We are just that important.
Last week there was a video all over the local news about a fight which occured on the Buffalo Metrorail system. It was quite a fight, made the cover of the Buffalo News, but YouTube took it down (Booo!). Some creative minds made a parody of it in a Geo Metro. Enjoy:
I’m not going to lie… I buy a lot of stuff online. I mean so much stuff that I have a sign permanently stuck to my front door “UPS Please Leave Packaged on Step”.
Let’s recap some recent purchases… Aside from polo shirts, shorts, a shirt the says “Make your plastic fantastic” (my day job is with a plastic recycler); I have bought some more interesting things… A record player (yes vinyl is still the best in 2008)… Prince’s Purple Rain Album (Classic!) and Coldplay’s new album (yes NEW albums come out straight to vinyl). I have also purchased land (in the Texas desert) and a motorcycle (Buell American Motorcycles)… I even used Craig’s List to locate a car.
There are some things the internet just can’t do… For example I might have bought a motorcycle, and to be honest have read every single review of it ever. But until I was in the saddle I knew nothing about it. That’s why there will always be brick and morter. To try the thing out… I drive down to my local Harley/Buell dealer get on the back of one and take it for a spin… Why didn’t I buy it there then? Because these things aren’t easy to come by with the oil crisis (70 mpg!) so I had to use the one thing the internet is good at - Having access to lots of stuff from everywhere.
In the future when I buy something big like that I will more than likely go through the dealer who services it and I have built a relationship with.
There’s something to a connection, to that level of service that the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol will never be able to duplicate.
I, like the average American, spend alot of time on Google. Whether it’s Googling the latest buzzword, or using one of the latest and greatest Google Apps. Yeah I use Gmail as my main mail account and have used GChat, Picasa, Google Docs, Scholar and the whole bit. The one thing I noticed, with the exception of Google.com Search every single App I use is a “Beta” says so right there in the header.
I have been using Gmail for like two years, how is something in Beta form that long?
If “Beta: is an excuse they can make so no one else can come out with a better App because Google Apps are never complete then it is a bad excuse.
The internet is an evolutionary medium and it is this very nature which makes every page and application an eternal Beta, as the sites evolve to meet the new needs of the users. Unlike conventional products which are the same from the minute they leave the factory to the minute they enter the waste stream, a user could log onto their Facebook, Gmail or any other site and have a different product then they did the day before (I know firsthand since I only learned the ins and outs of Facebook and today there is the new version out!).
Google why must you Beta? Is it the bugs in the software? We have all been using Windows since 3.1 so we know to expect “Unexpected errors” to occur.
Just call it what it is Application Version 1,453,674,432.0 and counting!
What compels people to read articles online? Is a genuine curiousity for the topic? A striking headline? Too much free time? A release from office work?
Why online? Before the 21st Century people read newspapers, books, magazines, periodicals(what?), and even letters! GASP! (The millennials in the audience are wondering what the hell those are!)
The Technological Revolution of the 90’s and Zeroes has made it easier and easier to digest information, but at what cost? I mean I was ahead of the curve, I read articles on my StarTac ten years ago!
Today people read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, or US Weekly (lol) on their cell phones, PDAs, laptops, watches?, cars, TVs, Wii’s, who knows what! It’s a saturation of media, an abundance of information; and often no way of knowing what is true and false.
You read my writing long enough you realize I have a very strange punctuation style (not exactly MLS approved!), I make up words and definitions! (and hope to make up many more!), and basically say whatever I want in a matter of fact way!
I am not alone in this style. Any kid with a laptop (hiptop, blackberry, or Wii) can write a blog (facebook, myspace, or hack a supercomputer!) and tell the world what they think (and alter Wikipedia so the world takes it as fact!)
Sometimes it’s just nice to sit back and read something printed (and I don’t mean on your BubbleJet!). At least that way you know that someone spent a lot of time (or at least a minute or two than I did on this article!) and some money to put the thing in print. Plus you get a feeling, an experience when reading printed media that you don’t get when communicating with the internet, listening to the radio, or watching the news (and you most likely get more than the highlights, the explosions! the money shots! from the headlines).
However you read, read, but remember I wrote this article in just as long as it took you to read this and I’m no expert, I read everything online too! So read on!