— @GovChristie on the “New York” Giants, to @davidgregory on @meetthepress, 1-22-12.
Device revelation of the winter has to be the GoPro HD Hero helmet-mounted video camera Gwen gave me for Christmas, which I’ve been using to get great footage of the girls skiing on Bromley Mountain in Vermont.
Gone - mercifully - are the days of stopping everything mid-run, fumbling around with my iPhone and trying to capture a few moments of on-trail goodness without freezing my hands off or crashing into a tree. Easy to use, light, delivers beautiful footage - can’t recommend the thing highly enough, especially for parents skiing with kids.
Here’s last weekend, in two minutes.
Twitter is definitely here, real and important, especially for those who deal in content and information every day - “part of the plumbing” as the NYT’s David Carr once correctly observed.
But, sometimes, actual human events meet 140-character micro-blogging service references in the press, call them plumbing in print, still bring a smile and shake-of-the-head chuckle.
Like this one from today’s NY Daily News, related to New York Jets Quarterback Mark Sanchez, who had a difficult year:
“Sanchez’s inability to handle mounting criticism prompted him to unfollow every Jets beat writer on Twitter earlier this season.”
Plumbing in print.
We took the girls to see Taylor Swift at Madison Square Garden last week, last stop on the North American leg of her Speak Now Tour. Tweeted some Instagram photos from the venue, figured I’d post them here as well. Best live performance we’ve ever experienced as a family, and I’m including Dora Live and The Wiggles in that assessment.
She’s a talented artist who puts on a great show, and layered on top of everything - or maybe underneath everything - are her formidable abilities as a songwriter, and the realization that every note, every word, every concept came out of her head, now all of 21.
Happy to note that our girls (8 and 10) seemed to get this, and spent the days after the show wandering around the house with notebooks trying to “write songs,” as opposed to obsessing over a tour picture book or watching videos. Swift writes about young love and relationships, but with a sophistication and awareness that is right up there with the great songwriters of our time, pick a name.
Consider these lyrics from Enchanted:
There I was again tonight
Forcing laughter, faking smiles
Same old tired, lonely place
Walls of insincerity
Shifting eyes and vacancy
Vanished when I saw your face
And these, from her current single, Ours:
Elevator buttons and morning air
Strangers’ silence makes me want to take the stairs
If you were here we’d laugh about their vacant stares
But right now my time is theirs
Seems like there’s always someone who disapproves
They’ll judge it like they know about me and you
And the verdict comes from those with nothing else to do
The jury’s out, my choice is you
So don’t you worry your pretty little mind
People throw rocks at things that shine
And life makes love look hard
The stakes are high, the water’s rough
But this love is ours
She’s the real deal, she’s doing everything right (the show was interactive and entirely age-appropriate for her young fans) and she’s going to be selling records and selling out tours for a very long time. She’s also going to have to retire the “Who, me!?” routine by the time the next awards show cycle rolls around, but I’m sure her people have already provided that note. Time to pivot to something equally endearing and humble, but more organic and appropriate for the unstoppable force she’s become.
Finally finished Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs bio this morning. It was very good, not insanely great. Extremely comprehensive and obviously required reading for Apple fans, students of business or technology and the generally curious, but probably not the transcendent and definitive work biographer and subject had in mind when they got together a few years ago, maybe a few years too late.
Overall, the pages are heavy on fact but not too long on perspective, probably because there wasn’t really the opportunity to tackle that piece, assuming the subject had the inclination - and that is a necessary assumption. It’s an enjoyable read that has the feel of a slightly hastily-prepared “as told to” recollection, with long copy block quotes, historical data and supplemental interviews thrown in to help provide an occasional counterpoint, as needed - Gates, Wozniak, Ive, Cook, family members, etc.
You find yourself left wanting more but realizing that, from the man himself, in his own voice, you’re never going to get it. Isaacson was his chosen vessel, with not much time left in an extraordinary life to really fully probe it, as opposed to trying to cover it. The writer clearly had unprecedented access, but you wonder about the length and depth of those “more than 40” personal interviews with someone who was struggling with the rigors of running a preeminent company, being the focal point of a family and navigating his own mortality.
One gets the sense Isaacson didn’t have the opportunity or inclination to hassle an unwell Jobs about details that might have provided a more insightful lens, like why he sent food back in restaurants so often, how he could treat some people so badly without really internalizing his actions and what it took to perceive that frequently razor-thin line between “complete shit” and perfection. He was more reporter than biographer in this engagement, almost certainly compromised, or at least co-opted, by the experience of watching his subject’s final days, as part of his trusted inner circle. I think back to the affable Isaacson’s promotional appearances on Charlie Rose and 60 Minutes, and what I saw was genuine affection for his partner in the project and an “aw shucks” giddiness at having been chosen for the assignment. It didn’t sound like Caro talking about Robert Moses, or a detached and contemptuous Edmund Morris sniffing about Reagan. It sounded like someone who got invited to a once-in-a-lifetime party, happy for the chance to - with a reasonable degree of distance and decorum - gush about his host.
The rare glimpses into Jobs’s family life at home, final years at Apple and struggle to stay one step ahead of the cancer that killed him were fascinating, current, accessible and real. Highlights of the book, for me. The record of his early career and success - clearly something Isaacson set out to nail - is meticulously reconstructed. The bio is long and wide on what, and - at times - frustratingly wanting on why. You get the history and the incredible things Jobs accomplished, you get to hear him talk about it, but you don’t really, ultimately, get him. Maybe he was ungettable. You kind of wish he and Isaacson had twice the time together, under less arduous circumstances, to really take their shot at putting it all down in print.
What did he think about the rise and impact of social media? How were the specific elements of his famous keynotes put together, the process of presenting? Why did he develop and maintain such bizarre dietary habits, even when they threatened to shorten his life? What were the specific words he liked to use to fire someone? It would even have been interesting to have seen one of those marathon 3-hour Monday morning senior staff meetings deconstructed - what did they sound like, who spoke when, what kinds of things did Steve write down on his whiteboard? We don’t get much of that here.
Maybe one of his key lieutenants will write a book at some point, further round out the picture. Maybe with some time and space his sister Mona Simpson puts fingers to keys as a follow-up to her extraordinary eulogy. Maybe Walt has something more in mind. Maybe someone stands on the shoulders of Isaacson and his singular source material and produces a deeper and richer look. Just based on his quotes and proximity to Jobs in the early years, I’d pay good money for anything Andy Hertzfeld had to say. We don’t get the sense wife Laurene Powell - the saint of the book, rock of the family and a truly elevating partner - has any inclination to transgress privacy by sharing her perspective, which would be fascinating.
“Steve Jobs” is well worth the time and will clearly serve as the definitively comprehensive volume on Steve and Apple. I’m glad the words are rattling around upstairs and am sure I’ll return to portions of the text again - came as close as ever to wearing out my virtual iPad highlighter. Isaacson offers up a very large helping of key and rare pieces of the puzzle, but not the fully-assembled look you were hoping for. That will take some time, and likely a few more voices, if it ever comes to be.
Twitter gave me something new this week. Showed up on Tuesday morning, right there on my desktop, a little “Activity” tab to make sure I knew exactly, in real time, when the people I follow were deciding to follow others (and making it easy for me to do the same), when they were marking Tweets as “favorites,” and other ways they were using a service I love, value and rely on every day.
I’d been hearing about this enhancement since August, but its arrival on my computer made it real, and gave me the opportunity to see how my actions and decisions on this platform were being documented and promoted to the 930 people in my Twittersphere.
I’ve always used Twitter favorites as a bookmarking tool, a way to tag something of interest, typically on the fly, to be able to quickly find my way back to it later, as opposed to, say, “I love this Tweet so much I want to marry it.” More recently, I’ve relied on an ifttt recipe to automatically send links in Tweets I favorite to my Instapaper read later folder. I appreciate the simplicity and one-click functionality. It has made my life, and the ability to aggregate and process information, easier.
And now those decisions are being broadcast, along with new people/accounts I decide to follow, in my activity stream. “Jim Maiella publicly expressed interest in this content, or this person, this was important to him for some reason, and you - as his follower - should know this, pay heed and comport yourself accordingly.”
I know this is not new, follows and favorites were already public, part of the elegantly simple way Twitter was designed, which has - at times - influenced my decisions. The fact that they are now being packaged and promoted will push this dynamic further. It’s worth noting that there was already a perfectly fine way for me to highlight links or content I thought merited special treatment - by Tweeting it, in my “regular” feed, in any number of forms. Text with a link, Retweet, Retweet with commentary (as space allowed), plenty of ways to say, “HEY, PEOPLE, LOOK AT THIS!”
The new Activity tab prompted me to write, but this is hardly all about Twitter. Facebook recently announced a new version of its Open Graph, designed to enable “frictionless” sharing by its users. Why ask someone to click a “Like” button when you can click it for them? Listening to an REO Speedwagon song on Spotify? Why shouldn’t everyone connected to you be able to share in the embarrassment, as it’s happening. Read a story on a blog, or stream a video? Isn’t it more fun to tell everybody? Some have characterized frictionless sharing as “silent total surveillance.” While that may sound alarmist, it doesn’t seem to be factually incorrect.
This is the ante to engage in social media today - real, assumed, eventual - everything you do will be shared with everyone connected to you, all the time, as it happens. If you have a problem with that, then back to your cave and just don’t participate, as if that’s a real choice anymore. As George Clooney said to Matt Damon in Ocean’s Eleven, “You’re either in or you’re out.” And, when it comes to the social Web, we’re talking all the way in.
Some wonder why all this oversharing would be a problem for anyone. Why wouldn’t you want to express, to people you’ve chosen - or who have chosen you - Tweets you favorite, music you’re listening to, new contacts you’ve decided to associate with. Well, lots of reasons, different for everyone and for every action.
I think about the way I mark Tweets with links as favorites. Suddenly, “This looks interesting, and I might want to read it later,” becomes a public act, a form of self expression. The story about the business competitor, how to get a job at Apple, strategies for dealing with annoying relatives over the holidays, effective treatments for psoriasis or body odor - whatever it is, there it is, for everyone to see.
This forced transition from personal bookmarks to aggressively promoted public declarations will change the way I use the functionality, and that’s irritating to me. Something that worked (in its original form, and made better by ifttt) now sometimes doesn’t. There are workarounds, but suddenly it’s incumbent on me to do the working around. And why limit update activity to favorites and follows? What about the decision to unfollow someone, or to send a direct message? Doesn’t that imply a stronger connection between two people, and shouldn’t everyone in my virtuous Twitter circle know that? No? Why not? Who gets to make that call?
In a few weeks, we’re taking our daughters to see Taylor Swift, who sometimes Tweets photos from concerts and thoughts on upcoming shows. It might be interesting to follow her, share her material with the kids in the run-up to our brief time together. But do I want to broadcast “@jimmaiella is now following @taylorswift13” across my entire base of followers? Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. Not really my call anymore. Sharing in life has always been a decision, not a state of being. That’s increasingly not the case in social media.
I understand why Twitter is doing this, to crank up its “social graph” and promote usage by creating a more dynamic timeline, making it more clear to me how the people I follow are using the service, offering new ideas for others to follow - expanding the ecosystem, generating revenue. Same thing with Facebook. But I wonder whether these efforts may have the opposite effect.
What if Google decided it would be a great idea to automatically send an e-mail to every individual in my address book on regular intervals listing “all the Gmail users Jim Maiella has corresponded with recently.” Hey, the objective is just to raise awareness, to make Gmail more dynamic and expand its user base by showing - publicly - how people are using the best e-mail service on the planet. The company actually bumped up against this crazy idea with its failed Buzz product, which consumer outcry helped kill, but who knows where Google+ is going. You do. I mentioned my issue with Twitter favorites to a friend and the immediate response was, “Just wait until Google+ starts broadcasting everything you search for.”
Confronted with Facebook’s new frictionless sharing capabilities at the recent Web 2.0 Summit, Google’s social guy Vic Gundotra said, “There is a reason that every thought in your head does not come out of your mouth.” Even though it may have been a defensive, competitive dismissal, the line resonated. Take what’s happening on social networks to the extreme, applied to real life, and we’re all walking around with animated dialogue boxes hovering over our heads, broadcasting every thought, every passing notion. “Jesus, you look fat today. Oh, I’m sorry, did I actually say that?”
So how does all of this shake out? I don’t know. Clearly, social networks have reasons and business motivations for opening things up as far as they can - to promote usage, generate revenue, new opportunities and growth. Maybe most will be fine with this, won’t care about the enhanced public dissemination of personal decisions or will adapt their behavior to living in a frictionless world. Maybe the rising tide of 800 million Facebook users can’t be wrong.
Or, maybe, people will curtail the social connections they forge on these platforms, move away from tonnage, with the knowledge that everything they like, every new contact they make, every Web page they visit, story they read or song they listen to is being communicated to their entire follower/friend population. Maybe the uninitiated who are thinking about making the leap into social will instead take a step back. Maybe new services will emerge and find success by traversing this ground more carefully, giving the end user more power to customize their sharing and make these decisions for themselves.
Twitter, today, gives you two options - your account is “private,” which for most people is like owning a car with no wheels, or it’s public. Total restriction or total openness - nothing in between. I never saw marking a Tweet “favorite” as a promotable act, any more than bookmarking a Web page - why can’t that be an option in my Twitter profile, whether or not to enable my outbound “Activity” feed, communicate favorites, or even follows? Not wanting to wander through town with a megaphone announcing every movement, “TURNING LEFT ON MAIN STREET, ABOUT TO HIT THE ATM,” doesn’t mean your intent is to skulk around in a fedora hat and a trench coat. There can be a middle ground, just like there is in the real world.
People who want to take the time and devote the effort to deciding for themselves what and how to share will do so - unless the decisions are all made for them, which is where it appears we are clearly going, to an ever greater degree, whether we like it or not.
I’ve always wondered about the quality of ordering business cards online, and here’s a great photo of the differences in companies.
I can vouch for Moo, we’ve ordered cards from them a few times now and they really are that good - all the way down to the cute little box they’re packaged in, the branding, the cheeky e-mails. Their space to own, for as far as the eye can see.
(via fromedome)
I grew up listening to music on vinyl records, 33 1/3s, 45s were largely before my time. Saved my money when I wanted something, snagged a ride to the mall, spent hours wandering around Sam Goody or some other brick and mortar store and then came home to listen to my prized possessions. Possessions.
Later on, I moved with everyone else into Walkman and car stereo-friendly (most of the time) cassette tapes and, ultimately, the Holy Grail - the Compact Disc (CD). Bought hundreds and hundreds of CDs - the future! Promising a perfect, scratch-proof, “last time you’ll ever have to buy these notes again” sound experience.
Got my first iPod in 2003 (Windows-compatible, we still had a ways to go in our Mac enlightenment) and the introduction to iTunes that came with it. Started buying both songs and albums. I think U2’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” was the first (what would you call it, an album, record, CD, full download?) I purchased in the early morning hours on the day it was released. Got my coffee, clicked a button on our computer around 6 a.m. and there it was, right there on the desktop and, moments later, on my iPod. Fired it up on the drive to work that morning. Mind. Blown.
But even with the transition to digital files, I always owned everything I listened to. Couldn’t imagine it any other way. When we migrated to iTunes, I spent a few weeks “importing” all our discs into our library - thousands and thousands of songs. Kept all the CDs, “just in case,” in a couple of big plastic tubs. Pretty sure they’re in our basement, somewhere. Even in those early days, “buying” music on iTunes seems slightly risky, ethereal, like it might just disappear at some point. How could you really tell it was even yours? The lifelong dedication to music as a physical possession was not easy to break. I would still buy CDs, mainly from Amazon (stores by then were basically gone) and when they arrived importing the contents into iTunes effectively became the last step in opening the packaging, right after dealing with that infuriating plastic wrap and scrutinizing the latest set of odd drawings Thom Yorke wanted me to see.
Over time, more and more of our music was purchased online, and at some point we hit 100 percent. I literally can’t remember the last physical CD that came into the house.
The transition from material things to accessible content was complete, and yesterday we made another one, maybe our last. Driving in the car, listening to music through the audio system on a Bluetooth-linked iPhone, Madison calls out a request for a Demi Lovato song.
I respond that I don’t think we have that song, and a quick scroll through “our” music confirms it. But then, at a stoplight, I call up Spotify and do a quick search. There it is. Hit the title and within a second or two it’s playing. Quickly starred, added to a playlist, and now we have it. Key words. We have it.
As we pull away from the light, I have a little mini epiphany, one that would have been unimaginable to me in childhood, or even just a few years ago. I don’t care about “owning” the music I listen to anymore. I just want to be able to hear what I want, when I want it. I want to be introduced to new artists and songs and then have the ability to quickly and easily find that material - bookmark it, playlist it, access it wherever I am, on any device.
We’re big fans of Pandora, for discovery and a lean-back listening experience, based on “stations” created off specific songs and artists. Spotify is like the universe, 15 million songs in your pocket, far beyond anything you could ever afford to buy. These services are sometimes billed as competitors, but they are truly complementary, and there’s enough power in the combination to change the way you think about music.
We pay Pandora $36 a year in exchange for skipping the commercials and some other vague enhancements, and $9.99 per month for a “premium” Spotify subscription that enables mobile and offline playlist listening. A fraction of what I used to pay for physical CDs, for a vastly superior and more flexible experience.
All the steps that came before were important and necessary to getting to where we are today. Vinyl, to tape, to discs - great music, platform agnostic. iTunes making digital files accessible and real, not transient apparitions that could vanish at any moment. And then the cloud… the promise of any song, any time, on any piece of hardware. Narrowly defined, not yours, but still yours.
We don’t have to own the songs we listen to anymore. We just listen.
— Best Steve Jobs quote in the surprisingly mediocre (except for Walt and Woz) PBS profile, Steve Jobs - One Last Thing.
Great set of charts breaking down the current state of Apple, and the Q4 “pause,” from Dan Frommer, a.k.a. @fromedome.
(via fromedome)
Finally, after four years at the NYT, I have a Mac instead of a PC!
(The one in the middle is my personal Mac. The one on the right side is my work...
look who just flew through our yard
I’m going to write this in a stream of consciousness, the same way I experienced Joplin.
It was my first time covering —...
The poster for “Page One.”
