Here's your sign!

So, I had every intention of doing a separate blog for these, but now I'm thinking I'll just post them here occasionally. My new hobby is taking pictures of signs that I find "interesting." It may be that they're funny, artistic, silly, or just plain cool. I have a stash of them, but I'm not sure how often I'll post one. Depends on how fast they are coming in, really. So not more than once a day, and not likely even that often for a while. We'll see. Anyway, first up is one from our recent trip to Hatteras Island.

This one sort of sums up the island to me. Why? Because you just don't find unhappy people there. Maybe that's why we love that place so...

Our new dog!

Meet Hattie, our new Weimaraner. "Hattie" is short for Hatteras, which is one of our favorite places on earth (and on our minds because we just got back from a few weeks there). She's eight months old and her birthday is October 21. She's somewhat nervous still after a few days here, but starting to fit in fine. Our other two dogs seem to not mind her, and she seems to want to play with them but not enough to get her in trouble. She's been great with the kids, but that's because she's still VERY timid in her new surroundings. I think the energy level is still somewhat low for her, but we'll see...

Wow

Pardon me while I get political, but this is a really good read. I implore everyone, Democrat or Republican, to read it to the end. I don't think we're far from hearing "give Obama his fair share of time" type arguments, which is sad since a lot of the problems he is having to deal with are not of his making. But that's the case with any president, really. I currently rate him a big "fail" on most of what he's done or is intending to do. I'm actually starting to feel pretty good that he's doing so badly* we won't have to put up with but four years of him, with the exception that there doesn't seem to be anyone waiting in the wings of much merit, either. sigh It sure as heck isn't Sarah Palin!

* Yes, I know Obama is still a media darling. But people are starting to notice just how little change he's made since taking office on everything from energy (other than taxing the poo out of it) to the economy to the war to Gitmo. Only thing he's done better than his predecessor is fewer mis-speaks in public speaches. Bravo. His foreign policy sure is doing a great job with North Korea so far, too.

There's just something about the baseball.

I admit to not being a lifelong baseball fan. I admit that I don't know as much about the history of baseball as I do about the issue of steroids in baseball, which is quite sad as I'm sure I'm not alone (and in fact am probably in the majority). But I do know this one simple thing...the baseball itself may be one of the most perfectly designed devices in all of sports.

What makes me say that? I can't really articulate it well, but what I do know is it just "feels" right. I've played a lot of softball in the last ten years or so, and I've loathed the ball itself the entire time. Too big and strange to throw and catch. That's coming from someone with relatively large hands and the owner of a good glove, too. It's just all wrong. Even the ladies/youth ball is just too big.

Why am I just now noticing this? Well, I've always sort of known it, but recently I've been playing some catch with my boys and it's just sort of hit me. Those of you who know me know that I'm a HUGE basketball fan. I both play and watch. I have times when I haven't played in a little while (like now) when I can sit and daydream of what it feels like to shoot a jumper. I can daydream about what it feels like to execute that perfect crossover dribble. And lately, for some strange reason, I can feel that baseball in my hand.

That's what makes the baseball thing so profound to me. I grew up playing basketball. I still play a lot of it. But I played very little baseball as a kid (one year of coach pitch was it, and I was bad at that). But something just feels good about throwing a baseball. I think right now I could play catch for hours, and not just with my kids. With anyone. I sort of yearn for it, in fact. And it seems like it has a lot to do with that stupid little ball.

The basketball cannot compete with the baseball for best ultimate design simply because there are too many differences from one basketball to the next. Sure, any good basketball player can adapt to them pretty easily, but the fact of the matter is that you do have to make some changes from ball to ball. They feel slightly different, they have different weights to them, and worst of all, different levels of tack. College and pro football use completely different footballs in terms of dimensions, weight, and probably material. High quality baseballs are much more consistent. It is what it is and they'll all feel pretty much the same. This consistency is a key, but somehow the stupid thing is just pretty perfect and apparently has been for a looooong time.

Dear Apple,

I love your products in general and really don't want to sound like I'm whining, but I have a couple requests. The first is that the iPhone needs the ability to do unified messaging similar to the Blackberry. Yes, I'm sure you hate having your products compared to that of others, and I'd point out that the Blackberry isn't perfect at it. You can improve it. But it would be so nice to have the ability to configure SMS, email, Facebook, Twitter, AIM, etc to all "go" to the same place. Now that you have push notification capability this should be easy to do. But since the main requirement for this to make sense is email, well, you're gonna have to lead the way here.

We also need iChat for the iPhone. Sure, you can get an AIM application, but I want a full iChat. Please include voice and video chat capability, too. And the ability to direct message files like pictures.

Add "shake to reload" as an option in Safari for the iPhone.

That's it, nothing major. Just a few tidbits that will make the greatest electronics gadget ever conceived by man just a little bit better.

Where do we draw the line?

So, just where do we draw the line to be saved from ourselves by nanny-laws?

Okay, so the argument can be made that seat belt laws save a lot of lives. It can also be made that it saves us a lot in insurance costs. Okay, I get that. There's a line somewhere, and seat belts are way past it. I'm fine with that one, especially since I believe in using them. I suppose the question here, however, is does what I "believe in" matter? Should there be an arbitrary line? Should we at least be able to identify it for the purposes of discussion?

Why do I ask? Well, because it's becoming more and more common for nanny-laws to be introduced. North Carolina recently passed a law that will prohibit text messaging while driving, which a good many states have done. That's following on the heels of more and more laws about using cellphones at all while driving. Many states now require you to at least be using a handsfree device. Okay, so it's fairly easy to argue that those are on the other side of the big imaginary line. Fairly easy, anyway.

But how about this? Now a New Jersey legislator has introduced the first of its kind bill that would limit people from being able to input GPS information while moving with anything other than voice activation. Is there really any data that points to this being a problem? Particularly since almost all factory navigation systems disallow this feature anyway? It's only the portable devices you add to your car yourself that let you do this, basically. Yes, cellphones are adding the capability as well, so it will become more prevalent. But where's the data? Yes, I'm sure someone somewhere has been killed by a driver who admitted to being distracted because he/she was lost and putting data in their GPS. While that is a tragedy, a few isolated cases do not put this on the other side of the line requiring nanny-laws. People will continue to be killed every year by distracted drivers for all manner of things that we won't be legislating like simply dropping your tube of Chapstick.

Nanny-laws cost money to implement and enforce. They take away personal freedom. Many simply legislate common sense anyway. Look, we all take our eyes off the road from time to time for a variety of reasons. We always will. The key is to only do it when you can safely get away with it. We need to be teaching people how to be better drivers, not legislating how not to be a bad driver.

What's most annoying about this particular GPS law, as well as the legal pressure on the manufacturers of the built-in navigation units to build this "feature" in, is that there's no way to differentiate between a passenger and a driver by the unit. So if this kind of law were to happen across most of the country, the manufacturers of the portable navigation units would probably start making even those so that you can't input data while moving. Great, now even passengers can't do it for you! With built in navigation units they already can't, and that's incredibly stupid.

If I were the King of the Internets...

So, why does social networking "work"? Lots of reasons, but I think it mostly boils down to we all love keeping up with our friends, and our friend networks are large webs. We're all getting used to navigating a "web" on the 'net, and applying that to our lives in this manner is natural since our friend networks are really very web-like, too.

Twitter and MySpace are networks that default to a very open manner of publishing info. Unless you lock things, the default is for everyone to see what you post. Facebook, OTOH, defaults everything to locked unless you want to open everything up. I think that's why MySpace appeals to a younger crowd and Facebook a slightly older crowd. But both are similar outside of that, but the open nature of MySpace tends to lend itself to those who want to use it for self-promotion, such as bands that want to get music out there.

Okay, great. That's the state of things currently. What's next? My big problem with all the current social networks is that they own your data. What? How could that be? It's true. There's no way for you to mine what you've posted for info, no way for you to download the information about all your friends, etc. The reason for that? It's simple, really. If someone wanted to build a Facebook clone that was better and that info was available, well, it would be easy for them to write an application that made it easy for you to switch and invite all your friends to do the same!

As it stands now you have to sign up somewhere new and re-enter all your personal information. You have to manually upload any pictures and videos you want. Etc. It would be a huge pain.

Some social networks have embraced others. For example, there is a Facebook application you can install that will let you link Twitter to Facebook. So if you "tweet" something it also appears as a Facebook status update. That's nice, but I'm not sure there's any way to go the other direction (and if you could, and you did both, well, you could create a serious feedback loop!).

Twitter is a huge sub-set of Facebook and MySpace with one exception, the txt-message gateway. With that you can "follow" your friends via txt-message if you like. That is an incredibly handy way to "chat" with friends about their status. For example, if you "follow" your brother via txt and he posts a status update, you get it immediately as a txt-message to your cellphone. If you have the capability on your phone (and most do), you can respond in public or private right from your phone through the normal txt-messaging interface. No need for special applications or clients or browsers or even fast network. Facebook does not have this, and I'm pretty sure MySpace doesn't, either.

Another cool application out there is Google Latitude. With this, you can "publish" your location in real time via your cellphone (if you have a compatible smart-phone such as a Blackberry or iPhone) and your friends can "follow" you with the same application on their phones (or via the web) and know where you are at any given time. This is cool, but not seeming to take off in any serious way yet. The limitation for needing a smart-phone is one problem while the other is the security angle of people not necessarily wanting everyone to know where they are at all times. I think the latter is less of an issue, however, as most people probably don't care if their actual "friends" know where they are and given that the client can be told to stop publishing (or even lie!) at any time.

Another big reason it isn't happening is that Google has no social networking base of customers built (at least not yet) and as such people aren't looking to go have to sign everyone up they know via some other new service. I think if you could do it via Facebook then you'd see a MUCH larger adoption rate.

But on to the "If I were the King of the Internets..." What would I do? I'd create an open source based social networking site. I'd figure out a way to fund it, but it would be owned and governed by the users. The user would own his/her own data. The user interface would be fully configurable. It would include most of the functionality of Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Google Latitude all in one. It would be fast, easy, and fun! It might still be funded by advertising, but I remain convinced that advertising done properly isn't evil. Not only is it not evil, but it CAN be done so well that users might, oh, like it! Seriously. I think this model could pull that off, and it would have to as just because users own and govern everything, it still would require a good bit of real money to keep running. It would require serious server hardware, storage, txt-message gateway, and bandwidth...all of which cost real money. Oh, if only I were King...