such portals, the better we'll wind up making the software in the end.

If you are planning to be out at OSCON, please do stop by and say hello.

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Technorati Tags: wordpress, wordpressmu, wpmu, danyork, voxeo, oscon, oscon2009, oreilly, blogging, blogportals, socialmedia

Wow! Have you looked at the Twitter Fan Wiki lately? It is at:

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps

I wound up there late last week for some reason and realized that it had been many months since I had visited the page... what an incredible number of apps built around Twitter! There is no official "count" that I could see, but dumping the page source to a file and grepping for <li> in the relevant part of the file gave a count of close to 700 listings.

If you haven't taken a look at this view of the Twitter ecosystem lately, it's worth a look. (And if you are looking for topics for your blog, you could just start at the top reviewing Twitter apps and you'd have no end of things to writing about...)

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Technorati Tags: twitter, tools, microblogging