The Digital Life

With the popularity of many popular social networks, there is a shift that is happening, and I am right there with them. I have come to the place where I have plenty of Twitter followers and Facebook friends and I have come to the place in my life where I really don’t want that many friends, at least not on Facebook.  I have gladly accepted every friend request, but have come to see that a lot of those “friends” are people just trying to get me to join their MLM program, cause, or something that will get me a 100o Twitter followers in 30 days (like the 70,000+ I have now isn’t enough!).  So I am beginning the long and arduous process of culling out those folks who I don’t know, will never know, and most often don’t want to know.

I will still keep folks in the family, people I have gone to school with, people I work with, and most people from the Commonwealth of Kentucky (just because I love them all!).  There will be a few I keep that I have made friends with online or through something else. But I have come to that place where I want at least Facebook to be about real relationships and not some sort of popularity contest.  We’ll see how that goes!

There comes a time in your career when you have to stop and ask yourself  “Was this really a good idea?” Well someone in China forgot that ask that question and made the Rocky Balboa USB drive. And to make sure that you weren’t convinced that this is the stupidest thing that you have ever seen, they also have them in Apollo Creed and Mr. T.

Tonight (Friday, June 12) Facebook is officially allowing users to reserve vanity URLs such as Facebook.com/JohnDoe. There hasn’t been this much hype in a long while about grabbing up names. I have long wished that I owned Rick.com (owned by a DJ), RickAbbott.com (a guy who hasn’t used the domain in 5 years) or even rickabbott.net (a great young photographer). But alas they are taken and I am relegated to the blogs that I work on and my Facebook page. But tonight at 11:01 I get to get in there and grab something that points people to my Facebook page just a little easier.

But, do I want to do that? I have started to cull some of my Facebook contacts because I really want this to be about connectivity and not just as a way to see how many friends I can have and ensure that I have more than anyone else. Been there, done that.  Last week I got 15 friend requests and I think that I accepted 2.  This weekend I have committed to doing a big purge.  Too many of my Facebook “friends” are really just trying to sell their MLM plans, get me into their next big thing, or share how they can make me wealthy as a success coach. I don’t think so.  This is going to be a safe harbor of my friends.  Friends I know well, some I haven’t seen in 30 years (I have a few like that), and some that I work with virtually on political issues.  The rest are going to just have to go unless they have written me personally.

But for the future friends, the custom URL might be a good thing. Let’s just see if I can get it!

Today is a sad day for my generation, at least some of us. I remember when I got my first TV as a kid and would sit in the bedroom watching monster movies on my 9″ black and white. We got just a few channels, but the independent station in the UHF range was always the best one for the creature feature on Saturday night.

My parents had the big set, and it was color! I remember that when we would get a bad reception it was my job to climb on the roof and reposition the outdoor antenna that just laid on the flat roof. I remember a couple of times during a cold winter football game going out so that my dad could watch his favorite team.

But, its 2009 and those years are long ago. But ironically over 2 million people in America still get their reception with the rabbit ears or outdoor antenna and today they will either make the switch with their digital converter boxes or stop getting their favorite shows. The switch from analog to digital has been announced with more pomp than Y2K, but still some folks haven’t made that switch and I am sure that the news will all be abuzz over those who didn’t do it. But those that didn’t want know that the world is talking about them.

First, I am not a gamer, but I live with 4 who are. But with Project Natal I just might become a serious gamer. Check out this incredible clip from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Earlier this week CNET reported that this was the 25th anniversary of Tetris.  Since this is also my 25th wedding anniversary I stopped to think about when I first heard of Tetris and thought that the date might be off. I researched a dozen web sites and found that they all confirmed that the anniversary was June 1985, making this the start of the 25th year but indeed the 24th anniversary (at least how we calculate things in America).  I wrote a nice little rebutal to the piece documenting three sites that confirmed this. The reason for the celebration is because of a piece published (in error) by Electronic Arts. I was just a little surprised this morning when Google had a Tetris image to celebrate the birthday. So I went back to Wikipedia and guess what, the date was changed. Most of the other sites still list 1985 as the actual year, but it was amazing to me that a few prominent web sites can just redact their content. The game was invented in 1985 but according to the Ministry of Information we are living in 1984 all over again.

In case you are curious about Tetris, here is a great video explaining the history of this awesome game:
http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/play-value/tetris:-splitting-the-ion-curtain

I love it when I watch an old episode of Star Trek and see something and think “Wow, we can do that now!”. Nothing so glorious as teleporting to the planet surface or in-room replicators, but things like discs that have files on them, talking computers, a ship that has a great HD Plasma screen in stead of a window.

So today when I discovered that Microsoft was doing away with controllers for their Xbox system, I immediately recalled a scene in the movie “The Island” where Scarlett Johansson and Ethan Hawke fight in an Xbox simulator. Well, today that looks like another cool thing that we can check off the “Wouldn’t That Be Neat!” list.

The applications for this thing could be incredible.  The obvious applications are going to be fighting, but what about training someone in martial arts. How about a “Pilot Wings” type of game where you just stretch out your arms and fly. But because this is Xbox, it will be photo-realistic scenes that you are flying over.  I can just see a bunch of guys hooking into Xbox live to play football, bowling, or golf. The new controller is likely to totally change the way we look at gaming.

Microsoft is going to (finally!) make a serious run at the search market. They have tried before with MSN and more recently “Live.com”, but never really anything to write home about.  Finally someone at Redmond has paid attention to a LOT of people and they are apparently going to launch “Bing” in the next week.  We don’t know a thing about the technical side of the new search engine, but one thing that I really like about Bing is that it isn’t a Microsoft sounding name. Like “Google”, “Bing” is fun to say, and has a lot of marketing opportunities.  I keep thinking of the “Ding” from Southwest Airlines.  Here is my idea for their first commercial:

Guy sitting at dinner table. Looks over at wife who is on laptop. “Where should we go for vacation this year?” She types something into her Bing search engine. An audible “Bing” sound with a light above her head… “My mother’s!” she says. Search engine shows Fiji. Guy just cocks his head sideways a little and stares at her.  Its quick, funny, shows the effectiveness of the search and brands Bing into our heads. Every time we hear an elevator “bing” we will think of “Bing”.

Okay, I now take off my PR hat (Hey MS, I am available for a small fee), and go back to my rally hat. Its time for Microsoft to pull out the stops with something, I hope that this is it for them.

I have been saying for years that the next generation of gear heads are not going to be the guys who are looking to take their cars to new high speeds, it will be those who are looking to take their vehicles to new distances on the very minimum of fuel or alternative fuels.

I applaude the team from Lycée Saint Joseph la Joliverie in Nantes, France for their little gem. Like most concept vehicles, this isn’t the kind of “car” that you drive to the grocery on the weekend. But the technolgies that are derived will help the next guy to make his street rod just a little better.

The vehicle in question here competed in the Shell Eco Marathon in Germany. The vehicle got one liter of fuel and was able to travel 3771 kilometers. For those of you in the US, that means 8,000 miles on ONE GALLON! You could drive from Los Angeles to Washington DC, back to LA, and then back to DC. I would love to take this to the office and back, probably cost me about a cup of gas.

The US government has recently mandated by law the ability of cars and trucks to achieve certain mileage standards. But I think that this is proof that if you just leave it alone companies and organizations will come together to do so much better.

A guy has developed something that he is calling a WOW Pod, a small room for World of Warcraft (WOW) players so that they can play without any interruption. It has a toilet, a small stove, and a supply food. The developer said that he was frustrated by getting kicked off because he had to go unload the dishwasher.  The problem is not the delay because of domestic chores, the problem is someone so addicted to a GAME that they can’t have a life. But, there is a future for these pods, micro-prisons! This guy might be on to something. Let’s give every inmate a PC and sign them up for an online game so that they can spend their days in virtual bliss hacking and killing their way to the next level up!