Arranged Delirium

As a follow-up to my earlier post and a display of my Geekdom, I present to you the soliloquy of Sir Patrick Stewart. (a.k.a. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise during the Star Trek: The Next Generation series. Five Stars.)

OK - technically it’s not a soliloquy, but an interview from the PBS documentary Digital Nation...but still. I agree with absolutely everything he says, and that is an extremely rare circumstance. He must be brilliant! In all seriousness, I appreciate his critical views on technology, along with his exuberant appreciation for the positive elements it brings.

My ongoing like/hate relationship with Facebook continues. But I’ve decided it’s time to deal and make a decision about it. I’ve been so close to deleting my account fro months, but whenever I log in to do so, I just can’t seem to bring myself to it. In fact, whenever I log in, 30 minutes mysteriously disappears. It’s freakin’ evil!

(You can find directions for deleting your account here.)

Anyway, I’ve decided to simply keep the account and address the privacy concerns. This has always been the root of my issue with the service. Facebook started as a tool that was inherently limited - to academic accounts - thus there were some boundaries to the extent of where the information could go. Where Facebook has failed repeatedly over the years, largely due to it’s founder’s disdain for privacy concerns, is that it has more broadly distributed our information without giving users the choice of whether to share that information or not. The problem of course, is that you have to Opt-In for privacy, not Opt-Out for the distribution of your content (which remember, Facebook owns once you put it up there).

So for myself, I decided to strip out a lot of information (which I would have had to share to keep in my account), delete all applications (please don’t send me app requests people!) and limit my personal imagery to my Flickr account. In Facebook’s defense they have recently implemented some much better privacy controls which make it possible to maintain an account if your careful. (And, if you care about maintaining some privacy.) Here’s an article with some more info on the topic as well as some ideas for protecting yourself; although I’d imagine any directions are already out of date since Facebook has been scrambling to change the privacy settings so much recently - still, it’s a good read.

This also seems like a gratuitous opportunity for me to once again re-link to one of my favorite Facebook movies:

I’ve been meaning to write about my Apple Tablet Device (ATD) for some time now, and just haven’t had time to get to it. There’s been no shortage of coverage for it however, and you can find way too much written about it already: either praising it as passed down from the right hand of God, or reviled as an incomplete tool for which there is no real use. I still hold to my original premise. This is a great tool for folks who simply want easy-to-use technology. That audience isn’t necessarily the Technorati - although some of them may use one.

For my part, I’ve been surprised that I have liked it as much as I have. I’ve found it eminently useful. I can’t do any real development work on it - but then again, that isn’t the majority of my time on a computer anymore. I’ll always need a desktop machine for my development work; but my laptop has increasingly become the tool for my professional work which consists largely of email, web work, word processing, along with the occasional spreadsheet thrown in. This little machine handles all of that. I’ve found it particularly useful for the activities that you can tend to when you find yourself with 10 minutes to spare and want to get something done.

I should emphasize that this works for me because I rarely use a cell phone (unlike most people). So, I don’t see this replacing a phone, but replacing my laptop. I will also avoid the hyperbole of stating that this device will kill the Netbook - because that simply isn’t true - but this device will play a significant role in shaping the future of computing where our daily devices will look a lot more like this and desktop or tower machines will become increasingly rare.

In any event, here is a brief list of a few articles that I’ve found interesting over the past few months. You can check them out if you are interested, but take note of the dates - some are going to be less valuable through time:

Ann Kirschner shares her impressions through an article in the Chronicle
Omar Wasow explains The Techies Are Wrong about the iPad
Jean-Louis Gassée has been around a long time, and gives a reasoned review here

...and there are hundreds more. Articles regarding the features and specs, opinion around the usefulness of the device, and invective concerning how this changes everything - we’ve heard it all before. But you should go see this device and play with it a little bit. With the other tablet machines that will soon hit (or are already on) the market, it’s clear that this is the next big thing to figure out hardware-wise.

One of the features I’ve been most looking forward to in Photoshop CS5 is the Content-Aware Fill ability. Some of the most time-consuming work that I tend to do comes from efforts to perfect selection addition, deletions, or blends. This new feature should make life much easier. EL sent along a link to a you tube video demonstrating the effects, so with many thanks, I’m including it here:

Over the years, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with Flash, it’s broader implementation on the Web, and Adobe’s business practices in general. So much so, that I’ve avoided certain sites and more recently blocked all Flash content from my browsers unless I actually want to use it. (Thank you ClickToFlash!) It’s one reason why I haven’t been a critic of Apple’s decision to forego Flash - I’m already doing it. (I’ve commented on this in earlier posts, if you really want more of my opinion.)

I’ve been arguing that we should all prepare for the advent of HTML5 and its implementation of embedded multimedia content that avoids plug-in architecture. Its a better approach that lends itself to open standards and reduces the likelihood that any particular company can dictate the direction of the technology. A lot of people disagree with me, and would suggest that Flash has a long life ahead of it. That may be - I think that this will be another arduous transition phase as we’ve seen many times before in web development and it’ll take several years. But it still doesn’t change my mind toward the inevitability of the process (unless something better comes along in the interim). In fact, we are already seeing major content providers distributing video in other formats; so I would argue that the transition is already taking place.

In any event, if you disagree with me - you may find Richard Leggett’s recent blog post to be a good read. It certainly covers the major points well. I’m not sure that I agree with his taxonomy, or the position that many in his camp would take: that you need Flash to develop interact content. I actually think that we’ll see more of that development via the manner of mobile applications, and we can do a lot of that right now with dynamic web development tools and technologies.