The Future of Geo-Social Apps – Live Blog from Social-Loco
This is my first attempt at live-blogging a panel at a conference. I’ve copied the notes I took below with very few edits to give you an authentic feel for what it was like to be in the audience at Social-Loco. I apologize if they’re a little discombobulated, but that kind of comes with the territory of 6 people talking at the same time on stage.
The Future of Geo-Social Apps
Moderator: Di-Ann Eisnor, VP, Communtiy Geographer, Waze
Panel:
- Ian Heidt, Product Lead, Neer
- Sam Altman, CEO, Loopt
- Alexa Andrzejewski, CEO, Foodspotting
- Robert Scoble, Managing Director, Rackspace
- Andreas Winckler S. Advanced Technology Engineer, BMW Group
It all starts with context.
- It’s before you go out. Can it help you find what you want? (has to go beyond search though)
- Then once you’re at a place, what do you do? Can it help you figure out what to do when you get there?
- Third is sharing your experience with other people.
Notes:
- Location-Based Apps (LBA) help you when you’re searching for answers in a foreign environment. Those are the situations where LBA can be magical.
- There is a lot more potential for LBA in cars.
- All of the censors being integrated into cars can add a lot to the driving experience.
- The censors in your gas tank can power an app that intelligently suggests refueling options based on proximity and price.
- The camera is one of the biggest censors for delivering context in any device, including cars now.
- How do we take all these inputs and make them “human-understandable”?
- We’ll start linking emotional state to locations. How are you feeling in a place? Do you dig the vibe?
- The camera drives augmented reality.
- Color is an app that leverages these techniques. It’s aware of the devices around it. It maps the audio of a room.
- There are multiple ways to get these answers around mobile social. Battery is the killer. What’s the most efficient?
- You can use accelerometers to count steps, audio to recognize ambient noise, etc. What’s the most useful and efficient use of your device’s limited capabilities?
- Mobile devices aren’t just used on the go. They’re used in our homes. How can we add value to the home experience?
- What about location-tracking? Privacy?
- Companies have been tracking our cell phones forever. They tracked OJ in 1992 by his cell phone.
- Personalized control. Balancing user-customization with ease of use can be difficult because privacy fluctuates greatly in different contexts.
- Foursquare is integrating everywhere, which is why it isn’t over-hyped.
- We’re wasting a lot of energy because we haven’t optimized our traffic experience, leveraging data about traffic jams, energy
- You can compete with your friends about who can save energy.
- Only 21% of people are motivated by gaming mechanics – limited potential there.
- We’re refining our understanding of game-mechanics and adapting to what’s useful to people.
- Game-mechanics are a great way to jumpstart a service, but it needs to move the product forward to realize its potential.
Moving to San Francisco – The Online Tools That Helped Make My Relocation Easier
Hire movers. They're worth every penny.
In the middle of February I received an offer to work for Altimeter Group in San Francisco, CA. This was an excellent opportunity to take the next step in my career and work with a very talented, intelligent group of social media experts. The only thing that kept my excitement in check was the prospect of relocating to a city I had never visited before. The first time I ever set foot in San Francisco was actually for the last round of interviews, so moving somewhere so unfamiliar was daunting to say the least.
I had already made a major relocation once before when I moved cross-country from Chicago to Los Angeles three years ago, but that move wasn’t as intimidating because I had a very solid base of friends who moved to LA after graduation. Three of my four best friends lived there along with a large number of friends I had from the theater department at Northwestern University who were trying to succeed in the entertainment industry. It was stressful, but having a network of friends there made the transition much easier.
I knew three people in San Francisco before I moved here and one of them was studying in Japan for a semester. That coupled with the fact that I had never set foot in the city meant I needed to get creative and use every single tool at my disposal to make it work. The following is a list of the most important tools, websites and apps that helped me make this transition as smooth as possible.
Leverage Your Networks
This might seem obvious, but it was an important first step for me so I had to include it. Hopefully you know someone in the city you’re relocating to, and if not, then hopefully the rest of the tools I list will help you. The biggest question mark for me when moving to San Francisco was where to live. Every neighborhood has it’s own character, traditions and style, but I only had two weeks to find an apartment and move in, so the first thing I did was reach out to the three people I knew there to ask them which neighborhoods I should look at in my apartment search. This helped immensely. Even if you don’t know someone in the city you’re moving to, you probably know someone who grew up there or lived there at one point. One tool you can use to help this is searching your friends list on Facebook by hometown and current town.
All I can say is thank God for Craigslist. I can’t imagine apartment hunting without it. I was also lucky that the San Francisco Craigslist pages allowed you to narrow your search for apartments by neighborhoods. This feature is available in New York City, but not Chicago or LA. You can always work around it by searching for the neighborhood’s name, but it can be tough when neighborhoods have nicknames or if the posts only mention a street.
One of the best new websites I discovered in this process was WalkScore, which rates neighborhoods on a hundred point scale based on how walkable they are. Scores under 50 mean you’ll be dependent on a car and anything above a 90 is a “Walker’s Paradise” where your daily errands don’t require a car. It was really important to me that I lived somewhere very walkable, so this was incredibly helpful. It also provides you with lists of restaurants, bars, coffee shops, grocery stores, parks, and other lists of places nearby that can give you a better idea of what’s in the neighborhood. My current apartment’s score is a 97 and I’m thinking about getting rid of my car now. My old apartment in Venice was an 78, which is “Very Walkable”, but the difference between the neighborhoods has definitely made my move much easier. I LOVE how convenient my new neighborhood is and the scores pretty accurately reflects that convenience. Even if you aren’t apartment hunting, it’s interesting to see how your neighborhood scores.
Craigslist and WalkScore gave me a bird’s eye view of possible apartments and what their neighborhoods has to offer, but Google Street View rounded out the experience by giving my the ability to virtually walk down the street. Almost all apartments on Craigslist include a link to Google Maps and from there you can zoom in far enough and actually move around the neighborhood as if you were just out for a walk. It’s a great tool for getting a feel for what the neighborhood looks like without ever stepping foot in the city. This was especially helpful in my search considering how little experience I had with San Francisco before moving here.
The second weekend after I got my offer I drove up to San Francisco to check out apartments. I had been looking at Craigslist nearly every day for potential apartments, but decided the best way to save my favorite ones for follow up was syncing them with my favorite note-taking application, Evernote. Using the Chrome plug-in, I clipped full page craigslist ads to my account, which synced with the app I had installed on my iPhone. That way I had access to the pictures, links, phone numbers and addresses in each post on my phone without having to re-search Craigslist. It’s true you could create a folder of bookmarks and then sync it to your phone’s web browser, but Evernote allows you to write your own notes above the webpage that’s been clipped. So after I’d check out an apartment I’d give it a rating and type in any important things like “Windows look out onto an ugly brick wall. Feels like a prison.” or “Landlord is really friendly and street parking nearby is pretty easy”. If you aren’t using Evernote yet, I’d strongly recommend checking it out. It’s simply the best note-taking application I’ve used yet.
Apartment Application + Credit Report
One of the most annoying parts of any apartment search is filling out multiple applications that ask for the same details. Knowing that I was going to check out at least 10 apartments and that I might want to apply for up to five or more of them, I decided I’d create my own application. I google searched “apartment application” and found this document. Applications can vary between management companies though, so I just used it as a guideline and created word documents for each section. Looking at a couple applications will let you know what to include in the document, but mine included previous addresses (including the dates I lived there, management company contact information and monthly rent), my employment history, professional contacts and personal references. I also included a credit report so I could avoid some of the application fees, but most management companies will require you to submit to a background/credit check anyway. Only two management companies accepted my credit report, but it only cost me $15 and ended up saving me about $40. Put all these documents into an envelope that you can hand to the landlord when he’s showing you the apartment and you come off as very prepared and responsible. Plus, it’s great to just have all that information saved in a document that you can update and use in the future.
One of the most intimidating aspects of moving to San Francisco was the fact that I’d have to rebuild my social life from the ground up. I’ve made a very concerted effort to get out of the apartment and explore the city, but exploring isn’t enough. I generally find it pretty easy to make friends, but it’s tough when you don’t have other friends to introduce you to their social circles. Meetup.com is a website where you can signup for “meetups” which are basically groups that schedule events open to the public. Think high school clubs for adults. There’s a meetup for nearly any interest you could have: meditation, yoga, photography, writing, professional networking, sports team fans, religion, live music…. and if the meetup you’re looking for doesn’t exist, go ahead and create it! It’s a great way to meet people with common interests and everyone who joins is usually very friendly because the whole point of it is to make new friends. Just be careful about your email communication settings. Joining a bunch of meetups can quickly flood your inbox, which can discourage you from seeing the value in the service and using it.
One of my favorite TV shows is Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on The Food Network. The food always looks incredible and the restaurants have a ton of character. ”Flavortown, USA” is one of the catch phrases from the host, Guy Fieri, as in “Wow, partner, that meatloaf sandwich is a trip to Flavortown, USA.” He has a ton of great catch phrases like that, but someone turned this one into a website that maps out all of the restaurants he’s featured in the show on a searchable google map. Each restaurant has it’s own page with details and most include the actual video clip from the show so you can see their signature dishes and what it’s like inside before you visit. This website is now one of the first places I go anytime I have a road trip planned and I’ve never been disappointed. In a new city, it can help you explore new neighborhoods and many locals usually know about the places, so it can often be a nice conversation starter.
This is a San Francisco-specific tool I’ve been able to use, but it’s been one of the most useful iPhone apps I’ve ever downloaded. It contains over 50 different apps, including tools to locate Wifi hotspots, tours, restaurants, bars, nightlife and guides to help you navigate public transportation, find local events and read local news among many other things. It’s a jack-of-all-trades app for living in San Francisco that would be helpful to anyone in the area, not just those of us who are new. If you aren’t moving to San Francisco, just try searching your phone’s App Store for your city’s name and see what comes up. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you find.
What did I miss?
Those were the most helpful tools I used during my relocation to San Francisco and I’ve been very pleased with just how smooth a transition it has been. I’ll keep adding websites, apps and other tools as I find them, but I’m curious to hear what other people have used. Do you have any suggestions for people moving to San Francisco or relocating in general? Please leave any feedback you have in the comments section below!
I’ve Joined Altimeter Group!
I am very excited to announce that I’ve joined the Altimeter Group! I’ve posted it already on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, but I wanted to announce it here because I’m expecting to devote more time here as a result of this career move. I’m taking on the role of a researcher in support of the incredible analysts at Altimeter and will be spending most of my time working closely with Charlene Li (twitter, blog), Alan Webber (twitter, blog), and Jeremiah Owyang (twitter, blog).
Much of my research at Interpret LLC focused on the new technology disrupting the entertainment industry, but I’m eager to expand that into studying how disruptive technology (and especially social media) are affecting the best business practices in other industries. The level of research into this area at Altimeter Group is unparalleled so I’m both excited and humbled to join their excellent team at this time.
Of course this means a big move for me personally as I just relocated from LA to San Francisco, so keep an eye out for a post on all the websites and digital tools I used to aid my relocation.
Are Movie Status Updates Too Antisocial for Social Media?
The recent news about Netflix dropping their integration with Facebook has me puzzled. One frequent suggestion I see in industry news and among social media experts is that movie studios should push social media initiatives because people enjoy talking about the movies they watch. It makes sense intuitively – movies are an important part of our culture and many of our social lives. Even so much so that there’s a stigma to watching a movie by yourself (it’s really not bad, especially for quiet movies). If movies are such a common topic of conversation and have so many avid fans, then why are Netflix users (the most active movie renters out there) so indifferent about sharing their movie ratings on Facebook? Is it because posting something to your Facebook wall isn’t a valuable enough social behavior? Are our experiences with movies SO communal that it’s awkward to express a written opinion from a single voice and point of view that isn’t necessarily seeking validation or trying to stir controversy? It’s possible the real value of a movie is the shared experience, not the individual experience, at least not the individual experience expressed in the form of a social network status update. Posting a status update of the stars you gave a movie doesn’t actually say much about what you thought of the movie. There has to be a way for fans to express their opinions about movies in a way that is natural online.
There is one service that is slowly growing on me. It’s a mobile app called GetGlue that lets you check into media you’re consuming in real time, like a Foursquare for the movies and TV shows you watch. The feature that sets it apart from Foursquare (and one that I WISH Foursquare would integrate) is that it asks if you’d like to write a review. Since I started using Foursquare, I’ve wondered why they don’t have a review system so they could compete (or work collaboratively) with Yelp. It would add SO much more value to both the users and Foursquare. Back to GetGlue though – I think they’re on the right track, but I also wouldn’t bet the farm on them. I don’t get the branding behind their name. ”GetGlue” makes it sound like a registry for an elementary school teacher. It might catch on if a big enough TV show or movie launched a compelling promotion campaign, but the best chance for it to really make an impact would likely be getting acquired and re-branded by Facebook. If GetGlue’s functionality were added to Facebook, it might be able to get enough people engaged to where you could chat with friends who checked into the same movie/TV show’s fan page. I think service will eventually lean more towards conversation and further from simple status updates.
What do you think about checking into and writing reviews of movies/TV shows (or restaurants and bars in relation to Yelp)? If you’re a Netflix user, why wouldn’t you want to share your movie ratings on Facebook? Is all this simply over-sharing? As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
iPhone iSsues
At one point I was the perfect Apple customer – I owned a Mac Laptop, iPod, iPhone, iPad, iSoul… everything but an AppleTV and Mobile Me account. Apparently it wasn’t enough for the replace-everything-in-two-years business model Apple had set up for their customers. I’m going to try to be as level-headed as I can in this post, but Apple has pushed me to the breaking point this week. I’ll explain….
A couple months back, the vibrate button on my iPhone stopped working. It wasn’t a huge deal, so I didn’t rush to get it fixed. I didn’t realize until later that my missed calls had skyrocketed because I couldn’t hear the ringer in my pocket. So I looked up the issue online and found out it’s fairly common and that Apple would try restoring it first and then replacing it if that didn’t work. I tested the restore solution to find out it didn’t fix anything (it’s like restarting your wireless router. You always try it and then call your internet service provider’s help line to have them tell you to try restarting it. Even though you explain that you already did that, you do it again to amuse them and…. IT’S FIXED! I still have no clue how that works.). Anyway, I took my iPhone into the Apple store to have it replaced. No problem there. The Genius Bar, while usually filled with snarky little mac fanboys, was helpful and quick. I got a replacement 3Gs and it was working, no problems. Although it didn’t have my settings yet, I could still use it before I restored it from my last backup saved the night before.
Why is there always a "Genius" wearing a stupid hat like that?
I get it home and plug it into my PowerBook to restore my settings. I select my backup from the night before and walk away to let it do its thing. A couple minutes later, I check on it and iTunes has stopped syncing. I was expecting this to take the annoying couple hours like it normally does to restore an iPhone, so I immediately knew something was wrong. When I picked up my phone, it was just a black screen with the white apple logo. I couldn’t get to the home screen or even reboot it. It gave me an error saying it was stuck in recovery mode and none of the google searches I did could help me troubleshoot it, so it was time for round 2 at the Genius Bar.
This time the “Genius” Bar wasn’t as helpful. First it was annoying that they made me register an appointment when there was nobody in front of me. I couldn’t just walk up and start talking to someone. I understand why they have that process, but when the store is empty and there are all these employees just standing around, they should just skip that step. Anyway, back to the real issue. I tried explaining what happened to the “Genius”, but like most macboys, his below average listening skills made him miss the part where I told him I was in the day before and this was a broken replacement iPhone. So he went through the same process of trying to restore it and he couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t boot up. By the second time I got through explaining the issue in extreme detail, he got it. He still tried to restore it because that’s apparently the solution to any problem the “Geniuses” have figured out. When the screen turned purple and started flashing green and yellow bars, he finally gave up and replaced the replacement iPhone.
After 30 minutes of this, I was just glad to walk out with a new (read refurbished, but new to me, so who cares) iPhone. Having been without a phone for an entire day, I tried calling my Dad to check in with my family in Cincinnati. The only problem was that I couldn’t hear anything. It said it was “calling”, but I couldn’t hear it ringing. I tried putting it on speakerphone, but that didn’t work. I could play voicemails and music, but nothing was coming out of the ear speaker at the top of the phone. Thankfully I hadn’t even made it half a block away from the Apple store, so I turned back to have the “Geniuses” look into this new problem. Once I got it, they couldn’t believe I was experiencing ANOTHER issue. Thank god this time they didn’t make me check in and didn’t bother restoring the phone. They just gave me another and I was out of the store in 10 minutes.
"Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name...." (points if you get the reference)
So now I’m on my third replacement iPhone in 2 days, but at least I didn’t have to pay for any replacements or put anything in the mail. It really could have been a lot worse. Apple’s warranty is the best out there. Period. If I had a Blackberry or Android phone, I would have had to deal with people at an AT&T or Verizon store who know even less about cell phone troubleshooting than Apple Store “Geniuses” and it would have been a much more difficult process to replace my phone. I wasn’t out of the woods though. The issues with my first replacement iPhone came up when I tried syncing it, so I knew that would be the test. I wasn’t going to trust this new phone until all of my music, apps and settings looked like my old phone.
As discussed in my previous post, I am the proud owner of a 15″ PowerBook G4 that I got at the end of my Sophomore year of college. It’s 5.5 years old, but it’s still hanging in there. Sadly, Apple has given it a 10 count and decided they’re done with it. I found this out when I tried upgrading my iPhone from iOS 4.1 to 4.2 and discovered the new update would only work on Mac OS 10.5 and my machine was a 10.4 (and because they switched to Intel processors after the version of my computer, I can’t upgrade to 10.5). To make matters worse, when I clicked on the “Update” button to download the new iPhone update, it acted like I was trying to update iTunes and kept telling me “You already have the latest version of iTunes”. I decided I’d just sync it and deal with the iOS upgrade problem at another time. Except this time iTunes had lost my backup from 2 days earlier! It showed up when I tried syncing the first replacement phone, but this time it was asking me to sync back to November. SUPER annoyed, I selected it anyway, but it only synced my photos, contacts and general settings…. no apps or music!
Somebody get this guy a scotch.
After making myself a stiff drink, I became determined to ninja my way out of this situation. I’m the DIGITAL ANALYST for Christ’s sake! I can’t let this little machine defeat me. I racked my brain for possible work-arounds to fix my syncing issue since restoring it didn’t work. I figured I’d try upgrading the iOS to 4.2 on my PC laptop. Of course this couldn’t be a simple process either. When iTunes finished downloading the file and was “processing” it, my “network timed out” and couldn’t finish downloading the file. I tried re-downloading it, restarting iTunes, restarting my computer… nothing worked. I googled the issue and a forum said to disable my Antivirus temporarily and that should fix it. While it did fix it and iTunes finished downloading the update, I was still annoyed I needed to disable my Antivirus protection in the first place. It’s a standard Antivirus program called Kaspersky that is given away with every laptop sold at Best Buy, so I know I’m not the only person who experienced the issue, but I digress…
I finished downloading the update and upgraded my phone to iOS 4.2. Hoping this would solve the sync issues I was having with my PowerBook, I plugged it in and crossed my fingers, but of course, nothing comes easy. Upgrading to iOS 4.2 made my iPhone completely incompatible with my old computer. iTunes won’t even recognize it and just spits an error back at me any time I try to make them play nice.
At this point, you must be wondering why I don’t just sync it with my new computer. Here’s why…. my iTunes music folder is saved on an external hard drive. I keep all my files there so if anything were to happen to my old laptop, everything important would be backed up externally. So when I got my new computer, I tried connecting it to the external hard drive, but nothing happened. The computer saw that something had been plugged in, but it wouldn’t let me open a folder or anything. Turns out, formatting it to work with my PowerBook made it incompatible with any 64-bit Windows operating system. So I couldn’t transfer the files or even access them from my new computer. I discovered this issue when I first bought this laptop and again tried to troubleshoot it online, download new drivers, etc. etc., but nothing worked. Since I don’t have a “Genius” Bar for my Samsung Laptop, I talked to the IT guy at my work.
Turns out that I could plug the hard drive into a new Mac and it would recognize it because the new Macs with intel processors have a driver necessary to read old Mac hard drives. So the solution was that I’d have to first transfer the files to a newer Mac with an intel processor, then reformat the hard drive to work with my PC, then transfer the files from the newer Mac back to my hard drive. That should in theory work.
Until I can get that worked out, I’m going to have to be patient. At least this phone seems to work, so I won’t have to go back and deal with any other “Geniuses”. A problem for the interim was that I don’t really use my phone as a phone. I really use it for the apps. I’m addicted to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, HuffingtonPost and Solitaire, so without those apps, my phone feels worthless. Well, while I was updating my iOS, I changed the email address used as my login from an old account to a newer one, thinking it wouldn’t be an issue. Sadly, I changed it right after my phone had synced, so it was still using my old email address as my iTunes username and I couldn’t change it to my new one.
This was an easy problem though. I’d just re-sync my phone and it would recognize my new iTunes account settings. Easy peasy one two thre…. ERROR! I guess Apple thought I hadn’t experienced enough crazy-stupid issues over the past 24 hours, so it tossed this curveball at me. It was saying I needed verify my account AND that my account was verrified in the SAME ERROR MESSAGE! Had hell just frozen over? I couldn’t believe it. Of course I turned to Google and found a post from someone having the same issue:
I really thought I’d seen it all, but this was a new level of WTF APPLE?! I followed the steps from the linked issue above and finally fixed my iTunes account after working on it for close to an hour. At least now I’ve downloaded my most important apps, so I can make it through until I transfer my external hard drive and can restore from my backup registered in November. I’m not even expecting to recover the backup I made 3 nights ago… part of me is just giving up after all of these iSsues.
For those of you who have made it this far into my longest post here, I apologize for the rant. You’re probably thinking, “You’re the Digital Analyst dude. You should understand tech becomes obsolete and buy gadgets more often” and there’s some truth to that. My problem with this whole situation is that it could have been avoided, but Apple decided my computer was obsolete. It wasn’t that it stopped working or that iTunes wouldn’t work on it or anything else. I mean, it’s not even 6 years old. I’m mad because I bought a $2000+ laptop 5 years ago and assumed it would work for at least this long, but really I expected it to go 7 years before I recycled it for the metal. I expect 2 year life cycles on iPods and iPhones, but a computer is a much bigger investment.
Is 5 years the maximum shelf life we can expect from computers now? I’m sure if I asked a “Genius” at an Apple Store that they’d tell me their new MacBook Pros will last longer than that, because that’s what they told me when I bought my PowerBook 5 years ago. That’s why I upgraded the ram when it started slowing down. That’s why I manually took the entire machine apart to replace the keyboard after some coke had been spilled on it. I invested time and money into keeping that laptop chugging along, but then Apple decides to stop supporting Mac OS 10.4 and I’m screwed.
What would happen if Microsoft decided to stop supporting Windows XP? People would be up in arms! Rioting in the streets. They bought computers 5 years ago that still work just fine today and then Microsoft decides to drop them? That’s not how you treat customers who have been loyal to your product for this long. Of course Microsoft will eventually stop supporting XP and new updates will only be available for Vista and Windows 7 computers, but at least they’re supporting their products and proving that they can still works 5 years later.
I Was a Mac. Now I’m a PC.
Although I have always vehemently disagreed, some have called me a Mac Fanboy in the past. I resent this label because I think it represents a very immature, biased and unbalanced perspective on consumer electronics. I’m not saying all Mac Fanboys are like that, but c’mon… we’ve all been in an Apple store when one of the customer service reps goes on a tirade about how bad Microsoft and Windows are, blah blah blah. They couldn’t find a nice word to say about Steve Ballmer if their life depended on it. I like to think that I approach my decision-making a little more balanced than that. If you look at my desk though, it’s a sea of Apple… (once upon a time, an iPad) iPods, an iPhone 3Gs, Airport Extreme and my dear PowerBook. I got my PowerBook when I was a Sophomore in college 5 years ago. When you’ve had a machine for that long, you form a special bond with it. It’s seen me through a study abroad, college graduation, 3 cross-country moves, love and heart break, joy and disappointment. It survived a lot of life experiences that I didn’t always think I’d make it out of. The only big thing I’ve owned longer was my second car (8 years).
THAT SAID, I wasn’t always happy with my PowerBook because I got the last model before they started using Intel chips, so I couldn’t upgrade to the newest OS. I was content with my Tiger, but slowly the Internet left my computer in the dust. The first major frustration I had with my PowerBook was that it was too old to sync with my iPad (RIP), but the kicker was when I was no longer able to watch streaming video of any quality without it going haywire. The battery also died, so it had to be plugged in all the time, and there was a major kernel issue where it would shut down without warning and only turn on when it felt like it (I swear…. I tried all sorts of voodoo, witchcraft, karma, prayer and incense, but no key combination, trouble-shooting guide or mac fanboy had a solution for me). This morning, I decided enough is enough! I need to buy a new computer.
I had been shopping around and weighing options for a couple months anyway, debating whether I’d get a MacBook Pro or pick up an iMac and use a iPad for mobile computing. I’d had a laptop since I went to college, but the more I thought about what I needed from a computer, portability wasn’t high on the list. I had reasoned that I could save the money on a MacBook Pro (my customized version cost about $2,350 before taxes… 15″ high-res antiglare screen, 2.53 GHz Core i5, upgraded 7200rpm hard drive with MSFT Office), and just get an iMac ($1400… 21.5″ screen, 3.06 GHz, trackpad + magic mouse with MSFT Office). My rational for making my home computer immobile was that I used my iPhone for any personal mobile computing needs and that I could use a laptop from work when I needed it.
Well, speaking of that work laptop, I have it set up right next to my poor old broken PowerBook and after a YouTube video wouldn’t load 2 nights ago, I decided to switch over and use the work laptop more regularly. It’s nothing special… just a Dell Lattitude E5500, but it gets the job done and while writing a couple emails this morning, it dawned on me that there wasn’t ANY reason for me to buy a Mac over a PC. So I went out and after a couple hours at two Best Buys, I picked up a Samsung Q430 laptop for $799 ($850 after MS Office). I put a lot of thought into what my specific needs from a computer were and decided I just didn’t need to spend the money on a Mac. I’m going to avoid comparing specs and weighing processor speeds against screen resolutions. Here are the major reasons I switched back to a PC:
7 Reasons I Bought a PC Instead of a Mac
1.) PRICE – After measuring the space on my desk and reading an article about unemployed people my age, I decided I couldn’t go with an iMac to save money because I would eventually need a laptop and a desktop is too limited. I’d have to buy a netbook or laptop to compliment it eventually anyway, so once that decision was made, I was left staring at a $2350 laptop, wondering whether it was actually worth that much money. Considering the quality of laptops Sony and Samsung were producing, I simply couldn’t justify buying a laptop 3X more expensive when the only discernable difference performance wise for me would be a 9 hour battery life vs. a 4 hour battery life.
2.) MICROSOFT OFFICE 2010 – This was an area where Microsoft just flat-out beat Mac. Fanboys will defend iWork until they’re blue in the face, but Keynote just simply isn’t on the same level as PowerPoint. Microsoft really nailed the user-interface when they redesigned the Office suite. I’ve stayed late at the office many nights because I had a PowerPoint presentation I needed to edit and I knew it would be a million times easier and quicker to just do it on my PC at work than try to work in Keynote or even the Mac Office suite. Anyone who’s worked with the Mac Office applications know they’re designed nothing like the PC experience, which I found very frustrating. Most of the functionality is in the Mac version as far as I can tell, but it really made me appreciate how well organized PowerPoint is on the PC. If I bought a Mac, I’d have to run Parallels so I could use Microsoft Office within Windows (additional costs not incorporated into the already crazy price tag…. see reason #1).
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The new Office 2011 suite for Mac looks like a significant upgrade over the older versions, so I’ll have to walk back some of my criticism on the Mac office experience. The old Office suite really did affect my Mac experience so much that I thought it was all a plan at Microsoft to get consumers to switch back to Windows. Obviously, that didn’t seem sane enough to write in the first version of this post, but that’s how frustrating the old Office apps were on a Mac.
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3.) APPS – This was probably the straw that broke this camel’s back (aside from reason #1). Getting a new MacBook Pro meant I’d get all of the iLife applications, which I was pretty excited about. The new Mac OS applications are great, but I don’t see as much value in native computer apps anymore. When I really look at my day-to-day life, I use Google for email, contacts, calendar and to-do’s,in addition to storing/organizing files. I still have to use Excel, PowerPoint and Word, but those are basically the only non-web based programs I run regularly besides iTunes and TweetDeck. When I thought about all of those programs, most of the PC apps were either on par or head and shoulder above their counterparts on a Mac. I was excited about getting iPhoto for a while, but realized I don’t take many pictures, and when I do take them, I upload them to Facebook immediately. I wanted to use Flickr or Picasa, but neither site really stuck with me for some reason. Now that Facebook has begun seriously upgrading their Photos app, my next major personal project will be to upload every single picture I own to Facebook albums. Similarly, I’ll just upload my videos to YouTube and save anything else in folders on my external hard drive.
4.) PRICE – Did I mention I saved over $1,400?
5.) WINDOWS 7 – You have to give credit where credit is due, and Windows 7 is a quality operating system. Microsoft was able to correct many of the annoyances of Vista (thank God I’ve barely seen any pop-ups since setting this bad boy up). It’s clean. It’s well-organized. It’s not as pretty as Snow Leopard, but it’s not the ugly step-child either. I spend most of my time looking at tabs in Chrome anyway, so the aesthetics of it all aren’t too important to me in the end. I just need it to work.
6.) VIRUSES – Many people cite this as the main reason they switch from a PC to a Mac, but over the past couple years, I haven’t gotten a single virus on any PC I’ve used because I always have some sort of baseline virus protection and I’m not an idiot. If I don’t know who sent me an email, I’m certainly not going to open the attachment. You can avoid most viruses with simple common sense. Make sure you’re downloading from secure websites, read the comments on Torrent files if you choose to risk it, and set up a little protection from mal-ware. It’s not that difficult. Macs might not have as many vulnerabilities to viruses, but they do exist and as Mac’s share of the market increases, they’re turning into a bigger and bigger target for malicious programmers.
7.) PRICE – Just in case you missed points 1 and 4, $2,350 minus $950 is $1,400. I just paid for a vacation to Costa Rica that I’ve been planning for over a year! I just really couldn’t find any justification in spending an extra $1,400 for a MacBook Pro. It felt like buying a BMW when the new Honda Accords look pretty snazzy and still get you from point A to point B. Sure, BMW’s are beautiful, well built machines. I have nothing against BMW. I hope to one day own one even, but I couldn’t justify buying one right now and I couldn’t justify buying a Mac either.
I’m still a big fan of Apple, but right now, their computer products just aren’t as differentiated as the rest of their product lines. The iPod, iPhone and iPad all have rivals on the market, but I don’t think any other devices are on the same level (Android is close, but the variance of quality in their apps are holding them back).
I’ve spent the day setting up and “breaking in” my new Samsung laptop, and so far I couldn’t be happier with my purchase. I wrote this post with it and the more I type, the more I fall in love with it. I couldn’t believe how many mid-size laptops tried to cram a full number pad onto the keyboard. It pushed everything off center, throwing off the spacing and how you look at the screen. I was not a fan at all. Some companies still design really poor laptops (I’m looking at you Dell, HP, Toshiba and Gateway… I trust those brands about as far as I can throw them), but Samsung and Sony both design beautiful machines that are reliable and perform well. What more can you really ask for (aside from a $1,400 rebate)?
I’m curious though. I hear about people switching from PC to Mac all the time, but I haven’t heard as many instances where people switch back to a PC after having a Mac. It’s time to speak up! Why did you switch back? Do you regret it or miss anything about having a Mac? Please post your experiences and thoughts to the comments section.
Facebook Places: It’s All About the Advertising
I originally wrote this post for Interpret LLC’s blog. Please check it out and read the other interesting articles by my colleagues.
Everyone in the social media space has predicted 2010 to be the beginning of the ‘location war.’ Smartphone applications that let you ‘check-in’ to places you visit in real life finally began bridging the digi-social experience with the real world. Foursquare took the early lead in the location war, but Facebook has stolen its thunder with the roll-out of its own location-based service called ‘Places.’ While many are calling Places a direct competitor for Foursquare, Facebook’s strategy is markedly different and surprisingly compatible with Foursquare’s services.
The biggest difference between Places and Foursquare is that Facebook has not gamified their service. The points, mayorships and badges built into the Foursquare experience have been very popular with early adopters, and Facebook’s decision to not incentivize check-ins with anything beyond the satisfaction of self-expression has been seen as the only chink in Places’ armor. This decision against gamifying their location-based service seems more indicative of Facebook’s overall strategy in regards to Foursquare and other similar services like Gowalla, Loopt and MyTown than an oversight in the development of their own services. Instead of trying to compete with them and push them out of the space, Facebook has left its Places API open for Foursquare and other services to compete within their platform because they don’t care about the actual act of checking into locations as much as they care about the user-data those check-ins can add to their website’s advertising value.
Facebook knows it’s on the top of the social media mountain looking down at the rest of the networks trying to climb their way up, and with the lead they’ve surmounted in active users, it would seem paranoid and borderline vindictive for them to try to squash smaller platforms – they simply aren’t a legitimate threat to Facebook. They’ve recognized that they can let the other companies do all the leg work developing unique and engaging user-experiences while they gather the increasingly valuable data each of these services generate. Location-based check-ins are a gold mine of tangible profiling data that Facebook can use to develop more targeted advertising, leading to higher premiums and more specific opportunities for building relationships with location-centric advertisers.
One of the most important ancillary effects Places will have is the spur in creation of Pages for local businesses. When someone creates a place to check into on Facebook, businesses have the opportunity to ‘claim’ that Place, given they provide proof that they are the actual owners, and once a Place has been claimed, Facebook automatically creates a Page for that Place. Integrating Places into their Pages platform will give local businesses a strong incentive to build or increase their social media presence. Once more local businesses have created their own Facebook Page, they can then be sold advertising targeted to people who have checked-in to their business. The Pages will also likely become destinations for promotions, coupons and other deals which will increase their value to users, lead to stronger engagement, more time spent on Facebook, and again, higher premiums for their advertising content.
In the end, Facebook isn’t betting against companies like Foursquare, they’re betting on them. They’re betting they will continue developing apps that deliver highly engaging user-experiences that integrate seamlessly with and add value to Facebook. Facebook is very comfortable letting Foursquare play with their point system, badges and mayorships, as long as those check-ins are posted to Facebook walls and integrated into their ever-growing stream of user-profiling data.
I lost my iPad. AKA, THE END OF THE WORLD… or is it?
A tragedy occurred on Thursday. As I was flying back from NYC from my second business trip ever (first one was the previous week… yay new professional adventures!), I made one of the most stupid mistakes I’ve ever made with something I own/love. I left my iPad in the magazine pocket of my plane seat. I did not realize this until about 6 hours later and have come to grips with the fact that I will likely never retrieve my baby. I went through different ideas of tracking IP addresses connecting to my email account wirelessly on it (the email accounts should update automatically if it’s connected to a wifi router), but while I KNOW it is possible to locate my iPad by identifying the IP address connecting to it, law enforcement is basically stuck in the pager-era, so this sounds like a fool’s mission. If anyone has any ideas on how to find locate my iPad (no, I don’t have MobileME), I’m all ears.
I’m really torn up over it because of the apps I had on there… I can’t watch Netflix as easily in my bed before I go to sleep. I’m stuck on my high score in Fruit Ninja (greatest game EVER), giving my co-workers an opportunity to beat my rather impressive, if I do say so myself, high score. Even worse, I’m halfway through the book Linchpins by Seth Godin and I do not want to have to buy it again to finish the book (same with Blink by Malcolm Gladwell). My Powerbook was too old to sync with my iPad, so neither were backed up (major frustration… I’m definitely in the market for a new computer, so you can expect a post on that to explain my decision-making process once I’ve made up my mind). I’m going to investigate whether I can get those ebooks somehow. I figure Apple has a record of me purchasing it through my iTunes account, so I should be able to get access to it on another computer.
The most interesting part of this experience though has been the realization of the role the iPad played in my life. If it’s true that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, I wish the iPad gave me more to miss. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s purely a luxury device in my life and not something I can justify purchasing again only a month and a half after my first purchase. Basically, I can live without it. This is slightly depressing in hindsight, but also depressing in foresight because I know I’ll eventually buy another one…. I’m debating whether I’ll wait for just the price to drop or if I’ll have the patience to wait for the second generation. Right now, I’m thinking I’ll wait for the second generation. By then the apps will have evolved into iPad-worthy experiences (which I can’t currently claim… it’s a nascent marketplace though, so the sky’s the limit on innovation within the space), the price should drop and they should have integrated the front-facing camera for video chat on it. I feel like the only reason the first version of the iPad didn’t have it is because they wanted to wait to release it with the iPhone 4. From a business perspective, I completely understand the roll-out plan, but from an early adopter consumer perspective, I expect more from Apple and I know the camera is a really easy feature to integrate. I digress though…
After realizing that I didn’t need an iPad in my life, I began considering which devices were truly essential for me anymore. The first one that I KNOW I couldn’t live without is my iPhone. I rely on it way too heavily. It’s my primary device for interfacing with email, social networks, web search, communicating with people, organizing my life… the list goes on. It’s been integrated into so many parts of my life that if I lost my iPhone tomorrow, I don’t think I could make it more than 2-3 days before buying a replacement. This was a shocking revelation to me because I couldn’t put my home computer in the same category. It certainly meets a different set of needs, but in the end, I found it didn’t meet any crucial needs that my iPhone couldn’t accomplish within a short period of time. There’s no replacement for saving all of my old files, navigating pictures, or full-on web browsing, but the more I thought about it, the less these features mattered. Almost all of my pictures are uploaded directly to Facebook or Twitter from my phone and I’ve started using Google Docs to save Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. I have all of my historic files backed up on an external hard drive, so even if I lost my laptop, I’d still have the files that really mattered. The fact is, if I lost my laptop or spilled water on it or whatever other tragedies I can imagine, I wouldn’t need to replace it within a week to continue functioning on any level that mattered. It would certainly be inconvenient not to have access to a full web browser, but that’s the main thing I use my computer for anyway and the Safari web browser on my iPhone meets nearly all of my essential browsing needs. My situation would be different if I relied on my home PC for work, but I try my best to finish work in the office, on the Windows-based PC my employer provides me, and keep work-related tasks separate from home. Work-life separation is very important to me, which is part of my explanation/excuse for not updating this blog more frequently.
So I’ve found that the only truly indispensable gadget in my life is my iPhone. Although I’m not glad that I went through the agony of losing my newest toy, I have learned an important lesson about what truly is essential in my life. If I were more willing to consider a ‘disconnected’ lifestyle as an option, my iPhone wouldn’t even qualify anymore, but let’s not get crazy here.
Which devices in your life are truly indispensable? If you lost a device, what true impact would it have on your life beyond simple convenience? These are important questions because the relationships we form with technology can have a profound impact on our daily lives.
Can Twitter Help Me Lose Weight?
My weight has been an issue since I was 8 years old when my parents got divorced. Homemade meals and playing with my friends outside turned into Wendy’s kid’s meals and watching hours of TV every day. Although I came to terms with my parent’s divorce pretty quickly, the exercise habits and poor diet I developed as a coping mechanism to those events have haunted me ever since. Besides a period of time my freshman year of high school when I had an eating disorder and lost 45 pounds, I have never really been able to lose more than 10-15 pounds and have never been able to keep it off for more than a month or two.
I reached my all-time highest weight, 255 lbs., in February after my Mom passed away. In fact, the very last thing my Mom said to me before she passed away was that she wanted me to get serious about losing weight because she had always been overweight and felt that it held her back from reaching her full potential. She had communicated this point in the past, but there was an urgency and tone about it this time where she wasn’t just encouraging me to live a healthy lifestyle, but was challenging me in the way a concerned friend would. It was a wake-up call before she passed away, but took on even greater importance when it became the last conversation I’d ever have with her.
After I got back to LA, I decided to really focus my energy around living a healthy lifestyle. In order to jump-start this goal, I decided to do the Master Cleanse for 10 days. If you’ve never heard of it before, the Master Cleanse is commonly referred to as the “lemonade diet”. It’s a fast where you only drink a mixture of freshly squeezed organic lemon juice, grade B organic maple syrup, organic cayenne pepper and filtered water. You also do daily salt water flushes, where you chug a liter of salt water to clean our your colon every morning. I always thought this sounded extreme and never supported my Sister or Mom when they did it, but after looking into it more, I decided to give it a shot and it ended up being a GREAT decision. I highly recommend it. I made it the full 10 days without food, lost 20 pounds, and never felt hungry. One of the craziest things I experienced was that my sense of smell went off the charts. It was kind of bizarre, but awesome. Mostly, the cleanse helped me redefine my relationship with food. I began realizing that I didn’t need to consume a large amount of food to feel full and energized. I actually had more energy during the cleanse than I normally felt, which surprised me a lot.
While I was doing some research on the Master Cleanse, I came across a lot of people who suggested keeping a diary or posting daily videos online as a way to motivate yourself. I’m not much of a journal-guy and online videos seemed a little intense, so I tweeted about my experience. This turned out to be a great decision because I got a lot of positive support from both my Twitter followers and friends on Facebook (my tweets automatically update my Facebook status).
After I finished the Master Cleanse, feeling empowered to finally conquer my health goals, I began recording my meals and exercise in an app on my iPhone called Lose It! I liked the app, but found it difficult to maintain when eating at restaurants where the nutritional information wasn’t clearly posted. When adding meals became even slightly inconvenient, it really killed my motivation to keep up with it so I started looking for alternatives.
I played with the idea of starting a blog to record all of my meals/exercise, but judging by the frequency I update this blog, I knew that would be doomed from the beginning. Whatever system I came up with would have to be based in my iPhone because it’s the only device I carry with me everywhere I go, but I also wanted some sort of an accountability system that wouldn’t be tough enough to encourage me to cheat. I didn’t want to use my primary Twitter account to record the food I ate because I know how annoying food updates are on Twitter. I’ve become very comfortable with my Twitter stream’s mix of news and personal thoughts, but adding a bunch of “I had a smoothie for breakfast” and “Just finished a 50 minute spin class” tweets seemed like it would be annoying for my followers who tend to expect my updates to revolve around digital media and current events.
The compromise I’ve come up with is to start a separate Twitter account where I’ll only tweet about my health goals. I’m going to use this new Twitter screen name to record my exercise and everything I eat/drink. My hope is that by making my health habits public, it will force me to become more aware of the quality of my choices and eventually lead to embracing a lifestyle I can enjoy without shame. Part of my inspiration for this plan is that I noticed my eating habits are very different when I’m with my friends compared to when I eat alone. Eating with friends holds me to a level of accountability I don’t feel when I eat by myself and I almost always make healthier decisions.
I’m excited about this solution because I think it balances my need for public accountability with a system casual enough that I won’t be tempted to cheat and omit snacks or drinks out of fear of letting myself or others down. My goal is to eat healthily 80% or more of the time, but I’m not going to kid myself into thinking that it’ll be 100%. I’ve always been my own toughest critic, so it’s important to me that my public accountability system be there for positive encouragement and not to chastise me for getting Ben & Jerry’s instead of fro-yo.
If you’d like to be a part of this experiment, feel free to follow @zak_healthlog. The tweets won’t be very interesting, but I don’t expect even my closest friends to read all of them. I think just knowing that people could read the updates will be enough peer pressure to keep me honest.
Have you used social networks or other online accountability systems to achieve your health goals? Any tips or feedback on how to make this plan work? Feel free to add your thoughts to the comments below or @ reply me on Twitter.
UPDATE – 6/19/10*********************************
Twitter did not help me lose weight. Hahaha. Surprise, surprise. Twitter is many things, but it is not always useful. In my case, it started rejecting my tweets as spam because they were repeating. This is a problem since eating habits are usually pretty consistent. Since it rejected me as spam, I haven’t kept up with it. I might give it another try soon, but for now it’s on the back burner. I recently moved to a new apartment and have been swamped at work, so updating this blog has taken a backseat. I will try to make up for this with even more insightful posts. Stay tuned!
The Digital Analyst
Zak Kirchner
