The Republic of T.

A couple of months ago, I mused about possibly getting a Kindle Fire. Ultimately, I ended up getting a Kindle Touch, and being glad I did.

Well. Having read the latest news on the Kindle Fire, I’m even more glad I opted for the Kindle touch.

The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success with many of its early users. The most disgruntled are packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer.

A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing. The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky.

All the individual grievances — recorded on Amazon’s own Web site — received a measure of confirmation last week when Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, denounced the Fire, saying it offered “a disappointingly poor” experience. For users whose fingers are not as slender as toothpicks, he warned, the screen could be particularly frustrating to manipulate.

…All this would be enough to send some products directly to the graveyard where the Apple Newton, the Edsel, New Coke and McDonald’s Arch Deluxe languish. But as a range of retailers and tech firms could tell you, it would be foolish to underestimate Amazon.

Wow. Kinda glad I dodged that one.

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Two of the bloggers I read regularly have posted about browser related problems. One was returning to Firefox, after Chrome started crashing too often (a problem I’ve also had recently). Perhaps too soon. The other was musing about whether the end is nigh for Firefox.

 

Mozilla’s open source Firefox browser essentially saved the Internet by breaking the hegemony of Internet Explorer. But over the past 18 months, I’d say it’s become noticeably obsolete. Safari and IE have both upped their game, Google’s Chrome which I use is an outstanding product, and in the fast-growing mobile space it’s not at all clear where Firefox can play. And the future outlook for Firefox is quite bleak. Over eighty percent of their 2010 revenue came from a deal with Google, in which Google paid them to make Google the default search option on the browser. But that deal expires this year, and since Google is pushing a competing product in this space it seems unlikely to be a lucrative source of revenue in the future. It’s at least conceivable that Microsoft would step in to generate traffic for its Bing search engine, but here too it’s hard to see why they wouldn’t just stick with pushing the latest version of Internet Explorer.

Meanwhile, as the chart indicates, Chrome is catching up with Firefox.

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The answer, as far as I’m concerned, to the question in the title is the same as in the Joan Jett song I borrowed it from: “Yeah! Oh yeah! Oh yeah!”

Before I begin, like I said before, I already know all the reasons I shouldn’t have slurped down another cup of Amazon’s Kool-Aid. And my answer is the same as it was when I was debating whether to buy a Kindle Fire or wait for the iPad 3 to buy my first tablet device.

And on, and on. Substitute any other company for Amazon or Apple, any company whose products I use or come into contact with in the course of a day, and all of the above could still be said. Sometimes it’s hard to avoid connection with any of the above transgressions. Sometimes it’s not even a choice. When I ride the bus, do I know where the fuel comes from? BP? Exxon? Likewise, with the goods I purchase that have been hauled from one place to another. When I buy clothes for myself or my kids, can I always be certain of the conditions in which they were created? Can I avoid be “tainted” by goods and services through association, voluntary or otherwise? Well, maybe, but my guess is it would become a full time job, and I’ve already got one of those. The best I can do is the best I can to change the above in other aspects of my life. My hands will never be “clean.” Best I can do is wash them regularly.

As for the rest, whether or not to drink the Kool-Aid depends on whether I like the flavor. I know that the products I’m buying come with some limitations, and by the time I reach the point of purchase, I’ve already decided whether I can live with the limitations, because they outweigh the features I do want. The bottom line for me when it comes to the Kindle Fire is simple: Does it do what I need it to do? And maybe a little bit more?

Well, I ended up getting the Kindle Touch, sans 3G.

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I’ve already bitched about Google’s decision to force Google Reader users into using Google Plus, and the many ways it’s made my life more difficult. Well, I can now chalk up another complaint.

Long ago, I started publishing digest posts to this blog. They were basically collections of links I’d gathered and wanted to share. (Or, as I summarized it, “Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about.”) They were also a way of posting some new content even on days when I didn’t have time to write. It kept the blog from looking utterly dead for days on end.

Well, digest posts are dead. Google killed them.

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Warning: Geek venting about to ensue.

Can I just say how much I hate — really, truly hate — Google latest update to its Reader?

No, I don’t mean the new look.

I mean the decision to do away with shared items and force everyone into using Google+. Yes, I and countless others have been “owned” by Google, again.

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I’ve decided I’m not going to write anything today. That isn’t to say that I’m not going to post today. I’m posting this now, aren’t I. If I find something someone else has written that I can blockquote and wrap a few paragraphs of my own around, then I’ll post it. If I can think of one idea someone else hasn’t already covered, then I may post about it.

But I’m not going to write anything today. I’m coming to the conclusion that being a writer and a blogger are two different things. I want to be a writer, but the reality is that I’m a blogger. Most of the time blogging is the wrong medium for what I really want to do.

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This is why I hate using third party sites to post media like video playlists and slideshows on my blog. They disappear, and sometimes take the content with them. Case in point: two sites I’ve used to post image slideshows here.

One, Imageloop, has morphed into ima.gy, exclusively mobile platform for sharing photos via iPhone and iPod Touch. Good for them. Bad for the content I’d posted there. (Which I can’t seem to access anymore.)

The other, Slide, is shutting down in March 2012. So, I’ve either gotta move it or lose it, content-wise. But really, why bother? It’s just as likely that I’m going to move it to another platform that will vanish as well.

That’s why I lean towards using plugins, frankly.

I do not own an iPad. To be honest, I don’t need one. But then again, who does? Still, I am almost certain to get one. Or I was. Now, I’m not so sure.

I’ve gotta think about this one.

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Well, I now have an answer to a question that’s been bugging me every since I upgraded to Mac OS Lion. What’s up with the scrolling?

In July, Apple released its new operating system, Mac OS X Lion, and pulled a Frank Lloyd Wright. The architect would return to the homes he had designed and rearrange the furniture as he saw fit, often in the middle of the night. You like the piano there? Too bad, it has to go in the center of the room! Similarly, 1 million Apple users downloaded Lion the first day and noticed something odd when their computers restarted: Down was up, up was down. Apple had decreed that "natural scrolling" was the new standard, overturning 25 years of convention. This was more discomfiting than rearranging furniture. This was pulling out the chair as you were taking a seat.

With natural scrolling, a trackpad or a mouse wheel no longer follows the direction of the scrollbars. Rather, the pointer responds as if your finger were touching the screen. One reason Apple made the change is to integrate the way we interact with our iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks. The secondary effect is to bind us more closely to the Apple way of computing. The trackpad is rapidly developing its own complicated sign language; I’m addicted to the two-finger swipe to flip between web pages. Using a Windows machine with a mouse suddenly feels very 1997.

OK. At least I know it’s not just me.

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Here we go again. Every time I hear news of the "death" of one medium or another, I take it with an entire box of Morton’s. But for the latest report on the death of blogging, I may need stock in a salt mine.

I talked to AdWeek about my worries about the future of the blog; regular readers of this one know I’ve shifted from jumping on mini-news, politicians’ utterances, and interesting links — which now invariably break on Twitter — to using this space for scoops and thoughts that need a few more characters to flesh out.

In any event, my doom and gloom thoughts:

Twitter, Smith says, is “sort of draining the life from the blog.”

“Where people were hitting refresh on my blog because they wanted to see what my latest newsbreak was, now they’ll just be on Twitter, and I’ll tweet it out and they’ll see it there,” he says. “What I’m doing right now is just incredibly old school. I might as well have ink all over my fingers and be setting type.”

And my boss seems to agree:

“I’ve had this discussion with Ben, and I think what Ben is wrestling with is, ‘Are blogs as viable and essential today as they were four years ago, or is Twitter in the process of replacing blogs?’” VandeHei says. “Can a blog still thrive as robustly today as it did four years ago? The answer might very well be ‘No,’ that it’s much harder for a blog to get and keep and cultivate that audience today than it was four years ago because of that competition, of Twitter pulling away that conversational immediacy element from the blog world.”

If our culture has degenerated to the point that anything that can’t be said in 140 characters or less isn’t worth saying, then perhaps Michele Bachmann, the tea party, and Fox News are exactly what we deserve.

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I knew it! Well, at least I suspected as much. What’s true for me had to be true for at least a few other people, right? Turns out, maybe more than a few. At least according to a new study that says surfing the web at work makes you a better worker.

Don’t feel guilty about browsing the Internet at work—turns out it may actually improve your performance.

According to a new study, Web browsing can actually refresh tired workers and enhance their productivity, compared to other activities such as making personal calls, texts or emails, let alone working straight through with no rest at all.

…The researchers found that the Web-surfers were significantly more productive and effective at the tasks than those in the other two groups and reported lower levels of mental exhaustion, boredom and higher levels of engagement.

“Browsing the Internet serves an important restorative function,” the authors said. Personal emailing, by contrast, was particularly distracting for workers. The second study, which surveyed 191 adults, found similar results.

Why is Web-surfing more restorative than, say, responding to a friend’s email? When browsing the Internet, people “usually choose to visit only the sites that they like—it’s like going for a coffee or snack break. Breaks of such nature are pleasurable, rejuvenating the Web surfer,” wrote Dr. Lim, in an email. By contrast, workers can’t control the kinds of email they receive, and reading and replying to each message is “cognitively more demanding, relative to Web surfing, as you need to pay attention to what is said on the email,” she added.

I wonder if maybe I’m an exception, though.

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Guess which answer I chose.

No, really. It’s a serious question. Serious enough to be studied.

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Well, there goes the rest of the news cycle.

Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York will heed calls from across the political spectrum and resign over a sexting scandal that he lied about before admitting his involvement, a Democratic source with knowledge of the congressman’s plans said Thursday.

Weiner has scheduled a 2 p.m. news conference in his home district, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she planned to issue a statement on her Democratic colleague after that.

“He is going to make an announcement,” Pelosi said. “I am not going to predicate any remarks on a decision that we haven’t heard yet.

Some House colleagues from New York offered their farewells to Weiner even before any official announcement.

“There is life after Congress for Anthony Weiner and I hope he devotes himself to repairing the damage he caused to his personal life,” said Democratic Rep.

Not that we didn’t see it coming. Nancy Pelosi cut him off at the knees, and then the president pulled the rug from under him.  (more…)

I’ve written before about how much I’ve enjoyed my Kindle 3 since I got it, and that was only after one week of using it. I’ve always carried reading material with me, and the Kindle 3 has made it a lot easier to carry all I reading material I want. And I’ve been using Instapaper’s Kindle feature to grab articles online for reading during my commute home. Who knew it would help me keep up with my blog reading and news reading?

What more could I as for? Well, as I said in my earlier post on the Kindle, there were a couple of things I wanted to ask for. And they were important enough to keep me from buying a Kindle for a while, until the combination of the price and capability of reading the Mobipocket were enough to get me over any reservations I had before.

Now, it looks like Amazon is addressing two of my earlier concerns.

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It’s finally happened. We have reached the end of the internet.

Well, sorta.

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I’ve been a big fan of Dropbox since I first heard about it and signed up. I used it just about every day, in fact. It’s one of those apps I put in category I call “Stuff That Works.”

[proplayer width="400" height="380"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFb0NaeRmdg[/proplayer]

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For the second time today, I find myself going back to Matt Yglesias’ blog. This time for some surprising news about AOL.

In his big New Yorker profile on AOL this week, Ken Auletta explained that 80% of the company’s profits STILL come from AOL’s subscription business.

What’s troubling about AOL’s subscription business is who the subscribers are and why they may be sticking around – in Auletta’s words, "older people who have cable or DSL service but don’t realize that they need not pay an additional $25 a month to get online and check their email."

A former AOL exec explains that this is AOL’s "dirty little secret" – "that 75% of the people who subscribe to AOL’s dial-up service don’t need it."

AOL’s subscriber revenues during Q3 2010 were $244 million on 4 million customers.

Wait a minute. AOL still has subscribers?

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No. Seriously. A guy’s Motorola Droid exploded, right next to his ear.

To be fair, it’s not just the Droid.

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There are, I think, certain events that make it clear that the period you refer to as your “youth” has irretrievably faded into the past. One is when the musical acts you listened to almost obsessively have greatest hits collections, anthologies and (yes) even boxed sets in their catalogs. Another is when you favorite acts become fodder for summertime reality/nostalgia television shows. (Also, clubs dedicate whole nights to the music that comprised the soundtrack of your formative years, now reduced to a “theme.”)

I think another such moment is when the technology you used to listen to all that music goes the way of the Betamax — as Sony has announced will happen to its Walkman.

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If you’ve ever emailed and have never gotten a response, I hereby apologize. There was a time when I was on top of my email inbox every day. But something happened along the way to becoming a working parent of two young children. Now, I’m lucky if I checked my email every few days. There are, on any given day, more things that I want and/or need to do that I have time to do. So I make choices. If, for example, I want to write, email is likely to fall by the wayside.

It’s not unusual for me to have several hundred, or even more than 1,000 emails sitting in my inbox. So, never mind getting to the bottom of my inbox. That’s something that happens maybe every few weeks. The best I can do is to scan my inbox for priority emails and “star” them so that I could keep track of them. It’s a great system, and it had me wishing for a way to have those emails automatically placed in a high priority email inbox that I knew to check first. I even tried to figure out how to use Gmail’s filters to do something close to that.

Google must have been reading my mind, when they developed Gmail’s priority inbox.

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