Monthly Archive for August, 2008

3 Social Media Applications I Left Recently

Published
by
Jon
on August 27, 2008
in Technology
. 2 Comments

Every shiny new application that emerges from Silicon Valley nowadays is always greeted by a flock of early adopters eager to try it out.

I don’t exactly consider myself an early adopter (imagine - I only started blogging recently, long after it was the cool and “in” thing to do so), but I do sign up and try out new services from time to time which I feel may fill a particular productivity void for me. (Still waiting for my Soocial invitation… Got it! Thanks!)

Some select applications, like FriendFeed and Toluu, instantly demonstrates that they has staying power for me. Most other applications? Not so much unfortunately.

Here are three social media applications which I recently gave up on and I’ll briefly explain why:

Identi.ca

Yes, I know some folks like John Hunt sing praises about open source microblogging, and it’s true that distributed architecture does wonders for scalability. However, my decision to leave Identi.ca boils down to one simple reason:

From a user’s perspective, it just doesn’t offer me any more value than Twitter.

For me, Identi.ca has exactly two useful features which Twitter doesn’t have: Auto-follow anyone who follows you, and OpenID support.

And in exchange, Identi.ca, users need to live with an inflexible content license, lose out a larger ecosystem of 3rd-party applications, and most importantly, don’t get access to the humongous network of existing Twitter users.

Now that Twitter’s scalability problems seem to be more or less under control, there is no reason for me to use any other Twitter clone, unless it brings something new to the table (like Plurk).

Also, additional minus points to Identi.ca for not allowing you to completely delete your account.

CrunchBase Information on Identi Ca
Identi Ca
Information provided by CrunchBase

Brightkite

Brightkite is actually a pretty cool service, and I do believe that mobile-enabled and location-aware social networking applications will be the next big wave once we can agree on how different phones can automatically - and with consent - send location data to applications. (Google Android, perhaps?)

The reason why I deleted my Brightkite account was simply because there are not enough users in Singapore.

As Metcalfe’s law states, the value of your network is proportional to the number of users in your network.

If you have lots of friends and followers on Twitter or Facebook - you can gain tremendous value from your social network.

If you don’t follow many people on Twitter and not many people follow you - you gain less value from your social network.

If you have no friends on Brightkite because virtually no users live in the same location as you on a a location-based social network - it just gets downright depressing.

After diligently checking-in my location on Brightkite for a couple months and never getting any replies or notifications that someone is around me, I pulled the plug on the whole thing.

Maybe I’ll sign up again when there are more than 23 new user check-ins a month in Singapore.

CrunchBase Information on Brightkite
Brightkite
Information provided by CrunchBase

Atomkeep

I thought Atomkeep was the holy grail for solving the problem for people like myself who need to maintain personal profiles in like 18 different applications and services. However, at the end of the day I deleted my Atomkeep account for three reasons:

  1. The performance was piss poor for about a whole week while I was trying it out. It’s one thing that Twitter doesn’t scale because of it’s gazillion users, but a new startup? FAIL.
  2. At that moment, it didn’t support all of the applications that I used (ironically, Brightkite was one of them), and I would of still needed to maintain my profile in multiple locations.
  3. The biggest issue for me however, was the incomplete vision and poor execution. I would of imagined Atomkeep having some slick GUI-driven capability to do basic field mapping and transformations so you can truly integrate all of your profiles together in as few data fields as possible. Instead what we got was basically a huge aggregation of all of the profile fields from all of the services. That provides no value for me. And there is repetition everywhere also. In order to synchronize my LinkedIn profile with my Twitter profile properly, I need to provide my home page (i.e. blog) URL in at least two fields. Why not give me the option to map both of those fields onto the same data?

Folks, maintaining multiple profiles may be a pain, but it’s hardly a deal breaker. A profile synchronization service really has to bring something unique and new to the table. What about pulling your profile photo from Gravatar? What about custom privacy settings so that some sites will receive your birthday and other sites won’t?

CrunchBase Information on Atomkeep
Atomkeep
Information provided by CrunchBase

If Athletes are Gods, Where are the Miracles?

Published
by
Jon
on August 25, 2008
in Theories
. 2 Comments

This is the most interesting thing I’ve read all week.

John Amaechi, a retired NBA player famous for being the first ever NBA player to come out of the closet, offers his opinion on why athletes should speak out more on certain issues:

…that if you would be a God, even if it is just a God of the stadium, then you should perform a miracle every once in a while.

And that doesn’t mean a triple salchow, it doesn’t mean a perfect vault, it doesn’t mean a game-winning shot. It means, occasionally, if you are a God, you do something that affects the world. And I don’t see that from any athletes–whether it be the Dream Team or the gymnasts or somebody else–from any country.

And I think it’s disappointing, because I think even now, if Michael Jordan stood up and said, ‘You know what, let’s really do something about the inequity of education in America,’ then I think it would change.

Of course, John is likely referring to the athletes who are participating in the Beijing Olympics this year who are generally mum about China’s poor human rights record both recently and in the past.

Honestly, I don’t necessarily blame the athletes for not speaking out. The athletes’ top priority in Beijing is to represent their home countries in achieving Olympic glory, and I would bet that most of them certainly can do without the distractions that will be brought about by speaking out on certain sensitive issues.

John further adds:

If you have people that can force people, families, who have almost nothing, to pay 150 pounds or dollars for shoes, then what can’t they achieve? Politicians can’t get 150 pounds out of families with nothing. Politicians have to give families with nothing stuff for them to believe in them. These people are so powerful that they make these families who have nothing buy stuff from them.

So yeah, I think they have the kind of power to change the world. I think it’s an awesome responsibility, and I can see why people wouldn’t want that. However, if you’re a God, every once in a while you’ve got to show it.

Source: Washington Post (via TrueHoop)

On this point though, I can’t really say I disagree with John.

Top tier professional athletes like Tiger Woods, LeBron James, and David Beckham do hold tremendous influential power over the public, and with great power certainly comes great responsibility.

I also think John’s example is spot on - I’ve seen it first hand where poor kids will scrape together enough money to buy expensive Air Jordans even if it means secretly skipping lunch for a few months to do so.

Although the Olympics may not be the proper forum to do so, I do wish more influential people in the world can use their power to influence positive change.

And this should extend beyond just professional athletes and “Gods of the Stadium”, but to other celebrities and public figures who the public generally holds in awe.

I’m also talking about our “revered” Singaporean rulers and leaders who demand nothing less than the full respect and obedience of all Singaporeans for the so-called good that the leadership has bestowed upon our nation.

If you truly believe you are a God to the people, and demand the respect worthy of a God - then show us that you are capable of miracles once in a while, and undo your own morally outrageous acts, will you?

Introducing Plushies in Action!

Published
by
Jon
on August 16, 2008
in Life
. 1 Comment

Jasmine has finally taken the plunge and started her own photo comic blog: Plushies in Action.

Check out her “response” to my earlier blog post on Why Guys are Superficial and Girls are Materialistic…

Way to go, Jas! :-D

FriendFeed Proves its Worth as a Research Tool during South Ossetia Crisis

Published
by
Jon
on August 12, 2008
in Technology
. 0 Comments

I don’t blame you if you haven’t heard yet about the military crisis between Georgia and Russia in South Ossetia right now.

I mean, how much attention can one spare when the Beijing 2008 Olympics is all that everyone is talking about?

In fact, it was downright serendipitous that I found out about South Ossetia tonight while watching CNN, since I tune into CNN like once every three months, and coincidentally only while traveling in Thailand.

In any case, the situation there is very real and extremely grave. I wish the Russians and Georgians can stop this mindless aggression immediately. The world has enough wars going on right now as it is, and we certainly don’t need another one.

However, I’m not here to talk about Eastern European politics today. I’m here to talk about FriendFeed.

Like any other information maven, the moment I saw the Georgian-Russian conflict on CNN, I immediately wanted to know more. Yes, I could of waited a couple hours for CNN to do their news recap, or waited a week for CNN to do their Georgia-Russian special report, but I couldn’t wait that long.

So off to the web I went.

Doing a Google web search for “south ossetia” yielded decent results. Google blog search and news search also got me a lot more detailed information to scour through.

However, pages and pages of search results only yielded a lot of facts. What I was looking for is a recap of how did things get to this stage, and some guys’ analysis and commentary on what all this means and why is South Ossetia so important that both Georgia and Russia wants the territory so badly.

So I tried searching on FriendFeed. And voila! The fourth search result - a conspiracy theorist’s take on the South Ossetia conflict - is exactly what I was looking for. And the fifth search result - an article by David Wescott - agrees with the conclusion that I’m about to make:

While the mainstream media and even Wikipedia can provide facts and current reporting, you really need to rely on social media and social content aggregators like FriendFeed to get the entire story quickly. It was through FriendFeed that I found a possible conspiracy theory backing up the war. It was through David’s blog entry that I discovered the Global Voices Online site and their excellent coverage on the South Ossetia crisis.

It was FriendFeed and social media that allowed me to quickly discover new insights and information that is different from the same stories and takes that the mainstream media and traditional information channels feed us all the time.

And like I have said many times before, the importance of social media in offsetting complementing mainstream media coverage is 10x more important in the country where I come from, where our press freedom is ranked 153rd in the world, sandwiched between luminaries such as Iraq and Kyrgyzstan.

FriendFeed - You have graduated to the top spot as one of the first places I will search whenever I am doing research. Congratulations.

CrunchBase Information on FriendFeed
FriendFeed
Information provided by CrunchBase

Why Guys are Superficial and Girls are Materialistic

Published
by
Jon
on August 6, 2008
in Theories
. 0 Comments

Ever wondered why guys are generally characterized as superficial creatures whose #1 priority when looking for a mate is beauty and good looks?

What about girls, who generally are portrayed as status or money chasers when they are choosing their boyfriends or husbands?

Are these generalizations accurate and fair?

Well… sure! Is anyone really denying that? ;)

OK, fine. So why is that so?

It’s because of evolution, of course!

According to The Logic of Life, which is the latest book by “The Undercover Economist” Tim Harford, it can all be traced back to our ancestral roots.

Tim writes:

In the ancestral environment, it is fair to assume, a baby with two parents looking after it stood a much better chance of reaching adulthood than a baby whose single parent had to do the rearing as well as the hunting and gathering.

And that was essentially where the modern concept of couple pairing and marriage evolved from.

Tim further adds:

Since a woman needed the physical strength to bear and rear the baby, youth and health - for which beauty is a reliable indicator - would top the list of male desires.

And how about for guys?

We can imagine that a father’s role in raising children, primarily, was to provide and protect: perhaps the most able hunters would have been in most demand as long-term partners, or the strongest fighters, or the canniest at making political alliances. All these attributes would have translated into high status. And in modern times, we have a very reliable indicator of high status: wealth.

And so the truth is out. It’s not our fault for being superficial, ladies. It’s all science and evolution’s fault. :roll:

So don’t blame us men for gawking at pretty girls and preferring good looks over everything else when we are choosing our mates.

And in return we promise we won’t blame you gals for gawking at investment bankers and chasing eighty-nine year old Texas billionaires when you are choosing your mates.

Deal? ;)