Some Twits are more interesting than others

I have been trying to get in the spirit of Twitter again. Really. As readers know, I am slow in finding the value in this "tool."

It does seem that some people post more interesting Twits Tweets than others. These posts are from one of the candidates for the new office of CTO of the United States of American, Padmasree Warrior,* currently the CTO of Cisco:

Did Governor Palin just wink at me ?? I feel insulted.

Sitting next to Martha Stewart at dinner.

She says she loves my last name and wants to have it :)

Said no to Bridge w/ Warren Buffet.

Back in my room doing email.

My dad, a national Bridge champ in India, would be unhappy with my judgment.

My decorator & I talk at x-purposes;

He says "chartreuse" I say *green*,

he says "antique" I say "fake",

he says "shantung", I say "pardon?"

Maybe success in Twitter is all about following a higher class of Twits. No offense to any one I now follow.

I appreciated David Pogue's recent column about Twitter. In the post he talks about some "rules" he's found about the program. This is the most interesting:

I found one rule, though, that answered a long-standing question I had about Twitter: “Don’t tweet about what you’re doing right now.” Which is weird, since that’s precisely how the typing box at Twitter.com is labeled: “What are you doing?”

Think how much more valuable this resource may have been had the question in front of the box been:

• What are you reading?
• What are you thinking about?
• What has you stumped?
• What are you excited about?
• What do you know that others might find valuable?

Oh, I'd agree with Pogue's final assessment of Twitter:

I’m still dubious about Twitter’s prospects for becoming a tool for ordinary people (rather than early-adopter techie types).

Twittter's not something I think I could ever have convinced my dad to use. Or many teachers who are already time-starved.

*Coincidentally, this happens to be John Pederson's elf name in World of Warcraft. The image above probably bears no resemblance to either Ms Warrier or any of John's avatars. (Image from http://uk.gizmodo.com/wow%20night%20elf.jpg>

If newspapers go away

It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper. Jerry Seinfeld (1954 - )

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not. Henry Fielding (1707 - 1754)

My mornings usually start like this:

• Put on the robe and slippers.
• Make coffee.
• Feed the cats.
• Take the (cold) walk down the driveway to retrieve the newspaper from the mailbox.
• Clean up the cat barf.
• Get coffee.
• Settle in the recliner, open the Mankato Free Press and solve the Jumble, read the funnies, scan the news, and read the editorials.
• Shower, dress and go to work.

Because the newspaper is, and has been, such a big part of my life-long morning ritual*, I read Seth Godin's recent post, "When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?" with dismay. This small panic was intensified when I read yesterday that our major state newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, filed for bankruptcy. It seems I may have to consider what I would miss should print newspapers go away sooner than I would like.

Godin flatly states that nothing will be lost should newspapers stop publishing in print, even arguing that investigative journalism and in-depth reporting will continue. (This might be one area where I agree with Keen's Cult of the Amatuer diatribe.) Yikes.

I thought I'd just check Godin out on a few things out and see if I really can cancel my "Mankato Free Mess" subscription. First the important stuff...

• The Jumble  (Yes, online, but I HATE the timer. And no Sunday version.)
  
• Isaac Asimov's SuperQuiz
• The funnies: Dilbert, Pearls Before Swine and F- on comics.com and Doonesbury and Non Sequitur on gocomics.com. (This is dangerous - I just signed up for a half dozen new comic strips and editorial cartoons including Lil Abner classics and Steve Sack.
• Dear Abby
• Car Talk column
• Local movie times are online - and accurate

Looks like all the important parts of the paper are online and most have RSS feeds. So far, so good.

I already subscribe to the RSS feeds for NYT columnists David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, and Paul Krugman. No problems there. Garrison Keillor's "Old Scout" columns are available online, a week after publication it seems but without RSS feed. Local papers have feeds for local columnists and opinion sections.

For "hard" news, I can subscribe to a dozen separate categories of news feed including "strange" at the Associate Press. CNN and NPR both have feeds. Locally, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Mankato Free Press both happily send send stories to my GoogleReader. The Jefferson-German Lakes Association Newsletter still seems to be print only.

OK, you get the idea. Yes, about everything in the paper I enjoy reading can also be found online. And more. And without the cost or long walk down the driveway wearing a bathrobe in -40 degree wind-chill.

Am I just sentimental believing I would really miss the printed newspaper? Is this another example of me resisting pounding my old square 1.0 mind into a new round 2.0 world?

Maybe it is the spread of ego-casting, reduction of editorial view diversity, and just plain loss of the serendipitous findings of interesting "stuff" that saddens me. And having nothing on which set my shoes when I poiish them.

How about it - would you miss the print edition of the that fish-wrapper you read?

*The ritual changed for five years when I worked in Saudi Arabia. While there was a daily English paper, it was not delivered, heavily censored, and there was no "Sunday" paper - something I missed the entire time I worked there. You expats today have it pretty darned cushy!

Your brave predictions!

The Pew Research Center recently released "Future of the Internet III: How the Experts See It."

Since they didn't ask me, I am not sure how they came up with the title. Anywho, here are some of the article's "brave" prognostications about the Internet of 2020...

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing "arms race," with the "crackers" who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

  

• "Next-generation" engineering of the network to improve the current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

To all of these I say, "Well duh!" These predictions are so 2008!

Blue Skunk readers, gaze deeply into your crystal ball, Koi pond, or wine glass and do BETTER than the Pew's "experts." Cripes, 2020 is what (20, take away 8, let's see...) about 12 (exponential) years away.

I'll start you off...

1. Equipment. No more clunky iPods requiring pocket space and thin white cords. We'll all be wearing glam geek glasses with the computing power in the stems, holographic images on the lenses, and cochlear implants wirelessly transmitting sound. (Those voice you now hear from the toaster might be real!)

2. Content. Paper textbooks and reference materials will all be completely replaced by e-books - all accessed online, most written in in a Wikipedia-type arrangement. Actually, short text will be the only reading anyone under 30 will do since most complex information and communication will be done via audio, visuals, and iconography. Read for fun? The same people who now think going to the opera is fun might.

3. Interface. Internet III in 2020 will basically be Second Life in 3-D on Virtual Reality steroids. Let's walk into the virtual library and pull down those audio books we want to listen to. Visit to the sexy librarian avatar. My daemon (a blue skunk, of course), an intelligent agent that follows me from place to place on the Internet, will always be with me and use my past buying habits, learning experiences, and mistakes (should I make any) to offer suggestions and advice whenever I ask.

See you in 2020. Let's hear your bold predictions!