Entries Tagged 'Cartoons' ↓

No big writeup this weekend, folks, as I'm on holiday in France, a country probably best-known as the one-time home of Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur. And maybe as the setting for some of "Julie and Julia."

But the news that PayPal will now allow you to transfer money to someone just by bumping your iPhone or Android device with theirs - that's pretty cool.

Makes you wonder what else you could swap. Maybe DNA?

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Are you finding the same thing I am? Where you're having a casual conversation with a friend, and you're in the middle of saying something... well, not exactly secret, but not the sort of thing you want shared with the world... and you stop dead, suddenly worried that it might end up in their Twitter stream?

When I'm talking to someone with a blog, a Twitter feed or even a Facebook account (which, these days, means nearly everyone), I'm often just a little guarded. I have my own guidelines and boundaries when I'm dealing with other people's information - basically, if there's any ambiguity, I ask permission before I share - but I know other people draw the line differently.

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Sometimes they'll reveal a confidence but change a few details to protect identities. Or maybe they'd never do that, but they'll readily tag an embarrassing party photo of you on Facebook.

While some people lay down hard and fast rules about the new online etiquette, the reality is things are still a lot more fluid than many of us realize. You've just had lunch with a potential client; do you tweet that? You shot a hilarious video at the company picnic; do you upload it? And do we all just assume we're all on the record, 24-7, until and unless we agree otherwise?

Several years into the social media revolution, we're still only making baby steps toward some kind of shared understanding of the terrain we're walking on together. And in some ways, netiquette seems as nebulous a concept as ever.

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By now, you've probably had the same experience I have of learning about a close friend's marriage breaking up because their status changed on Facebook. There's something a little alienating about the fact that a server somewhere in Facebook's infrastructure had the goods before I had even an inkling of trouble in paradise.

But then, the whole relationship thing in Facebook is fraught. I have to imagine there have been screaming, tear-filled fights because one partner clicked "In a relationship" while the other clicked "Hey, let's not rush things." Or, maybe worse for some people, "Sweetheart, what are you putting down for 'relationship status'?" "I'm glad you asked, because I've been meaning to talk to you about that."

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No matter which checkbox you've been ticking – no, that's not a smutty double-entendre – have a happy Valentine's Day.

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Photo credit: Esparta

Ah, yup. Between the price point, the locked-down App Store approach, the spiffy design, the tech specs, the lack of camera, the lack of multitasking, the lack of phone, the cool iBook Store, the corny iBook shelves, the impending transformation of personal computing, the impending collapse of Apple stock, the green light for 3G voice-over-IP apps, the telco deals, the publisher deals, the rumor fact checks, the comparisons with Windows, the Kindle-killing, the not-Kindle-killing and the just-have-to-wait-and-see, all of the good points are taken.

Okay, except maybe pointing out how disappointed cartoonists are that there's no pressure-sensitive stylus. But That Would Be Self-Serving, so I won't say it.

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I'm sure there are probably a few more sanitary-napkin jokes left waiting in the wings (Anyone joke about a Maxi model yet? They did? Bugger.) but I'd like to think I'm above that. (Addendum: Alex tells me that "wings" is also circulating as an iPad joke. God, I'm clueless about this stuff. Is there a course I can take somewhere? Or maybe an app?)

All I can say is this: Dollhouse wrapped on Friday night, and I'm just about certain that even if the zombie apocalypse was brought about, not by the depradations of the Rossum Corporation, but by an iPad OS update that went horribly, horribly wrong... I'd still want one of the gorgeous damn things.

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Jolie O'Dell sparked a fascinating thread on marketing to geek women - specifically, marketing cutesy pink stuff to them.

Okay, so maybe there is a long-tail market for Barbie's Dream Server Farm. But my experience in shopping for consumer electronics says there's plenty of room for folks who sell technology of all kinds to get a little more savvy on how gender relations have changed.

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I can't count the number of times I've walked into tech stores with Alex and had the salesman (I use that word advisedly) glom onto me... despite the fact that Alex is the household video, audio and telecommunications geek. Some get it after a few not-too-subtle hints (Alex: "Now is that true MEMC 240Hz, or just scanning backlight?" me: "TV's hard! (giggle)"), but a surprising number of them can't seem to resist directing their pitch exclusively to me.

I'd like to think times have changed from the days when cars were sold to women on the basis of how many cupholders they had. (The cars, not the women.) But I wonder.

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It's getting to be a joke: the magic things cops can do with computers. "Wait - there's a reflection in the teakettle! Magnify! Enhance! Now pull a DNA sample from the image! I don't care, just do it - boost the power if you have to! Crossmatch it with every person named Brent in the continental United States! Damn, this new version of GIMP rocks!"

Annnnd... DING! Three seconds later, up pops the photo of the perpetrator, out go the cops to haul him in and America sleeps a little more soundly tonight.

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We've grown to accept this, partly because without these little storytelling cheats our streets would be crawling with fictitious master criminals executing horrific, if imaginary, atrocities. And partly because we have a tacit understanding with directors that they're going to keep us entertained, and there's nothing pulse-pounding about "Well-elp, might as well take the rest of the week off while this thing renders."

But maybe what really sells us on the idea of magic high tech down at the precinct is that, deep down, we kind of wish it were true (never mind the bladder-emptying implications for civil liberties and privacy). If we were being stalked by a sociopathic ex-con determined to exact a terrible revenge for our having sentenced him to 30 years in prison, well, dammit, we'd want those nice CSI people to have every tool they needed to stop him in the nick of time.

And maybe, just maybe, that technology could trickle down to, say, the prosumer market. "Computer... draw cartoon!"

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I'm just aching to know if the new Apple tablet (insert caveats, weasel words and qualifiers here) is a potential Cintiq competitor. I don't think it will be, but you never know. It may also have a built in barometer and bird call generator.

I'm never sure if Apple does themselves more good than harm with the secrecy and anticipation that surrounds the run-up to these announcements. Unless there's something truly jaw-dropping about whatever device rises from the stage when Steve Jobs reaches that particular slide in Keynote, the reaction may be muted disappointment: "Oh." "Huh." "Wait a minute... my life is still the same miasma of thwarted potential and spiritual anomie that it was half an hour ago!"

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That said, what are you expecting on Jan. 27?

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'Tis the season and all that, and this time of year I find myself thinking a lot about my parents. This is exactly the sort of thing they'd have said (if my childhood had been, oh, 20 or 30 years later), and it would have driven me CRA-ZEE.

Funny thing: It's also exactly the sort of thing I find myself saying to my own kids.

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And speaking of 'tis the season, thanks and all the best to all of you who've read, tweeted, forwarded and commented on Noise to Signal this year. Have a great holiday if you're celebrating, and just have a lovely week or two if you aren't. I'll see you in 2010.

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'Tis the season and all that, and this time of year I find myself thinking a lot about my parents. This is exactly the sort of thing they'd have said (if my childhood had been, oh, 20 or 30 years later), and it would have driven me CRA-ZEE.

Funny thing: It's also exactly the sort of thing I find myself saying to my own kids.

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And speaking of 'tis the season, thanks and all the best to all of you who've read, tweeted, forwarded and commented on Noise to Signal this year. Have a great holiday if you're celebrating, and just have a lovely week or two if you aren't. I'll see you in 2010.

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The debate rages on over whether social networks (and Twitter, and YouTube, and, and, and) have any legitimacy in the workplace, fueled in no small part by people who sell tools to block them.

But employers who turn their noses up at Facebook et al. may well discover that their coveted Millennials (a.k.a. Generation Y, a.k.a. those damn kids who won't get off your lawn) are happy to return the favour when recruiting time rolls around. Blocking access to Facebook looks a lot like those IT departments that wouldn't install web browsers on your computer a decade ago... or external email access a few years earlier.

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And like those tools before them, the social web today is increasingly being used by companies and organizations for productive, collaborative work. So it's not just a question of denying your HR department a hiring pool of cool kids. Blocking social media from your company can mean cutting yourself off from an important potential source of productivity, innovation and increased efficiency.

Of course, that's an argument I like to make to people who haven't just received a dozen Farmville notifications.

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