Twitter Thoughts – More like MySpace than Facebook

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I spent a lot of time this weekend explaining Twitter to people.  People want to know not just what it is but why they should use it.  It’s confusing for people who have never tried it.  It’s so simple yet so confounding.  This chart explains the early stages well: twitter3

One thing i’ve noticed in my explanations is that Twitter is much more like MySpace than Facebook.  I also heard the term “egocasting” for the first time.  It makes sense. Both Facebook and MySpace are social networks but if you look at their architecture, you’ll see that Twitter is more like MySpace in that all profiles are public by default and it’s a place for sharing.

Let me explain more.  one of the strangest things i noticed during SXSW last week was that during panels, whenever someone asked a question, they came up to the microphone and (a) stated their name, (b) said their twitter handle, (c) asked their question.  Everyone did that.  It was amazing.  People at SXSW are entrepreneurs but more than promoting their company, they are there to promote themselves.  People are brands now more than ever and promoting yourself and your brand is more important now more than ever. Twitter lets you do that better than any other social tool.  Just like MySpace allowed bands to simply say, “hey go to www.myspace.com/pinkfloyd” users can say, “hey just go to twitter.com/pescatello to find out about me.”  It’s public, it’s just a URL and it will provide all the info you need to get to know someone.

Whether it’s good or bad that the popular tools of society are built to broadcast yourself out to the world is a good question.  Regardless of the answer, the fact is that Twitter is here and embraced and only go to grow in strength and adoption.  There’s a whole other post on why Twitter caught on. I do think it’s a good tool for our time and it combination of “egocasting,” easy mobile usage, and a great API have helped. I’d love to hear more about what you think. Please comment below

twitter

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I Love You, Man is just ok

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I Love You, Man is a pretty funny movie.  From what i can tell, everybody likes this movie but nobody thinks is great.  It’s just solid.  I would give it 6.5 or 7 out of 10.

loveyouman2

There seems to be a trend in movies where the comedy happens with the main character tries to say something cool like “fo-shizzle” and it comes out totally moronic and you feel bad for him.  This technique came on hard during Superbad when half the stuff Jonah and Michael Cera said while trying to be cool but were actually really dumb.  The trend continues in I Love You, Man when Paul Rudd tries so hard to be chill and laid back yet half the words that come out of his mouth don’t make sense.  It’s funny at first but i think it’s used too much. I think this all started from the movie Tommy Boy when Chris Farley‘s comebacks were incoherent (“your head has a thick candy shell”) and now, twenty years later, there’s an entire movie with it.

Another thing that i found interesting in this movie is the complete reversal of gender roles.  While Jason Segel‘s character (Sydney) is in some ways the stereotypical movie male – a total bachelor who refuses to grow up – the movie doesn’t stereotype his relationship with other males.  In fact, the opposite.  The men in this movie tend to have deep, heartfelt, emotionally deep conversations.  They talk about why they love people and why they are able or unable to open up to others.  The female conversation, on the other hand, is all locker-room talk and the objectification of men.  It doesn’t go as far as Mr. and Mrs. Smith but i still love how this movie flips the typical gender roles.

I wouldn’t let that keep you from the film as it’s pretty funny.  But i was hoping for something a bit more original.

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Edina Hockey

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Growing up in Edina, MN is a great experience.  One of the highlights of the year is the state hockey tournament. If Edina made (which we always did) we’d get the days of school off and everyone would go to the Xcel Center dressed up like maniacs and cheer like mad for the Hornet players.  Hockey there is huge and it doesn’t get any bigger than the state tourney.  You can imagine how happy i was to see Sports Illustrated do an article about this year’s team.

THE BOYS made a pledge, like many 13-year-olds do. No contract. No blood oath. Just a promise. In 2004, five eighth-graders from Edina, Minn., teammates in the youth hockey program, committed to the same dream. They would not merely win the state high school hockey championship someday. They would win it together, for Edina High.

It might not have been an extraordinary pledge in other sports, but in hockey, star players have the opportunity to leave high school for prep schools, junior leagues or the national development program in Ann Arbor, Mich. The idea of playing against better competition, developing more rapidly and enhancing their value to Division I schools or NHL scouts is too seductive for many boys to resist. Stay at your high school and you’ll go to your prom—but you might not go to the pros.

No matter: For kids steeped in Minnesota’s puck culture some things are more important. “My heroes [growing up] weren’t guys who played for the [NHL’s Minnesota] Wild,” says Edina’s Baker, 17, a defenseman who will play for Holy Cross next year. “They were guys who played at the high school.”

Damn straight.  High school hockey is ridiculously awesome.  Go Hornets

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Small Victories

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Some times just a little win during the day can give you the power to make it through the rest of the day. Or, check out this guy. Just winning one point was enough to celebrate. Hilarious

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNjXgS0_CWE]

Watchmen was good

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I saw the movie Watchmen last night and i have to say that i really liked it.  Here are some thought why.

The movie was….

  1. Merciless.  Some will say that the movie is too violent but i think that it actually ads to the character of the film. This is a world where superheros have grown disconnected from their human counterparts.  Showing the amazing painful battles they engage in and are subject to you can sympathize with their pespective but then to also show the other side of the coin – on how they have become cold-hearted, makes the movie quite interesting.    This applies especially to Rorschach who actually explains the exact moment he ceased being human and morphed into a full-time vigilante.
  2. Interesting.  The plot was really interesting.  Or, better yet it actually had a story that actually mattered to the characters which is unusual for a comic book movie.  I enjoyed for once watching a comic book movie where i cared whether missles were launched or not.
  3. Self-confident. The movie didn’t care about being too graphic, too violent, too campy, too strange, or too unconventional.  It put itself out there on the screen completely.  Bold choices in use of music (more below), in use of graphics (Rorschach’s face), and in use of story-telling.  All of which is completely refreshing.  I don’t see many movies like that and the unusualness makes it better.
  4. Sexually unusual. From a three-some with 2 cloned glowing super-humans to showing 40 minutes of shlong, the movie was so unusual, which again made it really interesting.  There was pretty much a comic book porn sex session in the movie which was surprising (and appreciated).
  5. Full of blue penis. i’ve never seen so much blue penis.  This is related to the last point, I like how they gradually introduced me to Dr. Manhattan’s penis.  First it was a nude shot of Dr. Manhattan but only above the waist.  Then, it was another naked shot of him, full profile but from afar and with only a glimpse of shlong.  10 minutes later it was an up-close shot of him staight-on with shlong and eveyrthing for a few seconds.  And finally, they would leave the camera on the shlong for minutes at a time.  I think the movie studio probably had a few meetings to determine how best to show it to the audience. I can just picture it now, a 11am meeting on the lot with people sitting around a conference table focusing on the unveiling of Billy Crudup‘s penis.  There are storyboards on the walls and one associate director wants to throw it right at the audience from the beginning for shock value while an older producer doesn’t want to show it at all and a fight ensues.  Ah, that’d be a fun meeting.
  6. Visually compelling.  The movie looks great.  Coming from the director of 300 (Zack Snyder), I was worried there’d be too much slow motion.  There was quite a bit but it worked. Even though it was 3 hours i’d even go back and watch it on IMAX

Some things i didn’t like:

  • The music was horrible. Songs like “The Sound of Silence,” at a funeral and “Me and Bobby McGee” were just so out of place and strange.  Why use such familiar tracks in an completely new fictional world?  Everyone i talked to after the movie noticed it and how weird it was.  I hate thinking about the music in the middle of a movie unless i’m thinking, “wow, this is great” which is a tought that definitely did not go through my head.  Each time a song began, i thought, “whoa this is strange.”  Maybe that was the point.
  • It was too long. While it was unbearable, it could have been 20 minutes shorter and my ass would have appreciated it.

All in all it was a good movie.  I give it an 8 out of 10.  What did you think?

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Time-Traveler's Wife is a good little book

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Cover of "The Time Traveler's Wife (SIGNE...

The book The Time-Traveler’s Wife is a great little book. I found it very easy to read and quite touching. While it contains a guy who time travels it’s not a science-fiction story but rather a love story between him and his wife.

I find that books that take a very extreme or unusual position do a great job of exposing everyday emotions. For example, Nelson Mandela‘s book Long Walk to Freedom talks about Mandela’s resolute quest for equality, and his long imprisonment inspired me to keep persevering in the things i care about. Similarly, this story about a time-traveler’s wife who grew up knowing a man bumbling through time and how they structured their life around each other makes me look at personal relationships and see how trivial my challenges are compared to theirs.

A great book and a quick read. I definitely recommend it.

There’s a movie coming out with the same title that stars Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in Feb 2010. There are some photos of that here:

I also saw that the author Audrey Niffenegger just sold her second book, called “Her Fearful Symmetry” for $5 million buck.  Unlike most authors who sell rights to their next novel off of a summary or description, she had finished the entire manuscript.  The NY Times article about this states:

Ms. Niffenegger had completed a full manuscript. “She really has defied custom and written a spectacular second novel, which is one of the hardest things to do in this universe,” Ms. Graham (Editor of Scribner) said. “She’s not selling it essentially on the success of her first book.”

I’d be willing to give this next book a shot.  It comes out in September.  Anyone heard anything more about it?

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Nokia’s “Comes with Music” is slick

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A few weeks ago, I went to the Nokia booth at MWC last month and checked out their “comes with music” program. For those who are unfamiliar, here’s the deal:

When you buy a Nokia handset you get access to the Nokia Music Store which has deals with all 4 labels. For the 12 months after you purchase the phone you get unlimited downloads from the store. This isn’t a subscription, for one year the plan is for unlimited downloads for you to keep. They can live on both your PC and phone.  Once a year is up, you keep all your downloads and you then have to purchase any additional tracks

Their new phones are all pretty slick and have smooth iPod functionality built in. One thing I especially liked was their Bluetooth headset which is also a sweet pair of headphones (see below)

This won’t be available in the states until layer this year and then only in the PC so it’ll be a while before we can fully check it out

One thing that always gets overlooked when peope talk about iPod’s dominance us the fact that it only dominated because it had BOTH the software on the computer and the hardware. Without iTunes, the iPod is nowhere.  I was impressed to see the the Nokia software player I’d pretty nice. Not quite as simple as iTunes but still very slick. I haven’t seen any other handset makers making player software which will really hurt them if they try to compete.

iPhone Usage

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Timer
pescatello on Flickr

It was interesting to see in a report yesterday that the iPhone, even though it represents only 1.2% of the total mobile phone market, represents 66% of total mobile web traffic.  That is astounding.  But it’s not that remarkable if you look at the differences between the iPhone and other phones.  On other phones it is quite painful to use the browser and to install and use applications.  Both of these are enjoyable on the iPhone.  It’s much more of a web device with mobile capabilities than a phone that has a browser.

My new friend Volker listed this report in his blog and talked about how the other players are catching up fast.  This is interesting, but until we get a better look at their app stores and new OS (Windows Mobile 6.5) i can’t accurately gauge if they will be a true competitor.  My guess is that only blackberry, nokia and android will be close and that Windows Mobile will never get close to competing.

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Obama poster drama

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obama

I heard a great podcast yesterday on NPR about the iconic Obama poster (seen above). The poster is done by a fascinating artist named Shepherd Fairey.  It’s a little known fact that Fairey is also responsible for the Andre The Giant “OBEY” sketches that i remember from the 90’s.  He really gets around.

In this case, Fairey took a photo he found on Google and then altered the neck, the eyes and the colors (and cropped out George Clooney) to make a poster than came to symbolize the campaign.  Shepherd always claimed that he made the poster from an Associated Press photo and about a month ago, it was finally determined which photo he used and who the photographer was. It was a photo of Obama sitting at a press event in Darfur with George Clooney.

darfur

All this would be nice and peachy except that because the photo was an AP photo, the AP came to Fairey and threatened to sue if he didn’t dish out a percentage of revenue he made from the poster. Fairey acknowledged that he’s willing to pay the standard license fee and attribute the photo to the original photographer but he won’t be bullied into paying.  So, instead he sued the AP in an attempt to discourage companies from punishing artists for creating art.

While his argument stands on fair use, to me the real issue is about people making derivative works. It’s the 21st century and lots of people take lots of images and transforming them into art. If each is penalized into paying a bounty for the original source we’re limiting and hurting society.

In this day and age, users are both consumers and creators of content.  So many YouTube videos have copyrighted works in them.  Last week there was a huge fiasco around Facebook’s Terms of Service when they claimed they owned all user uploaded material.  Thankfully, they backed off.  But the backlash from the users illustrates that ownership of property, attribution, and sharing is really important to the web.

If anything this just leads me more and more into believing in Creative Commons. It’s truly the only mechanism that let’s people properly manage their rights

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