Back in February, I attempted to demystify Twitter for the non-tech oriented. The service was (and still is) trying to find its place in the crowded marketplace of tech innovations. It’s been plagued by serious downtime, and has even had to cut back on some of its features in order to provide more stability. While it continues to slowly gain recognition outside the narrow audience of technophiles, it still suffers from a big problem: you can’t explain it to your grandmother in just a few sentences.
The easiest way I know how to explain Twitter is as a “microblogging system” or “a tricked out Facebook status update”. In my blog post I called it a combination of text messaging, Facebook status, blogging, and instant messaging. Little to none of that would make sense to someone who doesn’t own a computer. Of course, it’s not like those people are the audience for Twitter. But if you can’t quickly and easily explain your product to audiences that aren’t already embedded in these developments, how can you become relevant or attractive to them?
What follows are a number of links completely unrelated to banks, stocks, bailouts, the Federal Treasury, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (see: news items that trouble and confuse me). Instead, how about a nice dose of random:
The Macarthur Foundation announced the recipients of its annual Genius Awards last week. One of the newly minted geniuses is an artist named Tara Donovan who creates art I think is brilliant, mainly from everyday objects at an enormous scale (tens of thousands of pencils, toothpicks, etc). Check out a slideshow of her work on the NYT site. [Hat Tip: Kottke].
It’s impossible to talk about China without acknowledging the sensitive political and human rights situation. But, being a complete geek for all things related to space exploration, I still found this video of the first Chinese spacewalk (on their third manned flight) to be worth celebrating [Hat Tip: Gizmodo]:
Sam (who also pleaded for a more upbeat Monday Links…maybe not this week) drew my attention to this story in the comments of my last post. Today the American Prospect blog picked it up with the appropriate title “Shame.“:
On Friday, two men attacked a Mosque in Dayton, Ohio, with some kind of chemical irritant. The victims were the Muslims worshiping peacefully inside, and the perpetrators have yet to be apprehended. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt, but this kind of bigotry is simply unacceptable and is symptomatic of the stigma surrounding American Muslims that surrounds our post-9/11 elections — see the ridiculous accusations that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and the political imperative he has to deny the charge as loudly as he can while defending Muslims as quietly as possible.
If you drink 2 cups of coffee a day, you will need 18 coffee trees devoted just to you. And it takes 5 years before a tree is fully mature and productive.
North Dakota is apparently the most outgoing state in the nation, according to an index of personality traits. This is completely true based on my sample of 1 (cheers, Kate!):
[The index] used a standard personality test that rates people based on the “big five” personality traits — extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness. The results? Highly conscientious states were a really mixed bag, including New Mexico, North Carolina, Utah and Florida. Super neurotic states included not only the obvious culprits — New York and New Jersey — but also Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas (the latter three possibly, the scientists surmise, because of the extremes of poverty found there).
I mentioned Alltop a few months ago; the topics have since expanded from 20 to 215+, so now might be a good time to check out the new design.
At times like these, we all need a little more Dr. Seuss in our lives. Mental Floss obliges with Stories Behind 10 Dr. Seuss Stories. My favorite Dr. Seuss tale is the Butter Battle Book, but here’s the tale behind Green Eggs and Ham:
Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss’ editor, bet him thaat he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less. The Cat in the Hat was pretty simple, after all, and it used 225 words. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mr. Geisel started writing and came up with Green Eggs and Ham – which uses exactly 50 words. The 50 words, by the way, are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.
Wow, it’s been a hectic week three weeks. Apologies for my unforseen blogging hiatus. Before we get to links, a few things have happened while I’ve been away:
The economy imploded. If you’re looking for an informative break-down of the subprime crisis, I recommend this chart from Wikipedia (thanks for the link, Hank). If you think the economic crisis has a lot to do with deregulation and failures of the “free” market, AND you’re looking for a chuckle as your money disappears, I recommend this diagram from Indexed’s Jessica Hagy.
New Facebook made it’s debut became mandatory for users. As anyone with a Facebook account could have predicted, many users are FURIOUS and making their displeasure known through things like status updates, Facebook groups, profile changes, and posts of friends’ walls. I’ve fortunately been able to follow this hot air fest though the intuitive interface and all-inclusive feed on the new Facebook. Whoops. Seriously, people: get a grip. Want to whine about Facebook? How about you focus your energies on combating these obnoxious “I heard someone has a crush on you! Download this virus to find out who!” spam wall posts.
Hell froze over The Rays made the playoffs, and my BoSox aren’t far behind (though I don’t think we stand a chance against the Angels).
On to links! Lots of them today to make up for ignoring you:
This Sunday’s NY Times Magazine featured an article on start-up Unigo: an open platform for students to review their colleges and for prospective students to read those reviews. My alma mater’s admissions director is quoted in the article saying, essentially, ‘that’s cute’:
“I’ve got to be honest with you,” Christopher Gruber, a vice president who oversees admissions at Davidson College, told me. “I’m not spending a ton of time navigating those student-driven sites. It’s too much to manage. My sense is that the traditional big players, like Princeton Review, are the major sources for online information too, in part because those are the names that parents still recognize. Those are the names that are going to have greater panache, and so those are probably the ones that will be turned to. The ones that we supply information to are the ones that we spend the most time on, filling out surveys for them to make sure that that information is accurate.”
In early September, after Unigo offered Davidson and the other 266 colleges a two-week preview of the site — “because we don’t want them to feel ambushed,” [Unigo founder] Goldman explained — Gruber confirmed that the letter from Goldman was sitting on his desk but said he hadn’t yet found the time to visit the site itself. If he does, he will see reviews, photos and videos by roughly 230 current Davidson students (one-eighth of its entire student body) already posted there.
I know and respect the folks in the admissions office at Davidson. They do a great job with a small staff. But this is foolish to the point that it’s downright irresponsible. Just like social networks, there will certainly be a number of “student-driven” sites like Unigo that pop up. Some will fail (Friendster), while others will explode in popularity and influence (Facebook, MySpace, etc). To categorically write-off the value of peer-to-peer marketing online is to assume that Davidson can jump into the ‘Princeton Review 2.0′ world when it damn well pleases…when a victorious, influential site has emerged. Unfortunately, the web doesn’t work that way. Some of Davidson’s peer institutions will almost certainly beat us to the punch and effectively engage the non-”traditional big players,” putting Davidson in a place years (months?) from now where it scores well in traditional measures (Princeton Review, US News and World Report) while ignoring the very sites that most prospective students frequent. [Thanks for the tip, Jeff and Jane]
Seth Godin argues that the newMicrosoftads represent a fundamentally flawed understanding of the company’s market leader status:
Microsoft has fallen into a trap that befalls many large companies in search of cred, buzz or respect. They’ve decided to buy some via advertising[...] [T]hey have Apple envy [...]
When was the last time you met an Apple employee who was truly passionate about the products she made or sold? My guess is this happened the last time you went to an Apple store. When was the last time you had a similar experience with a Microsoft employee?
If you talk to Google employees, odds are that they are totally engaged and on a mission to change the way people interact with the internet and with information. Talk to a Microsoft person and they will be happy to talk about reliability or standards they set or the way to engage the bureaucracy of the organization.
Speaking of Microsoft, EcoGeek reports that big man Bill Gates shares my geek love for algae as a biofuel stock:
Sapphire Energy, which hopes to create fuel for cars from algae, is undergoing series B financing, and Gates and several other large investment companies brought up Sapphire’s total invested capital to $100 M.
When [the proposal] came out on September 9, I think you might have looked at it and said “well, this sounds good, but perhaps it’s a bit too expensive.” But put in the perspective of a $700 billion bailout, the idea of spending $100 billion over two years to ensure that the ordinary people who are getting stuck with the bill for Wall Street’s screw-ups don’t all lose their jobs is small change.
Instead of making assumptions on imperfect information, I wish more voters would use this tool to figure out how their taxes would change under President Obama or McCain. [Hat tip: Ezra Klein].
TechCrunch reports on internshipratings.com, where former interns rate their experiences. Sounds like a similar model to our friends at rateyourstudyabroad.com, which with one more mention will become a paid sponsor of Tropophilia (they just don’t know it yet).
Blog friend Rachel Will [apparently] Blog for Food Haterade as she thrashes childhood icons Babar and Paddington Bear (not to mention my personal favorite Corduroy…you WOULDN’T!!). This seems about as courageous as threatening Canada or bashing Scientologists. I’m looking forward to future posts on why the following are lame/ugly/stupid: Alf (he’s pretty on the inside…), puppies, the single grey duckling waddling behind the rest, dandelions and/or clover, lemonade stands, bicycles, hot chocolate with little marshmallows, France, and Saturdays.
Last, but certainly not least, here’s LeBron James getting spanked in a game of HORSE with an amateur:
That’s all for now, but (once again) I promise to be a better blogger this week.
We’re testing a new comments system that allows for threaded conversations, voting, and other useful features. The old comments are queued up for import, so they should be integrated shortly. Let us know what you think! - J
It has fallen to me this week, dear readers, to feed you your weekly supply of links. Boy, do I have a list for you. So let it be written, so let it be done.
If you’re craving more regular linkage, let me point you to a great new source I’ve discovered. The New York Times started the Ideas blog a while back, which serves up a handful of links each day to interesting sites, reports, and other resources. Highly recommended, check it out.
Avast, me hearties! This Friday the 19th of Septembarrrrr be Intarrrnational Talk Like a Pirate Day! Cast off your land lubber ways and smartly muster yourself up a pint o’ grog with your maties to celarrrrbrate! If you can’t summon up mad skills like these, the site above reminds us of the ubiquity of the well-placed Arrrrr!:
“Arrr!” can mean, variously, “yes,” “I agree,” “I’m happy,” “I’m enjoying this beer,” “My team is going to win it all,” “I saw that television show, it sucked!” and “That was a clever remark you or I just made.”
Lee LeFever at CommonCraft writes about his experience with Amazon Fresh, the experimental grocery delivery service that the commerce giant is beta testing in its Seattle home market. You can elect to have your groceries delivered in the middle of the night or during the day, all in temperature-controlled, reusable containers. As if that wasn’t enough, through a service called Amazon Now, you can even have items from Amazon.com’s vast commercial inventory included in your order. Get your eggs and a digital camera in the same box, same day, no delivery fees if your order is over $25. Madness.
Link dealer extraordinaire Jason Kottke points us to this MythBusters nugget showing how sulfur hexafluoride has the opposite effect on your voice that helium does. It is hilarious, and probably giving a lot of people Halloween ideas.
During the company’s 10th anniversary celebration, high profile Googlers are presenting their views on the future of the Internet via the official blog. They’re really intriguing and worth a read, especially Marissa Mayer’s take on the future of search. You can find the rest here.
Anyone else as confused as Arrington, Taylor and I are about Microsoft’s strategy with its newads? OK, they make me chuckle and make Bill Gates seem a degree more human. But it doesn’t talk about the products. At all. Rumor has it that later commercials will get into this, and the two released so far are supposed to warm us up to the company. We’ll see if it works, I guess…
Fasten your seatbelts, social networking conservatives: Facebook’s getting ready to pull the big lever.
Clive Thompson reports that scientists used Google Earth to determine that cows align themselves with magnetic north. Will this have an impact on barn construction, and would such bovine feng shui improve the quality of their milk? Stay tuned, cow lovers!
That is all. Happy mid-September, and stay tuned for posts from both of us (shocker!) this week.
Disclaimer:All content found on Tropophilia represents the thoughts and positions of its authors alone, and does not seek to represent those of their employers.
Back in February, I attempted to demystify Twitter for the non-tech oriented. The service was (and still is) trying to find its place in the crowded marketplace of tech innovations. It’s been plagued by serious downtime, and has even had to cut back on some of its features in order to provide more stability. While it continues to slowly gain recognition outside the narrow audience of technophiles, it still suffers from a big problem: you can’t explain it to your grandmother in just a few sentences.
