Category Archives: Social Media

Metapost: MyWMU.com

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I’m creating a new category called Metapost. I think of it as a “behind the scenes” post where I share some of the details of what goes on behind the scenes. There won’t be any dirty laundry for these posts, but there are some things that I will discuss that might make some people feel awkward and uncomfortable. If this is the case, then you are free to ignore my squawking. Nobody is forcing you to Clockwork Orange my blog.

The development of MyWMU.com started really last year when we had a change of leadership. Our new VP arrived and brought a whirlwind of change in his wake. We kind of already knew that there were some of us in the rank and file who were fond of technology and especially clever with social media. The nature of social media pretty much guaranteed that we’d discover each other and our strengths and expertise. Originally there were three, then we acquired some consultants and the group grew to five. This core group of five started to brainstorm some pretty great ideas. A lot of the power I found was always there but viciously muted by a culture that didn’t understand and didn’t care to understand what possibilities lay before it. Once that culture evaporated, like so much fog in a stiff breeze, the past, the negativity, the railing complaints all fell away and all that was left was a group of very creative people who could finally enjoy the blessings of evaporating negativity and a massive new influx of empowerment. Once given power we took it and marched forward. Some would say we progressed at a breakneck speed, but as far as my perceptions go, it was brisk and refreshing, not an onerous pressure as some would assume. I can remember when “Western Express” came to me. I was driving on Interstate 94 from Paw Paw to Kalamazoo after a wonderful celebratory meal at Bistro 120. As we were making our way towards the I-94 on ramp we started to brainstorm titles for this new blog we were thinking of. I knew it had to feature Western in it somehow, so that was obviously going to be in the title and I had a firm grasp on what we wanted to accomplish with this new blog. Right after we joined the flow of traffic on I-94, headed back to Kalamazoo it was if the title for the blog emerged from the tangle of thoughts in my head and solidified. It felt a lot like how a super-chilled glass of water can freeze if you agitate it, that progressive and fantastic freezing as the liquid acts surprised that it’s still a liquid and quickly marches into order and becomes a solid. Just like that the title fell into my mind, “Western Express” – and then I marveled at it. It was perfect. Express as in fast, Express as in News (Pony Express of old…) it was a title that was short, not schlocky, it had a pleasing multiplicity of meanings and I championed the hell out of it once I got back to work.

The blog took shape shortly thereafter as Western Express. The title was also handy in that it had a delightful initialism, “WE”. Not only “Western Express” but also “Together”. I still softly chuckle at how great it all turned out.

We had selected a host of different technologies to help us with our goal. The biggest technology we saw before us was WordPress itself. It was almost Kismet. A perfect superstructure with which to publish our message. An external entity, a different network, a company that was responsible for 17 million voices. It had everything including a breathtaking cost-efficiency that we could not possibly beat any other way. Twenty bucks to turn off ads, ten bucks for custom CSS adjustments, twelve bucks for custom domains. Such low sums in trade for stability, accountability, and professionalism was totally irresistible. Truth to be told, I didn’t even consider any other path to take. WordPress was so utterly PERFECT, such a great fit, so elegant that any further considerations were thoughtlessly abandoned.

We progressed, establishing our new voice in popular consciousness using this new approach and I felt it vital that certain qualities were branded with fire into this new thing we had created. That it be a refuge of positivity, that it be regarded as a safe place where people won’t be seen as opportunities to be taken advantage of, but rather as guests standing around the bonfire of positivity, feeling welcome without a single worry that there were any traps anywhere near any of them. This was when I realized a truism that I’ve heard many times in the past – “Be that which you wish to see in the world”. So in a way, this “Western Express” was a kind of philanthropy. We express philanthropy into the world so we can reap philanthropy from the world. Is it a waste of money and resources? Absolutely not. The time and money and loving attention that we are giving this entire effort is how we can express our affections for everyone. Western loves our Alumni, we love our Students, we love everyone and we hope that what we put out into the world is reflected back at us. In many ways, it’s quite karmic. Finally we can put our collective humanity, our collective philanthropy into action and undo some of the damage that Western has endured in popular consciousness since I’ve been in attendance with this institution. That’s my personal goal, and as long as I have a role to play, this is what I bring to the table.

Things progressed from there, people think that we actively advertised this new resource but actually, the truth of the matter is that we made an embarrassing mistake. We failed to make this entire thing private and before we knew it we had people poking around this new thing and it became a socialized meme and spread like wildfire. It’s proof positive that social media is damn near a miracle. Without any action on our behalf the blog took off and started to spread. The fact that people regard it that we intentionally spread it always brings a chuckle. We didn’t do anything, you all did it yourselves – and we thank you.

After that, the entire project started to expand. We acquired two more staff members in our team and our technology increased. We turned to WordPress again for more help with hosting and WMYou was born. We purged the notion that what we were doing was blogging, that we had blogs. What we really had was an “Engagement” and we were “Engaging”. Truth to be told this slight change in verbiage is actually more accurate. What we’re after is engagement so instead of “blogging” we’re “engaging”. Perhaps you have to be where I am to see it completely. We also picked up GoDaddy as our Internet domain registrar. After that we also picked up iPage for the glue that is holding what you see how all together. No other technology really entered our minds and it wasn’t out of spite, it was just simpler to do it this way. In many regards some of the people who might feel awkward about what we did should consider themselves the unintentional victims of Occam’s Razor. The simplest path was pretty much all we spent any time on. C’est la vie.

Now we have a full presence, MyWMU.com. The response we received from our audience was absolutely intoxicating. What makes me blush is when I learned that other “bigger” institutions commented that we must have had a huge budget and a sprawling staff to pull off what we did. Truth here is that we did it all for about a hundred bucks and the raw passion of seven very dedicated and talented people.

Some people who went to our new site accidentally fell victim to a GoDaddy landing page. I had to make a last-moment change to our Domain Name System setting for the site and it took about 48 hours for that change to propagate throughout all of the Internet. People who had ISP’s who were lucky to get the “most fresh” DNS information experienced the site without a single hiccup, while others who either had an ISP with not-so-fresh DNS data or had DNS Cache staleness problems ended up seeing the GoDaddy landing page. For those people who fell into the later camp, I offer my apologies and I hope that you try the site again, that problem should no longer affect anyone on the Internet.

Now that we have expended a rather prodigious amount of energy to get MyWMU.com aloft, we are still very active and we’re really looking forward to see just how far all this positivity can take us as an institution. Our story has just begun, to say “Stay Tuned To This Bat Channel” is a massive understatement. I hope everyone enjoys what we’ve brought to our little corner of the Internet. It means a lot to all of us on our team and we’re always seeking feedback and fresh ideas, so don’t be shy. 🙂

Banishment

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Earlier today I read a news article that stated that someone had successfully knocked the Westboro Baptist Church offline effectively silencing them online. There are few people who get under my skin, but these people, they hit all my buttons. They hate gays and are obnoxious about it.

While I don’t approve of their speech being curtailed, as the First Amendment protects us all, despite the quality of what we say and I must respect that. Deep down their silencing does gratify me, despite it technically being a crime.

What I think should be a new element of popular media is a type of banishing. Banishment has always been a really effective punishment for anyone. Yes you committed a crime, and so you are sent away. In this context however it’s impossible by the law to actually physically banish anyone. What I propose is a kind of attention-banishment. In the case of the WBC they are allowed to spout their vitriol and hatred according to the First Amendment, but every popular media outlet agrees that they are to be ignored. This could only work if all the elements of popular media could be brought together in this way, but it doesn’t really have to be an all-or-none deal, a majority would do just as well. Everyone agrees that stories that touch on the WBC are skipped. It’s not that anyone curtails the WBC’s speech, it’s just that nobody really learns of it or hears about it. In many ways, they are banished, ignored, and over time and enough starvation of attention they will fade into nothingness. The majority of the banishment would be covered if Google removed every reference to the WBC from its index and CNN purged all the stories in its archive that touch on the WBC. In a way, it’s a little like 1984, that if we all agree to forget, and if we all agree that organizations like the WBC exist, then in a very real way, they actually cease to exist. Yes, they can continue to scream and protest and carry on without any curtailment to their actual speech, but we all agree to turn our backs on them and ignore them. Eventually there won’t be any reason to grandstand and show off and protest for them because it’s meaningless. Nobody sees them, everyone ignores them, and no cameras will point their way. No reporters will write stories on the WBC and their existence will be struck from public consciousness. It’s even within this argument that the Wikipedia article for Westboro Baptist Church be eliminated. No historical record of them will be shared.

With this type of banishment, especially in our increasing socially connected world, anyone who is declared banished might as well just give up what they are doing, as it’s just a waste of time, money, and energy.

This reminds me of one of those late-night sci-fi shows that used to be on, like Outer Limits, where criminals weren’t incarcerated at all. They had a mark placed on their forehead that they couldn’t cover up and anyone who saw the mark behaved as if they didn’t exist. They weren’t seen, they weren’t talked to, they weren’t THERE. They could do anything they wanted, but they were cut off from the rest of humanity – and in a way, banished. What a punishment. It just takes my breath away.

MyWMU.com

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For the past few months I’ve been pretty much ringside on a lot of new things and some pretty epic changes to this old University. One of the foremost, and I’ve discussed this at length before with family members is that we have a new vice president. This new VP is the whirlwind, it’s quite something to watch. It’s also the first time in a very long time that people have started to come to us both (my assistant and I) with really great questions. It used to be that technology wasn’t so very important and now, well, everything has changed.

We’ve released upon this world a brand new WMU experience, it’s a part of our new engagement platform that I had an integral part in forming along with (and I love this) a real team of coworkers. Not a mindless committee of disaffected drones but real passionate and incredibly creative people! It’s a refreshing change. This new experience has a new “front door” and two blogs attached, the “Western Express” which I named and am very proud of, and WMYou, the Alumni blog which has some really incredible people writing for it. You can find it all here, at MyWMU.com.

It’s quite stunning to me to see the responses we’ve gotten from the quality of our site. I don’t know if it’s modesty but this effort is what I would expect anyone in IT to be able to pull off without blinking an eye, turns out, at least from the feedback we’re getting, that what we did here is a whole order of magnitude better than the competitors. I’ve never really considered what I do to be remarkable in any way, I’m just doing a rather even-keeled job of things as far as I am concerned, but apparently it’s more than anyone expected. I feel good about all the kudos but I also feel a little awkward about all the other IT people who aren’t making things like this happen. I worry over the differences. Then again, I’ve always worried over those differences. I suppose I’ll never understand, and as far as I’ve gathered from my management, I bet they hope I never understand either. 🙂

So the site is up, and it was created in an atmosphere that I think is best summed up by what Craig Ferguson said about Dr. Who:

“The triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism.”

I just love that, and in many ways, that’s what this new site feels a lot like. It took a long time for me to stop bludgeoning dead horses and see the light as it were. Now that I have, all the turkeys that used to get me down suddenly are very small things and easily ignored. I hope everyone enjoys this new resource and we’ve got some really cool things planned for it in the weeks to come.

4G

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I’ve caught myself in one of my first fuddy-duddy moments. It has to do with 4G. Mobile phones have taken on this moniker to help people understand that lower values of G are slower than higher ones. So far 3G is pretty snappy, and 4G is on the horizon.

This has me wondering what exactly would one use 4G speeds for. I start to think about the nature of the devices, what people are likely to do with them. I would say that for most people, voice still dominates the use of these devices but data use is nipping at voice’s heels. People are starting to request more data through their mobile devices and I think that the majority of the data is internet services followed up by the packetized SMS data traffic on the back-end. People are getting their emails, sending and receiving pictures as well as video over these data links and this use will only grow. I can see 3G filling the need for these services quite well, but I start to wonder about 4G, and what it could be useful for. Certainly 4G is overkill for most data traffic, as most of it is designed to flow neatly over current 3G signals. While shopping for new phones at our local Verizon store they started to push 4G on one of my friends. First of all, 4G isn’t in our market yet and I dare say it won’t be for two or three more years. Even if you did have 4G, what would you do with it?

The only applications I can think of are data tethering other devices or a group of devices to that signal, but that would only work well if the data was unlimited. As it is, I seriously doubt any provider will ever offer such service where the data cap isn’t 2 to 5 gigabytes per month, with more money due after you blow by that limit. So, what is the use of 4G? If I was using it, I’d say video calling would probably be the first use, but with a 2-5 GB cap, how many of these calls could you make before you started digging into your limit? If you artificially put a limit on a thing, people are going to use it and fill up their lives with that thing until they hit that limit. Much like how a goldfish will grow to fit the tank it lives in, if it’s a small tank, it’s a small goldfish, if it’s a giant tank, it turns into a carp. With the speed that 4G is pushing, the only other use that springs to mind immediately is BitTorrent. Now what would you be BitTorrent’ing over your mobile phone? Chances are pretty good that it isn’t a legal use of that protocol, chances are it’ll be porn or some pirated data.

I think what I’m getting at is, the nature of these devices may have all the speed they need to do what they do. That any more speed is a solution in search of a problem, and that almost never works well in the end. Is it speed people should be clamoring for or is it network coverage they should be clamoring for? I think that I’d be hotter for a well-fleshed out network than a network that is super speedy. It comes down to the question, what could I do with that speed, and when I hit my data cap, what then? What good is 4G speeds when you’ve burnt through your 2GB cap? In order to not accrue more charges you’d turn off 4G and float around with 3G or 2G. What use is that? And if there weren’t caps, what legal uses of 4G traffic are left? Video calling, yes, but beyond that? I’m not so sure.

A good portion of this argument comes to mind when I see TV spots for AT&T pushing their network speed over their shitty network coverage. Verizon makes the opposite argument, that network coverage is more important than speed. I personally agree with Verizon and am critical of AT&T. Yes your network may be very fast, maybe even 4G fast, but unless you live in a megalopolis and happen to catch the network when a minimum of people are using it all at the same time, then yes, I can see the benefit. But how many of us live in a megalopolis *and* can count on nobody in said Burg from trying to hit the network all at the same time? I call bullshit on 4G data currently. Those companies pushing 4G have an intended-use mismatch and they should probably get in touch with their legal and compliance teams to see if their customers will use 4G traffic for purely innocent and legal means. I am full of doubt.

So, why not just embrace 3G, call it a wash and concentrate on expanding network coverage? That’s an idea worth pursuing.

One thing did strike me at the end, if the really compelling use of 4G is video calling, who wants that? Do you really want to have to shave and look presentable, wearing the right (if any) clothing to make a call? It seems neat and does have some very limited use, but after all, who really needs it? Oh that’s right… Pornographers do. And that’s what will sell 4G. Mark my words. 4G will be powered by pornography, and you know deep in your heart that men will order up 4G porn while back-benching it at church on Sunday with their naive wifeypoo and accidental children. Mark my words.

iPad Apps #2

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The continuation of the series…

  1. QRANK – This rather fun trivia game has some good social competition aspects to it and is quite fun to play. The only thing I wish for this app would be a QRANK HD, so I wouldn’t have to scale it up from iPhone-App size to iPad size.
  2. Checkbook – Probably the most indispensable app I have on my iPad. I manage my budget of $260 a week with this app. As I spend I mark it in the app and it tells me how much of my budget remains and makes balancing my books on Sunday mornings very easy. I just look at the top line, add or subtract from 260, and that’s what I pay for my weekly expenditures. Very nice.
  3. 1Password – Without a doubt my number two go-to app. The heroin for this app is how it syncs with Dropbox, so I can have my 1Password database updated and ready for me to use on every single machine I use. My machines at home, my machines at work, my iPad, all together. This app I am sure has saved me tons of worry and kept my online life secure.
  4. News Apps – These apps are lumped together, there isn’t much to rave about here and I barely use them.
    1. NPR
    2. ABC News
    3. NASA
    4. Mashable
    5. NYTimes
    6. NewsRack
    7. MacLife
    8. Huff Post
    9. BBC News
    10. 3D Sun
    11. USA Today
    12. CNN
  5. Notable but little used News apps include:
    1. River of News – Lost out to Reeder due to Reeders interface design.
    2. Sandpit – I downloaded it, but never really used it. (huh)
    3. FeeddlerRSS – Useful in that you can save images from Google Reader Feeds. The interface is sluggish. If Reeder would have a way to save pictures this app would go out the window.
  6. Social Apps
    1. foursquare – iPhone-only App, silly game, I play but I don’t know why. I suspect it’s more knee-jerk than for fun anymore.
    2. Wikihood – Cute but limited. I used it a few times, it didn’t piss me off enough to earn a deletion, so it just sits around.
    3. BirdEye – Great for people with photo-heavy Twitter feeds.
    4. Scruff – Another gay chat talker. This one supposedly caters to Bears, but so far it’s just another litterbox.
    5. Grindr – Tounge-in-Cheek gay chat talker. Everyone is looking for sex but can’t say anything sexual. It’s where the frustrated and masochistic go. Another litterbox.
    6. FBF_Albums – Facebook Photo app. I can’t remember the last time I used it, probably should delete it.
    7. IM+ – Links up a bunch of instant messaging systems and has a neat push feature so the app can let you know there are incoming chats even if it’s in the background.
    8. VisibleVote – Cute and fluffy, but ultimately meaningless. Should delete this one as well.
    9. Jack’d – Again another gay chat talker. Much like Grindr it tries to be something that the Apple App Store categorically refuses to vend. I keep it around because it doesn’t take up much space.
    10. HootSuite – Annoying Twitter and Facebook app. It’s only claim to fame is that you can post to both Twitter and Facebook with one posting. It’s not enough of a feature to actually use the app.
    11. Kik – Doomed to failure because it is not ubiquitous. Perhaps it will gain traction sometime in the future.
    12. Tree To Go – Applet from Ancestry.com. Allows you to rattle off names and relationships but doesn’t really have much more to offer than that.
    13. Groupon – Coupons reinvented for Generation X and Y.
    14. Facepad – Behaves like the Twitter app does for Twitter, only for Facebook. Originally was oddly out-of-focus and a little annoying to use, so it’s relegated to the internment camp of the Social folder.
    15. Twitteriffic – Used to be my go-to app for Twitter before the Twitter app came along. Lacks some key features that the native Twitter app has, so it hangs out in la-la-land.
  7. Books
    1. nook – I don’t use it, but I have it!
    2. Kindle – Again, I don’t use it, but I have it.
    3. Discover – Turns Wikipedia articles into magazine-formatted booklets. Cute.
    4. Dictionary – Actually use this a lot to get new words, clarify meanings, and get pronunciation help.
    5. GoodReader – Has a lot of file features and is very manageable, however it collides functionality-wise with iBooks, so not a lot of use.
    6. Google Books – I don’t use it, but I have it. It’s not very good.
  8. iLife / Productivity
    1. Pages – I bought it for my iPad and my MacBook. So far, it’s quite a competent word processing app. It’s got all the polish and refinement that you’d expect from a native Apple app.
    2. Numbers – I bought this in a crunch because I didn’t have a good spreadsheet program on my iPad, and I needed to use a spreadsheet program that could understand Excel. Numbers fit the bill, the interface is a little annoying, but it does work.
    3. Dictation – I trot this out to display the how-cool-is-that feature of the app, but I don’t use it. I find I type far better than I dictate.
    4. iThoughtsHD – Once I got started using XMind I found myself with brainstorming sessions and all I had handy was my iPad. This app fits the bill quite nicely. I’ve done some very good work with this app and it really helps. It’s well worth the money.
    5. PlainText – This simple notebook editor syncs with Dropbox. It’s principal power is that synergy. Otherwise it’s very plain jane.
  9. Mercury Web Browser Pro – As a replacement for Safari it does quite well. Unfortunately the system is fixed to open websites with Safari, so this app doesn’t get the kind of use it really ought to. There are some clever settings it as, like the User Agent String adjustment, which is kinky. The only down-note to this app is that it can’t automatically pick up all of Safari’s bookmarks. You have to manually herd them yourself.
  10. Toodledo – My go-to app for tasks and one of the apps that I run a lot and almost always have in the background on my iPad. It syncs online, has a full-fledged iPad app, a nice website, and keeps me alerted to tasks that I need to accomplish at home and at work. Add in that I can email to my Toodledo and it creates tasks based on the emails and it’s damn near perfect for task management. I can’t recommend this app strongly enough!

iPad Apps Series

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Over the next few blog posts I will be listing about ten iOS Apps that I find worthy to be on my iPad. I’ve written about my iPad before, how the device has changed my life and it appears from what I can see in the incoming Google Searches that hit this blog, that people might find some of these interesting. One short note to add however, I will not be including the apps that come with iOS 4.2.1 by default, since we all have those and can appreciate them. Since iBooks is pushed when you first touch the App store, that too will be left off the list, as everyone should already have looked into it to see if it fits their needs.

So, without further ado, here’s the first ten:

  1. Evernote – The app has a crashing problem and a display glitch. That being said, having your Evernote library handy even off-network is worth it’s weight in gold.
  2. Wx – Excellent short-and-sweet weather app. NWS is changing some key XML files which might break the app, but maybe the author will cope in time.
  3. Flipboard – The ultimate browser for Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader. It received a huge shot of adrenaline in the arm recently, but the biggest feature, multiple accounts for everything, is very much overdue.
  4. WordPress – The WordPress App. It’s an okay way to blog and it works natively with the WordPress interface. I’m never quite sure whether my blog posts get in properly or not and I’m always wary that the entire app could crash at any moment. It hasn’t done so yet, but I definitely get the sense that failure is just over the next river bend.
  5. Reeder – My Go-To App for browsing Google Reader RSS feeds. It is very clean and very slick, with shortcuts for Instapaper and Twitter/Facebook. The only thing I would like to see with this app is a “Clip to Evernote” feature. Perhaps it’s coming.
  6. Instapaper – Buy this app, enjoy the service. Nothing brings on the Instapaper love more than sitting at work at 5pm, knowing you have to go, seeing a flurry of unread tabs in Safari and with a few clicks, saving each page to Instapaper, saving it for later… very useful indeed.
  7. Wikipanion+ – Great app to query Wikipedia and keep page details offline when you can’t reach the network. Some people get bent out of shape when they discover that the information in Wikipedia isn’t curated by some scholar. I think they are spending too much time with very nit-picky academics. Sometimes Wikipedia is “Good Enough”
  8. Twitter – The home Twitter client is probably the best of all the Twitter apps out there. I can’t quite make up my mind between Twitteriffic or Twitter. Currently Twitter is on the home screen and Twitteriffic is stuck in a folder.
  9. Friendly – I bought this Facebook app when it was paid and I’ve found it steadily getting better with time. It might as well just be picked up by Facebook as their official iPad app. I don’t think that will happen until Facebook realizes that the iPad is just as useful as a computer or an iPhone to access its services.
  10. GetGlue – At first I thought this app was going to be another lame Foursquare ripoff, but the ability to check in to shows, movies, wine, or a host of other topics really works surprisingly well. The first thing I noticed about GetGlue was that it socialized popular media. You could see who watches Primeval for example and develop new social contacts based on that kind of lead-in.

Creeping Dead Zones

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Has anyone else noticed that there appears to be two very prominent creeping dead zones that surround the weekend? I mean, think about it. Nobody is really conscious Friday after lunch, and when you get to “High Tea” around 3pm, where really civilized countries are napping already, you could strip buck naked and streak through the office and NOBODY WOULD NOTICE. The same fuzzy non-time surrounds the beginning of the week too, that nothing of meaning ever happens between Friday afternoon and Monday afternoon.

The comical part of me sees this as a creeping problem. First we lose Friday afternoons and Monday mornings. Then as time goes on, people start making allowances for Friday mid-mornings and Monday afternoons. The work week is being effectively gnawed down on both sides by this creeping inertia.

Case in point, a help desk’s ticket throughput during these dead zones. Nobody has problems, principally because they’ve already checked out and can’t be bothered. I swear that sometimes you can hear tumbleweeds dashing along our office during these dead zones, it’s so quiet. So we keep busy. I bet a monumental amount of network traffic is bound for Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and yes, my dear readers, WordPress.

The people who manage productivity should be alarmed. The weekend has sharp pointy teeth and it’s getting bigger! 😉

P.S. This is the first time the WordPress Proofreader didn’t have piss OR vinegar for me. YAY!

Being Sick

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With my iPad and my MacBook I have to say that the classical lines of distinction of “The Workday” have blurred completely away. I find myself doing my best work at 1:30am or 3:30am, or even when inspiration strikes. I think that’s one of the hallmarks of how technology is changing our lives for the better. I don’t have to write a flurry of ideas down to process at some later time when I can do them RIGHT NOW. Then again, my work style is built on speed. Think fast, act fast, do it right the first time.

Even when I’m sick and hacking up a lung, I can create new blogs and assemble rights for users, and thanks to Apple and all the infrastructure I’ve combined around my work life and my private life I can do all of this pretty much from anywhere, even while driving 70MPH (as a passenger, of course! SCANDAL! :))

I think it’s something that the classical structure of business life will eventually have to address. The idea that if you have a salaried employee who is as mobile as I am and as technologically connected as I am, that we can really do our jobs competently from a rest stop as much as we can do it at work desktop. To that end I have to admit that I encourage my coworkers to heed the wisdom of non-blocking/non-interrupt based communications. I no longer really use a telephone and I don’t really value face to face communications. I prefer my communications to be of the type of Email, SMS, or Instant Message. I think these forms of communication are far more respectful than the intrusive nature of blocking/interrupt based forms of communication. Writing me an email means your message was received and understood and will get the attention it deserves, the same with the other non-blocking/non-interrupt forms, such as SMS and IM’ing. If more people would adopt these forms I know I’d be a far happier person.

I think a good portion of why people elect to use the blocking/interrupt model is because they believe there is a value in the personal approach. They are afraid of the non-blocking/non-interrupt forms to lead to alienation and depersonalization. I get enough personal interaction in my life and the last thing I need is “expensive context switches” where my task flow is interrupted by someone calling me on the telephone or knocking on my door. I often wish I could tell these people that I understand their need for human contact, I don’t require it of them myself and would vastly prefer the non-blocking/non-interrupt based communications styles. The only time I want to see someone in the flesh is if something has become an emergency, then fine. But here again, I make an exception that must be tempered – not everything is an emergency. Even when “emergencies” come up seven out of ten times those emergencies aren’t, they’re just wearing the garb of an emergency to provide an excuse to block/interrupt.

I think eventually more professional people will see the wisdom of this and finally understand that in an average workday the time-wasting emergency-based “humanizing” approach is just wasting money and time. This approach is just as good for the sources of these blocking/interrupt based issues as they are for us victims of their blocking/interrupt driven behaviors. By not having to get up, not having to pick up the phone, you save yourself so much time, to say nothing about the clarity of what you want to convey. You just can’t beat the low signal to noise ratio of text over voice.

Proof of Life

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Here is some email back and forth between me and a fellow at Google Apps who doesn’t believe that I’m who I say I am. Oh how to prove WMU.

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Email From Google:
On Jan 13, 2011, at 6:26 PM, The Google Team wrote:

Hello Andy,

Thanks for your message.

Before we can continue processing your application for an Apps for
Education Upgrade, please clarify the purpose of the specific domain you
have requested for upgrade.

In addition, can you please provide the following information:

What are the ages of the students you teach?
Do you offer degrees to students who complete the program?
Have you received accreditation from an accepted accrediting body?

Please reply to this email with your responses so we may continue to
process your request. If you are a certified 501(c)(3) non-profit
organization please send us your EIN, as you may qualify for an upgrade to
Education Edition for non-profits.

If you do not feel you meet these requirements, we invite you to continue
to manage your account with our free Google Apps, which offers many of the
same features and services.

Sincerely,

Suchit
The Google Apps Team

My Response:

Hello,

We teach students from 18 to in their 80’s… This might help:

Western Michigan University (WMU) is a public universityestablished in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo. When the school first opened, it was known as the Western State Normal School, but was renamed Western State Teachers College in 1927 and Western Michigan College of Education in 1941. On February 26, 1957 Governor G. Mennen Williams signed into law a bill making Western Michigan College the state’s fourth public university. In its annual ranking of the nation’s 4,000 colleges and universities, U.S. News & World Report consistently lists WMU as one of the nation’s top 100 public universities. (Hooray Wikipedia!)

We offer many degrees, Everything from Bachelors all the way up to PhD’s. We’ve got about 117,000 alumni who we’ve graced with degrees. We’ve got 278,000 living constituents… I’m just saying.

And once again…

Western Michigan University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, 30 North LaSalle Street, Suite 2400, Chicago, Illinois 60602-2504; Web site www.ncahigherlearningcommission.org.

Feel free to give me a call, 269-387-8719 and we can discuss Western Michigan University in detail. I’m the system administrator for WMU Development and Alumni Relations, my office is in Walwood Hall room 133E. I’m sure we could likely also find a few of our graduates who WORK AT GOOGLE and have degrees from our COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING. Oye!

Thanks for the laughs, I hope some of this works for you guys…

Andy McHugh
269-216-4597

Poor Comic Book Sales

Posted on by
1

I’ve seen this show up on Twitter quite a bit, the slowly degrading sales figures for popular comic books and what might be behind it. As a light consumer of comic books I can at least state a few things that keep me from buying many comic books:

  • Dullness – Many series, even some that I’m very fond of like Brightest Day from DC are rather dull. For Brightest Day I have faith that the chief writer, Geoff Johns, is simply warming up for some stupendous issues-to-come but so far it’s shaped a lot like a Stephen King novel, huge wads of detail with action all piled up at the end. There are some titles that I won’t even touch because they are monumentally bad. I won’t name any as to not injure people who feel passionately about their favorite comic and start a flame-out.
  • Impenetrability – Marvel Entertainment is chiefly centered when I bring up this point. Unless you establish serious time to your comic book experience you find the bleeding edge zooms away from you quite quickly. What I mean by impenetrability is that there are entire stories that I have yet to read, and by the time I’ve got both time-opportunity and funds-opportunity the number of comics you’d have to read to get the whole story is monumentally large. It feels a lot like it does when I wander through a library. A good metaphor for these feelings is the confusion/starvation of a shark in the middle of a cloud of tuna. There is no real place to start, there are too many options, there isn’t any handy map or checklist so you can enjoy a storyline as it was intended to be told, so you end up not reading anything. The entire oeuvre becomes impenetrable. I don’t start because I don’t know where to start and I don’t have the time or money to properly enjoy the unfolding story being told.
  • Digital Shrink – Comics are leaking out through channels that have nothing to do with the distributor or the publisher channels whatsoever. People are scanning comics and posting them for free online to the detriment of all the hard-working people who spent time and energy creating the material in the first place. It’s a double-edged sword and I’ve written about this in the past as well. These digital copies being free is only incidental damage, there is a lesson as to why these formats are so popular and it has very little to do with it being ‘free’. It comes down to format choice. Ever since April 2010, when I first laid my hands on my iPad, it became my go-to-device for reading both digital books *AND* digital comic books. There are companies like Comixology which are doing their best, but the publishers have to pay lip service to their distributors and their brick-and-mortar children, the comic book stores. The reason that digital comics haven’t been a cash-cow for comic book companies has everything to do with incomplete, inconstant, and inconsistent vending by publishers. I don’t want to buy paper comic books anymore. I want to subscribe to all my favorite titles digitally and I’m fine with coughing up a credit card number, setting subscription preferences (pull lists) and buzzing around the one central Comic Book app that ties everything together. That would get at least $20-40 a week out of me instead of my current $2.99 a week strategy.

Really the biggest point I have to make here is that by not being “The Brave and The Bold” when it comes to digital comics, people like me aren’t going to make any investment in the product and we’re just going to lurk in the dark and keep our buying power in abeyance. I’m not interested in a teaser issue with the punchline at the end being “Visit your local comic book store for more!”, sorry, but no, I don’t want to. I want to “Visit my Comic Book App for more!” when I want more. Unfortunately by not heeding the opportunity, not filling a vacuum, regular folk have filled it. Nature abhors a vacuum and in this case, certain services and new open-source file types such as CBR and CBZ have filled up all the space that could have been occupied by profit-making comic book sales. I’ve said it before and I will repeat myself here, if you fail to innovate, your customers will innovate without you and then you’ll miss the train completely and be left walking along the tracks. It’s funny to see how many old-school publisher/consumer business models failed to adapt to the Internet, you can see the bodies littered all over, Music, Movies, Television, and as unpleasant as it is to say, Comic Books. By not embracing the bleeding edge of technology each model has created subsequent vacuums and people have found ways to fill those vacuums without any one publisher being able to draw any benefit. When popular media takes technology and the Internet seriously, then you’ll see a turn-around, but not before then. As they stuff their heads in the sand, ever deeper, the erosion will just get progressively worse.

You could sum up this lesson that popular media really should learn in one really great curt statement: “Innovate or Die!” So, get busy innovating, or get busy dying.