All posts by Evan Hamilton

Henry Rollins on Net Neutrality

Tech

Sorry for so few blogs, I am completely overwhelmed with being the only marketing person at Flock. Don’t worry, things are well and good. I just don’t have the time to blog.

I came across this while looking for Henry Rollins videos on YouTube. I have worshiped Rollins for several years, and his Black Flag tour journal book, “Get In The Van”, has a permanent place on my coffee table. I figured this would have relevance to you all.
GRR. The video will not embed. YouTube and/or WordPress, I am extremely frustrated with you.  This is not supposed to be hard.

The video is HERE.

I keep having to remind myself (or get reminded by folks like Rollins) that this is a serious issue. Let’s all remember to do what we can.

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Blogging killed the Blog Star

Community, Tech

Why haven’t I been blogging? In short, Twitter.

I have been insanely busy. Too busy to deal with the strange invisible rule telling me that I have to write long, profound blog posts.

I know, it’s silly. It’s my blog. While I’d love to inspire a few minds, this is my mental output. I don’t have to do anything but what I want to. So why do I feel like I can’t write a paragraph-long post about my day?

At the Social Media Club Workshop I attended on Monday, there was much discussion about why blogs did not become “the next big (social) thing”. Experts had predicted blogs would rise up as the predominant online social tool…and then they didn’t. After the surge in popularity, blogs became a common sight on the social web…but not a soaring, viral phenomenon like everyone expected.

Why did this happen? Where does this leave predictions about the next big thing? I think we sabotaged ourselves (I use “we” loosely as I only recently began doing what would officially be called “blogging”). And I don’t think it’s bad. Let’s look at the elements that contributed to this.


1. Tools
The blogging tools that exist do not lend themselves to short, light writing. Even Flock’s delightfully simple and usable blog editor has options for formatting, photos, html, tags, and more. And we still have a laundry list of advanced options that our community requests daily (Tony Fardon’s BlogPlus Extension fills this gap nicely). Even the themes surrounding many blogs makes a single paragraph look overwhelmed (Example Here). This is not welcoming to the kind of people who avoid word processors as much as possible or don’t know what html is.

2. The Over-hyped Decline of Traditional News Media
At the same time that blogging became a rising star, traditional news media began a noticeable decline. Did blogging cause this? No. It may have contributed. But what I feel was more of a factor was that people wanted (and could finally get) fast, visual, and relevant news. The proliferation of high-speed internet (fast), the rise of YouTube (visual), and the introduction of user-rated news like Digg (relevant) all hastened the decline of the 5 o’clock news hour. Those seeking the fast/visual/relevant combo discovered that “the next big thing”, blogs, didn’t always provide this. And so these people pushed blogs aside in favor of piano-playing cats.

3. Community
Again, this isn’t a bad thing. This is a great thing. The people that eventually became the blogging “community” are the people that stunted it’s growth. In the blogsphere, there is an emphasis on readers, not “friends” (including a lack of “collecting friends” mentality), and on colleagues/contemporaries rather than hookups (ignoring the rule of successful social apps: get people laid). Very few us of are friend whores or glitter graphics lovers, and thus we turn those people off. The fact is, there are a lot more of these glitter graphics kids than there are writers with the interest, talent, and focus to write several paragraphs of intelligent text for a dubious number of internet readers. We drove away the MySpace crowd.

Don’t fret! This is fantastic! We live in an idyllic community because we didn’t become “the next big thing”. We don’t have to deal with the pressure of having new companies riding their money on our success every day. We don’t have to deal with millions of “omg i luvz the blogz yo” posts or serious lawsuits. Bloggers, rejoice in not being the next big thing.

What is the next big thing? For now, Twitter and nanoblogging/microblogging/tumblogging/whatever it’s called this week. There’s much less of a barrier here. All I can do is customize my background, add a few tiny notes about myself, and write 140 characters. And sometimes, at the end of the day, it’s all I can do to write 140 characters about what I’m thinking. Is this bad for blogs? Who knows. I doubt it. After all, it says something that what began as a short excuse for not writing blogs became a whole blog post about the matter.

Sticki(e)s!

Tech

I just discovered stikis.com, thanks to Mashable; I may be addicted.

I am constantly using real sticky notes around my cube. Some are on the desk. Some are on the monitor. Some are probably under all those papers to my left. Some travel home in my laptop to hopefully remind me of what I need to do in my personal life. Sometimes I just send emails to myself with tasks. I’ve even tried Outlook (uugh) Tasks. All these combine to some semblance of keeping on top of what I have to do, but it’s just awkward.

Stikis (theoretically) solves this by giving you a website that you put your sticky notes on. You no longer have to worry about being in your office or even on the right computer to know what you should be doing. Choose from five different colors (all nice except for the glaring yellow and green…perhaps that’s for those really important notes) and resize and move as you need to.

(names blurred to protect the corrupt)

I’ve put all my permanent, evolving stikis (the status of conversations with outside companies, my priorities for the week) in one color off to the right, personal stuff down on the left in another color, and left plenty of room to replace the roaming paper stickies that normally bury my office.

I’m digging it now. Will I actually be better organized after this? We’ll see…I’ll post again after a few weeks of use.

Blogged with Flock

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Best Splash Screen Ever

Misc

Flock 0.8 Splash Screen

Seriously though, I’m actually excited to see this screen. It means we’re reaching the final bits of development for Flock 0.8. Now that I’ve resolved the memory issue on my machine (it was due to Norton Antivirus 2003 and we’re looking into how to fix it for other people) I’m really getting to use the product constantly. It’s looking great: Pretty, simple, powerful! Those who are still using Flock 0.7 are going to love 0.8.

Meanwhile, the new Flock website progresses…it’s starting to come together and look pretty nice. We also have lots of neat research projects set up that are letting us get some great data on what people want to with Flock now and in the future. I never thought I’d be so excited about data, but I think it will really make the Flock experience now and in the future really amazing.

I’m bummed that I haven’t been able to blog more, but once the rush to get everything in my court done for 0.8 is over, I’ll really be able to sit back and talk to the Flock community, write a bit, and explore all the new things on the social web.

Keep on Flockin’!

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Evolving into Creativity

Misc, Tech

Just read Tara Hunt’s blog post regarding bite size data and broken attention spans.  As a multi-tasker who has a family member with ADHD, I felt compelled to wade in.

To be clear: I’m not a doctor.  I’m not a scientist.  I’m not a psychologist, though I work with people and what they think.  But let’s face it, doctors consistently change their views on even the most important things.  This isn’t bad; this is medical research progressing.  But with that in mind, let’s look at what’s going on without any of the current medical research gumming up the works.

Split Attenion

I spend most of my day doing at least 3 things.  I constantly have chat windows open (AIM, MSN, IRC, and Gmail chat), I receive regular email notifications, I’m busy in Office applications, I’m Twittering, I’m checking my SNS and blogging and working.  This is normal at Flock.  This is normal in most places.

If I had told my father when I was a kid that I’d be doing this, he would have laughed at me.  He grew up in a time when you did maybe two things at once.  These days, however, he’s forced to multitask.  He drives his container-carrying trailer to the job while talking to clients on the phone and getting pages from others.  He wouldn’t have chosen it, but even his two-task-trained mind has adjusted to handle this.

By comparison, I grew up multitasking.  TV and computer (a habit I’ve tried to break and mostly succeeded) were my evenings.  While I absorbed theatrical elements and plot development from the tube (the original tube), I spoke with friends online, played games, found random stuff online, and/or worked on my own little projects.  I felt bad about this at the time; kids weren’t supposed to do this.  We were supposed to concentrate on our homework.

Cons

To be fair, I didn’t come out of this as a multi-million dollar champ who laughed in the face of parents and old teachers.  In fact, my grades were less than good and my college options were limited.  When I took my first difficult college class (Astronomy) I nearly failed because I simply couldn’t absorb that much straight data.

Like Tara, I learned to focus my energy.  In a way, it’s a sort of balance.  I now enjoy the concentration taken to focus on a single piece of writing (reading or creating) because I know I’m really getting something out of it.  Once I finish, I relish the dive back into multiple streams of data and creation.

Is this for everyone?  No.  Figuring out how to concentrate my multi-tasking brain wasn’t fun, and if I had screwed up badly enough I would have regretted it.

Where is this all going?

So what is the answer?  Are we all crippling ourselves?  Tara disagrees.  “It sounds a little like evolution to me.”  YES!  I think one of the most-overlooked elements of evolution is the evolution of thought processes.  It is a much faster evolution than that of our bodies.  Frankly, I think this has been labeled Anthropology and Psychology and left alone by scientists of evolution.  But it’s fascinating to think of all the unresearched gaps here.  Why is it that I (with my inferior single concentration) can figure out a technical device that I have no experience with, while my father (with superior concentration) can’t?  I refuse to attribute this all to “experience with technology”.  My dad has plenty of technology and has had it for awhile.  It’s our BRAINS that are different.

So, is this good?  I think the truth is that no one knows.  Is all evolution good?  No.  Evolution is a reaction to environmental circumstances.  It does not take into consideration how things might change in the future.  It doesn’t take into account that this change might be temporary.  If all computers died today, we might be crippled.  We might die off, leaving only the John Locke’s.

What do I think the result of this will be?  I think increased creativity is the most fantastic element of this.  Previously, one had to dedicate specfic time to creation.  Only those with lots of time or the ability to concentrate and create in short periods really revolutionized things.

Now, we all have the time (due to multi-tasking) to imagine and create.  “User-generated content” is a big buzzword right now, but nobody seems to be thinking about it on a deeper level.  Is the internet or technology the real reason for more user-generated content?  No, the real reason is these people have the ability to create and imagine in the space between moments.

This isn’t all good.  In fact, I attribute it to the creation of many crappy, crappy bands.  They have time to work and work on songs until they’re just enough above craptastic to be slightly marketable.  But I think that, by far, the result has been positive.  From the fantastic collections of data on the internet to the myriad of blogger opinions to the startup businesses created in spare time or an afternoon…we’re truly experiencing a renaissance, and it’s because of this ability to split our concentration.

The end to this enormous diatribe is rather simple: don’t fight this.  We’ve stifled evolution as much as we can with chemicals, confines, prosthetics and the like.  Let’s not kill the one, amazing evolution occurring in our brains right now.

As Tara said: “Information overload is painful, yes, but it is necessary, I believe, for our personal advancement.”  Amen.  And now I’m off to Twitter, Gmail, and Flock.  Hm, maybe a little IM too.

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