So Where Do I Go From Here?

I haven't written much lately. Well, at least not on this blog. My Tumblr blog on the other hand has been fairly active by comparison. And of course I'm extremely active on on Twitter, somewhat less active on Google Plus, and I keep in touch with my family through Facebook. So where does Blogger fit in? In the past it was a no-brainer to put whatever I wanted on my blog but now there are so many more choices, many of them more convenient and faster than blogging. Twitter is amazing in this respect and Tumblr fills the gap nicely when Twitter falls short. Tumblr even holds its own nicely against Blogger in terms of longer form writing, something I never really did much anyway....

So here I am with my old blog writing a post wondering if it will be my final one.

Although the new revamped interface for Blogger does look cool once you get used to it. Maybe I'll play around with it a bit....

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised—But It Is Being Twittered

Image by Zoolcar9 via Flickr

Following the Iranian election on Twitter is turning into an addiction for me. Television reporting during the early hours of the story was pretty sporadic but people keep talking about it despite the Iranian governement's repeated attempts to tamp down on the it. I guess this is the future of news. People gossiping to each other online about what's going on in their area and hopefully we'll figure out what happened when the smoke clears.

It's interesting at this point to turn the clock back to the past and ask how we got here. This isn't the first time that political turmoil has changed the way we get our news. Back in the '90s CNN rose to prominence in part because of its coverage of the fall of the Soviet Union and 24/7 cable TV news became the dominant news medium. Before that television replaced radio and and radio replaced newspapers. Note that all along the line, each medium "replaced" the one before it in only the broadest possible sense. Newspapers while they are struggling to survive today, still continue to publish. Similarly, radio continues to be a powerful medium even if it has been replaced in terms of influence by television. And more people was the network evening news that cable TV news. So now that the Internet is replacing other media as the dominant source for news it's in parts because we have been linking to New York Times articles and MSNBC video and Twittering about stories we've seen on television.

Think of information as a sphere that surrounds you. As communication technology advances, that sphere expands and fills up with sources of information that we can use to access it. But until the Internet, there was nothing to hold it all together. The Internet acts a glue that helps its users hold on to information. It's no wonder the mainstream media is struggling to integrate itself with Internet services like Twitter, sometimes with embarassing results.

Palm Pre Tips on Twitter

I still haven't upgraded to the Palm Pre but everything I've seen since and read since fondling a Palm Pre demo model at the Sprint store on launch day makes me want it more. My T-Mobile G1 is sluggish enough that even the flaky demo model Pre would be faster and it looks like Palm is already issuing over the air updates to the Pre to correct its early bugs. In the meantime I am monitoring Pre websites and a new Palm Pre tips Twitter account.

The Palm Pre Start Up Video

Found on Twitter, a link to this story with the Palm Pre start up video.

Out of Twitter's Dog House

It seems that my account suspension at Twitter was a short one. I can now tweet again. That was pretty fast. When Blogger thought I was a spammer, I had to fill out a captcha form for months. Of course, I could still post. Anyway, it's an interesting thing to keep in mind with this Web 2.0. You are at the mercy of the company which controls the servers you are using. While this means that they can control spammers more easily. It also means that legitimate users are more likely to get hit by the same hand that slaps down the spammers.

With things like Twitter and blogging, this might not be so important but with GMail? A lot of people swear by their email. A ban can hurt a lot more. Worse yet, my phone's address book synchs to GMail's Contacts. A ban would be terrible for someone who depends on their phone.

Ultimately, the issue of ownership will have to be resolved before Web 2.0 applications can trusted for truly critical uses. If I am blogging, tweeting, and doing all the other crap that we do on the web, I'm generating content. It may be crappy content, it may be useless content, but it is my content and if a company can cut off my access to it, then it's not really my content is it?

Suspended By Twitter

Twitter has been getting a lot of spam lately. I get several emails a night telling me that "X is now following you on Twitter." Half the time, these accounts are obvious spammers. More and more recently, these accounts are being suspended by the time I see them. This seems like a good thing to me as Twitter is clearly clamping down the spam. But they may also be suspending a lot of legtimate accounts. Well, they've suspended my account at least. I have been using Twitter a lot lately, mostly for posting links which I find interesting which don't really merit a long blog post. Apparently this is the sort of behavior which can get you suspended....

Political Twittering—The Sound Bite Goes Digital

And to think that all I ever use Twitter for is for following NASA space probes. Now Twitter has been embraced by both politicians and the "mainstream" media. I guess it was only a matter of time. TV news, particularly on the cable news, has always been dependent on sound bites. Those short pithy lines that politicians are only too happy to provide because they are easier than talking about and solving complex issues. I think that John Stewart probably has the best take on this issue:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

One of the most depressing thing about both politics and about the news people who follow it is their eagerness to constantly dumb themselves down for the masses. This is probably why politicians always complain about "pork barrel" spending and make fun of things like planetariums and volcano monitoring. These things are usually obscure projects which people don't understand and are more likely to disapprove of. So they make easy targets and it's easier to talk about them than to actually fix this country's problems. It's also more fun for journalists and pundits to talk about these things than to sincerely research and analyze complex issues. So it makes perfect sense that politicians to embrace Twitter and its 140 character limit as the next big thing for blathering on and on without saying a thing....

R.I.P. Mars Phoenix

The Mars Phoenix team has just frozen. It's a remarkable thing to feel emotions over the "death" of an inanimate object which I've never seen or touched or otherwise interacted with in any way except the occasional Twitter alert. But it was exciting to get these little updates on a mission that was pushing the boundaries of science and exploring another world. In the end, that's what we associate with the best of what we call the "human spirit." If that is the case, then that frozen slab of metal on Mars that we call Phoenix is more human than a lot of us.

Mars Phoenix Speaks

NASA has been posting first person accounts of the Mars Phoenix lander's mission via Twitter for some time now. It's basically the only reason why I got a Twitter account—in order to follow Phoenix. It's cool and sometimes even poignant to receive these little messages from Mars. Now, nearing the end of its life, the Phoenix Lander saying goodbye as a "guest blogger" on Gizmodo.

Now another NASA mission, New Horizons is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon as it makes its way to Pluto. If nothing else, it seems like a great way to get young people interested in science.

The Text Message From Space!

As part of an attempt to reach out to young people, NASA has put the Phoenix Mars probe on Twitter which makes it possible for cell phone users to get text messages directly from the red planet. Not wanting to be left behind, The European Space Agency has also put its Planck spacecraft on Twitter. Perhaps due to its more esoteric mission, Planck is much less popular on Twitter than Phoenix. I can't help but wonder how this development affects that the recent claims that an SMS message is four times more expensive than the cost of getting data from the Hubble Space telescope.