Month: July 2003

During an early dinner on July 4th, I took several family snapshots. I threw in this landscape shot just because, and to see how it would turn out. 4 megapixels isn’t enough to replace film, but it’s getting there. Taken near Hyde and Chestnut in San Francisco. WARNING: The full picture is about 1MB, and I didn’t cut it down from its width or 1704 pixels, or its height of 1770, so you’ll have to scroll, probably.

This New York Times story “The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive?” feels like an old story. Technology lets us stay ‘always on’ and all of us, especially business folks, are taking advantage of the opportunity… perhaps without any true productivity benefit. If you’ve read James Gleick’s Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, written in 1999, you’ve heard this tale before. And I’m sure Gleick is just the most recent teller of this tale… if I were to go pull the book off the shelf, I could re-use one of his historical examples which remind us that these tendencies are not new. Anyway, with all that griping, I’m glad I read the article, if only for this quote:

ACCORDING to research compiled by David E. Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, multitaskers actually hinder their productivity by trying to accomplish two things at once. Mr. Meyer has found that people who switch back and forth between two tasks, like exchanging e-mail and writing a report, may spend 50 percent more time on those tasks than if they work on them separately, completing one before starting the other.

I think this is true, at least personally. I find myself fighting the urge to start the next task before I finish the one in progress.

(I’ll update the NYTimes.com URL later with the archive-friendly URL when I see it in NetNewsWire.)

With some helpful babysitting from the in-laws, we rushed out to see Whalerider. This movie is set in New Zealand, among the Maori. Good story, well told, mostly about how family and cultural relations mix (or don’t).

Originally a book (which I’ve neither read nor heard of), Whalerider was quick and beautiful. By quick, I mean the movie ran 90+ minutes. I appreciate a movie that takes as long as necessary, but no longer. Editing saves time. I wasn’t in a rush, but the pace of a story must move faster than most directors seem to want to move… maybe too enchanted with their story-telling. By beautiful, well, this movie made New Zealand look gorgeous and sunny. I’ve only spent three weeks in New Zealand, but I think only half of the characterization is necessarily true: NZ is gorgeous, but I don’t think it’s nearly as sunny as portrayed. Minor quibble. See the movie.

Mild understatement. P is not sleeping well. No surprise. Argh. Back to bed, if not to sleep.

What is not mentioned in this post about kissing up to Google-bot is that these are generally good guidelines for usability. Maybe not hard and fast rules, but you won’t go wrong with these. The only one that really bothers me is Radio’s use of the same title tag for each page/post. I know there is a way around it, but I’m lazy.

Ray Ozzie just posted an essay called Extreme Mobility. Starting with the ascendancy of laptops over desktops, he goes on to discuss (software) architectures that support mobility, with different types of mobility explained. Interesting piece, with no direct applicability to my life right now, but worth noting.

July 3, 2003 New York Times article Opinions to Spare? Click Here The article goes on about how people are getting paid to participate in online surveys, which are becoming more economical for those looking to measure the pulse of public opinion about issues or products/services. Beyond the economics (data collection and analysis is automated, without transfer costs), the growth of online polling is also a response to the ongoing decline in response rates for other methods, like telephones and direct mail. Preserving privacy and fighting the ‘noise’ in our lives has reached a tipping point, to where it’s changing the behavior of marketers.

Driving the growth are the limitations of the old technology and the promise of the new. Everyone wants to know what’s on the consumer’s mind, but traditional survey methods have become more expensive and time-consuming. People beg off from face-to-face interviews and discard mail questionnaires as junk. Consumers often decline to respond to phone surveys as well, or pre-empt them with caller ID and other devices. (The new federal do-not-call list for telemarketing exempts telephone surveys and polls.) Moreover, cellphone numbers are not included in random surveys.

I worry about whose opinions get heard. If I use caller ID (I do) and aggressively avoid telephone surveys and polls (usually), and others like me do, too… how do our views and opinions get disseminated? How do we change the landscape, political and commercial, if we limit our willingness to share our beliefs and convictions (strongly held or otherwise)? I use “our,” “like me,” and “we” somewhat broadly, by design. I think I mean those who are technically savvy, who are making enough to cover more than the bare essentials (computers and caller ID and the like cost money… less all the time, fortunately), and who are ever more protective of their time and attention. This categorization crosses the political spectrum, which I’m grateful for… but I don’t know how evenly. I vote in every election, but so much of the representation that results from our representative democracy seems so unresponsive, even on the time-scales (years) of elections. So who continues to share their opinions in forums (unlike this blog) where aggregate results boil down to a pointer about which way to go? And, selfishly, do I agree with those opinions? Something to watch… this trend is not slowing down.

By the by, that parenthetical comment at the end of the quote above, that telephone surveys and polls are exempt from the new do-not-call list, is disappointing. Sounds like a large loophole to me.

I like this idea: a bicycle repairmain who makes housecalls. Found via Chuq, which I found via Scoble.

This merger of two RSS search engines happened nearly two weeks ago, but I missed it. I think Feedster was a one-man band: “Although Feedster admittedly started as a “Wouldn’t this be cool technology experiment”, Feedster is now a real business…” rssSearch, admittedly, wasn’t much bigger, but interesting to see an idea move from hobby to business in three-plus months!

The engineering staff and technology of rssSearch merged with the market appeal of Feedster to produce a stronger, more compelling product for the market. (from the press release)

Why my interest? I own the domain searchrss.com. I registered it a couple of months ago. I don’t really have the time or energy to do anything, but I’m interested, and still curious.

From a quick visit yesterday afternoon to the San Francisco Zoo, two giraffes (click thumbnail for full-size image). About time I added an image here, although it will be rare. When family goes home, I won’t have time for so much noodling around here.