Steven's going global, b*tches! -- oops, please excuse my potty mouth. I'm feeling a tad rambunctious tonight ;) - Mona N.
@Mona - I take my small wins where I can but global .. not quite yet methinks :) - Steven Hodson
Congrats, man. That's gotta feel good. I still love albums more though. I am old school. But since you like(d) Yes and ELP I say we can still get along ;) - Josh Haley
It went exactly as it was expected to, which says a LOT. - Art Lindsey III
Made for some animated morning reading - Mark Dykeman
I must have read a different article. I don't understand why people got so upset. - Rob Diana
If a tool helps my workflow then that's all the explanation I need. I know we need to keep the general web-surfing public in mind as we continue innovating, but surely not *every* tool has to be suited for use by retirees and CEOs and there year olds all at once. - Daniel J. Pritchett
The political description didn't really serve to bolster the rest of the article's point, but I thought the article was pretty spot on. And I usually disagree with everything Mark Hopkins writes. Kids these days. - Mark Trapp
I find the term "early adopter" misleading at best. These people do not adopt "the next big thing" before growth comes. They simply adopt anything, especially what will enable getting more followers. This has nothing to do with the usage pattern of an average user. - MySites
Not all early adopters are doing it to get followers. Some just do it because they can afford it and are complete gearheads. - AlexScoble(Robert'sBro)
I think my brother truly likes trying out new stuff, the fact that he has people that pay attention to what he uses is secondary. As far as I can tell, he's driven to do that more internally than externally. Personally, I like having my own professional canary in the coal mine. - AlexScoble(Robert'sBro)
I liked the article and am a bit confused over the agressive tone of a lot of commenters. I must be getting old. - Alexander van Elsas
@alex I've always liked your brother, and he's part the reason I tried out a number of tools. the article wasn't a personal attack on Robert. I think I said two or three times that I was describing a stereotype - one I gathered, by the way, by polling folks who aren't A-list bloggers in my personal circle. I was pretty disturbed by the personal attack he made against Mashable in his response. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
@mark again, that was something that someone I talked to said "make sure you include that" because it's pretty true for the majority of early adopters. It's just how the demographics skew. If you look at Mashable's own coverage, our Obama posts outnumber McCain posts by at least 5:1, if not more. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Sorry, I should have said in my comments that I was responding to what MySites said. - AlexScoble(Robert'sBro)
Checking in from a brief vacation, a bit surprised to see the huge uproar over this post. Perhaps could've done without the one or two lines touching on politics given Mark's known affiliations, but I'm not sure why people interpreted it as such a personal attack. - Adam Ostrow
Mark: I agree that it's true, but it doesn't do anything for the rest of the article: it's just sort of there, getting people upset about you pigeonholing early adopters as Obama supporters instead of focusing on the meat of your article. You could've removed that sentence and your argument would not have been affected at all. Either that or your article could've used a better argument of how early adopters supporting Obama proves how out of touch they are. Or are you arguing that before supporting Obama we should make sure our mothers would use him? Or that he's a time-sink? But hey, it's one sentence out of many, and like I said, I thought you were right on the mark with it. - Mark Trapp
If half of the likely voters are going to vote for Obama, I hardly think that it makes an Obama supporter out of touch. - AlexScoble(Robert'sBro)
Alex: sure, but if there was a cogent argument linking the claim that Obama supporters are out of touch to the fact that Obama coverage with early adopters is huge, it'd make more sense that Mark talked about it in his article: it'd be a simple a fortiori argument. - Mark Trapp
The idea of me leaving it in there is to show how the majority of early adopters sort of live in this monoculture vacuum. We talk to other early adopters continually due to the tools we've early adopted, so we think more and more alike. This gradually pulls us away from thinking 'how can i pitch this to my friends" to "how can i pitch this to other early adopters." It ends up pushing our tech into a increasingly smaller concentric circle, instead of wider ones. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
I figured I had two choices - I could write another echo-chamber post about how we're in an echo-chamber, and just go super meta on the theme, or I could write something that nudged the early adopters in the ribs and said: "hey - insular cliques are about as annoying to folks who aren't a part of them as they were in high school." It's fun to be a part of them, but if our goal is convincing others to use the tech we like, it's not particularly effective. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Mark: I'm glad you gave 'em a poke in the ribs. They need it every now and then, especially considering how divorced from reality a lot of them are. Secondly, the Obama thing made perfect sense. When you're painting a stereotype, it's always helpful to employ as much data as you have (and frankly, it's true!). I really liked the piece. One of your best ever. - Vincent Ferrari
Good stuff Steven - reminds me of that discussion we had a while back about the early adopter crowd drifting further and further away from the mainstream. - Frederic
The Passionates, for the most part, are unfortunately not objective because The Passion is their bread and butter. But those who want more than a niche will pay attention to how the other 98% use the internet. - Logical Extremes
The "passionates" thing struck me as a bit dissonant, too. Scoble is right: this technology isn't user friendly enough to have wide appeal -- yet. But it's the start of smart browsers. And I *do* think you'll see mom and pop happily swimming in that pool someday soon. - Chris Baskind
I'm with Scoble on this. He's just saying that Ubiquity is not for everyone and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's on the same vein as Jeff Atwood's two types of programmers post. http://www.codinghorror.com/bl... - Alan Le
And I don't agree that the internet is grouped into passionates and nons, unless he means those who are passionate about web technology and those who aren't. Just about everyone is passionate about something. We just aren't all passionate about the same things that Robert or Dave or whoever is passionate about. - AlexScoble(Robert'sBro)
I just left a comment on the blog that just might choke a hippo. - Mark Dykeman
@Mark .. it was a great comment ... I'll be getting around to replying to all of them shortly as I just finished posting tonight's Discussion Point. - Steven Hodson
youre ok steven. I think early adopters are overrated. For example if you were a home theater early adopter you'd have bought an HD-DVD and a LCD for 10,000 that are now obsolete or a big waste of money. More and more I see the wisdom of being a "fashionably late early adopter"... let the early adopters waste their time / money, kick back and reap the benefits of their work. - Jason Kaneshiro
great post...many people use tech as a tool to help them achieve things in what they ARE passionate about. - Elliott Ng
Good one Steven. Scoble does bring some seriously interesting stuff to his stream. Blocked him once a long (long) time ago. It was a mistake. Noisy? I'm starting to think I'm noisy. Maybe it's a disease :) Love the new blog look. Keep it up - Charlie Anzman
@Jason - I like the idea of the "fashionably late early adopter" - it's cheaper! - Mark Dykeman
@Jason, I totally agree. I consider myself to be one of those and appreciate the time I save by learning from those who get there a few minutes before me. - Kate
Hmmm for some reason the point of view of Seth Godin on this matter seems a bit colored. Is he making money in advertisement ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
two cents ... the "street performer" paradigm ... why not a little public/private shared space - wish it worked for billboards ... @Alexander which 50% of the ads work? wish I knew! - Wes Schadenfreud
Hi Hutch, I like your stance on this. It’s so important to write about things you have an interest in or are passionate about. It really doesn’t matter what you write about then.
Don’t know about this “Guy who questions this social media thing though”. I tend to question a lot more then that (you should see my iPhone posts ;-). I get passionate about First Use. A technology or service, no matter how cool, needs to provide its users real value. If it doesn’t, well, you simply won’t put in the effort to integrate it into your habits. That’s how I try to look at things (including social media) ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Thanks Alexander. And good point about First Use. You may have blogged about this in the past, but you should expand on that. Two thoughts come to mind re: First Use: (1) How the app/product appears to someone the first time they try it. (2) The highest and best value one gets from the product over time ("First" meaning highest ranked). - Hutch Carpenter
Hutch - The piece is right on. My highest ranking stories since launching SEO and Tech Daily were a few small pieces on the Olympics (by a distance). Sharing a little of who we are and what interests us keeps it interesting. - Charlie Anzman
This is based on the false premise that each service caters to a vastly different audience with different topical interests. It simply isn't true. Everyone, especially your friends, is talking about the same things on all these services. With aggregation, it doesn't become a chore to follow the same discussion over every service: it all comes in the same way in one place. - Mark Trapp
Mark - The premise of your argument seems to be that I, as a user of these services, travel in the same circle and talk about the same thing on each and every service? - Rai
Rai: given any random sample or group of people on any social network or service that isn't specifically designed for a specific topic, people will be talking about the same array of topics. In addition, there's nothing peculiar to a specific service that makes talking about specific topics impossible, and that any differentiation in friendbases is artificially imposed by individuals. The same differentiation in friendbases could just as easily be accomplished by adding a group feature in aggregation service. It's imposing an individual "tick" and calling it a major flaw in the concept, and it's irresponsible. - Mark Trapp
What an aggregator such as Netvibes does is to provide a platform for collecting all information into one place, saving instead a multiple visit of different webpages and following different links. This is what aggregator must do. In what concerns attention span, this is obivously true. But our span is spread thin not because of aggregators, saving us time and effort, but because there is an increasing amount of info to be digested. Aggregation is for those with multiple interests/online participation. - Hayk Hakobyan
Two major problems for me: I'd like to share into all services yet would love to avoid dublication here. Having a "toned streamed" if one can say so I would be able to differentiate on the other services very well to allow the slicing and dicing needed - if only the tools would allow for it. Sharing a link for a video on SU is good, but does not result in a player here, a youtube fav does. Unecessary. - Nicole Simon
Second, bigger issue: language. I am facing - yet again - doubleing up on all outlets because language is NOT separated to what you can read. I do not need two Bratwürste, the tools force me to. I'd like one big bratwurst and only like to offer you the pieces you want to see. - Nicole Simon
Aggregation is highly overrated imo. Don't like the non-thinking, unintentional, "its easy for the publisher to distribute" aspects of it. It leads to echo, noise and a whole lot of uninterestng stuff that cover the interesting bits. Intentional sharing provides so much more value. - Alexander van Elsas
but alexander, filtering of what is interesting can only happen at your side of the equation. and as i said - we would 'distribute' better if the tools would allow to do so. - Nicole Simon
Yeah, but you gotta love the image. Totally off subject but this reminds me of my grandmother and one day helping her make their own breakfast sausage with a grinder like this on their farm. **fondness** I do miss her. (sigh) - Melanie Reed
The author is right about the potential for echo, and static. Keeping up with my FriendFeed was a fulltime job while I was unemployed. Current lifestreaming apps are missing the point. When you're aggregating a user's content, you have an exceptional opportunity to understand what they are interested in. I just hope that I can make http://www.Agglodex.com do that before FriendFeed figures it out. - Jesse Hattabaugh
@Nicole, it takes a conscious act to share intentionally, that improves value by 200%. RSS makes us lazy, life streams and aggregators quickly will become our next SPAM problem. Just look at what is being developed now. Trust filters, friend filters, noise filters, whatever. Technical solutions that follow a pattern exactly like e-mail SPAM. Garbage in = garbage out. - Alexander van Elsas
I can have everything separated, it is just that the tools take separated junk and good stuff, throw them back together and say 'now work with them again and separate if you ilke, we wont do it for you". :) - Nicole Simon
* geo – geographical area
* tard – a fucking stupid idea - Alexander van Elsas
geo based embedded video makes about as much sense as browser or platform based video in a generally accessible internet site. I bet most of these defenders wouldn't have IE/Windows only based media players embedded in their sites. I think it spells ultimate failure for delivery services (like Hulu) that have geo based videos. Pissing off 15% -50% of your audience is just not defensible. - Brian Sullivan
What every geek wants! The hot chicks, the cool toyz, and a private Star Wars screening with Lucas. - Todd Jordan
Got the cliff notes version of that thing Scoble? :) - Nathan via twhirl
Todd: well, I have two out of those three. I saw Star Wars with the guys who started Hotmail, though. Does that count? :-) - Robert Scoble
Robert: we'll go with that for private screening. :) - Todd Jordan
Oh yeah, LOVE - they want comment love, and soc net love - hint hint - Todd Jordan
Nathan: cliff notes? I'm looking at differentiating myself from other tech bloggers. That means telling PR people (most of them, anyway) to either get me interesting and different stories than TechCrunch gets, or routing around them and finding my own stories that don't require them to be involved at all (like StackOverflow). - Robert Scoble
Robert: cultivating a variety of relationships has got to be key. I'd wager your biggest key to success is two things: persistence, relationship building. - Todd Jordan
haha. I appreciate that but to be honest I read the article. I was just attempting to be humorous :) - Nathan via twhirl
Winnov! I integrated those into a video conferencing project back in the '90s. - Peter Dragon
I thought I was going to hate it, but it made total sense. Thanks for not ranting! - Jason Kintzler
why, even after all the times i've posted to your blog, do I still have to wait for my comment to be moderated... - Zee at WeDoCreative via fftogo
Zee: I don't know why your stuff is still getting moderated. I approved it, though. - Robert Scoble
Will someone tell Scoble PitchEngine is worthy of a look-see? Zee? htttp://pitchengine.com/alpha - Jason Kintzler
Jason according to his post - you may need to camp out on his front lawn...But heck, considering the topic at hand & the rants you've given Scoble - it's worth a few minutes away from friendfeed to have a look at. - Zee at WeDoCreative via fftogo
Thanks, must have been the nervous jitters... - Jason Kintzler
Def. need to check out PitchEngine...worth a look. - Eric Miltsch
Great post. Just had a meeting with PR and AR today, so your post was especially refreshing to me. - Matthias Zeller
Robert, I believe that this is one of your better posts. Thanks! - Tal Keinan
My office is in Wyoming, we can Qik-it while fly fishing. - Jason Kintzler
Commented on your blog re: how important is Techmeme, anyway? - Kip
Robert, I enjoyed your blog post again, just like your others. I know nothing about the PR business, but it's good to hear it from your perspective. Keep up with the good work! - imabonehead
Todd Jordan, I absolutely do not want hot baby birds! - MiniMage via NoiseRiver
Robert, your post is a gift, excellent and thoughtful. I hope more people read it and learn. Thanks. - Cathryn Hrudicka
There's passion. About what I've no idea forgive me. I started watching your podcast because you made developers focus on why their gadget was useful and that came across again in the post. I don't come from a tech world perspective like so many new and coming users and when I find someone who can bridge the info. gap it's a gem. Most times TechMeme is in the "so what" chasm to folks like me. You didn't do that often in the podcast and have used some of the things I found there. I cannot say that about many - Boo
One thing you didn't explicitly say (or if you did, I missed it) - know who you're pitching to and tailor your message accordingly. Some people DON'T want PR pros on their front lawns. :) Your interests differ from Louis Gray's interests, or from Corvida's interests. In fact, some people probably shouldn't pitch to you at all, but should pitch to Corvida because their product more closely aligns with her interests. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
BTW for the record, I didn't beg Dave Winer for a link. I either asked him what I had to do to get a link (which is what I think I did) or I jokingly begged him for a link and he took it the wrong way. Big difference even if he didn't see it that way. - AlexScoble(Robert'sBro)
And as for PR people figuring out how to exploit blogging, et al, if you hadn't showed them, someone else would have. At least you got something to show for it. - AlexScoble(Robert'sBro)
Ontario: actually if Corvida or Louis like something there's an extremely high chance that I'll like it too. I read both of them like a hawk. - Robert Scoble
Interestingly, I covered most of this ground in my post yesterday (the only one in the meme Robert didn't cite). The PR person is an evolving position, one that's moving past someone who can click send on a press release and towards someone who needs to be part entrepreneur and part researcher/resource for the journalists they work with. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
best post in awhile! actually, the last few have been really good! - jeff
PitchEngine is certainly worth a look-see.... it seems to have a good foundation for what could be a better way to organize pitches. Brogan is already a fan and I could see it getting some serious legs. - Jason Goldberg
excellent one (again) Robert. It will be interesting to see if new startups and PR firms will actually read it and start acting upon it. I think theTechMeme game is a game that everyone (including the echoing bloggers themselves) will find increasingly boring and less effective ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
I appreciate long posts. It lets me really get into the material. - Denton Gentry
I like this post. Robert, you set the idea of WHAT a tech blogger should be trying to do front and centre. While not all of us may have PR firms flooding us with pitches, we can find intersting stories ourselves in other ways, because those stories are out there waiting to be found. - Roberto Bonini
Some long posts really lose me, but when Robert rants I'm glued to it from top to bottom. Great post. - Sarah Perez
Good stuff, but #8 was uncool. It sounded like you said "Spam Friendfeed so that your item comes to my attention." You didn't mean #8 that way, did you? Because that just transfers the game that you're already tired of (competition to show up on TechMeme) over to a new playing field (Friendfeed) - Matt Cutts
another great post. i can feel the passion oozing out of you, Robert. thanks for doing what you do best. how “XYZ product solved this need and transformed my life”? exactly. this is the best question to ask. say, have you looked at Dean Kamen's Slingshot, lately? http://bit.ly/21ccZ5 - ~C4Chaos
Why do you think I keep telling you to come to Arizona, dude. We have stories NO ONE sees:-) - Francine Hardaway
An introductory post to act as a press release for linking, Digging, Stumbling. Although I like to have a few days of content up before I do any promotion - David Knight
So do you do the PR post first, then the real posts, then link back to the post in the archive, or do you do the real posts, then the PR post, so it's the latest post when you do your push? - Mark Trapp
I am relatively new in blogging. The header of my blog makes it clear what the blog might contain. Bookmarking and subscription tools are also on the top. I usually start by directly posting my post. - Hayk Hakobyan
I've only started a few blogs, but what i did last time (and i liked the way it went) was intro first, get a little content out there to show your stuff, then link back to the initial post when you're drumming up readers. It really wouldn't matter all that much, but I like the intro first for continuity. - David Knight
i say get right in to it - if people want to know what your blog is about they'll click the "About" link. Great content is what gets people to come back - not the promise of same. - Morgan
@benedikt ... I question your knowledge of internet history! Now pardon me while i get back to my Spin Doctor's CD - David Knight
Maybe I'm oldfashioned, but I still like an introduction - for the reader and for myself, just to get started. But the 'about' page is essentially the same. - Matthias Metze via twhirl
I seem to be in the minority here so let me flesh out my opinion. An 'About' page is not the same as an intro. The about page should provide general information about the blog and writers and should change as the blog does. An intro post should be a fixed (for lack of a better word) inspirational post about the direction of your writing and what you hope to accomplish. It should be an example of your writing style and an invitation to start a journey, not a fact sheet. You don't need one but I like them - David Knight
For what it's worth I know that's a little cheesy and I don't care - David Knight
i'd say it depends a lot on the type of blog! corporate or personal? team or individual? topical or general? etc - Jeremy Toeman
I get right into it but that's mainly because the kind of stuff I write isn't your usual topical blogging fare. - Akiva Moskovitz
Depends on what I'm discussing, but mostly, I just dive right in. If the reader hasn't been following along, it's either "oh well" or "look it up in Wikipedia". - Helen Is SOOO Not Of Troy
This has all been very insightful, thanks guys. Regarding the type of blog: I'm not sure I see the distinction in how you'd approach the conveyance of information. Wouldn't you want to provide the same contextual information (if any) for all blogs that someone else is going to see? Perhaps Jeremy or Trish you could explain the differences in how you approach it if it's personal versus a corporate blog? - Mark Trapp
Oh, wait a minute: you wrote 'real bloggers'. That counts me right out. - Akiva Moskovitz
No way, Akiva. By "real bloggers," I refer to all bloggers who actually write a blog, as opposed to me, who only kids himself into thinking he'll maintain and contribute to a blog eventually. - Mark Trapp
what do you mean by "real" bloggers? you think your better than everyone else? this is what i hate about the blogoshere is these egomaniac "social media stars" i mean what because you sit behind a computer and write a post you are such a star....most of the times these people are just using to fill in a missing void in there own lives. they use social networking to feel important - orionstarr
Well orionstarr, when you come down from your soapbox, you can go ahead and read my comment right above yours defining what I meant by real bloggers. - Mark Trapp
Mark, sorry, I was being kind of tongue-in-cheek. Although I really don't see myself as the same as the 'famous' tech bloggers. I don't write about topical things; all my stuff is personal and internalized. It's not really a blog, really. But, y'know, I'm derailing things here. - Akiva Moskovitz
orionstarr, calm down, man! You're going to give yourself an ulcer. Possibly two. - Akiva Moskovitz
its nothing personal it is just i feel like its useless to blog anymore since it is just used a marketing tool anymore or feel people to shamelessly promote themselves. i have my personal blogs, i'm not in it to make a profit or to become a popular "internet" star i can careless how many readers i have etc. or then again maybe i'm a little envious who knows, its just frustrating anymore. - orionstarr
I wrote a first post which explained why I started blogging. Made me feel good to do it then, but I actually haven't ever looked back at the statistics (did anyone ever read it). I did link back to it for my post looking back at one year of blogging. The things I wrote then still fit quite well for me ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
orionstarr: I'm merely soliciting ideas on how to approach explaining the purpose and direction of a blog: I don't really care all that much what the topic of the blog is, or how famous the blogger is, as I would presume such an issue is universal. If you're writing a public blog, I would presume the thought of someone else reading it came into your head: how do you explain to that person what you're doing? That was the entire scope of my programme here. Looks like based on what people are saying, it's a matter of personal preference. - Mark Trapp
@orionstar it's never 'useless' to blog, unless your motivation to blog IS to become a star (and even then, not useless). i've been blogging for 4 years, and while i go through my "why aren't *I* an a-lister too??" moments, at the end of the day i've realized i do it more out of self-expression and sharing opinions than any other reason. accordingly, it'll never be useless for me... - Jeremy Toeman
I like that Alexander: if I understand what you're saying, it's merely so it's clear in your head on what you want to write about and where you want to go. - Mark Trapp
for me i think its a form of self expression i guess. is that so bad? don't be a "blog snob" - orionstarr
@mark corporate blog: in my opinion a corporate blog must be introduced by the company's blogger (or team of bloggers), and whatever the plans for the blog should be made clear - will it be used for opinion-sharing, informal updates, official announcements, thought leadership, etc. I think with corporate blogging it is essential to set expectations right up front, so that your potential readership knows why they should read... - Jeremy Toeman
@mark personal blog: i think there's a lot less value in the 'intro' post other than to introduce yourself as an individual. personal blogs tend to shift over time - mine started out primarily about gadgets and now includes a lot more general 'tech opinions' (although there's still a predominant focus on gadgets & reviews). but per my comment above, i think it depends a lot on your real agenda... - Jeremy Toeman
I do an intro post as a habit, though I had never consciously thought about the benefit of that before now. :) - Leslie Poston
Anyone who has perused my blog's archives can probably see that an intro post would have been wasted. My blog's direction changed. I would have had to go back and explain myself. My About page serves to tie it all together and provide context, though. - Rahsheen(isSoAwesome)
I've restarted my blog too many times for an introduction to make much sense, so any time I restart, I just let the About page do that. :) - Stephen Shores
This product will definitely not be Apple's entry into the enterprise phone market. RIM has nothing to worry about methinks in this generation. A phone that can't be used without recharging for one day is a huge step backward in useablity - Brian Sullivan
Thanks for the info. I've got a 1st generation iphone and wasn't sure if there was any advantage to upgrading. Think I'll stay with what I've got - Patty Hankins
Reading this article and others the like make it less and less likely that I will even renew my AT&T contract and keep my current iPhone when it runs out. Pricey and not so "it just works" anymore huh? - DAVE ID
Thomas, I notice you don't mention the GPS at all. Is geo-tagging photos, etc., of no value to you? Granted, the first gen iPhone is better at being location-aware than it was at launch, but currently I get very erratic results. - Stephen Mack
I'm surprised that you haven't gotten a better 3G signal. After all the hype I thought that 3G was everywhere. Trying to use any cell phone network for internet will always be slow, so my next phone will definitely need wifi. It'd also be nice to be able to load my videos on my phone, instead of having to try and stream them through an expensive data plan. - Davis Freeberg
Stephen -- I don't think he mentioned the camera either -- isn't it a bit of joke as cameras go? - Brian Sullivan
Tech question. Since 3G sucks. Have you tried turning it off to see how long the battery would last? I live in a non-3G market and would probably continue on Edge for a while anyway. Just curious. - gfurry
I would agree - the benefits of upgrading are not worth it if you're an existing user. If I wanted to upgrade my 1st gen phone, it would cost me $399 or $499 for the phone as well as the increased monthly for 3G. I would get a slightly smaller phone, faster wireless, and GPS. No thanks, I'll stick with 1st Gen and the new firmware. BTW, the battery life with the new firmware stinks too. - Otto R. Radke
Heh, the iPhone cam is reasonable - not great, fails miserable under low light, but for a phone cam it's decent. The Treo cam... now *that* was a joke. - felix
Stephen, Yeah GPS is sort of cool. I found a good Indian food restaurant with it the other day, but I'm not sure it really adds that much value. Because my Canon 5D goes with me 100% of where I go I rarely use my iPhone's camera or geotagging. Even then though with Geotagger on the Mac, geotagging is pretty simple with Google Earth. Not sure it's worth the extra money for these minor features. - Thomas Hawk
Fails under low light? -- since Thomas is "the" ambient light photographer it is easy to see why he has no use for the camera or geotagging possibilites, - Brian Sullivan
Greg, yeah I could turn 3G off I suppose to get better battery life. Maybe I'll do that. It still makes me feel stupid though for paying $15 more per month for a 3G data plan that I'm just going to turn off. - Thomas Hawk
I am hoping the next gen of DSLRs will support geotagging via bluetooth to a gps or phone with GPS. I need a good use for my old Treo bt gps. - gfurry
TH, I agree. That is one of the reason I haven't upgraded yet. Why should I have to pay more for a network I can't even use. Seems like Apple needs to have an auto switch that would flip to Edge when 3G is not available to save you battery. - gfurry
Good points and the main one that made me buy my iPod Touch over the iPhone was wifi availability. Soon most accessible places will have it and negate the real need for 3G. A good example, this weekend I travelled to Lands End in the UK a 400 mile journey through some remote parts and only once was I unable to find a wifi network I could log onto. - Russ G
@gfurry That would certainly be nice. I currently have a separate BT datalogger that I merge GPS coordinates into XMP sidecars using Downloader Pro. - Jauder Ho
Thank you so much for that extremely useful post. I had a question. What is the ballpark monthly that folks pay for their old iPhone vs. their new 3G phone? - kamla bhatt
I have been turning off 3g on my new iPhone to give my battery extra juice. The GPS is great, though - Nicholas Molnar
Personally, I've been straying in this direction for a while and I think it's evident from an under-current in a number of my posts over recent months. I don't, therefore, think it's just a summer doldrums things but we'll see what happens later in the year. - Colin Walker
Not at all!! If anything, as more people get exposed, immersed (addicted?), more people are connecting, technologies / services are advancing to be the newest/greatet (ie: micro-blogging -> micro-blogging w/ options - location based + multi-media, etc.), mobile + desktop services/software/sites seem to be intertwining, and technology companies in general seem to be shifting to a more consumer driven one. If anything, I'm more excited about the internet and technology than ever!! :) - Mona N.
You're looking at wayyy too small a picture in that post. The people you are talking about are all tech bloggers. What you aren't looking at is the larger picture.A higher interest in technology and, new technologies are leaking into the mainstream. Maybe for the techies things are not as nice and shiny as they used to be but..for the rest of us social media is a "new frontier" that people are just beginning to explore. - Candace Holly
I don't know about this social media thing but EA has a lot more fun with its shiny objects. - Robert Scoble
Depends on who you ask. For those in the echo chamber (or just with their ear against it), I'd say so. For the rest of the world, I think you'll find that social media was never so shiny to begin: they have FaceBook or MySpace and that's it. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
Stupid: (wow, that sounds rude =|) Did you read Shey's recent blog post on the echo chamber? It was a really good piece. Read it here: http://www.sheysmith.com/2008/... (Steven, sorry for hijacking your thread...) - Mona N.
@Candace - as with most of my posts this is purely to raise a conversation on something that I was thinking about - Steven Hodson
The only people that are getting jaded are the one that follow the same routine (online and offline) every day. Mix it up a little gang. It's healthy, and there's a whole new world here .... and Mona - Charlie Anzman
I find it funny that all of you are throwing critques around ON social media. - Robert Scoble
+1 to Charlie and @Scoble - Don't point out the irony! ...It's not as funny that way :( - Candace Holly
@Mona: Definitely not trying to be rude, I'm simply drawing off my experience with friends and family offline. They aren't tech people, but they are all web users and only a handful of them have anything to do with social media (and it's FB and MS). Even the tech people I deal with don't feel drawn to it. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
Stupid Blogger: I heard EXACTLY the same thing said about personal computers in 1977. - Robert Scoble
well maybe a shakedown coming up via increased competition to get rid of the non value adding ones.... - Marcel Ekkel
@Mona: reread & realized you weren't calling *me* rude. Doh! You can call me SB, or find my name which is hidden around here somewhere... To check my perspective, I looked over my FB profile: all but two friends are from my math & science magnet school. Other than one guy who actually works at Google (and you can't count him, he's in the chamber!), no one else seems all that involved in social media outside of FB. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
@Scoble: Wouldn't you say, though, that the speed of adoption and adaptation have dramatically increased over the past 30+ years? What previously took 5-10 years to become 'mainstream' is now taking a year or three. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
SB: I hear you, but IMHO, Facebook and Myspace are slowly breaking in the masses. New Facebook, upgraded Myspace, incorporation of new services, apps, etc., :) Oh, and the iPhone. The iPhone revolutionalized the American mobile market, regardless of how buggy / over-hyped it is. - Mona N.
Stupid: absolutely. The world is going faster now. - Robert Scoble
twitter just hit USA Today. I think it's just getting started for the 99% who aren't in the chamber. - Morgan
@Scoble - if people have an issue with social media then, surely, social media itself is the perfect place to air those concerns as they are immediately placed in front of those who can do something about it. You wouldn't complain to an Apple customer service rep if you had a problem with McDonalds. I see no irony here. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Colin: you missed my point. If social media is so bad I'm sure there are alternatives where you could communicate your point of view more effectively, no? I guess I'm just getting tired of seeing all the social media talk coming through my reader and through FriendFeed today. Oh well, I know this storm will probably pass within a few hours. Even haters can't focus for very long lately. :-) - Robert Scoble
ah excuse me Robert but no-one in this thread expressed any kind of "hater" speech .. and neither was my post anywhere close to being in that vein. So maybe clarify your assumption - Steven Hodson
Steven: it wasn't this comment cluster or even your post I was talking about. There were a bunch of anti-social media sentiment that came through my reader tonight and I'm reacting to the group of things. Hater is probably too strong a word. Critic, or critical thought is probably more correct. "Uninteresting" is the word you used in your blog post. I guess I should have just said they were bored. I'm bored with this topic, so onward. - Robert Scoble
i try to think of any online stuff w.r.t the real life (humans remain human even online). How has it been w/trad. media? We got newspapers then magazines then periodicalls then specialized magazines then specialized newspapers then what? perhaps one or more item? the rest is variations, improvements, derivations and AGGREGATIONS of those, right? Following those? yes, people get into new but there is saturation. So is it online. There is increase in following but the curve is saturating.. - Hayk Hakobyan
To echo Steven, I am certainly not a hater and have been a huge advocate of social media and its possibilities. With regards to other avenues, they may exist but would not be as effective in communicating directly with those involved. And besides, what's a blog for if not to have your say? - Colin Walker via fftogo
I'm all for mouthing off on a blog. :-) I'm just bored. I should have hid this cluster and went on with my life. :-) - Robert Scoble
Social media age is about 3-4 years.Probably,it's the time of first crisis. - Igor Poltavskiy
@Igor, I would rather call it a life cycle! - Hayk Hakobyan
As a "newbie" to the social media scene, it hasn't lost it's luster for me. I started on FB just 4 months ago and I am just learning how to really get connected. I've gotten 20 friends and family to join FB and I have discussions with most of them daily. I think social media is still growing and will eventually be a part of everyone's online experience. - Jonathan (Vacation Boy)
Steven, maybe you are seeing something similar that happens to people when they drink too much Coca Cola. It gets your sugar levels way up, puts you into hyper drive, but after a while the rush wears off and you slow down. You then either drink some more which leads to adjustments in your body that make you less hyper the more you drink. Or you do what is probably most healthy. Drink a coke when you are thirsty or really enjoy it, and stick to something healthier for the rest of the time. - Alexander van Elsas
I am beginning to believe that a lot of the pro-bloggers/breaking news type of bloggers have been drinking too much coke ;-) There are really exciting things going on in this world. But you don't have to race to the next "new" fad to see that happening. You can find it all over the place ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
