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March 31, 2007

Twitter is all the Rage?

twitter1.jpgI recall briefly hearing about Twitter about a year ago and quickly shrugged it off as yet another Web 2.0 thing that may/may not make it. That's easy to do these days, seeing that there are so many ideas (good and bad) out there. We have a hard time deciphering which ones we should care about. Which ones are meaningful. Most importantly, which ones are worthwhile.

Full circle. Twitter. What is it? To broadly define it, I consult the great, all-knowing Wikipedia:

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website or an application such as Twitterrific. These updates are displayed on the user's profile page and also instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

Makes sense, right? Users just update their Twitter profile with whatever they're thinking/doing. We can read, or subscribe, to others' updates. It's not necessarily a blog because the input amount is restricted, hence the term, micro-blog. Still don't get it?It's been described to me as an blown-out version of "My Status" on Facebook, which I think is a pretty good description.

Okay, so I understand what Twitter is. But now, I'm trying to discern WHY is Twitter so hot right now?

Let's look at an example post that I grabbed from the Twitter home page:

lots to do today, luckily it is gorgeous outside. think I may open some windows and air out the house

Um, so what? I want to think that Twitter is a technology that let's people just talk whenever they want to. You know, the person who just needs to say something out loud all the time, like, "ooo, that person's hedge needs to be trimmed down about six inches," or, "I think I left my gloves in the bucket next to the back door." Just let it out, people, if that makes you feel good.

But I'm telling you, no one cares that you're going to open the window. No one cares that you just burned your toast. No one cares what you think about Brad Pitt at this very moment.

For me, I don't have time to communicate every little thing about myself and my plans, schedules, thoughts, etc. For those who do it, I'm astounded that THEY even have that time. And when I sit down and think about what Twitter is, and what it does, I'm still baffled.

Todd pointed me in the direction of this article about the 5 ways smart people are using Twitter. It's a good read. I won't go into detail here about what I think of each point, but I will say that I agree and disagree in areas. If you want more uses of Twitter, check out the 5 ways to use Twitter for good.

All good and fine reasons (maybe). But it still wasn't enough to convince me that Twitter is worth all the rage. That's when I started watching how a friend of mine is using their Twitter account... and that's where I started to round the corner.

In this day and age it's widely known that communication is becoming more and more impersonal. From emailing to Instant Messaging to text messaging, we're quickly abandoning our faces for our computer screens and cell phones – think about how we interacted when email wasn't as prevalent as it is now. Face-to-face communication is great, but I feel that we're trying to find more and more ways to get away from it. SecondLife is a prime example of just that. Why do we need to live virtually when we have a life right here? That, I'll never understand.

Where MySpace and Friendster started, I think Twitter could be starting to close that gap. Social networks were created to connect friends – either ones that already knew each other, or those with common interests. At the rudimentary level, Twitter is simply a short-message blasting system. Twitter allows you to tell your friends (or everyone if you don't mind them knowing) what you're doing/thinking at that given time. It's allowing us to connect, albeit NOT face-to-face.

Is it bridging a gap? I don't know. I don't think that abusing Twitter is the best way of going about it. Like I said, no one cares if I've had two slices of pizza while watching Prison Break. But my friends might care if I'm about to head down to Harry's Country Club for Happy Hour. They might care if I'm going to see one of their favorite bands play in an hour. They might even actually care about every little thing I do (damn stalkers). Who's to say?

Instead of picking up the phone and telling my friends that I just did this, or just thought that... I can put it on my Twitter page (if I had one), and then it's up to them to read it. Just like this blog post you're reading right now. It's out there, now it's your decision to read it, or not.

I think Twitter could be great for circles of friends. I think it could be great for company's brands. But I still think it'll be a while before it really catches on and is fine-tuned. MySpace didn't really work until all of my friends were there. Facebook is the same way. Twitter is just the next in line.

I'm not saying that I'm in love with Twitter, I think I'll wait and see on this one. But it doesn't mean that I'm against it, either. What it does mean, though, is that I still don't care if you decided to wear your brown shoes, that smell like ass, today.

Posted by Seth at 09:09 AM | Comments (5)

March 28, 2007

Fruitcake Widget Accolades

A while back, Aaron and I hatched a plan to make a new OS X widget – the virtual fruitcake. With the help of Kevin, we made it real quick and posted it to Apple's Dashboard Widget site.

It was mainly a holiday thing and we had nearly forgotten all about it. That is, until I received a phone call the other day from a representative at Chow.com. They were writing an article about food widgets and had come across ours somehow. They loved it and wanted to feature it in the write up. We, of course, accepted. Here's the blurb from the article about the fruitcake:

8. Useless food widgets (Windows version or Mac OS X version) The Virtual Fruitcake simply sits on your desktop until you throw it away. Just like in real life! A real apple, however, would get old and brown very quickly—so the Windows virtual apple makes no sense whatsoever. Neither Vista’s Snack nor OS X’s Virtual Fruitcake serves any purpose—yet somehow, we just like Fruitcake more. Even useless Apple stuff is better designed.

Noice! You can read the full article here.

Posted by Seth at 08:03 AM | Comments (4)

March 25, 2007

Oh Yeah, And That

Saint Patrick's Day in Kansas City turns out to be a severely over-hyped holiday. The parade was pretty tame. The bars are way too packed. And people that start drinking at 8:00 a.m., while wearing hats like this, are just asking to be called idiots.

I recently joined Scott Fitness and have worked out four times in one week. I wish I could say that I can already feel being lighter, but that's not the case. But I do have more energy, so that's good.

Yesterday there was a big-time potential scare – my dvr's hard drive quit on me. Luckily, there was only a new-peat of The Office and a boxing match on there. I exchanged it for a newer model at the cable store. I can now watch recorded HBO shows without an audio hiccup (I knew the customer service lady was nuts when she said it was HBO and not my dvr).

I know this will be unpopular in Kansas City, but my disgust with KU basketball fans has started to increase again. When words like "inferior teams" are being tossed around there's evidently something wrong with your outlook on sports. I'm sorry your team lost, ours did too, but there's still some good games to watch. Good fans, you know who you are... keep being cool.

Taking a cab from Westport to my loft costs around $10. This is because there's a flat $2.20 fee and then $1.70 per mile. So it shouldn't matter if the driver is driving super slowly while yelling into a phone in a language I've NEVER heard before, right? Wrong. At stop signs and stoplights the meter was still running.

Levi, my cat, had her front claws removed recently. She also lost the ability to have baby cats. It doesn't seem to have affected her. She likes to sleep in between my comforter and sheets. It's cute.


Oh yeah, I had a Coke yesterday. It was my first of the year. And it was delicious.

Posted by Seth at 08:06 PM | Comments (3)

March 22, 2007

The Dark Side of Lily Tomlin?

What happened to Lily Tomlin? Has she always been like this off-camera? Or is she, like many others, just a victim of being on YouTube in a very negative light? I don’t know the answer, but I don’t really like what I’m seeing (the clip below is from “I Heart Huckabees”).

Posted by Seth at 07:21 AM | Comments (4)

March 16, 2007

Saint Patrick’s Eve

In my opinion – please keep in mind that this is the opinion of a sports lover – March Madness is one of the best times of the year. There’s nothing quite like the NCAA tournament. You have 64 65 teams competing for one championship. It’s one game at a time. You lose, you’re done. You win, you survive. And a lot of times, it’s all about surviving.

I just got home from watching the last game tonight, which was USC (a 5 seed) vs. Arkansas (a 12 seed). It had all the makings of an upset, but the cards weren’t right tonight. Arkansas lost by 17 points, and provided more fodder to support the fact that they didn’t deserve to be in the tournament at all. I agreed with most critics, but was happy that they had a chance. Unfortunately, the typical Stan Heath-coached team showed up tonight, leaving Arkansas fans without yet another NCAA tournament win. I’m becoming tired of saying, “next year.”

The game wasn’t a great game to watch. In fact, it wasn’t even a fun game to watch... at all. It reminded me of the upcoming Bad Movie Nights this summer. Which reminded me of some of the bad movies I’ve seen over the past two years. Which reminded me that RottenTomatoes.com recently published their list of the 100 worst rated movies. What’s sad, I’ve seen at least seven of them... by choice:

  1. See No Evil
  2. Deck the Halls
  3. Supercross
  4. Code Name: The Cleaner
  5. The Perfect Man
  6. Christmas with the Kranks
  7. Zoom

Bad game. Bad movies. And tomorrow there’s a high chance that I witness many bad things during Saint Patrick’s Day and the annual Kansas City parade that occurs just one block from my loft. Yes, it could be a very long day.

Posted by Seth at 11:06 PM | Comments (1)

March 06, 2007

QuickTime Color-Correction

Last night’s episode of Heroes came with a nice surprise bonus – an extended preview of Spider-Man 3. I was antsy the entire episode to see the preview and when it finally aired, not only was I treated to some new footage, but I was also encouraged to go to NBC.com to check out a seven minute preview! Seven minutes? It seems that more and more movies these days are offering extended trailers online, just to get people hooked. If it’s a good or anticipated movie, I’d say it’s working.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t watch from my home last night, traffic must have been insane right after the Heroes episode. So, instead, I decided to watch it at work today. And that’s when I remembered that my copy of QuickTime on my office computer blows. Aside from the occasional audio drift, it plays movies just fine and dandy.

So playing movies is fine. I can Pause them. Rewind. Fast-forward. Everything. It’s just the viewing of them that blows – click on the thumbnail at the top of the post. What you see is a screenshot of two different instances of my glorious QuickTime player. On the left is how nearly any .mov file shows up when I first open and play them. On the right is the normal image. Imagine trying to watch movies like that. The first time it happened I thought it was some cool visual effect. It wasn’t.

I searched around the internet trying to find out what was going on. I couldn’t find squat. I un-installed and re-installed. Nothing. Same ol’ crapped up colors.

Then it hit me, maybe my visual controls were messed up. Upon first look, everything looked normal. So I started to mess around with all of the different bars that I could. The instant I clicked on the Brightness bar, the video switched from the weird colors to normal. I moved the bar MAYBE two pixels and it fixed the problem?

It wasn’t a glitch, either. I could move the bar back into the default spot and the colors would revert back to the squirrely zone. I could also move any of the other visual controls and it would make the picture normal.

Weird.

Posted by Seth at 02:26 PM | Comments (5)

March 04, 2007

Pitnickiest 63

  1. I get at least one nose bleed in my left nostril a week.
  2. I want another tattoo, or more, but don't know what I want (yet).
  3. Snowfall is one of my most favorite things.
  4. Walking to work makes me happy.
  5. Running and sliding on ice is fun.
  6. I sometimes wish I were an assassin.
  7. Or in the mafia.
  8. I would love to go to Europe next year.
  9. I get sad when I shop alone at a grocery store.
  10. Guys that rev their engines and squeal their tires annoy me.
  11. I have a huge desire to spend more time with my grandparents.
  12. I cry every time I leave after seeing them.
  13. My feet hurt when the police pull me over or I'm almost in an accident.
  14. I condition almost daily.
  15. I wish that men had as many shoe/clothing choices as women.
  16. I used to think that stealing music was wrong, but stealing software was okay.
  17. I've never baby-sat anyone.
  18. Surrounding myself with creative people is necessary for me.
  19. The past is something I'm still having a hard time letting go of.
  20. Dating is odd and sometimes awkward, and it wears me out.
  21. I love wearing flip-flops.
  22. I think its weird when people say they look up to me.
  23. I wish my mom lived closer.
  24. I never grew out of wishing I were taller.
  25. The next monster truck rally that comes through KC, I'm going to it.
  26. I believe that dinosaurs existed and evolution is a fact.
  27. American television should take some serious lessons from the BBC.
  28. I can't sleep in, nor do I want to (most of the time).
  29. I don't like dressing up much.
  30. I think my competitive nature scares some people away, but I'm trying to quell that part of me.
  31. A daily crossword puzzle would be heaven.
  32. Boxers are being replaced in my dresser with boxer-briefs.
  33. To my surprise, I'm wearing black socks more and more.
  34. I want to train as a boxer.
  35. I'm deathly afraid of wasps and bees.
  36. I think I act like a kid too much.
  37. Lightning storms astound me.
  38. I don't snore.
  39. I only ask one thing of people, honesty.
  40. I have a weird rogue hair that grows on my arm.
  41. Volcanoes are my favorite geological feature.
  42. I think water tastes good, well, most of it.
  43. I enjoy studying maps.
  44. Politicians annoy me to no end.
  45. Stubbornness is also annoying.
  46. I can be pretty stubborn.
  47. My blood type is O Negative.
  48. I don't donate blood often enough.
  49. I want to learn CPR.
  50. The most horrible noise at work is the sound of finger nail clippers.
  51. I don't believe the grass is greener, but sometimes I want to.
  52. Humanity humbles me almost daily.
  53. I want to take cooking lessons, but hate cooking for just myself.
  54. I'm a pack rat and I have too much crap.
  55. I check my email way too often.
  56. I enjoy making cards for people, but can't remember when the last time I made one.
  57. Sushi isn't that bad.
  58. I prefer tissue with aloe added.
  59. Doubt creeps in every so often.
  60. I always have hope.
  61. I don't like telling people about my personal life.
  62. But if you ask me a question, I answer it.
  63. I think everyone should do an exercise like this, it really makes you look at yourself.

Posted by Seth at 10:39 PM | Comments (5)

March 03, 2007

SethGunderson.com 2.1

It’s very easy to take time to redesign a site, code it out, make sure it’s all 95% there and then leave it. When I launched the new site, I knew there were things that I still had left to do, but finding time to fix them was hard to come by. I’m glad that I finally got around to fixing the following things:

Search is Back
The other day Scoot chastised me for taking away the ability to search on my site. I didn’t realize that it was a very widely used feature, that is, until I wanted to find something specific that I had written about before. Have no fear, now you can not search no more.

Master Archive Page
After the redesign, I noticed a fall-off of traffic to posts that didn’t appear on the home page. I didn’t think much of it, until I realized the ONLY way to reach older posts was to go to the category archive pages. Wow, smart. Now, in the main navigation, as well as under the three posts on the front page, is a link to the archive page where you can find ALL of the posts I’ve written.

Who Said What and When?
Do you like reading what other people have to say on my site? I do. If you’re like me, well now you don’t have to look around for when someone has made a comment. Just subscribe to the comments rss feed and you’ll be able to read them as soon as they’re posted approved by me. I’m pretty sure it’ll work most anywhere, if not, just let me know and I’ll try to fix it.

That’s all I got for now. If there’s a feature you’re just dying to see, tell me and I’ll laugh at you.

Posted by Seth at 06:38 PM | Comments (2)