Shelly Brisbin writes about new media, cocktails, technology, and the world around her
I had the chance to join Chuck Joiner’s MacJury for a discussion of social networking in the age of earthquakes and late night talk show wars. We talked a lot about the earthquake, not so much about the late night TV. We spent a lot of time discussing Twitter’s usefulness, and its place in our respective social media diets. It was a great discussion, with some really smart people from the Mac community. Listen here.
Just now, I had a brainstorm. The 20-page PDF files I’ve been studying on my computer screen, as I work my way through an online learning program, could easily be transferred to my iPhone. From there, I will be able to sit in my most comfortable chair and hold the device at a most comfortable distance, with the text zoomed to a most comfortable size. I raced to my computer to affect the transfer.
This from a woman who devours audio books, and gazes worshipfully at the shelves full of old paper books I have acquired an read throughout my adult life. I love to read, and I love books.
What I’ve realized here is that the situational reading format,not the ereader, is the most exciting thing going for readers. Just as TV fans demand their shows appear on a computer screen AND on the living room HD AND on the smartphone AND, though the thought horrifies me, on the DVD players in their cars, book readers like me are finding it possible to hope (if not demand, just yet) that text appear wherever and whenever. It hasn’t all come together in our minds the way it has for video addicts, but perhaps we’ll get there. Perhaps the cave-in to publishers that prevented Amazon’s Kindle from offering universal text-to-speech conversion will one day seem as laughable as an artist not providing digital versions of his or her music. Maybe my beloved old books; the novels I love to read in paper form, can coexist with the cocktail books and other recipe texts that should, in a just world, all be available via ereader. A girl can dream, can’t she?
I’m not here to offer advice to marketers about how to alter the tastes an culture consumption habits of social media users. That sort of thing makes my skin crawl, frankly. I have noticed, though, as I talk to fewer people IRL on a daily basis, and listen to less broadcast media, that my opinions, and certainly the opinions of people who consume way more media than I do, are influenced much more by the online world than they would have been even a few short years ago.
As a non-regular TV watcher who reads a lot of tech blogs, I know that many people consume shows via Hulu, Netflix, and their DVRs. Given a lack of channel-surfing or exposure to a network’s show promos, how does one decide what TV shows to check out and follow? Same goes for music. If you’re not geeky enough about your tunes to read music blogs, and you don’t spend your nights at live shows, how do you come across and choose the stuff you want to download from Amazon, iTunes, and “other” sources?
The answer, as SM aficionados will gleefully tell you, is the kind of online word of mouth that social networks facilitate.
I guess.
What has me wondering about this theory is the multiple circles I tend to inhabit. Many of my online friends are self-described “geeks” and they talk about series like “Heroes” and “Big Bang Theory”. Based on their descriptions of these shows, I’ve never been inspired to check them out. The ironic hipsters of my acquaintance, many of whom are gay or “gay adjacent” (I so love that phrase) find joy in campy reality shows like “America’s Next Top Model” or “Real Housewives…” Nothing will ever convince me to watch. Fashion and shallow women are two of my least favorite things. And finally, my “NPR intellectual” friends, and the blogs and periodicals I favor, can’t stop talking about shows like “The Wire” and “Mad Men”. Well finally! I did check out the latter, mostly because of the “period” gimmick of setting the show in the past. And because “Mad Men” works pretty well as a soap opera, and partly as history adjacent, I kept watching.
It’s striking to me how little overlap there is. My geek/podcast friends have never mentioned “Mad Men”. And I don’t think Slate has any ongoing discussion threads about “Heroes”. It’s almost as if you need to choose, just as you might feel compelled to choose a political party, a clique in high school, or a neighborhood in which to live. The negative spin on that would be Balkanization. The positive might be “the long tail”. To me, it’s a mite weird.
So why, aside from a conscious intent to severely limit my TV consumption, do the passions of my friends leave me utterly cold? Am I more resistant than most people to peer influence? Am I so invested in my iconoclast self-image that I won’t succumb? The truth could be in there somewhere, but I also wonder if I simply require more and better evidence than word of mouth provides. I guess I don’t find links or two-minute YouTube clips very compelling. “What’s in it for me?” I wonder, when presented with an opportunity to engage myself with a continuing series? And the answer tends to come back that what’s in it for me would not extend very far beyond shared experience. And I can get that any day of the week by simply loading up Twitter, turning on a podcast, or god forbid, walking outside my house.
Hi again, dear friends.
I’ve been using Google Reader a lot lately. The decision was forced upon me when NewsGator, maker of my preferred newsreader, NetNewswire, went and killed off its own feed-syncing service in favor of a connection to Google Reader. I can understand why they did it, but, like most people, I hate change when it affects me.
I found my old Google Reader account, cleaned it out, and synced it to my NNW stuff. In the process, I discovered the fun of sharing news stories with friends, via the Reader Web page. I still read a lot in NNW, which has yet to add Google Reader sharing or liking to its toolbox. That would be my preferred way of reading news.
I’m reading more feeds, and sharing items with a few people. You wanna share with me? I’d love that. As a result of all this sharing, here are a few things I’ve been thinking about:
Time once again for a very irregular feature, in which I rattle off some short comments about a variety of seemingly random subjects. If you listen to my podcast, think of it as a text-y Lightning Round(tm).
Ah, well. No blogging from me during Tales of the Cocktail. A quick look at my favorite “booze blogs” lets me know that I am not the only one who found events on the ground more compelling in real time than going back to the room to write. I also find it a bit difficult to focus (with or without cocktails) on writing while I’m in the midst of a whirlwind trip, hunched over a laptop. tiny screens, squirrelly keyboards, and flaky Internet, y’know?
So today I do my penance, writing for you, and for The Spirit World. I’m also doing penance in that the 26 pounds of stuff I acquired at tales is not here with me. I schlepped it to FedEx on Saturday for shipment home. I put the box on the slow boat, so it will be here Friday. I do have recordings and pictures from Tales, and a few books I bought. I should be able to make something of that.
Oh, among the topics I’m planning to write about are these: differences between tech and cocktail conferences/media, 21st century gin and the passionate people who talk about it, absinthe then and now, and mixer appreciation. I also picked a couple of product announcements that need writing up, and some iPhone apps that will find their way onto App Store Pundit over the next few episodes.
Well, it’s finally here; Tales of the Cocktail week. I’m headed to New Orleans to watch and learn, and cover a tremendous event for professionals and enthusiasts alike. Did I mention sampling spirits and cocktails of all varieties?
I’ll be filing posts for The Spirit World, as well as offering observations and photos right here. So watch this space.
I’ve had the good fortune to appear on several podcasts lately, discussing iPhone accessibility. I’ve also recorded and written some stuff of my own on that topic. So I thought: why not just post all of those links in one place, for those of you considering the development of a 24/7 Shelly channel in your head?
Chuck Joiner graciously invited me to join him on MacVoices for a little explainer on iPhone 3GS accessibility. It was a lot of fun, and I felt like we covered the bases pretty well. I also had the pleasure of joining Josh and Shane on The Maccast for a discussion of similar subjects, with some extra history and Mac accessibility perspective.
Here are my own collected contributions to the iPhone 3GS discussion. I explained and demo’d VoiceOver, zoom, and black on white for the App Store Pundit audience, and wrote here and here about the new iPhone before I had even seen it. Adam refers fairly often in our Maccast conversation to the first of these posts.
Chuck Joiner invited me to join his MacJury panel for a podcast about the iPhone 3G S. Beware, I almost sound like a fangirl.
I’ve had lots of nice linkage since my post about iPhone 3G S accessibility. I don’t have enough new information for another proper post, but here are a couple of things I’ve been thinking about.
The iPod Touch, my beloved iPhone substitute, was released, and updated to version 2.0 in conjunction with other iPod announcements, not during iPhone launches. So even if we are to see a hardware-updated iPod Touch, it will most likely be a few months. This makes me sad, but I’m going to check out the iPhone 3.0 software update; hoping against hope that some accessibility features have found their way in there. I’m guessing they will not.
Checked out iPhone service pricing from AT&T. Having extended our existing phone contracts earlier this year when we replaced dead phones, switching would be an expensive proposition for me. I need someone to offer me a spectacular job, the perks of which include an iPhone. You know where to find me.
And since I’ve been paying more attention, I’m noticing the AT&T customer grumbling a lot more lately. When Bay Area tech pundits grumble, I tune them out, because I realize that they realize that their voices are loud and influential. It tends to make them sound whiny. But AT&T has network issues in many places. Friends in Atlanta have major issues. If I do jump to the iPhone, I’ll be borrowing one, and evaluating coverage in and around my home.
The fact remains that buying an iPhone, especially when paired with expensive, shoddy AT&T service, goes against a firmly held principle of mine. When you buy a consumer product, don’t allow yourself to become a sucker; so dependent upon overpriced, poor service, or exclusive terms that you cannot escape. I’m not sure how I’ll resolve that one for myself.
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