Even though I don’t really care one way or another about whether I’m blogging about what everyone else is blogging about, after seeing pictures and having to deal with weeks of (over)-hype:
With all due respect to the Blogosphere, Mr. Steve Jobs, and Apple Inc., that IPad looks like it has serious flaws that are going to damage it long term in market.
So Loic Le Meur and Seesmic decided to release Look.
And being Shana-licious, I stuck it on a netbook to test.
As many people have commented, it is an extremely beautiful UI. This doesn’t mean I am not going to nitpick at it. The question is, Would I recommend this to my Ex, who recently registered for an account, is following 7 people, and as far as I know, never goes on Twitter.
Because of some odd scheduling stuff, I couldn’t get registered for anything I really wanted to go to for Social Media Week. So now I am waitlisted to death. And I am not sure what to do. Advice welcome.
Bleh. I hate when these sorts of things happen.
This is one of those products which makes me so sad. It actually could be a really useful product.
As soon as I saw it, I realized why college is so depressing when it comes to research. it’s because no matter what you do, the stuff out there, sucks.
Part of this is problems involving different fields of research: While generally, pretty much everyone cites one of two ways (MLA or Chicago), especially on the undergraduate level*, if one ever decided to go look up the amount of ways to cite primary and secondary material in say, The Chicago Manual of Style, one would know that just a paper is never enough when it comes to citing. From there, there are four ways to stick your cites into your paper. Then you have to deal with different kinds of material. It’s why the Chicago Manual, 15th edition, aka the orange brick, has two chapters on the subject. Citing a Musical Score is not the same as citing a paper from Nature. Depending on the length of your paper, of course…
Now trying to gather and manage all this stuff is a pain. Across different disciplines, forget about it. Someone like me, actually might be citing all of this. Or trying to. Or managing all of this information (Major students in my department have been told to read everything from hard core bio textbook to look up articles about how charts good charts are made for their theses. I realize that if I want to get really good at art, I would need to graduate, get a job, and study…math, statistics, and comp sci because of the kind of art I’m interested in….whereas other people I know would be studying totally different material….)
I actually had Mendely installed (because I tried to register for everything Le Web ‘09 offered that was explained in English). I’m part of their prime demographic (I’m a student on leave doing a bachelor’s thesis work in Art, and I am expected to defend a thesis of artwork through actual research. That’s pretty normal where I’m from due to class schedules versus requirements.)
I realized I couldn’t figure how to make the damn program work; How was I supposed to organize books that weren’t there, papers in the process of being written, movies that need to be annonated, and artwork that needs to be relooked at (if I am so lucky)? Before sticking in my own stuff. Delicious actually does a better job for me right now, for the most part.
That just annoyed me. I realized it wasn’t going to be a me thing either: How would someone import their lab notes (primary research) or other sorts of primary documents, particuarly rare ones? And then share them? Primary documents are everything when doing research: how else are you going to check that what you are doing is the right thing?
Those lack are a total fail. If your layout can’t make clear what is going on within 5 minutes, students will ignore you. I also can’t beleive I de-installed. I’m tempted to re-install to figure out what happened, but that may be a waste of my time. I have reading to do, you know…
(I never de-install, I mean I never de-install. And therefore, I’m sad.)
Sorry guys.
*In case you are curious, I cite Chicago. This means I’m an intellectual snob. 
Actually, the real reason is I went there. And if you like the photo, it is from one of my favorite Hangouts on Campus, the Regenstein Library. (Go A-Level!) Someone actually is documenting all the grafitti there, some of which is quite awesome, because it is an awesome library. Go take a look…(also here is her book)
This post covers two areas: Who may be reading this blog, and what I should do about it.
Normally I avoid the subject of freedom at all costs.
But the Google/China standoff has made it really important to say something, because I’m watching this in more bated breath than Haiti.
Most people, upon meeting me, don’t realize that I burn with certain questions, one of them being “What does it mean to be Free?”
I was very lucky to have a ridiculous amount of Internet access from the earliest age possible. My father is a hardware nut, and my mother a programmer, so it was normal that I would get these sorts of things (cellphones they don’t get though…) I was able to realize (being very retro here) that AskJeeves was better because it was a meta-searchengine, and that because search engines sucked, you should display results in 100s, not in 10s. I also understood I could look up anything, including religion, sexuality, fanfiction, anything. I understood this very early on.
It gave me the ability to look at the world with some more open eyes, even if I didn’t understand it (and still don’t), I was able to see that there was a broader world out there, and that I had and will always have choices.
Google made that process better. It made the choices more apparent (around the same time I stopped reading fanfiction, for the most part). Not everyone will use those choices wisely. That’s not the point. The point is, for those people who will: It will be life changing. It is the difference of knowing there is someone out there who cares, who is your emotional and intellectual equal, who cares about the same issues as you, and then being able to connect. It is the difference between learning a new fact that makes your argument and your person through the expansion of your intellectual abilities stronger. And is knowing that the people you meet will slowly bolster you. Losing that can kill people and can kill societies: or it can rebirth them.
I was talking with some people last night: A chunk of them blog and wanted to know if I read their blogs (I’ll come back to you in a bit)*, and I didn’t want to tell them that even though I can’t feel what they write right now (personal reasons), it’s adminrable that they do. They were fighting a good fight from a niche community. And they allowed their voices to be heard and to grow from it.
That may be what Google gives up if they leave China. And it wouldn’t be for 7 people. It would be for billions including millions of students, all of whom are like me on some practical level. I know I know nothing of the world. The only way to know is to put yourself out there.
Even so, Google is hacking back. I’m not sure what I think about a huge company just peering inside other large companies and potentially large governments. Yes, I know their policy is “Do No Evil.” However, to be free is to recognize that one is small and that I can come together with others for mutual benefits (usually to protect myself from harm) (This is Locke people, I accept Locke.) How does Google manage to protect my freedom without being, well, oppressive in some sort of utilitarian sense. They have my information, and I wonder what could cause them to turn it over. Right now, nothing.
I’m so sad when I watch this- I don’t know if there is anything I can do except watch and wait, and maybe want to cry a little. I want freedom to win. Freedom to be whatever I want to be. Freedom for everyone to be what they want to be: and that requires information to flow.
I wish someone would translate this into Chinese: If you are in China and can see this: The thing that unites you is that you are all a little different, that in fact is normal. It is the ability to find out together what those differences are and then to repsect them: That is what makes the Empire strong. I wish those my own age so much luck in all of this, because I know that this one of those defining expeirneces that will affect you for the rest of your lives. May you rise above it and change societies and governments for the better because of it. May you bring some sense of liberty and Joy, a sense of better understanding of who you are as individuals, and therefore what China and the Chinese people are, as you scale the wall. Good Luck!
*You get your own post.
To the people who have educated me and supported me along the way: Thanks.
One other note: I have a lot of social data on this subject. I did a whole 10 page research paper on a related parts of this Judaism, Culture Jamming, and how it affected funding decisions, with footnotes, in 2007. Apparently if I thought about it too much, I probably have expertise in the field (which I why I don’t). Why Judaism? I’m very Jewish, it’s a small population which tends to track itself, and it tends to have a lucky streak of having a mixture of behavioral adoptions for religious-cultural reasons, plus technological reasons. With the size, you can really see a trend happening in front of your eyes, as well as live it. It’s extremely cool. In a way that is hard to describe. Very Niche community to study. Get a niche community and study it, find out why they do the things they do. Always interesting…
It is so sad really that because in part of my own stupidity about the real world and its intersection with Orthodox Land, and in part of the fact that I’m female, I’m basically trying to be on the run from the Valley of the Dolls. Anywhere but that. I feel like if I stayed too closely I’ll forever be the object; I get told really shocking things all the time. I was surprised that I commented this back to my mother, but I really don’t tell her anything because I don’t want people to know that I’m hiding as much as Shalom Auslander, of the Foreskin’s Lament, did at the same age. I’m not out to destroy careers here. I could potentially destroy my own. I’ve though about setting up a seperate blog to discuss this scathingly, but I can’t get around Disqus and me being ShanaC. Sexuality is one of those things…Particularly women’s…
Young people IMO tend to be a bit silly/stupid. Being one of course Some of this involves my own mistakes growing up. I’m sure we all have some. Beware of ranting below. A lot of ranting. I’m infuriated, and I’ve been keeping secrets. I’m still keeping secrets. I’m trying to write this in such a way without exposing everyone and hurting myself in the process. I hate so many little things. Little oppressive things. They’re endemic to where I come from. It’s not me whose saying it anymore. I’m just so angry and so beaten down and shocked and horrified, that I don’t want to be there anymore. It hurts too much. But I love little things about community. AVC gave me parts of it, I’m slowly discovering parts of it in a late college bloom, and probably will discover more as I get older. It will put huge distance from where I grew up, which for me, was a Valley of the Dolls.
Note: I’m really ranting. There are definitely more positive ranters. Like Aliza Hausman. I just snapped one night. And started crying, because I don’t know what to do. I don’t think anyone knows fully. FYI, in case you are curious, this is how you can see the full effects of the internet on my life: I learned a huge amount about being Jewish from the internet, including some of its more radical states, as well as learned that I don’t have to tolerate the status quo, or that I have to keep the identity that I grew up with. The ability for me to both passively and actively interact with so many different kinds of people, both Jewish and not Jewish, probably has radically altered the Orthodox and Non-Orthodox Jewish community. People like me should not exist, the internet caused them. So below is probably an intriguing document of that fact, because of the sheer amount of linkage to material about this rant, and that is only a surface gloss for a long rant…In the abstract, it might be intriguing about how interaction on the internet can in fact change societies and individuals. We’ll see how it plays out.
If you feel like skipping this, that’s ok. The entire post is close over 5000 words, so I’m really lost in emotion here. No one will blame you. I’ve kept this inside for a while, and below is kind of long rant. This is probably healthy, no one should keep all of this inside for so long…and this probably about half of what I am thinking too…Screwed up people.
The AVC People List
I’m not sure what to say right now. Though the AVC People list is here. (now you can’t complain, it is at the top of the post.)
Originally I had started this list many moons ago because Fred Wilson told me that I should follow the people on AVC.com in order to learn more about the world.
I originally was using Disqus, I found that experience semi-unsatisfying. It was doable, but all the comments seemed out of context. So I ended up stalking the user base on twitter.
Then the KidMecury outed me one day. That was embarrassing. Not soon after, Erik Schwartz asked if there was a twitter list available of regular commentators.
Thus, my personal ambition of just being quiet and going on my way was sort of crushed. The List kind of had to get bigger. My original intent was to just get all the people who had commented 10 times per month. I figured they were definitely reading and not just popping in this one time, never to be seen again. I wanted to look for those who were engaged, and then make them more engaged. This was extremely hard to figure out. Some people just pop in occasionally. Some people post an occasional comment here and there, and I wasn’t sure where they were primarily associated with. And some people hid their twitter or just didn’t have (and still do). I’m still not sure of who everyone is (Though Hi! if you are missing can you tell me?)
I needed help so I asked and became a pain in the neck.
The post announcing the list has a huge amount of unique comments. A number included people who hadn’t commented before; who feel like “All I can say is Yes” or who read through Rss feeds, who feel like if they comment they are late to the conversation, and even a person who just likes stuff without telling anyone until now.
To those people: You have something valuable to say. Maybe not all the time (and I probably talk to much, but I’ll admit publicly I’m actually, uh, competitive about comments.) Just find someone who you disagree with slightly. Or maybe say why you like something.
I wasn’t ever expecting to become a commentator with a massive amount of comments. I wasn’t ever expecting to ever write a blog, or start talking about what I like from a UX/UI point of view. This was not my imaginary life (actually I didn’t know what I wanted precisely, and I’m still working parts of that out.)
I did it because I found it engaging. Clearly the vast majority who read AVC.com find it engaging too.
Next question: What now?
I’m not fully sure. This is a very unique experiment in social media.
This list is now massively larger than it was before. I have managed to get everyone in the comments so far. How am I supposed to get those other missing people over time? (and I may eventually break the list down into two if it gets too heavy- there is a 500 person limit to lists I think.) And what do those people want? (I like products, I like engaging people, and it’s a good question.)
Further, some new complications. This is an over 200 person list, and that is before I add the people who are following the list, before I get to Listorious. It’s a bit of a madhouse of a list. I’m ok with this. However from a sheer practical perspective, I don’t think many people have the tolerance for engaging in 200+ people at once even through a stream. Let’s face it, in person, I get intimidated by a crowd of 200 people. I figure for some it is very similar in social media.
There has to be multiple uses for this list. Don’t be afraid to engage people- but also don’t be afraid to cull down into your own little world if you find this all very intense. This is a contact list, a question list, and answer list, a place where people tell the world little bits about their tiny corner of it. And there are a large variety of folks, from crafters to hedge fund people (and this is not the time to make fun of hedge funds). In some ways, it’s very diverse (though there is a definite lean towards men in their mid to late 30s involved in technology.)
In exchange- look out for each other and the list. And find the people who aren’t engaged yet, and engage them. Ask them why. Really simple request. I promise. Just asking apparently makes people feel a lot better. Yes, people want to know what you are thinking.
Also- piece of advice: Go back to the original intent of the list. I only created it because I wanted to learn more via other people. Contact people with questions, comments, and see if you learn something new.
(Just remember this does expose you a little, if you feel uncomfortable about exposing parts of your life, or being exposed to other people’s- you should also ask to not be part of this.)
One last thought:
AVC.com has it’s own twitter id. It’s now attached to the list. So yes, the posts will appear too, along with each other.
Have fun!
PS If you have advice, you might want to throw in a word or two. This is new even for me.