I just received Buzz today, and I must say, I’m most impressed how Google has learned from the botched Wave beta by just shipping this tacked onto their already existing, pre-populated social system. Millions of people are already on GMail and integrating this into it is a brilliant move.
At the same time, I don’t see why this is super exciting. It’s Twitter, but tied into Google. It’s literally just another system I’m going to hook my other web 2.0 sites into and get comments from friends. In some ways, it feels really phoned in by a company, that honestly, I expect better from. They combined their reader service and their chat IM client and called it a new invention. At least they were smart enough to realize that people already have external services for stuff and it’s best to just play nice and import them.
On a side note: I’m slightly unamused that no one seems upset that they just added this. Maybe it’s because I’m a bitter Microsoft employee, but seriously? If MS tried this anywhere, people would be going ape shit. But because Google is doing it, and it’s internet related, it must be ok. Seriously, trying to circumvent a competitor by putting your competing widget in an already overpowering product…why does that sound familiar? Am I the only one beginning to think that Google is becoming a little too big? When do you flip the Megacorp-Is-Evil bit? Just some thoughts on the subject.
So, as I had previously stated, I have decided to go farther down the web 2.0 rabbit whole and start using flickr to host my photos. After trying for a couple of weeks to get a plug-in for gallery2 (which I had been using) that would export to flickr to actually work, I just went and checked my backups to see if I had all the pics I had hosted readily available. Since I’m a serious digital pack rat, the answer was yes. I also came upon all of the other pics I had taken with my digital camera. Thus, I am currently uploading ALL of the pics I had taken to my new flickr account.
Now, while the actual mechanics of this import are kind of boring, I’m really enjoying the act of going through all of my old pics. The digital camera I used I recieved as a Christmas gift in 2004, and I had it with me on a regular basis from then until April of 2007. That’s a span of my life that was filled with a lot of change. It’s interesting to look back and reflect on all of the memories from those times in my life. What’s nice is I can look back on those times now and just smile. It was crazy, but my life was good, and for all the change, I’m glad I have both written and photographic evidence of those times.
The other thing I stopped to think about was just how my life on the internet (i.e. this blog) has changed. When I first started blogging over six years ago, I was in the process of coding up my own blog site. I was teaching myself PHP and I was working on doing more complicated design in Photoshop. I built my entire site by hand including it’s photo gallery and guestbook. At times, I’m still really impressed with my handy work, given that I did it all in my spare time. Eventually, maintaining my own site became too much work, as I was tired of dealing with comment spam. So I switched to Wordpress for my blog and Gallery2 for my photos. And that was good for a while, until I got lazy about updating my software and I was hacked. I eventually moved to the latest bits (which included easy upgrading and plug-in support), and all was good until I realized I was running low on hosting space. After realizing that I already had Facebook and Twitter accounts, I finally realized hosting my own pics was silly.
So here we are six and a half years later: I’m typing up blog post number 777 as I watch the flickr uploader push another photoset from my life into the cloud. This post will be pushed to multiple RSS feed aggregaters, facebook and livejournal. My twitter feed is hooked into this site and my facebook account. And when I’m done, I’ll have another Web 2.0 site to throw in the mix.
Sir, you can’t ask to not be seen as a racist when you say things such as:
Blacks Using 8-Bit Music To Entice Youth
and
I’m worried that this rapping mongrels want to brainwash our children to be the next gangsta thug. I’m love blacks, I just don’t like their hipped hopped culture.
I wish I had the faith in humanity to believe no one would take this guy seriously, but well…I know better. I wonder if the concept of me being an ivy league graduate working for MS is too much for him to grasp. It would probably just eradicate his mind to know that I’ve been listening to hip hop and rap since I was a teenager. How can anyone be successful under such conditions, especially being black. Shouldn’t my “hipped hopped” (wtf does that even mean?) culture prevent me from succeeding. And I won’t even begin to start on his “x-tian” (I refuse to acknowledge him as a Christian) values. His responses in his comments are so anti-Christ it’s actually painful.
Oh the internet, allowing me to see how retarded humanity can get since 1997.
As an aside, you should check out the “satan” music. It’s pretty hilarious. How anyone could take this seriously is beyond me.
As you can see by the side bar, I’m now Twittering. I’m still not sure how I ultimately feel about making such a decision. It’s one of those things I always kind of ignored, and now I’ve just kind of started doing it. It’s kind of strange, honestly, given that I’ve been blogging for so long. I was wondering if I’d blog less because I have twitter. But 1. I honestly don’t think I can blog less and say I still have a blog; and 2. you really can’t fully express yourself in 140 characters.
Interestingly, I no longer feel a need to update my Facebook status anymore. With the twitter plugin, there’s really no incentive to do it. Twitter is essentially Facebook status messages in a more public space; which, given how many people are on Facebook, might as well be public.
This leads me to wonder about where our current society is going. It’s clear that with Blackberries, iPhones and every other smartphone on the planet, we’re approaching the always connected world described in so many cyberpunk novels. I think I’m going to have to go back and watch Lain because I honestly feel like we’re approaching that world, or at least to some extent.
Hmmm, this might be an interesting blog post for another time.
