Earlier this week I changed back to an iPhone from Android so I’ve spent that last few days loading it up with a bunch of apps.  One of the apps is Instagram, an app I’ve wanted to try and gave up waiting for it to come out on Android.  Anyway, downloaded the app, took a picture, picked my filter and was given my choice of channels to send it to.  So, in his case, I sent it via email to my wife, sent it to Facebook and decided to not put it into my Twitter stream.   Then I saw that I could send the photo to Posterous, a service I signed up for long ago but had used in some time, so I thought, send it there too.  And then software took over…

All of of sudden, this nice photo ended up on this blog and in my Twitter stream.  What happened?  I forgot that at some point back when I signed up for Posterous, I also said of course publish anything posted on Posterous I would also want to publish to Twitter and to this blog BUT I should be smart about it and only do it when I am the author (that way I can control it what cross posts).  So all software operated as instructed.  But things that I did not intend to happen at the time I published this photo did.

So it turns out that I now need two new services:

1. Service Tracker  -  A service that keeps track of all the services that I’ve signed up for.  This I’ve been wanting for years. At one point, I used Friendfeed for this purpose and it seemed to work well but I feel I need something specifically designed for this purpose.

2.  Service Auth Tracker – I would now like a service that tracks all services that I have authenticated and authorized to access data in other services or to cross-post.  This post demonstrates the cross-post issue.  Who knows how services I’ve allowed to use my social logins or to access my social data stream.

Okay, time to hit publish.  I wonder when these two new services will be built and by whom?  Where this post will now publish to is a whole other question.

Posted via email from loupaglia’s posterous

Image by Rafa Puerta Photo via Flickr

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. Most of this blog is about technology. But make no mistake, we are under self-inflicted attack of technological warfare.  And we love it.  But we have to remain mindful of it. We have to be mindful of it because it is only going to get worse, because technology is getting better. Think about it…let’s take one device, the iPad, a device phenomenally designed so that you can comfortably have it on your lap and be plugged in. What a great way to immerse yourself in great apps, great content, your feeds, the news, books, videos…all while ignoring those around you when you are probably already interacting with them so well….watching the tube.

I’ve had a post like this sitting in my drafts folder for months.  Fred Wilson wrote a post a few weeks back talking about “Being Present“. Similarly Brad Feld wrote a post about his four minute rule that he has with his wife. So I thought it was a good time to dust if off, polish it up and hit publish.  It’s purpose is simply to make the three of you that read it to PAUSE and reflect, even for just a moment before going to the next items in Google Reader.

With technology, we all know it is very tough to unplug and be present for the ones around you. I try to remind myself all the time of this when with the family and admittedly, don’t do the best job of it. The good news for me is have a family that will continually remind me so they keep it top of my mind…put the phone down, shut the laptop.  My personal favorite is my dad who says “Lou, is that phone attached to your hand?”  It is (or should be) obvious for most that balance is really important. This got me thinking about the pervasiveness of technology and how much it may be hindering our abilities to interact on a personal level with others, not just family but colleagues and strangers too.  Again pause and reflect.

I realize that anyone reading this post is instantly going to say that if anything technology has improved interaction with others.  The mobile device let’s you stay connected and reachable.  There is video chat like Facetime and Skype giving you the ability to communicate with others across the country and around the world.  Facebook keeps you in tune with the happenings of all your offline friends (if that isn’t a paradox in itself).  Twitter keeps me abreast of the news and what is happening around me.  And I get it, absolutely right.  That is why is such a tough topic and one that everyone has to figure out themselves.

Take a moment think about it, take stock of those around you and how they are interacting (or not) with others.  Think about the opportunities where you can interact with others and leave the technology aside for even a few minutes.  That is all you can do.  I’ve done it and here are some observations I’ve made:

• At home – talked about this above already.  Read Fred and Brad’s posts on it.
• In the city – As if not making eye contact and acknowledging a stranger in city was already a problem, now walk down a city street and take a look around you.  People walking and talking on their phones.  People with headphones on in their own little worlds.  People (pet peeve of mine) walking down the street and typing on their phone.  The most recognition you give is not slamming into them.
• At the local coffee shop – Starbucks recently changed their WiFi policy making web access even easier for patrons.  Think about that though.  The coffee shop where people used to go, sit down with someone else and chat.  In the past month, I’ve been in Starbucks in San Francisco, New York and Chicago.  Everywhere it is the same.  Everyone has a cup of coffee…and their noses into their phones or laptops.  Sometimes both, while ear buds in their ears while listening to music.
• At the airport – Waiting for my plane to depart, I think everyone at my gate was on the phone, on their laptop, charging their phone or laptop at the charging station or listening to their iPod.
• On the train and on the plane – Same thing.  Everyone immersed in the technology in their hands.  More rare is the occurrence that you actually meet the person next you.
• At the stadium – I was just at the Giants game this weekend.  There we are opening day, beautiful new stadium, huge crowds cheering their team, a game on the field.  What do I see?  A row of people on their phones the whole time!  Don’t get me wrong, I checked into Foursquare but then I watched the game, chatted with my neighbors and cheered for the team.

Again, I am the first one to say technology is fantastic.  I can’t stress that enough.  But we need to sneak some time back in for personal interaction…somehow.  For fun, take some time the next time you are out and take a look around you.  Pause and reflect.  Repeat.   Ok, time to go check what is on the DVR.

So is Google Wave the New New Thing? Who knows? Scoble, Gray and many others probably have fair points. I have no idea if it is going to be successful. In fact, I haven’t even used it yet since I wasn’t opened to the system (not one of the worthy 100k, thanks Google!). I’d like to discuss a bigger question.

Why so negative? (Said another way, a very provocative question is “Why be so quick to judgment?”) Who knows what the future holds? In the beginning, Twitter showed no purpose to me. I have a personal post to prove it. I made the mistake to be very quick to judge the service at the time and quite honestly give the thing time to ferment. I later remedied my incorrect early impression. I think people confuse how they look at the service now as opposed to the service we were all looking at it when it first came out. And that quick rush to judgment has bigger negative consequences.

When Friendfeed switched to a real-time interface, I came very close to making the same mistake. It was blistering fast, hard to follow and there was a lot of noise in the channel just like when you follow tons of people in Twitter and just watch the stream. Very valid points BUT to a certain extent, it is the wrong way to look at things. It took a few months, but once I got used to the service, I couldn’t even go back to “refresh mode”, I loved real time. Back in August,I reflected and was honest with myself as to what I thought at one point no longer was valid…for me.

The goal or premise of Google Wave was to re-define what we mean for collaboration and by folding into the framework the concept of real-time, public and private conversations, threaded and nested conversations: really the merging of email and IM/chat which has been the standard collaboration conversation paradigms of the past couple decades.

Some say, impossible, there is too much email lock-in to change the way people communicate in an email like channel. Why? Are we actually saying that we will not advance from the email we know today? That cannot be. With that attitude, we are set collectively to never create anything game-changing and new. Again I reflect, back in the 90′s, a little search company came out and I laughed (negatively) and wondered if these two guys didn’t understand that Yahoo! owned the search market. We know how that story ended. And that is why I don’t say things like “don’t come out with new search engines, you cannot beat Google, they have too much share and power.” Is it daunting? Of course it is. But not impossible. Microsoft, a gorilla, is under threat in the enterprise and the office productivity space. We would never have thought such a thing could occur, many still don’t.

Building good enterprise software (often regarded an oxymoron) is hard and often failed but that doesn’t mean we will not continue to innovate in the space.

I close this post tying it back to Google Wave. Will it be successful? Who knows? What I can say is that it shows an enormous amount of vision, positive vision about how it can change the collaboration and real time communication world. It is so early in the evolution, let’s see where we go, viable use cases, incremental improvement, additional feedback loops incorporated into the product. And finally, let’s not lose sight on what huge factor: the open development community will harness some real power and value in this ecosystem. Just like what happened with Twitter. Twitter evolved from a simple user interface with a white box to type “what are you doing”. It would be no where near as pervasive today with the significant developments around its API and the community developing apps with vision on how to leverage a one-to-many communications framework.

Let’s give this some time. Let’s give it a chance. That is what makes innovation so great. Building and investing in things that do not seem possible, initial ventures that are seemingly dumb and improving the status quo.

Guess I woke up on the right side of the bed this morning.

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I do not get too political on this blog and don’t wish too in this post. But as we live in the world of bailouts and government intervention, Grove’s comments are too timely. I’m not talking about his perspective about vertical integration but his points are quite valid there too. I think his point about government involvement (or not to) is spot on.

“Imagine if in the middle of the computer transformation the Reagan administration worried about the upheaval and tried to rescue this vital industry by making huge investments in leading mainframe companies. The purpose of such investments would have been to protect the viability of these companies. The effect, however, would have been to put the brakes on transformation and all but ensure that the U.S. would lose its leadership role.”

This is a very compelling statement. Think about it. More often than not, people that know me know that I will fall into the camp of letting innovation, letting customers choose and the markets decide. In the long term, letting companies that have fundamental problems and issues figure it out themselves forces creation, value for customers and quite effectively removes bloat from the market. Sometimes sea changes happen, companies go away, new ones enter that have learned from the past and are built for the future. Holding up things for a few more rounds that are clear are not working typically costs us in the short term (money), costs of in the long term (money) and the scariest consequence could prevent new emerging greatness from places we aren’t aware of yet or least expect. Definitely Darwinian but in most cases, the best path.

Something to think about.

Remember that tag line? Thinking back to the 80′s, there are not many ads that stick in my mind as much as the ones from MTV. Maybe “Where’s the Beef?” Push forward a couple of decades to today and the slogan has even more meaning.

Many of you have been asking so I wanted to post a quick update on my doings and whereabouts. And from the intro, you probably guessed it. About four weeks ago I joined MTV Networks and will be working in their Global Digital Media group on an initiative called “Scenic”. I’m sure I’ll be posting more on that in the future.

At a high level, “Scenic” is an initiative aiming to bridge a lot of the innovative platform capabilities that MTV Networks continues to pump out whether it be search, content, social, video and the like with an optimal and flexible way to deploy site features across the network. As you can see from my lack of posts, my first four weeks have not disappointed. It’s been busy but I’m thoroughly enjoying it as I’m working with a great team of people, we are innovating with some of the latest web technologies, working on a complex problem and building a set of digital products that aim to build great online experiences for users.

It is safe to say that MTV has evolved quite a bit in last 20 plus years. What was once MTV has now evolved into a portfolio of some of the best media brands out there. Of course there’s MTV, VH1 and CMT on the music side but in entertainment there’s Spike, Comedy Central and Atom. Leaving out a ton but you get the idea. My daughter is particularly excited that I’ll be working with Dora and Diego over at Nickelodeon. And internationally, there is an enormous amount we are doing as we extend the brands beyond the domestic market. (Apologies for the free plug, MTV Music Spain launched earlier this week!)

To close, check out MTV: The First 24 Hours. Wow.

DALMATIAN : DOG ::

(A) oriole : bird

(B) horse : pony

(C) shark : great white

(D) ant : insect

(E) stock : savings

It seems with growing frequency, I’m pulled into conversations regarding Twitter with many who are just now learning about it.  Great Time article on Twitter by the way.  Yes, I get the often “I just don’t get Twitter.”  I used to think that too when I first heard about the service.  I quickly no longer thought that.  But, recently, I get “Why use Twitter when you can just update your status on Facebook?”  And this throws me right back into the 90′s:  “Do you use the internet?” “Oh yes, I use AOL all the time.”  So back to my SAT analogy:

web : AOL :: Twitter status : Facebook status

Remember the walled garden of AOL, how many users would think that was the web, never venturing out into the wild world of the wide web.  Times change but I see history repeating itself.  The struggle and growing awareness of open and closed systems.  There is a tremendous amount of value being generated off the openness of Twitter than is available within Facebook, where your status network can only be as big who you are willing to have in your personal friends’ list.  The same goes for status in LinkedIn and who you are willing to have in your professional connections’ list.  The situation is certainly more complex than AOL of the 90s but strikingly similar.

Slice of MIT is a new blog that is out discussing (or should I say “giving a small taste”) of MIT life, happenings and what is going on with MIT and alumni.  I’ve been an active reader for the past couple of weeks and it gives a good perspective on the things going on around campus.    Enjoy.

Cover via Amazon

There is no doubt we are in a tough time economically. And in our world of technology, start-ups, entrepreneurship and innovation, we are feeling the pressure more each day. Today Google announced that they will have layoffs of 200 employees, no different than the layoff news that has come from other companies like Microsoft and Yahoo!  However, when it is Google, poster child for success in our space, it makes one take pause yet again.

Everyone is taking a more conservative approach in their outlooks, some classify it as being more thoughtful and prudent, others hunkering for the long haul to the more dramatic “just survive”.  So there are a lot of people trying trying to figure out how to approach the world we are in today.  Entrepreneurs are trying to figure out how to manage their burn rate so their ideas that were so promising just six months ago will find revenue earlier than planned. Investors are looking more closely at the investments they make.  And there are a number of talented people looking for next career opportunities as well.

Here’s the thing though:  Innovation continues to take place.  Investors are still investing in solid business models.  There are many people trying to do great things in their businesses and will hire individuals that will help them be successful.  This is the outlook I am taking in my own personal approach to the current marketplace.  In fact, my view is that you HAVE to.  What is the alternative?  A positive attitude is what is necessary to move us forward.

I was reading Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, to my daughter today.  Oddly, I’d never read this one before but as I was reading it, the story really resonated with me.  Dr. Seuss had it all figured out, before the first internet bubble burst and certainly before the current situation we find ourselves in.  If you are trying to find you way, pay attention to these words and heed the advice:

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

If you need to, read it again. Read the whole book. Whatever your situation, the message is spot on. Rely on yourself.  You know what you know (and you can learn what you need to).  You fully control where you want to go and how to get there.

These infrequent occassions of being sans connection without a mobile device pumping the zeros and ones out in the ether does give you pause to take stock of life (being on a ranch in the middle of Argentina can do it too).  Yes, the connections of Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook are valuable, are changing the personal and business communication landscape and will continue to do so.   We are building life-long connections and friendships through the medium all the time.  That part I did miss when away.

But remember, there are so many other things just as important.  Like the Giants making a huge splash in free agency with fantastic defensive signings of LB Michael Boley, DT Rocky Bernard and DT/DE Chris Canty!  Okay, just kidding. (sort of)  Friends, family, enjoying a nice day outside, going to the gym and going on vacation when you can.  These are just as important.  If you don’t take the time to unplug, even for a bit, I highly recommend it.

So, anyway, now that I’m back and cycling up again, I feel I’m beginning to catch up on my feeds reading and wanted to drop a little note out here.  Flew threw countless number of feeds and postings today.  The one that struck a cord, the latest Kindle.  The Kindle device is vastly improved but that is not what is important.  The ecosystem shift is important, the Kindle iPhone app and deployment to other mobile phones is important.  To me, it has a similar footprint to the movement of apps on the iPhone itself and what that is doing in the mobile space.

Not going to go into it more here but it is clear that there is a movement taking place that could very well be another major shift in the digital media landscape and in “written” content consumption overall.  Media companies must pay attention.  Steve Rubel has a great post from a couple of days ago discussing this very topic.  If you read only one today, I would recommend that be it.  (Well, that would mean you read two today because you had to read this one just to get to that one.