Blogging from my iPad

Blogging from my iPad is no easy feat, I can assure you. I'm forced to use some bastardized version of the Square Space editor that's not quite mobile and not quite desktop. It's really an interesting experience as I'm using the raw HTML instead of a WYSIWYG editor. Sometimes entire lines of text just disappear only to return when I wrap to a new line. Square Space, where ID your iPad app?

Thoughts on Apple

I haven't paid much attention to the Apple vs. Adobe spat until today when I hit the Apple.com homepage and noticed the "Thoughts on Flash" link right there next to the iPad promo and the new MacBook Pro link. After reading the letter, purportedly from Steven Jobs, I must confess that I think Apple's in the right on this one.

And I love Flash. Spent a good bit of my career learning Flash and saw it transform the way we interacted with video on the Web. However, it is a proprietary system that requires a plugin to function properly. From what little I understand of HTML 5, this open standard marks the end of Flash.

What's funny to me is how Apple, a company that's become progressively more closed and restrictive as its dominance in the mobile space has grown, it still finds ways to do the right thing and look like a hero. And it's these little glimpses of minor heroism that keep me believing that like Darth Vader, underneath all that bad and evil beats a pure heart of truth and honor and that ultimately Good will prevail.

Apple is right here, now let's see more of this good guy Jobs.

Is Blippy TMI?

Just heard about Blippy which is a kind of consumer social network where you share with your friends what you're buying. It reminds me of Foursquare or Gowalla for purchases. While I can see how conversations and even communities could develop around purchases (think gadgets or software) I'm skeptical about the long-term prospects for a business based on oversharing. 

While such sharing provides some benefits for consumers in the form of discounts or recommendations I think the real gold in sight for Blippy's investors is the belief that such a service could provide the same type of consumer data to sites that Amazon.com is using to its advantage as Brad Stone points out on the NY Times Blog.

I'm also sensing a small but growing backlash against what Stone calls the "Too Much Information Movement" as evidenced by the backlash against Facebook for its privacy transgressions. 

The real question to ask as the TMI apps and services sprout up is whether or not the benefit of sharing provides enough value to offset the loss of privacy and most of us haven't really asked ourselves that question - until now.

How important is our privacy? What happens when the pendulum starts swinging in the opposite direction towards privacy protection like it has in Europe? I don't know but I'm starting to look for alternatives to Facebook and rethinking my embrace of Foursquare. What about you?

Concierge 3.0?

Mashable has confirmed that Twitter is launching a "Twitter Business Center" which reportedly provides participating businesses with the ability to respond to Direct Messages from non-friends. Mashable gives a good overview of the new features which include verified accounts and multiple users but what I'm most interested in is the Direct Messaging feature.

Beyond Customer Service
Lately I've been trying to imagine how businesses could more fully utilize Twitter and customer service seems like a natural fit. Comcast and Zappos have done a pretty good job of using Twitter in this manner but what about going beyond traditional customer service and actively seeking folks to service? Help with problems or answer questions for folks who aren't expecting to receive an answer?

Services like Schmap.it are doing something like this but they have that phony auto-responder feel to them and miss the boat in my opinion. What I'm imagining is a robust, person-powered Twitter concierge service that goes way beyond customer service but applies the intelligence and reason of a human being to know which tweets require a response and which tweets to ignore. 

Lunch Advisor?
Imagine it's 11 a.m. and you're at the office and your mind starts thinking about lunch. You lean over to your colleague and ask, "where should we go for lunch?"

If you're lucky you work with a foodie and he recommends the best new place in town for the best price. If you're like most people the response is some place close by and boring. Enter the Lunch Advisor.

Tweet out that you need a lunch recommendation for around $10 per plate in your area and within five minutes you get a quality recommendation from the Lunch Advisor. But it's a Mexican place and you'd really like Thai so you respond and immediately get a new recommendation for an Asian fusion place nearby.

Now you're having a public conversation about great restaurants in your area. But how does the new Direct Messaging feature have anything to do with this idea? Now imagine Lunch Advisor sending a DM to the starving desk jockey offering a free appetizer if he shows a code on his iPhone. Or maybe the DM is a message recommending the Vietnamese place down the street for tomorrow's lunch with a coupon code?

Who Powers This Idea?
How does something like this get answered with real, quality answers 24/7? I haven't worked that out yet but I can see a business model emerging where Direct Messages are a way to send offers, codes, exclusive deals, coupons, etc. to a specific follower. 

Write about what you know

Every creative writing class teaches students to write about what they know and the obvious reason for this lesson is that it's easiest to find your voice, to sound authentic when finding inspiration from something specifically personal.

However, that advice runs contrary to similar advice given to journalists which is know your audience and write each story with them in mind. 

Both bits of advice are solid instructions but can come into conflict with one another, especially as a journalist is trying to be creative and opinionated and not necessarily reporting on events of the day. Balancing both a need to appeal to an audience and a desire to write what is sometimes deeply personal is one of the characteristics of successful independent writers.

It's a balance I tried to achieve when blogging more consistently years ago and one I'm trying to strike right now.

Yet two other key elements to good writing are reading and volume. Great writers are usually voracious readers as well as compulsive writers meaning that they write a lot, even if not all of it is published. Practice makes perfect and I know that the more I write, the more my writing improves. 

I cranked out my best writing when I was writing three or four times a day and reading dozens of other writers in blog posts, articles, reports, books, etc. And during that time I was always aware of my audience while keeping the writing grounded in what I knew.

That's what I'm working to recapture. It's not easy but I'm doing it. Not everything I write over the next few weeks will be something I look back at fondly but it's the discipline I'm trying to reclaim.

Why 3D?

Just saw the film "Avatar" and while I really enjoyed it, I don't understand why it was in 3D. Most of the movie appeared to be a normal 2D experience with the 3D adding occasional visual flair and thrills. 

So, why was this film a must-see 3D experience which forced me to cram uncomfortably grubby, smudged glasses on my noggin for nearly three hours? I have no idea but there are a few theories circulating around that run counter to the PR reasoning spouted by James Cameron and the studios:

1. It makes the movie virtually "piracy" proof. Much too difficult to copy a 3D movie and add it to the torrents.
2. Competing with large, HDTVs and Blu-Ray. The experience of 3D is really only obtainable in a theater. No matter how good your set up is at home, the one at the theater is better.
3. Make more money. I just paid $11.50 per ticket to see the movie in 3D. The 2D version was $9.50. I really paid an extra two bucks for blurred glasses and a headache? Yes. Yes I did. That extra coin helps the box office take and gets this flick up the financial charts just a little bit faster.
4. Try watching this movie on an iPhone. This is a theater and ultimately home theater film. It's not meant for laptops and iPhones. Maybe that's not a bad thing?

I'm not saying the film didn't look great. It did. Quite possibly the most beautiful film I've ever seen. And I do believe that the 3D added to that beauty and the effectiveness of the film but it did so at a price. The price of actual money ($2), the price of comfort and I believe the price of having a film that might not present the same experience for everyone.

Not everyone can see films in 3D (some common vision problems make 3D film ineffective) and I don't believe that I'm getting the same experience as everyone else. It's the same reason I hate hearing about people's dreams. It's like those old computer 3D paintings you had to stare at for a while to see the 3D. Half the time I never could see it and I felt left out of the experience I heard everyone else squealing about. Sort of the same with 3D movies. I hear others raving about it non-stop and wonder if I saw the same movie they saw? I think I did but that 3D didn't seem all that spectacular to me.

So, why 3D? I don't really know but I do know this, I'm not a fan. At least not until they can figure out how to get it working without those nasty butter smeared glasses.

Portable Blogging

This post was written entirely on my iPhone while lying (or is it laying?) in bed with my 20 pound feline purring nearby.

The only reason I'm blogging on the iPhone is to review the new Squarespace app. I have a wireless laptop that would make this much easier to post.

Likes: it's obviously more portable than my laptop and the autocorrect keyboard is nice to have when blogging. It's also an easy way to quickly communicate in more than 140 characters.

Dislikes: There doesn't appear to be a way to format text, add links or integrate any media other than photos. And of course the iPhone isn't the best device to use for composing lengthy messages of any kind.

The app is pretty feature rich considering the limitations of the iPhone. I can add categories and tags, preview the post, edit previous posts and check real time stats. That's a win.

This app will definitely help me increase the frequency of my blogging and for that I'm grateful to Squarespace and glad I'm a customer.