aaron c beals

back in November, i wrote my local representatives asking them to stand against SOPA/PIPA. the senators (Kerry and Brown — i’m a lifelong MA resident) were quick to respond, or at least their offices were.

from the office of John Kerry:

Thank you for contacting my online office. I always appreciate hearing from you, whether you’re getting in touch with us for help on a constituent matter or weighing in on the issues being debated right now in the United States Senate — whatever the reason for your email, please know that we read these emails diligently and please be assured that our office will work in a timely manner to respond to your comments and concerns. If this matter is time sensitive, I’d encourage you to also call my offices in Massachusetts or Washington and speak with a member of my team so there’s no waiting and we can begin to help you today. DC 202-224-2742. MA 617-565-8519.

A couple of quick notes:

First, this email account is not technologically able to receive a response to this email, it is only an outgoing account — so please submit any additional comments through my website at www.kerry.senate.gov — I always want to hear from you, and I always want to make sure that your feedback and comments are properly received here.

Second, if you are contacting me regarding casework because you need assistance in resolving an issue or filing a complaint, I ask that you go to my website www.kerry.senate.gov/services and download the privacy disclosure form and fax or mail a copy of your email and form to my Boston office. Once we have this information we can begin to process your case.

Lastly, please sign up for my electronic newsletter by visiting www.kerry.senate.gov/newsletter — it’s free, it doesn’t cost the taxpayers a dime, and it doesn’t waste paper — but it’s another way for us to stay in touch and for me to update you on the work I’m doing and all the issues that affect Massachusetts which are being debated and voted on in the United States Senate.

for those keeping score, i didn’t actually get a response about SOPA/PIPA here, nor did i receive a real reply in a “timely manner”… unless that translates to “February”.

from the office of Scott P. Brown:

Dear Aaron,

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act (S. 968). As always, I value your input and appreciate hearing from you.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced S. 968 on May 12, 2011. The PROTECT IP Act aims to provide law enforcement with tools to stop websites dedicated to online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods, which range from new movie and music releases to pharmaceutical drugs and consumer products.

I understand your concerns about online information sharing and censorship. On May 26, 2011, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, of which I am not a member, approved S. 968, and it now awaits further action by the full Senate. As the legislative process moves forward, I will keep your thoughts in mind.

Again, thank you for sharing your views with me. Should you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact me or visit my website at www.scottbrown.senate.gov.

Sincerely,
Scott P. Brown
United States Senator

Please visit my website and public pages:

To sign up for my e-newsletter, click here. Next time you’re in Washington, plan to attend my monthly constituent coffee, RSVP here.

*** Please do not reply directly to this message as this mailbox cannot receive inbound messages. Should you have any additional questions or comments, please visit my website at http://scottbrown.senate.gov. ***

in other words: “i hear you, but… this is out of my hands.”

what i actually heard was “i agree with this bill for political reasons–the movie industry is giving us all boatloads of cash–but i also can’t lose you and the many tech-savvy constituents in Massachusetts, so… here’s a vague response that i hope absolves me of responsibility in case this thing passes.” well, at least he mentioned the issue at hand in his response.

also, it’s clear that senators like e-newsletters.

[ LONG PAUSE ]

in late January, long after SOPA and PIPA had been beaten into submission by an irate tech industry and tech-savvy consumers, i received this.

from the office of Scott P. Brown:

Dear Aaron,

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act (S. 968). I am strongly opposed to this legislation.

As you know, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced S. 968 on May 12, 2011. The PROTECT IP Act aims to provide law enforcement with tools to stop websites dedicated to online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods. However, many Americans feared that S. 968 would stifle freedom of expression and harm the Internet.

The Internet has been a source of dynamic growth in our economy and is responsible for employing many people in Massachusetts. I have very serious concerns about increased government interference in this area and the effect of the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261, House companion legislation) on the Internet. On January 18, 2012, I announced my opposition to the PROTECT IP Act. You will be pleased to know that with opposition to the bill mounting, on January 20, 2012, the Senate Majority Leader announced that the scheduled vote on the PROTECT IP Act has been indefinitely postponed.

Again, thank you for sharing your views with me. As always, I value your input and appreciate hearing from you. Should you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact me or visit my website at www.scottbrown.senate.gov.

Sincerely,
Scott P. Brown
United States Senator

… clap … clap … clap …

it is with that slow golf clap, dear Senator, that i mock your boldness in standing up against this bill in the 11th hour, with pressure mounting and the withdrawal of the bill a foregone conclusion. bravo, good sir. all techies in the 128 belt can breathe easier knowing that you have our backs.

but hey, at least he responded and cared enough to pretend to care. a full two weeks later, i received the following from the senior Senator.

from the office of John Kerry:

Dear Aaron:

Thank you for your letter regarding the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT IP Act). I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

I have long championed the cause of innovation and an open Internet. Firms operating on and off the Internet strongly rely on intellectual property laws to help protect their investments and ensure a just return for their goods and services. Online piracy and copyright infringement hurts our economy and costs American businesses more than 200 billion dollars a year. Many infringers operate from foreign countries in order to avoid US law enforcement. As a result, under current law, American authorities are limited in what they can do to bring these rogue sites to justice.

As you know, the PROTECT IP Act was intended to protect American businesses from intellectual property theft on foreign websites. Among other things, the bill would provide the Attorney General with the authority to seek a court injunction against a foreign website that engages in copyright infringement. The court could also require U.S. websites to block access to websites found to be dedicated to infringing activities. For example, search engines could be required to disable links to the website that is found to be violating copyright of a US company.

However, there are a number of serious and legitimate concerns regarding the scope of the legislation, as well as the potential for abuse, censorship, or other unintended consequences. The authors recognize the legislation still needs work and I will oppose any proposal that would fundamentally undermine or impede the ability of people to communicate, compete, and innovate using the Internet.

I am pleased that Majority Leader Reid has indefinitely postponed Senate consideration of the PROTECT IP Act, and I will continue to review and work to improve legislation to both protect the intellectual property of American businesses and to ensure the web remains free and open. As I consider proposals to address these issues, I will keep your views in mind.

Thank you again for contacting me on this topic. Please don’t hesitate to reach me again on this or any other issue in the future.

“I have long championed the cause of innovation and an open Internet.” apparently not enough to stand against this clearly-flawed, industry-funded assault. read the text above — other than the sentence i quoted, the rest looks like MPAA boilerplate.

my favorite part of the reply? you’ll have to check out a screengrab — the two paragraphs that talk about the shelving of the bill are a much smaller font. subconsciously less excited about these points, or just a copy-and-paste issue with the MPAA template?

screengrab:

we received something of a victory on Sunday, when it was announced that the House was shelving SOPA.

folks in the tech space are encouraged but only slightly, as PIPA (the Senate version of the bill) is alive and well. i’m personally concerned about SOPA being on the shelf, as i believe it’s far less dangerous out in the open where we can debate and poke holes in it. rather than killing it, the House opted to put it aside until consensus could be reached. this bill is not dead. its supporters can now work behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, drumming up support through political leverage, and then they can pass it in 6 months or a year, when everyone is far more concerned about some other bill trying to make its way through.

stay vigilant, techies. stay alert. we cannot rest until these bills are dead.

have any technologically-literate people considered running for public office? we can’t afford to wait 20-30 years until our generation (those who deeply understand the issues and tradeoffs of living in the information age) has taken over.

if you follow my twitter feed, you know that i’m strongly against SOPA/PIPA — not because of it’s stated purpose (combating piracy is important), but because the means by which the bills’ authors are going about it will set a terrible precedent. if passed, the bills would allow allow businesses with money, connections, and flimsy evidence to get a court-ordered DNS-level shut down of the websites of other businesses (e.g. small businesses and tech startups) — pushing the resolution to litigation (where one can clearly outlast the other) and meanwhile bleeding the small business dry due to a complete lack of web presence. in the many cases where the website is the product, this action would destroy the revenue stream and brand of the victim. the bills are, in short, incredibly shortsighted and constructed by the pairing of technology-illiterate politicians and resource-rich media moguls unwilling to adapt to a world that’s changing rapidly around them.

i’m saying the same thing that many before me have said — this is all over the web at this point, largely because those of us who run web-based startup companies rely on this medium for innovation and for our livelihood. i encourage you to speak to your representatives about this issue and spread awareness. a few months back, i reached out to my representatives and signed a petition on the White House website. just a few days ago, i received this response from the latter:

Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet

By Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra, and Howard Schmidt

Thanks for taking the time to sign this petition. Both your words and actions illustrate the importance of maintaining an open and democratic Internet.

Right now, Congress is debating a few pieces of legislation concerning the very real issue of online piracy, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Online Protection and Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN). We want to take this opportunity to tell you what the Administration will support—and what we will not support. Any effective legislation should reflect a wide range of stakeholders, including everyone from content creators to the engineers that build and maintain the infrastructure of the Internet.

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity. Any provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing.

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders. That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

This is not just a matter for legislation. We expect and encourage all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy.

So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don’t limit your opinion to what’s the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what’s right. Already, many of members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration. The organizer of this petition and a random sample of the signers will be invited to a conference call to discuss this issue further with Administration officials and soon after that, we will host an online event to get more input and answer your questions. Details on that will follow in the coming days.

Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders. We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge.

Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the values of free expression, privacy, security and innovation. Again, thank you for taking the time to participate in this important process. We hope you’ll continue to be part of it.

Victoria Espinel is Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget

Aneesh Chopra is the U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology at the Office of Science and Technology Policy

Howard Schmidt is Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff

last weekend, in the midst of an epic head cold, i played around with google’s ngram viewer. most of these speak for themselves…

(if you’re reading this via Facebook, they don’t like the embedded images thing — check out the post on my website.)

i received an invite to Google Wave a while back, but haven’t made the time to really try it out until now. there seem to be more people on it now, which is a good thing as makes it easier to test collaboration.

first impressions:
* the interface is a wee bit messy. it looks a lot like an email interface (even uses the terms “inbox” and “spam”), but there are a number of controls in the list and detail frames. it also seems as if i can move each frame around… but i can’t. i can just minimize them.
* i like the fact that it automatically pulled my contacts from Gmail into the contacts list, and just those people who have Wave.
* i dislike the fact that i received new wave content over the past few months, but never received an email letting me know. i realize that Wave is supposed to act as a sort of replacement for email, but why am i going to check it if there’s nothing yet going on? talk up your product a little more, Google.

my first wave:
* received a wave from my friend who invited me. it seems empty. is it weird that you can start an empty Wave?
* the playback option seems neat, but i’m not sure when it would be useful. perhaps from a mobile device…
* this wave doesn’t have a subject (or text, for that matter), so where i’d expect the subject to be, there’s a list of the avatars for the participants in the chat. pretty straightforward how to add other people to the discussion / wave.

my other waves:
* ok, now there’s some content. my friend sent me a wave that includes an embedded photo. he also references adding ‘robots’ to the wave, and it seems as it on this wave there is an ‘email notifications’ robot. doesn’t it seem silly that you have to add a robot to send you emails? shouldn’t that be one of the built-in options for Wave? couldn’t i just set that app-wide if i wanted? either that, or a follow/unfollow via email model would work.
* looks like they’re already using a follow/unfollow model to keep or remove things from your inbox. unfollow makes sense to me… it’s like ‘mute’ in Gmail. follow doesn’t make as much sense. the action exists in your inbox, and if something’s in your inbox, doesn’t that mean that you’re already following it?
* there’s a ‘draft’ checkbox on my reply, but it won’t let me check it. unfortunate.
* oh… i get it. playback shows the progression of the wave. when you make something look just like audio playback, with controls and everything, your users expect it to be audio. just saying.
* apparently, i can edit my friend’s post. when i do so, it says that that post is now by him and me, but otherwise, there’s no indication in the text about who wrote what. in that way, it acts a lot like a Wiki. interesting.
* almost constant saving of text means that you don’t lose what you’ve written. nice.

other:
* you control your Wave settings in a wave? i know that we’re all supposed to buy into the Wave model of the world, but can’t you just put settings up in the top right nav, like every other Google app?
* when i click on my avatar in a wave, i see my info: an email address and a website. apparently i have a wave (@googlewave.com) email address? that’s news to me — haven’t seen that listed anywhere else on the page. if i can email info to myself and then discuss it with others, isn’t that an important feature?
* i tried emailing my own google wave email address. after 5 minutes, still no new waves.
* why is so much real estate dedicated to the list of waves? i would prefer the Gmail model, where the list of waves is the default but is replaced by the content when you click on one. This 3-column approach is very Outlook.

contacts:
* my contacts list looks a lot like google chat — i can even set a status (by clicking on my avatar). but it’s not chat. if you click on a contact, you can start a new wave with them, find waves by them, and ‘ping’ them, which i assumed was like ‘poking’ someone in Facebook.
* the ‘ping’ is actually just a wave, but one that renders itself initially as a chat, a sort of inverted version of the Facebook chat.

praise:
* Wave is an interesting concept, sitting at the collaborative intersection of chat, email, wiki, and document editing.
* there are collaborative elements here that could be split off and re-purposed elsewhere, perhaps integrated into other websites or applications. from what the Wave team has said in the past, it appears an API of this nature is forthcoming.
* i think the real value in Wave comes from the real-time aspect — being able to very rapidly interact with your fellow collaborators.

criticism:
* let’s assume that Gmail let you embed objects (images, maps, etc) right into your emails. let’s also assume that editing someone else’s text is something you’d rather do in fully-featured app like Google Docs. what value is Wave adding? it’s a confusing email client (compared to Gmail), sub-par document editor (compared to Google Docs), and a middle-of-the-road wiki (compared to MediaWiki, PBWiki, et al).
* Wave is still pretty rough around the edges, and while Google has been good at generating hype (hour+ presentation, limiting invites, getting good press via major news outlets), they have been operating in a “here’s a tool — figure out what it means for you” model. not a terrible model, but certainly not the way you’re going to revolutionize email and overthrow the status quo.

—

update:

let me preface this update by letting you know that when it comes to software, i’m a notorious non-instruction-reader. i believe that most software should be intuitive, so i wrote my review before reading or watching any of the instructional information. after writing the initial review, i watched some videos from the Wave team and learned some things:
* apparently you can reply within a Wave ‘blip’ (creating a sub-’blip’) by double-clicking on the blip. pretty cool for in-line comments.
* there are some Wave use cases listed by the Wave team: organizing events (ok, but i’d rather have it tied into my calendar); meeting notes (i’m not a huge fan of extensive meeting notes, but this would work well for those who are); group reports and writing projects (as i mentioned before, i’d rather use Google Docs); brainstorming (yes, yes, yes!); photo sharing (meh. i’d rather use Picasa, Facebook albums, Flickr, etc)
* i sent that email in to my account a while back, and still don’t have a new wave. i even tried sending from another email account, but no dice.
* robots seem pretty powerful (Blogger, Twitter, email notifications, etc), but i can’t seem to see an easy way to add these robots to my contact list. the UI doesn’t make it clear, and the short tutorial videos all assume that you already have the robots in your contacts (which i don’t, in case that wasn’t clear).
* Rosy the robot does automatic translation, so people who speak different languages can communicate — ok, that’s just amazing.

i realize this presentation has been making its way around the web recently, but i’m just getting to it now. the folks over at Netflix (of whom i am a paying customer) put together a ‘little’ slide deck about their corporate culture.

the theme of the presentation is “freedom and responsibility”. given that these characteristics are two that i prize highly in a work environment, they started off on a good foot.

you should read the whole presentation (it doesn’t take that long), but here are the points that stood out to me (not that I agree with every word, but a lot of it rung true):

• “The real company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go”
• “The Keeper Test Managers Use: ‘Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving in two months for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix?”
• “In procedural work, the best are 2x better than the average… In creative work, the best are 10x better than the average”
• The desire for process grows over time in a company not simply due to increasing complexity, but due to dilution of high-performance employees in the face of increasing complexity.
• The Netflix vacation policy is probably the most-quoted part of the presentation when it is referenced on the web, but I hope that people look past this (I think it’s a common-sense move I happen to strongly agree with) and see some of the other points in the deck.
• “Act in Netflix’ Best Interests” — the premise here is outstanding. I have always thought that the time and wages it takes to fill out and process lengthy expense reports is simply wasteful. If someone willingly abuses the system by acting in an irresponsible manner, fire them.
• “Managers: When one of your talented people does something dumb, don’t blame them. Instead, ask yourself what context you failed to set.”
• The compensation plan can’t be adequately summarized in one bullet, so check it out. Just outstanding.

Jon Payne — who is doing some work with us here at the Global Health Delivery Project — has been working on outlining an ontology for the area of “Health IT”. the category is broad, so there are a large number of possible sub-categories, and increasingly so as federal money here in the US is put behind Health IT initiatives. head over to his blog and weigh in!

some background

almost two years ago now, i posted about microblogging. at the time, i didn’t see the value in services such as Twitter, at least in a productive sense of the word “value”. it wasn’t that i thought people would avoid these services — rather, i figured the masses would flock — but my concern was that the constant cycle of tweeting and reading tweets would devolve into a dead-end of inactivity.

i still maintain that Twitter (the other microblogging sites i mentioned in my previous post have all but died out, leaving Twitter alone at the top) has the potential to be yet another information feed to fall behind on, like your email inbox and RSS feeds. however, as time has passed and innovative minds have started building new services on top of the Twitter platform, i realize that these deviations from the original “what are you doing now?” mantra hold the key for the transformation of Twitter into something useful.

dealing with information overload, aka “thinning the herd”

during a recent PIH gathering, i had a conversation with some colleagues about information overload. it’s a conversation i have had many times before, but one of the first with folks who are largely non-technophiles. i always assumed that the information overload problem (except for email) was unique to folks really hooked into the tech realm, but it has become clear that with the proliferation of social networking and information sharing technology, the problem has started to bleed over into the rest of the online world.

the issue, at its core, is this: what do you do with a deluge of potentially useful information? reading it all is a non-starter — you’d spend most of your life just consuming. filtering based on source (website, author, etc) is tricky, because not all content is useful, and it would be a shame to miss a true diamond in an otherwise uninteresting site. you could rely on the mechanical turk or “crowdsourcing” model like that employed by digg or reddit. many people go this route, but i find that the interests of the masses tend toward the middle of the bell curve, whereas my interests (and, honestly, some of the best information) lie on the long tail.

what i really want is to find a select group of people that share the same interests as me (or an one in each interest area) and then together, we’ll share the load of chewing through the mountain of information. if we each take a slice, the value to work ratio will be significantly higher. this is, in essence, the distributed computing model. the difference is that unlike digg, which uses an unbounded pool of computing resources, i want to hand-pick my pool of ‘computers’.

what about Facebook? you have control over your network there, right?

Twitter vs Facebook

in my old post, i said that “the line between Facebook and Twitter is the line between sharing and over-sharing”. at that time, Facebook wasn’t really promoting their “status update” feature, and my notion of Twitter was that it was solely focused on the “what are you doing?” question. now, Facebook has started to ramp up the prominence of the status message in an attempt to tackle Twitter. in fact, the new site design (which should roll out next week) removes the notion of putting your name as the first noun in the status message, allowing you to post Twitter-like messages.

unfortunately–even with these changes–Facebook does not quite do the job, because your network there is comprised of your friends, and your friends do not all share your interests — which is OK! Twitter actually does a much better job of letting you manage information flow, because you do not have to be friends with someone to listen to their feed — you subscribe to someone if you’re interested in what they have to say and unsubscribe if you’re. Sure, one of your friends might be upset at you if you don’t follow them, but if you are willing to take that risk and realize that Twitter is not a social network but an information dissemination tool, you can use it to help tackle information overload.

of course, i’m not saying Facebook is without value. as i said before, Facebook allows us to keep informed about friends and acquaintances who do not have the time or desire to manage a blog. in fact, on Facebook i am very interested in what my friends are “doing right now”. however, in the fight to parse a mountain of information, Twitter–without the overhead of social networking–succeeds where Facebook cannot.

in which i blame Shaq

i consider myself a technophile (aka “nerd” in the minds of many), and in many ways an early adopter of technology, but i also have a realistic view toward my productivity and propensity toward procrastination. given that, i have held back from exploring certain technologies in the spirit of keeping my job, family, hobbies, etc. — social networking and multi-player online games are the two main areas of caution. i will engage in the former when i feel that the value outweighs the cost (read: risk of wasted time), and the latter is right out. don’t get me wrong, i love video games. i just like video games with an end.

but i digress. in order to get invested in a social networking technology, i need a catalyst: either someone to give me a push or overwhelming evidence that real value lies within. so just as my cousins were the catalyst that pushed me into Facebook, The Big Aristotle pushed me toward Twitter. i had heard rumors that his Twitter account was really him, not a poser or someone ghostwriting for him, but it wasn’t confirmed in my mind until recently. being hooked up to the mind of Shaq has been a surreal experience, to say the least. all i need now is for Sir Charles to join Twitter and i’ll call the experience complete.

so i signed up. i’m late to the parade, but i figure that i can’t properly critique something if i’m looking at it from the outside.

there was, to be fair, another reason that i joined. i have been involved for almost a year now in the Global Health Delivery Project (and more specifically, GHDonline). the GHDonline site has been up since June, and we have a great member base and a decent flow of discussion in the communities, but i wanted a way that we could communicate about progress on the site to those interested. since Twitter has started to be an essential part of marketing plans these days, i figured we should carve out a space of our own.

blogging, microblogging, and nanoblogging

so my own Twitter account is something i’m using as an extension of my blog — more in keeping with the idea of microblogging. i’m trying to keep the focus on technology, health care, and other work-related items, as opposed my blog which has historically been wide-ranging in subject matter. of course, i cannot promise that other topics will not creep in over time. but here’s the distinction and the reason i finally saw the light: in the end, my “tweets” will be less about what i’m doing and more about what i’m finding.

as i mentioned above, information overload is a huge problem, and one of the things i strive to do in my blog is to distill out the items that i find interesting and of higher value. of course, interest is purely subjective, but the hope is that others will find some information of value. so if i use Twitter as a means of providing smaller snippets of this information, i am extending the reach of my blog’s purpose. tweeting about where i am and “what (i’m) doing right now” has far less potential value.

what i have found about blogging on topics of interest to me is that–as with this post–writing a full blog post takes a bit of time, which is of course a rarity. as a result, the blog post ideas i have emailed to or texted to myself sit in my inbox, stressing me out as they await the day when they are either acted upon or deleted in a fit of mercy. with Twitter, however, i can post a note about them as soon as i find them, rather piling them on top of my always-growing todo list.

and in conclusion…

the Daily Show on Twitter

i realize that it might be perceived as mildly unpatriotic to post an article on Inauguration Day that slams several of the largest US businesses, but i cannot sit idly by and let this go unremarked upon. after 5 years as a Sprint PCS customer (way back in the day), i made the switch to Verizon Wireless, mainly because almost everyone i knew was already on Verizon, and if i followed suit, i wouldn’t be charged for calls to them. later, when text messaging became popular, VZW offered free texting to other VZW customers, so that was an added bonus. the downside was that they charged you 10 cents per incoming and outgoing text with members of other networks (that price has since become 25 cents). eventually they provided plan add-ons through which you could pay for 500 out-of-network messages for $10/month, lowering the cost to 2 cents per message. but of course, you had to use all the messages or the per-message price effectively increases… and heaven forbid you go over, because then you’re back to paying $0.25 each. i put up with this nonsense, their lack of a GSM network, absolutely terrible selection of phones, and absurdly high data plan rates all because they have the best coverage in the area and essentially give me a free phone every 2 years. oh, and because the other US carriers aren’t much better.

and then, like salt in an already festering wound, comes the news that these wireless carriers don’t actually have much in the way of overhead (costs) for these precious text messages that they dole out at 4 for a dollar:

article in the NYTimes

i was reading my RSS feeds today, and came across this post about an Albanian developer who created an iPhone application that emulates the ancient Albanian lute (Çifteli):

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/19/if-you-like-the-oud-youll-love-the-tingalin-iphone-app/

i have to be honest, it takes some getting used to, but this is definitely playing a part in my next album. maybe a hidden track?