Technology has been working its way into the minds of almost everyone it seems these days. As a developer, it’s particularly encouraging to see many of the technologies I work with and develop for rising to the top. In particular, I am a new convert to blogging (formerly known as Content Management where I did lots of work) and Social Networking (formerly known as Instant Messaging, Blogging, Contact Management, etc.). The core acknowledgement is that technology is providing a new level of enablement from the “Geeks to the Greeks” to quote the old college saying.

Macromedia has coined the phrase “Occassionally Connected” in relation to the push for “Rich Internet Applications” — applications that leverage dynamic, flexible user interfaces, network-aware, service-oriented architectures, and connected “consumers”. Ironically, Macromedia has released a new “platform” of sorts called Macromedia Central. According to their site:

Macromedia Central gives people the ability to interact with distributed information in a more meaningful and relevant way. By managing your personal information outside the browser Central enables a more responsive, immediate, and convenient way to interact with the sources you need on a daily basis. Central is a personal interface that can be downloaded and customized based on the information that matters to you. Regardless of whether you are online or off, Central allows you to access, filter, and interpret content and share data across applications in meaningful ways.

Central provides Macromedia Flash developers with a pre-built infrastructure for creating, distributing and selling applications. Developers can use their existing skills and the ability of Central to store and share data locally to build a new class of responsive Rich Internet Applications. The consistent Central deployment environment, support for payment processing, and ready availability on any computer empower individual developers to distribute applications directly to end users.

Source: Macromedia Central Product Page

Interestingly enough, here in is the hidden promise: “Build It and They Will Come”. Macromedia has released version 1.0 of its platform under the guise of a “Developer” release. With this moniker, MM has been able to excuse itself of the majority of the marketing responsibility embedded in this promise as it gears up developers. This is a Catch-22, of course, so one can’t blame MM entirely. Without applications, there will be nothing to attract consumers to Central and without consumers, developers won’t have a desire to develop. Fortunately, developers are easily hyped and have in many ways taken the bait and jumped on the bandwagon.

So what’s the problem? Well, the major concern is illustrated by a post from a Flash Developer today titled “Earning $120000 with a Macromedia Central app?… more? (wtf???)”. For the most part, actionScriptHero (asH) does a quick profit analysis on the development of an AIM add-on application that could be marketed to AIM users utilizing Central’s unique integration API. asH and I have had a little back and forth on the matter, but I think he does prove that there is a good potential for this market. Of course, this may be based on three potentially overlooked forces`:

• Build the Community, Not the Members — although the Macromedia Central application will undoubtedly reach a large audience to say the least, Macromedia Central, as it currently is implemented, markets the Central Community more so than the Central Developer. This sounds incredibly close to the design of, say, Google. The hub generates the majority of the traffic for itself, stakes a claim by selling eyeballs or platform-specific “service charges”, and in exchange introduces consumers to Developer X’s content (or application).
• User Behavior Is Difficult To Change — it seems that many people think consumers think in terms of “applications”. Macromedia’s design of the system seems centered on the notion that users have an inherent need to “find” applications. But are we that easily shaped? If I wasn’t a developer, would I really be nearly as concerned about the applications I run? I’m not sure. Most end users I know are need driven, not function driven. I need a way to send Instant Messages, I ask my friends, they tell me get AIM. I need to write documents, I ask my friends, Microsoft Word is the leader. As opposed to “I need to be able to track message history” so I search for Instant Messengers with this function and find Trillian. And don’t forget what Danah said about “Configuring the User”.
• Virii Are Hard To Create — as Seth Godin has identified, and as I have written about previously, the world is now full of marketing messages, value propositions, and hollow promises. Standing out in a crowd requires nothing short of a Purple Cow, a remarkable concept executed at unseen levels from start to finish. Developer zeal can often lead to myopic views of many situations simply because of their closeness to the content and its execution. As the wealth of applications grows, how exactly does one create anything more than a simple listing if not through marketing?

So I guess that’s one context of the “Casually Connected” and its implications on two audiences, developers and consumers. Interestingly enough, Anil Dash recently commented (“While We Weren’t Looking” ) on another context for “Casually Connected” — public awareness of Internet technology, specifically blogging. As Anil notes:

I’ve been arguing for a long time that, for all the hype, weblogs have barely made an impact with regular people in any appreciable way. Most people have still never heard of them and don’t know what the word “blog” means. But watching TV last night made me think that perhaps we’re finally making some progress.

[…]

The word blog was only barely mentioned once in the intro for the show, and only as part of the introduction to Sullivan, but the presence of the medium was undeniable on the show.

[…]

I suppose none of this is news, we’ve never yet had a time in the weblog realm when the medium has been getting less popular, but it seems worth noting that, while we weren’t looking, we started to cross over to that other 95% of people that have never heard of blogs. I can’t help but be excited to find out how they participate and what they think of our medium.

Source: Anil Dash

The crux of this discussion was that the overall awareness of blogging has grown and spread to an ever-increasing audience. Currently, it appears to be gaining more and more momentum and lacks only a few “official” endorsements before moving to the next level of acceptance by the Early Majority.

However, I was most enlightened by the series of comments that flew out after Anil’s post. They fell into two major categories: Markedly Against vs. Sorta Supporting.

In the Markedly Against category, this quote seems representative:

In all honesty, I don’t think blogs will grow in popularity much more than they already are. Look at us, blog users. We’re all “technical types.” To put it another way, we’re geeks, nerds, dorks, etc. Before we had our blogs we ran dial-in modem bulletin board systems (BBS’s) years back.

As opposed to this:

There’s no doubt that bloggign started out as a techie playground, but the biggest growth I can see is in the literary world where every frustrated writer gets instant publication and gratification. If they’re anyway good they might even find that signing up for Adsense will buy then a whisky at the end of the month. The polical and social commentator also has a public. Like everything else, time will filter out the dross, and those with a loyal public will survive. There’s always space for someone who captures the zeitgeist

Clearly, there’s some other forms of “management” required in the process, .. be it process or reputation to ensure that things don’t go awry too soon and collapse the entire effort. Either way, this context has show “Casually Connected” as seen from the eyes of three audiences: The Users (bloggers, content creators, etc.), The Officials (press, media, public opinion), and Anti-Users.

Indeed we’re growing to be a “Casually Connected” community. I’m not sure anyone is aware of how many moving parts and divergent opinions that really requires wrangling.

A new IM pseudo-virus is circulating. It’s name is BuddyLinks. Although many would not qualify it as a virus, I think it’s penchant for doing things and telling people about something you did not explicity want (forgetting what you may have inadvertently authorized with the “Click-Agree” User Agreement) surely puts it into the viral category.

I received a link to it a few days ago from a friend working at Reuter’s. I was definitely surprised to see his message and even responded to him after receiving the message. I haven’t spoken to him in a couple of months so I was surprised he was sending me something as silly as that without saying anything. Once I arrived at the site and it asked for permission I said no (which in general is what we should always do).

In any event, the guts of this thing have been summarized and analyzed all over the place (1, 2, 3, 4) but here’s a good description from ZDNet:

“The application sends an IM to every person on an America Online user’s buddy list and includes a link to a fake TV news Web site. A dialog box then asks if the user wants to install a “news player.” However, the program instead plays a simple animated game, reconfigures AOL’s instant messenger to receive advertising and once again sends a link to the fake news Web site to everyone on the new victim’s buddy list.”

Source: ZDNet via Get Real

Over the past several years, I have made a great deal of friends, a large amount of buddies, and a random enemy or two, and several anti-buddies. In that same time span, I’ve also grown to admire and respect a wide range of people from the authors of the books I read to those that compose and publish via their blog. Before I talk about what these people mean to me, I think it best to define them these different roles and provide a little context.

Friends

These are really those people that I know in person and have been fortunate enough to spend some tangible amount of time in person with. In general, this group of people includes friends from as far back as elementary school all the way up to the folks I work with day in and day out.

Friends definitely provide the first line of support in most normal circumstances — if not by virtue of their proximity. Usually, our relationships with our friends are “tried, tested, and true” and the impact of the stressors in our life on our day-to-day experiences do not require explanation or justification.

Buddies

I wish I could make this as simple as those individuals that appear on my Buddy List in Trillian, but of course that’s not the case. The harsh fact is that my buddy list is made up of my friends, my family, my buddies, and some restless bots that are full of insight.

Buddies are individuals that I know purely online and have never met in person. I have on occasion spoken to these people on the phone, but that’s about the extend of it. This is not to trivialize the relationship at all. In many cases, I have buddies that I spend the significant part of my day in constant contact with through a variety of random IM pings.

Buddies also help to pass the time. While the friends are busy out and about, and you know where and why, if you’re still at the computer it gives you a chance to catch up with people. This is especially true since most of my buddies are actually in other parts of the world. To add to that, it provides a way to learn about how things are done in many different places, lacking the time or means to necessarily travel and experience it firsthand.

Enemies

This is really your traditional bad guy that’s crossed you in such a way that you need to stay away from them. I don’t think much more explanation is required ;)

Anti-Buddies

As ironic as it sounds, my “Buddy” list is also loaded with lots of people that I don’t want to have contact with. Some of these people are on my list because some annoying IM spammer found some way to message me and with the auto-add feature or some other internal error they get onto my list. Of course, since I usually am not here when it happens, and I don’t see it happen and then I can’t remember later if I needed that person on my list at all.

But the real Anti-Buddies are those people that you scorn from the online world. The same people you choose to make yourself “Invisible” to or those ones you choose to block since you “can’t take their sh*t anymore”. Ironically enough, to NOT be my buddy, I’ve got to carry you around as if you were.

(more…)

Growing up is always a trying and difficult time, I think, regardless of your particulars of your situation. Social circles, peer pressure, and parental expectations are just some of the sources of stress the youth of today are fighting. Surely, it’s not to say that we didn’t all suffer through these issues on our own, but certainly there’s been a change, perhaps evolution, of the forms in which it manifests. Just two weeks ago, I pointed out an article that talked about the potential use of the Internet and its variants for bullying others at school.

The New York Times Magazine has a quite lengthy piece on the blogging trend and how it is infiltrating the teenage social experience. The girth of it takes us through the lives and experiences of many different teens and how they are drawn to the online world for release. As noted in the article:

Writing in his online journal was cathartic for him, he said, but it was hardly stress-free. A week earlier, he left a post about an unrequited crush, and an anonymous someone appended negative comments, remarks J. wouldn’t detail (he deleted them), but which he described with distress as ‘’disgusting language, vulgarities.'’ J. panicked, worried that the girl he liked might learn about the vulgar comments and, by extension, his attraction to her. It was a somewhat mysterious concern. Couldn’t the girl have read his original post, I asked? And anyway, didn’t he secretly want her to read his journal? ‘’Of course,'’ he moaned, leaning against the banister. ‘’For all I know she does. For all I know, she doesn’t.'’

J.’s sense of private and public was filled with these kinds of contradictions: he wanted his posts to be read, and feared that people would read them, and hoped that people would read them, and didn’t care if people read them. He wanted to be included while priding himself on his outsider status. And while he sometimes wrote messages that were explicitly public — announcing a band practice, for instance — he also had his own stringent notions of etiquette. His crush had an online journal, but J. had never read it; that would be too intrusive, he explained.

…

Silences like this can create paranoia. It may be that friends just didn’t read the post. Or it may mean they thought the post was stupid. There’s a temptation to take silence — in real life or online — as a snub. ‘’If I get a really mean comment and I go back and I look at it again, and again, it starts to bother me,'’ M. told me. ‘’But then I think, If I delete it, everyone will know this bothers me. But if I respond, it’ll mean I need to fight back. So it turns into a conflict, but it’s fun. It’s like a soap opera, kind of.'’

Source: NY Times Magazine

The most interesting aspect of this article is the level of involvement teens have with the Internet today. I guess it’s only been in the last two weeks that I realized, and appreciated, how large and interesting this group is.

I have a very large extended family, spanning 49 first cousins alone (of which I am the second youngest, only to my own younger brother). Within the confines of my own first cousins, there are probably more than 100 children (again my younger brother and I the only non-contributing nodes). In our culture, this makes me an “uncle” to all of them, despite the fact that some of them are older than me!

I was first brought into this circle about a year ago when one of my nieces obtained my AIM screen name from someone. I got a short little instant message and was surprised to find out that it was her. It seems there was some apprehension on that end as they were scared I would be “mean” or not “cool”. Apparently, I was funny enough. A day later her younger brother shot me an IM. Within a week, I had messages from another 4 of them.. apparently there was this whole network of my nieces and nephews that I didn’t know about. Strangely enough, I think I’m also one of the few from my level in the family to ever participate.

Damn, I’m getting old.

Have you ever been sitting in your office and sent an IM to someone sitting right next to you? Ever been stuck in a meeting and pass digital notes to each other instantly without persecution? If you’re like me then you sure have!

I came across this entry today that talked about the growing use of IM inside of the home. At first, I didn’t realize this was happening, most likely because I work from home so it only seems natural to reach me online, but it’s quite interesting now that I think about it

Of course, this leads me to also consider that I get significantly less phone calls that I did back in the day. Naturally, all events aren’t quite as earth shattering as they were in high school, nor are the dependencies on me within my own perr nework as strong as they were in college. But none the less, are we just going virtual and not looking back?

I remember an argument we had a few years back in the office about this very matter. One of the partners insisted that we were too disruptive trying to speak to him via IM. His main point was that he could multi-task while still participating in the conversation. He was a very fast typer so I can see where he felt this was the best way.

My concern with the IM-based meeting was more that there were simply so many things missing from a strictly IM conversation. These things include, but are not limited to, conversation pace, body language or tonal expression. A third partner at the discussion chimed in that we could speak approximately 140 words a minute as opposed to the 70-90 that could be typed (and I would caution that adding emoticons and other phonetics into your text stream only serves to slow things down).

And definitely, let’s not consider the complete distraction that IM as a whole poses to us. Seriously, how can I expect to have your undivided attention when 20 other hands are waving?

Have you ever been typing mid-sentence when a blasted IM window pops up and captures focus, essentially sending the last half of your sentence to a colleage or friend?

Nielson describes this as Information Pollution and I would have to agree with this assessment.

IM is even worse than e-mail with respect to one of the most important human-factors criteria: It’s interruptive of task flow because it demands realtime attention. Some things do need realtime attention, but even a one-minute interruption can easily cost a knowledge worker 10 to 15 minutes of lost productivity due to the time needed to reestablish mental context and reenter the flow state.

Source: ACM Queue