by Jason Preston on December 16, 2008
Blogging has done a lot to extend the idea of mobile technology. The desire (and growing ability) for people to post from anywhere about anything has led to technologies that happily support the blogger addiction—for a small fee.
I predicted a few years ago that laptops would be sold in the future with cell-phone like data plans attached. After all, the gap between the phone and the computer is getting smaller and smaller as technology moves forward.
Wired has called it the next netbook trend. On the one hand, I think it’s cool that we’re seeing more modular connectivity, and it’s going to open a whole world for bloggers and small business people to be on the move while keeping track of their blog.
On the other hand, it’s a bad pricing model for the consumer.
by Jason Preston on December 9, 2008
It’s no secret that, as Scoble himself puts it, he is FriendFeed’s “number 1 customer.” What remains elusive to most people is why Scoble is such a big fan of the slightly confusing, lifestreaming service that is FriendFeed.
Dave Winer draws a comparison between Twitter and DOS: it is pre-GUI, command line software. He’s right that there is a gap between the two services, and that gap is defined largely by the complexity of using the tool.
Scoble mocks the small-brained users who can’t handle the FF features. Dave Winer seems to think that it actually is more complex than necessary.
I’m inclined to agree with Dave Winer. FriendFeed is a robust dashboard-like system that does too much. Facebook appears to be creaking under the weight of its own capabilities. Experienced users sometimes find it difficult to find today’s events.
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by Jason Preston on December 2, 2008
According to Gawker, the “highly anticipated” film Australia is rolling out to a lackluster reception in…Australia. Of course, just because it doesn’t do well down under doesn’t mean that the mass audiences in the United States won’t like it, but I’m willing to bet that most of the time a Bad Movie in Australia = a Bad Movie in the US.
But anyone can tell us if a movie is good or bad. The real golden nugget in the Gawker post is this:
We guess it’s just not possible anymore—people, what with the internet and all, are just too cynical—to manufacture a phenomenon. It has to come much more organically than this.
We’ve been telling people from the early days of blogging that authenticity is of paramount importance. Writing blog posts and engaging with people online is not like writing a press release or making an execuspeak presentation.
The audience is savvy, and they know when you’re laying down astroturf. The more you try to shove things down their throats, the less they’re going to pay attention to what you say, and I think the price you pay in authority for a few more ticket sales is not worth it in the long run.
