Mike English's blog

I’ve been playing with Google Wave for about a week now, but I still haven’t figured out what to do with it.  Yes, it has a lot of very cool features, but the as the combination is so unlike existing communication technology, it’s very difficult to know just how to use it.  I doesn’t help that at this point there is virtually no integration with existing communication channels (e-mail, IM, twitter) making it so that you have to be on Google Wave to know if anything is happening on Google Wave.  Most of the friends I’ve invited so far seem to have given up on trying to force this new technology into their lives.  There’s probably some wisdom in that, but I’d like to see this catch on because I do think it has a lot to offer.

Ann Michael has an post at The Scholarly Kitchen that outlines similar woes. From the post:

Google Wave is a cacophony of functionality that doesn’t even try to reveal its value or purpose to the user. You have to be determined to use Google Wave in order to make it work for you. Even then, since it’s a “preview,” the functions you try to use don’t always work. Being a new user you are left wondering if the function doesn’t work or if you’re just not doing it right.

My hope is that Google Wave will become much more useful and user-friendly as more extensions are developed and more invites filter out into the general public.  Once more people start to use it, it’s use(s) will become more defined.

That said, I have a couple invites left.  I’d like to trade them for something interesting (handmade crafts, mix tapes, etc.). Comment if you’re into that idea.

News of Google’s plans for Chrome OS have started me thinking about computer hardware – trying to decide what my next upgrade will be. While I can’t afford anything new in the immediate future (I’m a poor college student), I’m beginning to grow anxious about my aging PowerBook’s health.

Besides my laptop’s impending and inevitable demise, my cell phone contract will be up soon, and I’m considering downgrading from my BlackBerry to a “dumb” phone when that happens. Rates for data are exorbitant when you consider the ubiquity of WiFi coverage these days.

More and more, I find myself wondering if I might be in the market for a netbook. I ridiculed a friend of mine for months after she bought a tiny MSI Wind, but now that I’ve seen how convenient it is, I really think it might be just what I need: a lightweight computer that I can type on and carry almost everywhere.

The thought of phasing out my laptop – my “real computer” – is frightening. However, I recall that I had similar fears about phasing out my desktop when that was my “real computer” and I bought this PowerBook to take to college. Netbooks are a whole different animal though, especially when you consider the growing demands of media.

I’ll cut to the chase. One possibility for the future of my digital life is this: a dumb phone with unlimited text messaging, a netbook of some kind, and a NAS/Media server. It’s the last piece of the puzzle that’s leaving me… well, puzzling.

I’d like to digitize my entire CD collection. I’d like to store the audio on a server in some lossless format (FLAC perhaps) to save having to re-digitize from the physical media in the future when I might want better quality files (than if I had stored them all as MP3s). I’d like to keep my movies on there too, and my photos, and backup all of my documents (including a small but growing reference library of articles and research papers for school). I’d like it to hook up easily to a television or stereo (read: surround sound + HDTV). Oh, and it’d be really nice if I could get at some of this stuff while I’m away from home too.

Humoring my imagination (and helping me wrap my head around the costs of this next generation of computing hardware), can anyone recommend a good NAS/media server (and/or netbook)?

Thanks!
I’ll be looking for myself too, and I’ll post what I find in the comments here.

What makes Facebook so important? It seems that conversations about social networks always circle back to Facebook somehow. Why?

Well, I see a few reasons for this. First, Facebook has what is probably the most valuable social graph data. Accurate names and profiles are maintained by most of the users. I speculate that by slowly rolling out the service among colleges, and focusing on being a social utility, Facebook encouraged this social behavior. They didn’t add too many features or too many users too fast. As new users joined the network they copied the behavior of the earlier adopters, which was to provide accurate data.

But accuracy isn’t everything. You can find accurate profiles on LinkedIn for example, but LinkedIn doesn’t have the reach Facebook does. Facebook has penetrated the social networking market especially among college students (the original target audience) to such an extent that it is treated as a given, a ubiquitous utility, the way Google is treated for search. Facebook has entered the college student’s vernacular lexicon as a verb.

This is why Facebook is important. Not just because it’s done such a great job perfecting the social UX, – a vast improvement over MySpace‘s earlier efforts – but because ‘everyone you know’ is on Facebook, maintaining fairly accurate profiles.

It’s the data. Real data about real-world contacts.