NYDiscovery

Finding a good place in the social web

One bright spot in these challenging time is social media. The companies involved in it, probably won't pull the economy, as they all don't earn money, but they provide an unprecedented communication platform. And I believe only good can come out by connecting people.

Now, on a closer look, there are many self-proclaimed experts out there (I know a real one, who's privately and professionally doing social media for more than ten years) - but little certainty on where this is all leading us. This became very much visible in the Mashable NextUp Event on Tuesday: people are involved with a lot of passion, but only a few make a living out of it and nobody really knows where this is going. So here's my shot on the state of the social web:

Fotolog

Fotolog is a pioneer of social networking and Elke works there, so we both have pretty active Fotologs. It is a place where one can connect to others pretty quickly (speaking Spanish helps a lot and I don't) and it's simplicity allows to realize all kinds of ideas, such a a photo diary or an art project.

Facebook

The one platform to rule them all? Facebook has been pretty crafty in providing services that make their members come back again and it is really a great way of connecting with friends (I use it mostly for real friends). Elke and I have been reluctant for a long time, but since we joined, we reconnected with some old friends, some of them believed to be lost forever.

On the downside, Facebook has all these annoying services and "apps" that amount to nothing more than a waste of time. Most of them are viral, means once you've signed up, they encourage you to invite all your friends. The first times, when I got some invitations to games or causes, I believed somebody explicitly thought about me, but of course she or he just blasted it out to all their contacts. I usually ignore those (I don't believe you can "support" a cause without investment of time and/or money).

Twitter

Everybody loves Twitter and they recently secured another $35 million, even though they haven't revealed a plan on how to earn their first cent. That may be all okay, but I think Twitter is still far away from becoming a main stream service, because I doubt its scalability.

Right now it's mostly a giant game: who gets the most followers? As any great game it has very simple rules, but a very complex game play. Easiest way to get followers, is the "I follow you, you follow me principle". Unfortunately, with following more than, let's say, 50 people, you're not really following them anymore, unless you stare on your Twitter client all day. This of course means that your followers don't really follow you as well, so having a lot of followers is pretty pointless, besides being a very unreliable indicator of popularity.

Still, Twitter is fun, and via Twitter Search sometimes a useful tool to get up-to-the minute updates to certain topics.

MySpace

I never got into MySpace. The advertising is obnoxious and the site reminds me of those first personal Geocities sites, where people wildly experimented with rotating GIFs and <blink> tags. I believe that in regard to shaping the future of the social web, MySpace is pretty much irrelevant.

Friendfeed

My personal favorite. This is an aggregator side that incorporates feeds from 50 or so other sites and shows nicely what somebody is up to in the web. It also allows message-board-like conversation threads to any item posted. This is a little bit like Facebook, but with a uni-lateral subscription system, and a little bit like Twitter without this emphasis on being followed. It also gives every user an readable URL (as opposed to Facebooks user IDs).

Flickr

Where we share our pictures. We don't do much else there right now, something we want to change.

Tumblr

A blogging site which encourages quick and frequent updates. It is cooler than I originally thought, and I'm using it right now to publish some random iPhone photos (still waiting for the iPhone client to do the same on Fotolog).

So what's the verdict? At this point it's use 'em all – at this point I have no idea which of those or of the many others that exist or will exist will be worth spending time with. But I do believe that the social web is in its early infancy - there is still something missing, which addresses current issues like splintering your web presence on multiple services or trusting with too much of your life to a for-profit service. Maybe this will be an opportunity for the "next Google".http://friendfeed.com/oliverbo

Rooting for KATE - it's time to finally bring this baby home!

Okay everybody, the Oscars are on! Can't help it, but I have to watch it year for year. Although I am sorry to admit, that this year I haven't watched a single nominated movie! Me, not watching these films, has less to do with their topic - in the contrary - but with actually going to the movies. It's just no fun anymore, at least not in New York City. - The Ziegfeld theater being an exception! -  I couldn't agree more with what Oliver already said!

Now, 45 minutes into the show, I can't help but ABSOLUTELY loving it! From the moment I heard that Hugh Jackman would be hosting, I knew that regardless of having watched the nominated performances or not, I wanted to watch it and Hugh Jackman and the new designers and show architects are the BEST that has happened to this show in YEARS. It's exquisit.

During the red carpet segment, I was mourning with Mikey Rourke his departed dog, I was super moved seeing Kate Winslet in this gorgeous dress and hairdo - I hope she wins! (At least, I saw her in Revolutionary Raod, of course I did - not alone because of her to be honest). And then again I was moved by Penelope Cruz' acceptance speach. And there it goes. It's really, really cool tonight. "The Duchess" won for Costume Designe, yeah - another movie I've seen! It's one of these events you're sorta look forward to but don't have any expections and it turns out to be so much better than hoped for,

So, as it says in my subject line, I am roothing for Kate Winslet. And I am hoping that Danny Boyle wins too - two Brits, well deserved.

-- By Elke

"Confession of a Shopaholic" and the Oscar Night

Finally something like a romantic comedy that wasn't torn into pieces by the critics, so we invested $26 (including Fandango convenience charge) to visit the Regal 11 at Battery Park. The theatre experience, again, wasn't worth it, some folks next to us talking all the time and two guys (what are they doing in this movie?), who left in the first third - they probably anyway had tickets to a different movie. Not that it matters that much, but it somewhat spoils the experience of a big event worth paying that much money for.
Anyway - the movie was pretty delightful, if you like seeing Isla Fisher whirling from one frame to the other, that is. I do and that helped me over some mild suspension of disbelief moments and goofy slapstick scenes. So it is one of the better movies I've seen in the last month.

Of course this doesn't make it a contender for the Oscar's tonight. It's a comedy and the Academy rarely believes that funny stuff is great film making. Unfortunately this year, we haven't seen a single nominated movie – I would have loved to see Slumdog Millionaire, but it was just released yesterday on DVD (unfortunately not on iTunes yet). The other movies are not so much my cup of tea: For whatever reason I don't like the story of Benjamin Button, especially not with Brad Pitt in it (but that's just me). The other movies, I'll maybe watch someday, but not in a theater.

Again, the Oscar's don't follow blindly the most successful movies of the year. Many thought they should nominate The Dark Knight, but they didn't, for a good reason, in my opinion. First, I didn't like it and second, despite a lot of good film making effort and acting, it's still a superhero comic.

Also, these will be the first Oscars that I'll follow on Twitter. This was a lot of fun for the Globes and the Grammy's, because you get instant comments on what happens on the screen. To do this, go on Twitter Search and follow the action. Even more better: use twhirl.

My Content is My Content is My Content

Thank you Mark. Thank you faceobook! Much appreciated that you re-thought your strategy! Seriously. You wanted to claim not only everything that I post on your site - understandable - but also the LINKS leading to content on other sites? '

Whenever I would have posted a link to a blog posting on my site - nydiscovery.info - YOU would have owned the rights to use that? Excuse me please. And excuse me please for getting direct - but are you nuts?

My content is my content is my content, Mark. Create your own and monetize that but don't jump on mine. And if you think I need your facebook... well, think again! There are lots of other really cool sites out there, last but not least Fotolog, the site I am working for, for more than 4 years,

Yes, so  - dear readers - if you're annoyed by what's going on, you might want to give http://www.fotolog.com a second look. See you there!

Que te diviertas!

By Elke

More about backup: Drobo and Time Machine

A our backup disk slowly ran out of space I finally followed the advice of the TWIP podcast and bought a Drobo (which is a sponsor of the TWIP podcast). But it's really a pretty cool device and in my opinion tailor-made for Time Machine. Here's why: the Drobo is a disk array that allows putting up to four disks together into a redundant "super-disk". This means that if any one disk fails, it can be replaced - online - without loss of data. As opposed to traditional RAID arrays, the Drobo allows different types and sizes of disks, which makes it probably slower, but that's not really an issue when dealing with Time Machine.
Now redundancy is nice to have for a backup - a complete backup for me takes about 16 hours over the network, so I don't want to do this too often, but what's really cool, is the expandability. This means that if I expand the disk capacity in my Mac Pro (which I need to do from time to time as pictures, music and video take more and more space), I can just expand the disk capacity of the Drobo and Time Machine continues to work. When all four disk slots are full, I can begin adding higher capacity disks, as they become available. This works up to 12 TB, which should last - by conservative estimates - for, like, forever (unless I'm getting into producing HD video in feature length)
Since I like to have the backup disk in a different room than the computer, I need a Mac mini in order to enable Time Machine. I happen to have one, but a $599 investment for just making a network backup work is too much. So I really wish for the possibility to us Time Machine directly on a network attached storage - since HP managed do this with it's MediaSmart Server, it should be possible for Drobo to do this, too.
Is it worth $650 (at B&H after mail-in rebate)? Depends on how much you value your digital content and your peace of mind. I value both pretty high, so I'm happy with a solution, where in the worst case (as in technical failures, not catastrophes - that's what mozy is for) only a single hour worth of data (the Time Machine backup interval) could get lost.

How the Grammy's made me appreciate my favorite music even more

The Grammy's - yeah. The music industry was celebrating itself for the 51st time last Sunday.

Like Oliver, I watched the Grammy's for the very first time ever but unlike Oliver, I pretty much enjoyed the show. Granted, aside from U2, Radiohead, to a lesser degree Coldplay and of course Sir Paul McCartney, I am not exactly "fan" of the Grammy presented music. Hip-hop, R&B, Country, Soul? Not my thing! Super cool rapper, drunken presenters, teenage girls, teenage boys - give me a break!

I even agree with Oliver that the pairings of the performing musicians were a bit odd and too staged. And even if there weren't any odd combos, the musicians themselves moved like they were working out - that goes to you Chris Martin! While I agree with VIVA LA VIDA being the top song of 2008, I hated Coldplay's performance!

Totally different story with Radiohead! Thom Yorke's and Jonny Greenwood's show together with the USC Marching Band alone was worth sitting through the 3.5 hours Grammy spectacle! Their performance reminded me of what I love about music in the first place: the feelings that it evokes. The memories that it brings back. The unique experience wich is not comparable with anything else.

Which also made me re-think the significance of the simple "Favorite Music" question as to be found on all social networking sites.

I have a lot of favorite music. I like Nine Inch Nails, and I like Thievery Corporation, I like Chemical Brothers, and I like Snow Patrol. But do I like them that much that I'd like to listen to them in good and in bad times? Would they make the cut if I could only store, let's say 4 gigabyte of music?

And that's when I started to re-organize "my favorite music" on facebook and Fotolog. You'll now find me differentiating between music I already love for years and would't want to live without - thanks Radiohead! - and music I just discovered recently, less than 10 years ago and love and wouldn't want to live without. And everything else, is just music that's pleasant or interesting to listen to, but not really dear to my heart and relevant for me.

Having learned something important about myself, I'd say, this was time well spent.

-- By Elke

Photo depicts John Law of The Statues of Liberty, Arlene's Grocery, January 9th 2009

Music Discoveries, bad and good: the Grammys and last.fm

Sunday Elke and I watched the Grammys for the first time and for me it was a pretty big turn off. I've never really believed in the idea of handing out awards for music, because it's nearly impossible to judge the quality of music detached from the individual taste. The Oscars work, because it is possible to assess the technical quality of acting, directing or screen writing independently of commercial success. At the Grammys, however, commercial success and nominations are absolutely aligned.
But here's what annoyed me the most: I believe that music is something greater than the people who perform it. The Grammys, however, completely center around the performers. This became very evident when the show wildly paired musicians in a seemingly desperate bid to create musical history ("together on stage for the first time ever!"). So we had to endure Chris Martin & Jay-Z (simply odd), Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus (pretty, but meaningless), the four biggest rapper-egomaniacs (together on stage together for the first time ever! With a scarily pregnant M.I.A) and Paul McCartney and David Grohl on the drums (untypically the camera circled again and again around the drummer: it's David Grohl. Really. On the drums!). Many performances weren't actually bad, but were overpowering the music by focusing on visual spectacle: for example Radiohead performed with a marching band, kind of cool, but odd and unfitting for a band as artistic as Radiohead.

In the end I was almost done with music - if it was not for last.fm, which I finally signed up a couple of hours earlier. I really enjoyed the listening stats it generated out of my iTunes library (my top 3 bands are Björk, Radiohead and U2 - which came somewhat as a surprise). And now I'm listening to the recommendation channnel, which has an almost 100% hit rate (which should be possible to achieve by analyzing 55,000 songs I listened to since 2004).
So here we go: the past of music with the Grammys, which try to broadcast the same pop music mix to as many people as possible and the future, where everybody gets exactly served what she or he likes.

Kashi products being recalled! Did I poison my husband?

Life in the 21st century didn't get easier but more complicated despite all the cool new gadgets!

As a food conscious consumer, I am cooking everything from scratch and try to live as healthy as possible. Granted, working full time and leading a happy but pretty busy life in New York City, I am turning to some factory made products.

One of my staples are "Kashi Bars", granola bars that have the best nutrients and seem(ed) to be overall well made. Every single day I give Oliver one for his lunch break together with an apple or some nice seasonal fruit, 15 almonds, some fat reduced yoghurt and carrots. Pretty healthy, huh? WHO would have thought that these Kashi bars could contain - or are actually containing, the FDA still investigates - salmonella? As a precaution, Kashi recalled some of their products, the ones Oliver used to eat!

The sheer thought that it is me who could have poisened Oliver (I don't eat kashi bars) drives me crazy!!! From all what I've heard and read by now however, if he didn't get ill so far, he shouldn't get ill later either. Can't wait to throw that stuff all out. And never, ever buying it again! I am also angry with Freshdirect whose new search engine is pushing the Kashi products as my "favorites" on me with every single purchase I make. That's pretty irresponsible. I am looking forward to hearing what the Freshdirect customer service rep will have to say...

-- By Elke

Picture taken in Munich, December 13th 2008

Get On Your Boots - It's Worth The Effort

Not since OASIS' Don't Believe the Truth have I've been waiting for a band's new album. I remember that I couldn't wait to rush home to finally listen to the CD. Then again, this might have also been the last time that I bought a CD to begin with. Thanks to eMusic and iTunes! And I certainly would not have thought that I've been waiting for U2's new release! Nope, not U2 because Bono & Co. have been doing the same old same old for the last couple of years. At least in my opinion of course.

Nothing new and relevant to be expected from them. Until...

... this morning, when I heard their new Single Get On Your Boots on my lame radio station (lame because they do much too much self appreciation, yes 101.9 RXP) which absolutely blew me away!

 Woah! Listen to that song. It's fantastic. I've already listenend a dozen times and can't get enough. It reminds me of... Of what? The chorus reminds me of Queen. Then there's Bono's voice of course. Much rougher base lines than usual. Great drums. What does this song remind me of? Can't tell! Which is a very good sign.

And since we're on it, didn't talk about the Kings of Leon concert yet. Boy, did they love playing at the Garden! They were having a blast and you could tell. The concert was totally sold out and the audience enjoyed every single song the three brothers and their cousins would perform. It was an amazing night and I am happy for having been part of such a fantastic event. (Photo taken at the Kings of Leon concert on 01/29/09).

-- By Elke

True Love Never Dies

For the last 2 weeks, I was following The Australian Open very closely since one of my personal goals for 2009 is to follow all four Tennis Grand Slam tournaments. (It's one of the, "this is my hobby and my passion and I am doing this for myself " goals).

 

I got up early in the morning together with Oliver and started to watch taped matches - with a little fast forward, until I had to leave the house myself, not without hopping on the wii fit balance board. I was watching sports after all! The night from Saturday to Sunday I could hardly sleep. I knew, that Roger Federer vs Rafael Nadal would be on from 3:30am New York time on and I was hoping that our DVR would properly do its job. It did.

The one who did not was Roger, the great. I think, none of his fans can be that disappointed as he's himself. He's the one who didn't get the 14th Grand Slam title. He might have even traded a few of his many million dollars for that achievement. Maybe.

Personally, I simply prefer him winning over loosing. A weeping Roger Federer is also somewhat breaking my heart! It hurts to see him being hurt. And it also hurts to see Nadal not fully enjoying the moment because he certainly deserves to be happy. He made it. He's the new King of Tennis!

Long live the king and hopefully the old one's back soon!!!!!

-- Elke