Monday, February 27, 2012

My Guide to Social Networking

Admittedly, this is mostly tongue and cheek but I think I'm onto something here.
  • Gentlemint: Pinterest for guys.
  • Pinterest: Tumblr for ladies.
  • Tumblr: Twitter for kids.
  • Twitter: Facebook for ADHD types.
  • Facebook: Like MySpace only much less awful.
  • MySpace: Like Google Plus only it was actually successful for a while.
  • Google Plus: Blogging for people who don't know what a blog is.
  • Blogger, Wordpress, and other blogging platforms: Online diaries for people who don't know HTML or what a .plan file is.
  • .plan file: An online diary for people who were sick of getting flamed on Usenet.
  • Usenet: The original and best ever social communications platform for the Internet. Like the rest of the Internet it followed the typical path: created by nerds for nerds, then all the "cool" people joined up, and then regular folks joined up. Then it fell to constant infighting, frustrations, and people started leaving for the next big thing. And finally nothing but spam and porn. While many people continued to use it, it hand lost its relevance in much the same way that MySpace did. It's a little hard for me to be too snarky about Usenet, since I used it and loved it for so much longer than these other networks.
Enjoy your future folks, it's going to look a lot like the past....

Monday, February 13, 2012

Steve Ballmer, Apple Fanboy

So I was reading on Slashdot, as I often do, when I came across this:

Uploaded with IntrinSic.us

Suddenly it all made sense. Windows 8. Microsoft's seeming lack of direction and failure to innovate recently. Pretty much everything that had gone since Bill Gates retired. Steve Ballmer is secretly an Apple fanboy who is unwittingly sabotaging Microsoft from within. Yes, it all makes sense now.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

He Says While Posting On His Blog

Here's something a gadget geek like me doesn't want to encounter on his travels on the Innertubes:

Study Finds Growing Up WIth Gadgets Has a Downside: Social Skill Impairment

The first thing that popped into my head reading this was, "But I didn't grow up with a lot of gadgets and I have terrible social skills." But I'm a gadget geek now. So I can't help but wonder if the reverse is more likely to be true. That is, perhaps poor social skills are part of what drives children to enjoy gadgets in the first place.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Daily Show on SOPA

You could face as a website, up to five years for streaming ten pieces of music.

When did Congress turn into Ogre?
What kind of douchebag steals other people's copyrighted work anyway?

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Friday, January 6, 2012

How the Sausage Doesn't Get Made

The thing that I love about The Daily Show is the way it just has a knack for encapsulating everything that frustrates me about the absurdity of politics. Last night for example....
Look at it Stewart! Look at it! This is how the sausage doesn't get made!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

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....

Thursday, July 28, 2011

A President's Job is Hard...

You're the most powerful man in the world but everyone wants a piece of you. You start out able to do no wrong but public opinion turns and you can't seem to do anything right.

Before—2008:
From Squeezing My Mind Grapes


And after—2010:
From Spock Is Not Impressed