When Meres attack: The Biting of Sluggerr
Q: What did you do on your trip to Kansas City?
A: I bit the tail of the Royals mascot.
Stop #5: St. Louis...The Arch, a Parade, and more bloggers...
Today was a relatively easy day in St. Louis. We have a very ambitious driving day tomorrow... in fact, the next few days are going to be... well, we'll stick with ambitious as the term. Basically, by the end of Saturday, we'll find ourselves with Mere's family in Butte, Montana.
We did get to see the Arch, where I learned that my fear of heights isn't just about seeing the heights, but also feeling the ride up. Elevators don't bother me too much, although they did in the WTC... but the creaky tram system they've got up the Arch was a bit hairy for me. What's bizzare is that they use the same pods on the tram as were used in the infamous Jeff Goldbloom movie, the Fly.
The small windows at the top of the Arch gave me at least a little bit of security.
In the morning, there was a parade right outside our hotel.... very Middle America:
On our way out of St. Louis to KC, we stopped in the Dogtown neighborhood to meet up with fellow bloggers Matt Winn and Ashley Cecil. Ashley's comments about the power of her blog in her career as (an artist interested in the non-profits) started a whole conversation about it afterwards between Mere and I which might lead to her blogging. We'll see. This has definitely been a great "people trip" for us... meeting up with old friends and new, family, analog friends and digital ones, too.
Stop #5: Louisville Lunch and More...
We decided to swing by Louisville to catch up with Rob from Businesspundit, who I had been reading and writing to for a few years and finally got to meet in person at SXSW. We even got to meet Mrs. Businesspundit. The Mays are a great couple and hopefully, we can take them out in NYC one day.
We didn't really think we'd spend much time in Louisville besides lunch, as we still had to head out to St. Louis. However, we found a waterfront park that rented surrey bikes that sat you down side by side.
Hilarity ensued:
We got some ices. The guy at the cart asked us if we had ever heard of "Italian Ices." He then asked me if I had ever seen a purple spoon, which he handed me.
I wanted to ask him, "Have you ever seen... anything outside of Louisville?" :)
BTW... all of our trip pics are on Flickr, here.
And you can keep track of us in real time on Twitter, here.
Stop #4 - Cleveland: Meg and the Tribe
The Jake is a fantastic place to watch a game. The Indians beat up on the Rays, but the turning point of the game was Perez coming out of the pen for the Indians in the 7th with bases loaded and no outs with a 3-2 lead. He got the first out by leaping about 4 feet in the air to snare a chopper back to the mound and throwing home... finished off the inning 1-2-3... amazing job. I went to the game with Mere and my friend Meg from Fordham who graciously opened up her Euclid Heights apt couch to us.
They're serious about their "I" logo...
Didn't even realize beforehand... Fireworks night! We watched from the parking lot roof standing up through the sunroof of the Tribeca.
Whatever you do, do not speed in Ohio
...they've got undetectable radar technology, and lasers. I-71 was crawling with cops. This must be the state's main source of revenue. Yes, that's right, frickin' lasers. The cops stood on the side of the road with these laser rifle things pointed at us and our detector went nuts... "Laser alert! Laser alert!" It was like we were in Star Trek.
I used to have the original Test Drive for my PS/2... Remember this image?
$135. Oops.
Thankfully, from WikiAnswers, "New York and Colorado will not enter out of state speeding tickets at all unless they are serious violations like reckless."
Good thing. I don't need my insurance raised.
Stop #3 - Ithaca, NY
After the HOF, we drove a few more miles and stopped in Ithaca, NY at the Amazing Grace Bed and Breakfast. Alicia was a wonderful host and if you stay, make sure she makes you some of her German bread. May very well be the best bread I've ever had in my life. The house has some neat grounds around it as well. You're basically living in her house, though, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for young couples. :) Still, the tradeoff for that breakfast... pretty close call. (I'm going to get in trouble for that one.)
At the recommendation of Eric, we met up with Jofish while in Ithaca as well.
Not only did that make for some interesting conversation, lucky for us, he insisted that we stop by one of Ithaca's waterfalls. I'm so glad we did. Check these out!
I'll catch up on Cleveland, Louisville and St. Louis next time...
Road Trip Stop #2... Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame
I'm in St. Louis now. We have an easy road day as we only have to make it to Kaufmann Stadium for tonight's Fireworks night Royals game against the Mariners. So, I have a few minutes to catch everyone up.
First off, I'll tell you, I think I have some kind of special gene that gives me incredible driving stamina. So far, I've done 100% of the driving and we're 1500+ miles in, counting my trip up to Boston for Dave's wedding. I feel fantastic. One thing that is helping is that we've gone running each morning, even for a little while, and I'm making sure I get a good stretch in at every gas stop. Gotta keep those legs moving.
Mere and I have been keeping ourselves occupied with our portable XM radio, which she has been conscientiously adjusting when it needs a change in the FM output signal. We've also had some really good conversation. She has a big book of questions and we had a good social media conversation yesterday. In fact, she took some notes on it which I will try to get her to post here.
Anyway... Out first official stop was the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Somehow, even though its only a few miles from NY, I've never gone. It was alright. I'm glad I went, but it didn't knock me over. What was really disappointing was the lack of rich media exhibits. MLB must have tons and tons of old clips that I've never seen before and I would have loved to see more of that. Show me more home runs by Willie Mays and highlights from Nolan Ryan's no-hitters from the 70's. At All-Star Fan Fest a few years ago, they allowed fans to get in a booth and call a inning of a famous game, and save the video. That would have been awesome. Its 2007... the Hall needs a serious upgrade for the future because little kids aren't just going to be enamored with old bats and balls alone.
In any case, though, Nate asked for a pic of Johnny Bench's plaque. I also got photos of other faves of mine: The lone Met Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan and Wade Boggs, because of Boggs doesn't swing, its not a strike.
The real story of Cooperstown, however, was the serendipitous discovery that Mere has all sorts of softball skills. There's a beautiful lake up there with a nice park and I had brought two gloves and a ball. We also bought a Wiffleball and bat while we were up there. She proved adept at hitting the wiffleball, but even more impressive was her ability to throw and field the softball. I thought I was going to teach her how to play, but she's a ringer.
I have all sorts of video on this, but unfortunately, all of the online video services have uploading limits. The ones that allow editing, JumpCut and MotionBox, do too. JumpCut even directs you to a shareware tool that allows you to chop up your video before uploading. I don't want to upload a big video, but I need to edit it down somewhere first. This should be located in the uploading tools of these services. I'm more than happy to edit it down to upload, but I don't want to have to use an entirely different set of tools to do it. Phanfare should do the same thing. I love their drag and drop uploading tool and that's a great spot for some additional tools.
So, instead, we have some lake pics... I'll edit the videos when I get back.
Good Morning Boston
Day one...or two, depending on whether my cousins wedding in Essex counted. Great pics off Nana and Mere to be uploaded later. It is a gorgeous morning in Boston... If you're here, go for a run or something. I'm walking over to the car now to install the portable XM radio. You cannot imagine how psyched I am for this trip.
--
Sent from my Helio Ocean
Sah-weet... My Voki has a car... props!
Ok, so its not a Mustang, but now some of our characters (and soon all) will have probs. Check out his little convertible. Vroom!
Informal iPhone survey
I just pinged a bunch of random non-techie friends... you know, the other 98% of the world... and asked them the following:
1) Are you likely to purchase the iPhone in the next week? Yes/no
2) Are you likely to purchase the iPhone in the next three months? yes/no
3) Are you likely to purchase the iPhone ever? Yes/no
Responses:
Next week? 16 no's. A clean sweep.
Next three months. Another 16 no's.
Ever? 3 yes, 6 no, 7 maybe.
Ok, first of all, maybe wasn't a suggested answer, but besides that, here's what people wrote on the "maybe" side:
maybe if cheap enough, sometime! But it would have to be drop-proof...and waterproof!
i could be persuaded if i didn't have to switch my plan (because i'm really happy with verizon), if it becomes significantly cheaper and only after they get out the inevitable first generation bugs.
iPhone’s only available currently with AT&T, and I have a contract with Verizon.
No, but only cus I'm poor. If I were rich, then yes.
Point and Laugh Friday - iPhone, MySpace, Facebook Apps
My favorite radio show, Opie and Anthony, has been doing a "____ day" gimmick to make fun of other radio stations. Yesterday was "Phone call Thursday" and it just featured listeners calling up with absolutely nothing to say just because it was Phone call Thursday. Hilarious.
Today is "Point and Laugh Friday" in addition to being "Mispronunciation Friday" and a few other things, and I think I may just make Fridays into Point and Laugh Friday on this blog as well.
So feel free to point and laugh...
...at anyone at the front of the iPhone line. Including professional line sitters.
...for MySpace for thinking that developers would spend time building apps for them after Facebook has already said anyone is free to make money there and MySpace has a history of bullying the very applications that made the service what it is today. Chris DeWolfe thinks the Facebook platform "is interesting."
...at Yankee fans, who think there's any shot whatsoever of the Yanks making the playoffs.
...at Facebook app developers for thinking that all they had to do is throw any kind of crap up there and get 7 million users, plus have their business plan solved for them as well. Oh, so wait... you still need a marketing strategy, a compelling and viral app that provides utility, AND a business model??
Point and laugh, folks. Point and laugh.
Plaxo: Shiny and new, but doesn't quite work
Spam issues in the past aside, I've usually found Plaxo to be a pretty useful service. Having moved companies a few times, the process of moving address books around and keeping up to date with people has been made much easier because of it.
So when they announced themselves as the place to sync everything, I was psyched. Their new interface is terrific. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work.
First off, it somehow triplicated all of my calendar entries. That's ok, though, because they have a premium feature that includes de-duping. Ahh... I see their business model now. Screw up your calendar and than pay to fix it. Clever!
In addition, they sync with GCal, which is fantastic, because GCal couldn't understand the CSV file that I had exported from Outlook. Plaxo told me that I had too many calendar entires (about 3x too many, perhaps?) and that it would sync everything for me in the background. That was yesterday. Is it still working? I have no idea if the feature is broken, it just didn't work that time or if its halfway done.
Perhaps I should wait for Plaxo 3.5?
Trip Updates
So we made a little change on the front end... the Cooperstown day ends with a few hours to Ithaca, NY. That will give us 5 1/2 hours to trek across Western NY on our way to the Tribe game in Cleveland.
So here's the map now. Remember, all those west coast stops aren't actually stops.. they're just a way to get Google Maps to drive on the right road.
So, in terms of cities, stops and opportunities to meet folks...
We have a free day in Seattle on 7/11, both day and night. Suggestions are welcome and we'll prob do some sort of happy hour type thing for the handful of folks we know in Seattle.
We're also free the night of 7/14 in San Fran. We might stop in if anyone is hanging out after CommunityNext, but also, @caroliiine is going to be headed into the Bay Area that same night, so we were thinking of maybe doing a NYers invade the Valley thing, too. Up in the air...
I also just ordered my radar detector. That should come in by the end of the week... vroooom.
We picked up a few audio books as well, and I'm thinking of dusting off my XM radio and resubscribing. Does anyone have the car adapter for it? Does it work? I was pretty disappointed with the performance of the adapter for the iPod.
We also managed to avoid camping entirely... Mere called Yellowstone again and found a hotel cancellation, so we don't have to sleep in the woods. That would have been a lot of extra gear to carry around for just one night.
Tickets purchased for Royals game on 7/4 and for LA Dodgers on Monday the 16th. Most expensive seat at Kaufmann was $32, not surprisingly. At least I'll get to see Ichiro, b/c the Mariners are in town. I hope King Felix pitches.
danah boyd on Class and Social Networking
Wow... thoughtfulness in the blogosphere...
I'll read this kind of thing any day over that ridiculous "people ready" flap that killed off a couple of million collective brain cells over the weekend...
From danah... The part I liked best about this essay was the part that had nothing to do with social networks...
Link: Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.
People often ask me if I'm worried about teens today. The answer is yes, but it's not because of social network sites. With the hegemonic teens, I'm very worried about the stress that they're under, the lack of mobility and healthy opportunities for play and socialization, and the hyper-scheduling and surveillance. I'm worried about their unrealistic expectations for becoming rich and famous, their lack of work ethic after being pampered for so long, and the lack of opportunities that many of them have to even be economically stable let alone better off than their parents. I'm worried about how locking teens indoors coupled with a fast food/junk food advertising machine has resulted in a decrease in health levels across the board which will just get messy as they are increasingly unable to afford health insurance. When it comes to ostracized teens, I'm worried about the reasons why society has ostracized them and how they will react to ongoing criticism from hegemonic peers. I cringe every time I hear of another Columbine, another Virgina Tech, another site of horror when an outcast teen lashes back at the hegemonic values of society.
I worry about the lack of opportunities available to poor teens from uneducated backgrounds. I'm worried about how Wal-Mart Nation has destroyed many of the opportunities for meaningful working class labor as these youth enter the workforce. I'm worried about what a prolonged war will mean for them. I'm worried about how they've been told that to succeed, they must be a famous musician or sports player. I'm worried about how gangs provide the only meaningful sense of community that many of these teens will ever know.
Given the state of what I see in all sorts of neighborhoods, I'm amazed at how well teens are coping and I think that technology has a lot to do with that. Teens are using social network sites to build community and connect with their peers. They are creating publics for socialization. And through it, they are showcasing all of the good, bad, and ugly of today's teen life. Much of it isn't pretty, but it ain't pretty offline either. Still, it makes my heart warm when I see something creative or engaged or reflective. There is good out there too.
The Facebook Problem? Huh? (Scratches head) People, the same rules still apply!
The web is talking about the "problems" with the new Facebook platform.
Last time I checked, customer acquisition was a real benefit, no? Don't people usually pay for customer acquisition? As far as I'm concerned, the main reason why I suggested that Oddcast build a Voki app for Facebook was exactly that... to get more users. That's a phenomenal benefit for developers. Oh, wait.. is Facebook also supposed to invent a business model for you, too. That's like saying that AdSense sucks because it doesn't promise you customer conversions too, just traffic.
The problem of not making money with your app is not a Facebook problem. Its your problem! It shouldn't be up to Facebook to figure out your business model, too! Figure out a way to monetize your audience. If no one wants to pay for the Where I've Been app or you can't figure out how to stick relevant travel ads on it, then it shouldn't exist. If the Where I've Been app existed at whereivebeen.com, it would have the same exact issues. Facebook is not a parallel universe where the rules of needing a business model don't apply. This is real life, folks... and if you can't figure out a way to get the bills paid, well, sorry... This isn't Facebook's fault. Don't put your mouth in front of the firehose and than complain that the water comes out too fast and that you have a small bladder.
I don't really think this is a Facebook specific problem either. In fact, its actually a testament to how pure the signal usually is on Facebook. Right now, I have 25 posts in my newsfeed. Of the 25, 8 of them are notifications related to my friends adding or subtracting applications. The rest are actual usage of those apps, like Twitter updates, or people adding photos or friends or whatever they usually do on Facebook. That might be a lot, but compare that to my e-mail inbox. Of my last 25 threads in Gmail, 14 of them were not from humans. They were confirmations from purchases, notifications for folks joining the nextNY mailing list, ads, etc. On top of that, 4 more were blog comment notifications, which were initiated by humans at least, but not direct conversations.
I'm sure Facebook will adjust this issue, though, but it's not a huge problem. At some point, there will be equilibrium in the app world and people won't be adding or subtracting nearly as many apps. Plus, I don't really need to know when someone took something down... and maybe I shouldn't need to know that someone added something. If you invite me, fine... but I don't need to see that people are just playing.
In any case, I think the same basic rules of needing a business model, needing to be compelling enough to stand out from the crowd, needing to scale, etc. still apply in Facebook. Let's not forget that. It's still the web, people, not Fantasyland.