All the future “vision” videos I’ve seen circulating these days present the same dystopian take on our fate: that we’ll be further enslaved by our touch screens, viewing the world entirely through them, whether standing at our bathroom mirror in the morning or looking out the taxicab window at night.
Cases in point, to name a few:
Corning - “A Day Made of Glass”
EXOdesk - “The Desk of the Future”
Microsoft - “Productivity Future Vision”
Kudos to the first consumer goods company that can show me a vision of the future that has me experiencing my reality as it is, not an “enhanced” version of it. Perhaps a technology that keeps technology at bay… isolates it to a suitable realm, leaving the rest of the world untouched.
Am I the only one that doesn’t want digital overlays on everything I see or touch? We spend enough time with our heads buried in technology - shouldn’t we focus on how to create more authentic experiences, rather than foursquare checkins?
Unsurprisingly, Louis C.K. sums it up better than I can:
Like many Google+ adopters, lately I’ve been wondering at what point Google+ will “tip” and become my primary social network.
Today I saw this post by Frank Rogan in my G+ stream:
…which made me wonder, exactly how much of a ghost town is Google+?
On Facebook, I have 643 friends and on Google+ I have 255 people in circles. So by “friend” numbers alone, Google+ is doing very well (at least for me personally), given that several years separate the two services, yet I have 40% the number of friends on G+ as I do on Facebook.
But the real metric of course is activity of those friends. Controlling for autoposts (i.e. only counting Facebook posts initiated by users, not applications, pages I like or Facebook updating me on profile changes), I counted all the status updates on both networks for the past 16 hours - basically from midnight until now (4:30pm my time, as I write this, on a Sunday). I also made sure I viewed all the “Most Recent” FB posts and had turned on the option to show everyone, to try to make it as accurate as possible.
Not exactly scientific, but here are the results:
- Facebook: 643 friends, 164 posts
- Google+: 255 friends, 10 posts
So that’s a post rate of .26 for Facebook, versus .04 for Google+.
So in my networks at least, Facebook users are posting 6.5x more often than Google+ users.
So it will likely be a while before I make Google+ my primary social network…
I was just giving thought to Facebook’s Like system the other day and how versatile it’s become, especially when used on status or comments. The nuance of expression it offers is quite broad, depending on the context it’s used in.
I’ve noticed a few different types of Likes, but I imagine there are numerous others - I’d love to hear of any ways in which you’ve seen a like used.
For instance:
- “Thank You” Like - in response to Happy Birthday wishes, I’ve used this Like to say thank you to well-wishers.
- “I Heard You” Like - acknowledgement that you heard someone’s comment, but it doesn’t need a reply (or you can’t offer one at the moment)
- “Voting” Like - used to side with someone in a debate/argument taking place in comments
- “Ironic” Like - liking a comment that isn’t inherently likeable… tough to use this one very often as it requires the unlikeable status update to be benign enough that the updater won’t take offense, but it can be funny if done right (and the person knows you well enough)
- “Flirt” Like - pretty obvious - usually these appear on a comment that is suggestive (comments about bathing suits, crushes, going to bed, etc)
- “Splash Damage” Like - liking it because someone more popular / important liked it and you want to be associated with them / their tastes
What else?
When even a bank’s own spin-laden report calls Vancouver-area housing affordability, “extremely poor and rapidly eroding,” there must be something to it.
Another good quote from the report:
“The average family buying a house in [Vancouver] would need to dedicate 92.5 per cent of its [pre-tax] income to own a bungalow.”
The comments on the article make the best points, such as:
- Any interest rate increase from our current historical lows will make a bad situation in the Vancouver-area really dire
- RBC report has no real numbers (i.e. average income used) and doesn’t specify if one or two incomes are used
- The report saying “a weakening economy may help home buyers” is laughable if buyers don’t have jobs
- While the home ownership rate is at its peak today (more than 20, 30, 40 years ago), equity means ownership - not simply whose name is on title.
- From one commenter, “I’m stunned how many young couples think that the only house they should be buying is the 3,500 square foot, triple car garage…”
A friend of mine, David Seymour, posted this article on G+ today:
Letting Go of the Suburban Dream
After nine years, we did what some people would deem inappropriate. Others might even call it unthinkable. We sold our suburban house, got rid of 90 per cent of our stuff and moved back to the city.
Give the full article a read.
This story was (nearly) written for me. In June we sold our suburban house and all of our belongings in a series of epic garage sales and Craigslist postings. Now we have as many possessions as can be unreasonably transported via checked baggage on a flight.
Saying goodbye to suburban life.
We felt some of the same pains as the author of this article… neighbors we didn’t know, needing to drive everywhere, etc. We both work from home though, so we do see our kids a lot more than the regular commuting couple. And unlike the author, I put a premium on being able to open the back door and let my kids run out into a yard or common space. Often that’s the only way to preserve what’s left of my sanity.
While I spent a lot of my youth living in cities (Vancouver, Houston, Los Angeles, Toronto) and still like the concentrated nature of downtown areas, I don’t know if I could do it again. It feels a little too beehive-esque to me now that I’ve grown to like space and occasional quiet. Also, our four kids complicate finding a downtown living space large enough.
Obviously downtown areas make walking/biking much more possible than it is in the suburbs. And I vastly prefer self-transport to owning a car. However, one small problem with getting yourself around in Vancouver is the weather. It’s not always pleasant biking in the driving rain, which is a not-infrequent occurrence. By not infrequent I mean it rains almost year-round, in varying degrees.
So for me the ideal combination of lifestyles is:
- Housing large enough that my kids don’t have to share their room with more than 1 other sibling
- An easily accessible, ground-level common area or yard the kids can use
- A location that allows us to easily walk or bike everywhere in town
- Weather that is almost always good, making walking/biking possible
I’ll let you know what we find.
This infographic on Freshbooks (the same company I use for my accounting software) sheds a ton of insight into why people become freelancers and more. The image below is only a part of it - click through to see the whole infographic.
The graphic posted me to comment on freelancing from my own perspective of having been a game consultant for 4 years now. Here’s that comment:
So… I am a videogame designer/strategist who started freelancing for more control over my own schedule (I have four kids). I love the lifestyle and wouldn’t go back to full time work unless I absolutely had to, but here are the caveats:
Saw this post on TechCrunch this morning about MG Siegler (@parislemon) deciding to “quit” email by not responding to it for a month. The Office Space reference he makes is gold. Full text here of one of my favorite parts of that classic film:
Peter Gibbons: I uh, I don’t like my job, and, uh, I don’t think I’m gonna go anymore.
Joanna: You’re just not gonna go?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Joanna: Won’t you get fired?
Peter Gibbons: I don’t know, but I really don’t like it, and, uh, I’m not gonna go.
Joanna: So you’re gonna quit?
Peter Gibbons: Nuh-uh. Not really. Uh… I’m just gonna stop going.
Joanna: When did you decide all that?
Peter Gibbons: About an hour ago.
Joanna: Oh, really? About an hour ago… so you’re gonna get another job?
Peter Gibbons: I don’t think I’d like another job.
Joanna: Well, what are you going to do about money and bills and…
Peter Gibbons: You know, I’ve never really liked paying bills. I don’t think I’m gonna do that, either.
In the article, MG claims his life might be 30-50% better if he could eliminate email. He probably gets a lot more email than I do, so I understand the sentiment. But as a game consultant and Gmail fanatic, I pride myself on my elaborate system of filters and labels and a ruthless Unsubscribe habit that keeps my personal inbox to a manageable sub-50 conversations level at most times.
Over about 14 years, I’ve amassed a collection of dozens of CDs and DVDs as well as a 160GB external HD - all for the purposes of backing up my files.
There are old PST files in there, previous versions of my personal website, files from my EA Canada days (design docs, etc) and virtually everything I’ve done professionally for almost my entire career. I’m amazed the CDs held up as well as they have as some of them go back to 1997, at least.
So now we’re in the middle of a giant Life Streamlining project… we’ve sold our house and virtually all our possessions, and swapped our analog assets (DVDs, Blurays, books) for digital ones (I paid a local guy $100 to convert 76 DVDs to ISO & MP4 format!).
In that spirit of streamlining, I decided to amalgamate all my various backups into one online location (and likely a physical USB HDD as well). When I started poking around for how best to do this, it wasn’t super simple. There are two big swaths to the cloud storage industry:
It’s only been a few weeks with the iPad 2, but here’s my take on what productivity apps are my favorite.
1) iThoughts HD [iTunes]
Great mind-mapping app on iPad. Easy to use and auto-align has to be one of the most gratifying features to use after you’ve plotted out a giant mind map. I use it to organize all my client work, projects, statuses, etc. Great for seeing your life at a glance.
Beware of these invoice-looking solicitation letters from Domain Registry of Canada. I just got one for one of my domains. Read this great post explaining the scam.
Then, use this direct link to the company’s profile to file a complaint with the Canadian Better Business Bureau.
Here is the complaint I just posted with the BBB, if you’d like to use it.
Filed against :
Domain Registry of Canada
PO Box 4577
Markham ON L3R 5M7
Complaint Description:
The company presents an invoice, that aside from two lines of text, appears to be an invoice for renewing your domain registration. It warns that “you must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it” and “failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity” and so on. The format of this solicitation has been purposely designed to mimic a bill for services rendered or an invoice to renew the domain. The company knows this and no doubt many people fall for this deceptive sales practice, despite the few buried lines that state this is not a bill. Furthermore, the prices the company is offering on domain renewals are about 5 times higher than what customers normally pay at GoDaddy and other industry standard registrars. The only terms for this company’s practices are deceptive and exploitative. They should not be allowed to structure their solicitations so deceivingly.
Your Desired Resolution:
Company should be made to reform their sales materials to not be purposely deceptive to addressees. Any lay person would judge this campaign as deceptive. In my opinion, the BBB is here for ensure honest business practices, which this company is hardly practicing. They are hoping to deceive the targets into inadvertently transferring their domains to the company, believing they are paying to renew them with their current registrars.
