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Plurk and mobility, why I like it.
Plurk is one of the most interesting mobile “microblogging” tool available at the moment because of it’s simple interface. Without the need for additional applications, expensive data packages and more you can follow the conversation of your contacts and friends in a way that neither jaiku nor twitter allow.
If you’re on your home network then jaiku is interesting because you download the messages. If you’re travelling then twitter is semi useful to read messages whilst mobile. The biggest limitation with twitter is the api limit. Frequently I have found that I can’t access the messages due to a 404 error. That’s problematic.
That’s why I like plurk. It provides a simple front page where you can see all plurks. Select a plurk and you can read the responses and respond yourself. That’s great because it means you can converse without putting your life on hold to keep the conversation going.
What’s particularly interesting is that there was a time when twitter was as advantageous as plurk for mobility but due to costs they were unable to provide the service anymore due to cost. Cost is an excuse for a lack of lateral thinking.
By creating a good wap interface that can as easily be used as easily on an n95 as an ipod touch plurk have circumvented most of the cost problems and provided a service that just works. Of course their user base is much smaller and it’s easier to deal with the requests. We’ll see how things progress from here.
The age of Bloggers and Self installations
I come from the age of bloggers and self-installations. In fact, I come from the age of HTML pages and static websites. In those days we surfed the web looking for and finding content. We also found interesting bits of code and we added new features to our websites. We would install forums, guestbooks and more. In so doing our static websites became dynamic. At this point, our website could grow a community.
At this time we had our PhpBB forum, our own wiki, our own WordPress installation. When we said, “My website”, “my blog” or “my forum” it was ours. We were the webmasters. We were the ones that had found the code and figured out how to install it on our web host. Communities were small and geographically dispersed across countries, continents and time zones so most interactions were verbal.
Fast forward to today and most people do not have their own web server, their own wiki, their own web page or their own blogs. What they have are social media accounts hosted by others. They are not administrators, they do not have the technical knowledge. According to investors, marketers and other groups, these people are users of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus and other websites but their power is restricted to what they post and whether they delete their account.
They are so disconnected from the mechanics of websites that they say “My Facebook”, “My Instagram”, “my twitter”. Web sites and by extension social media are not like books, mobile phones or bikes. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are not yours. Your influence is restricted to your personal account, no further.
I wanted to have my own microblogging platform, I wanted to have my own diaspora server and more. I never did because my technical skills and budget did not allow it. With both of these, you needed server permissions that I was not willing to pay for. At that time I would have had my own Twitter or my own Facebook. I would have installed them. I would have been the administrator. I would have had the challenge of finding a crowd or tribe to populate it with content.
Recently I was also thinking about the discussion about curation that people were having. There was a time when the idea was to get people to surf the web, find content and organise it in such a way as to make it easy for others to find content. Now that we’re in 2017 the idea of curation has evolved. Everyone shares content so the need for dedicated people has dwindled.
Going to the netbook
I like smaller and smaller machines. I’m now enjoying the use of an eeepc, the 1000hg. It has inbuilt 3g modem and a 4.5hr battery life.
It’s a nice change to use a small laptop because it does the basic things. It allows me to tweet, read e-mail and fail at Nanowrimo ;-).
The keyboard is fast for typing. I was able to type over 20,000 words without finding the keyboard to be a hindrance. It’s not the smallest of keyboards, nor the biggest, but it does fit my fingers perfectly.
The screen is fine most of the time. It is slightly too small for a few web apps and programs. A few times I’ve gone to a page or used a program which could not cope with the vertical resolution of such a screen. As a result I do need to think about which applications and websites I visit.
I also tested seesmic for windows on this machine and that worked well. No crashes, no slowing down the system. I had it running for over 24hrs in between sleep modes and such without the hint of a problem.
So far I like the small laptop. It hasn’t fallen into a corner like the 900. This one has actually been used. We’ll see when I feel the need for a larger machine once more. For now though this is fine.
I enjoy Google Buzz
Whilst everyone makes fun of Google Buzz and continues living their daily life between google buzz and facebook I have jumped into google buzz with a passion and found it to be nice. It’s a social aggregator of content from a number of google services where you can discuss the content with a close network of friends.
The strength of this social network is that it is plugged right into google mail. As a result you are guaranteed to log into this site for the whole day. When you have some free time you can go through the threads of conversation and comment on those of interest. Once this is done you can go back to the mail client.
As the day progresses so will the number of people commenting on posts. You will see these comments in gmail and answer straight from there. It means you don’t have to wait for a notification, click on the link, scroll to the bottom of the page and finally comment. Here you just type the comment and then use the keyboard to progress onto the next thread with a comment.
The J and K keys can be used to go backwards and forwards between e-mails in Gmail. They can also jog from one item to another in Google buzz. The result is a very quick, natural way of conversing with the least amount of resistance.
The biggest drawback at the moment is the lack of users who find any use for such a site. It’s hard enough getting interactions from Facebook so you can wait a few months before Google Buzz reaches critical mass. I will be there in the meantime enjoying conversation with others, who like me are early adopters.
Forced to Wear Mask Outdoors
Switzerland is currently toying with the idea of forcing people to wear masks outdoors but it’s not clear whether this would be for cities or whether it would be for villages and even rural walks. If the obligation to wear a mask at all times is enacted then I have two reactions.
The first is that I never leave the house without a mask and that I wear it when I am forced to walk within a few meters of people. Since the end of March I have been staying as far away from people as possible, which is how I discovered all my new walks.
The second reaction is that wearing a mask outdoors in a city makes sense. It doesn’t make sense when you’re out for a two to three hour walk along main roads where you rarely cross paths with anyone. To be forced to wear a mask even when we are kilometres from any other human would really suck. I know it’s not a scientific term, but that’s a step too far.
No one had to say “Don’t socialise, don’t meet friends, don’t go to restaurants, don’t go to pubs, bars or nightclubs.” No one had to say “Walk along rural paths where no one else walks to avoid any and all human contact”. These are things I did of my own free will. It’s not easy, but the documentaries I have watched and the books and articles I have read make this logical.
If I have to wear a mask for the entirety of my three hour walks where my exposure to others may last half a minute or less then I will be quite disappointed. The reason for that disappointment is that we would never breath fresh air if this rule was enacted. We would always breath mask air. We will suffer from Vitamin D as a result of not getting any exposure to sunlight and we will fall sick, for a new reason.
From what I understand in the Le Temps article this will not include my cherished quiet walking routes, luckily. I will have to keep hoping for rain as the only valid reason for indoor training. 😉 (I know an ascii wink is not good form, but I want you to know this is meant to be taken as a joke.)
For Context Switzerland, yesterday, became world leader in highest percentage increase in the number of new cases. “C’est en tout cas le pays qui compte la plus forte augmentation de nouveaux cas de Covid-19 ces 7 jours: +106%,” Within this context Switzerland must take rapid and immediate action to get the number of new cases per day back in control.
For those who understand French this article presents the situation.
The three points of the article are:
- The situation is similar to how it was on the 16th of March.
- only semi-confinement helped to reduce the number of new cases.
- If the measures were taken today it would take three to four weeks for things to get back under control.
For months I have been saying that people need to take responsibility and that everyone has to do everything possible to reduce the risk of propagation of this virus, and as we see from the current crop of articles the scientific and medical communities say the same thing.
It’s a shame that ordinary people need to be confined for a pandemic to be controlled and then contained. It’s a shame that people can’t take a one or two month break from socialising during a pandemic to get life to return to normal as soon as possible.
The Guardian Article: Inside the Airline Industry Meltdown is an interesting article that looks at the growing number of planes that are being mothballed until better times come, about the removal from service of 30 aircrafts from a single airline etc.
Switzerland got down to 11 new cases per day in June. Yesterday there were 6600 new cases.
The amplitude of the second wave is much greater than the first as we can see from the graph above.