Twitter: big idea or leading-edge uselessness?

Posted on by

I’m puzzled by the buzz about Twitter: why would anyone want to know the tiny details of what I am doing at any given moment? But lots of people I know are intrigued by it and I can’t quite see why.

David Weinberger has just posted the best case I’ve seen so far for paying attention to it.

I’ve been twittering. I’m not entirely sure why, and I feel too old for it, but I’m finding it fascinating. And more than that.

Twitter and other such sites (e.g., Jaiku) are “microblogs” where you can post very short messages (e.g., 140 characters) and see the scroll of messages posted by your buddies. You can Twitter via the Web site, IM, or SMS on your cell phone.

In general, people seem to post what they’re doing at the moment, plus occasional quotes and ideas of interest. So, by definition it should be trivial. But, Twitter is about the intimacy of details. Without it, I’d hear from people maybe once a year, when I run into them at a conference or they send a holiday newsletter. (Actually, I don’t get any of those any more. Two explanations: 1. Blogging has obviated them. 2. Nobody likes me. Third explanation: Both of the above.) We then engage in the odd ritual of narrative construction called “catching up.” We give the headlines in each of the big areas in our lives. The kids are fine, the job sucks, we botoxed the cat, etc. But with Twitter, you see the day-to-day life of your friends.

A lot of it of course I don’t care about. But it turns out that I do like hearing that Paolo Valdemarin, an Italian friend I see every couple of years, is sitting on his porch, drinking wine and watching the sunset. I do like hearing that Jessamyn West, who I unfortunately run into very rarely, is working on a presentation to librarians, which she then shares with her Twitter pals. I do care that BradSucks, a Canadian musician I’ve only met once, is rehearsing for a live show. This is, to mangle Linda Stone’s phrase, continuous partial friendship, and it’s a welcome addition to the infrequent, intermittent friendships we’re able to manage in the real world.

It helps that the volume of flow is so impossibly high that there’s zero expectation that anyone is keeping up. “Hey, dude, why didn’t you know that? I like twittered it two days ago?” is just not a reasonable complaint.

I don’t know if Twitter or one of its new-and-improved competitors will survive, or what it will become. It’s hot at the moment, which usually means that it’s not going to be hot soon. But it’s a powerful platform for something, and even in its current state, it addresses our desire to fill every interstice with social connections.

A matter of perspective

Posted on by

Michael has a lovely picture comparing the bulk of a book he’s bought about the internals of the Mac OS X system with that of the Mac mini that hosts his blog (and is powered by the aforementioned operating system)!

Horticulture and software

Posted on by

Sue was a wonderful gardener and she left me with a nice garden — but without the knowledge, skill or time to maintain it properly. Now I find that I’ve got a serious problem with Ground Elder (Aegopodium podagraria to you) which Wikipedia tells me is “a common weed in the carrot family”. This seems to me to be a terrible libel on the carrot family, an amiable and delicious tribe. GE is a fiendish pest — and one that is virtually impossible to eradicate. It is, as this site helpfully puts it, “one of a handful of really nightmarish weeds. You have to be completely committed to getting rid of it as it takes constant vigilance and persistence. White flowers are produced from May to July.” The main way to keep it under control “is through constant vigilance – never allow the weed to flower or seed”.

Hmmm…. Contemplating this depressing news, I was struck by two thoughts. The first is that anyone who finds a remedy for this weed will not only do the world a great favour but become deservedly rich as well. In that respect, a cure for Ground Elder would be a much greater contribution to civilisation than any number of social-networking sites. The second thought is that Microsoft must feel about Open Source software much as I feel about Ground Elder!

Wikipedia claims that Ground Elder was brought to Britain by the Romans. Wish they would take it back then.

Before the fall…

Posted on by

It’s funny what one finds in suit pockets. I have one posh, hand-made suit which I wear in the same way that admirals wear swords — on ceremonial occasions only. Rummaging in its pockets this morning I found this menu from Sartoria, an oh-so-New-Labour eaterie in Saville Row. It’s from a dinner party on the evening of Monday, January 26 2004, hosted by then Chairman of the BBC, Gavin Davies, who wanted to talk about the BBC’s ventures in the online world. Everyone present was aware that the report of Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the death of Dr. David Kelly was to be published on the following Wednesday, but we stuck resolutely to talk of online matters. In the Gents on the way out, however, I had a brief conversation with Gavin during which I wished him luck for the week ahead. It was clear from how he replied that he expected a tough time. But it was also clear that he expected Hutton to hand out blame all round. He was wrong: m’learned friend produced a whitewash, and by the end of the week both Davies and his Director-General, Greg Dyke, were gone.

As it happens, I think that Greg Dyke handled the Kelly story ineptly, but the ironic thing is that the BBC report that triggered Dr Kelly’s suicide and the Hutton Inquiry was essentially true. The Intelligence ‘dossier’ was indeed “sexed up” to persuade the British public — and Parliament — to support the Blair/Bush invasion.

The Blair legacy

Posted on by

This week’s Private Eye cover. Says it all, really. And yet, if it weren’t for Iraq, he would probably be remembered as a great reforming Prime Minister. As the man said, all political careers end in failure.

Stand by for the crash

Posted on by

The prime motive for a bubble in any field of human activity is the delusion that investing is a one-way bet. Britain (and, to an even greater extent, Ireland) is in the grip of a crazed property bubble. I don ‘t often agree with Will Hutton, but this time he’s spot on.

The risk of history repeating itself is known, but too few people believe it. Not the clubs of four or five young people ‘co-buying’ in order to have a chance of getting into the housing market. Not the wave of buyers of flats that are bought speculatively either to be let or which just stand vacant (and which now constitute one of the prime drivers of demand). Seventy percent of the 20,000 flats built in London last year were bought by buy-to-let speculators.

Neither they, nor those who lend the money, appear to be concerned that prices will fall. Cheltenham and Gloucester has just decided that it will finance small buy-to-let borrowers to buy up to nine properties rather than the three at present. The Bank of Ireland, according to the Financial Times, has just raised the maximum it will lend to any one entrepreneur by eight times – from £2.5m to £20m. It is risk-free lending. It may be that the yield from rents is lower than the costs of borrowed money, spelling disaster, but as property prices only rise, nobody worries. It is stories like these that prove we are in a bubble…

What’s funny about bubbles is that everyone knows, really, that they’re in one; but most assume that they personally will be ok.

Blu-ray’s secret key: now showing at websites everywhere

Posted on by

This morning’s Observer column…

What’s in a number? Quite a lot, it turns out, if it’s a 16-digit hexadecimal (base 16) number that begins ’09 F9′. (That’s ‘9’ followed by ‘249’ in normal – base 10 – numbering.)

Why the fuss? Well, it appears that the 16-digit number in question is the cryptographic key for unlocking the copy protection on the new generation of DVD discs. It was discovered a while back and posted in obscure parts of the web, where it languished…

The future’s orange

Posted on by

At the OU’s Curriculum, Teaching and Student Support conference earlier this week it dawned on Tony Hirst that some of our esteemed colleagues might not be, er, fully up to speed on the significance of RSS. So he composed a thoughtful manifesto/rant on the theme that the university ignores RSS at its peril. He’s right.

So was someone pumping Yahoo shares?

Posted on by

The WSJ is now saying that those ‘talks’ between Microsoft and Yahoo are off. One wonders now if they were ever seriously on. Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times is wondering if there’s been any insider skullduggery. After all, Yahoo’s shares jumped after the NY Post published its ‘scoop’.

The New York Post owes everyone a good follow-up story.

You can’t just drop a bombshell that jerks around 80,000 Microsoft and Yahoo! employees, rocks Wall Street and then fizzles before the day is over.

The Post should investigate — and report — whether its anonymous investment banker sources made any money off the huge run in YHOO caused by its story.

If the Post doesn’t do this, the SEC might. We don’t need any more reporter subpoenas.

At the very least, the Post needs to go back to its sources and clarify if and when Microsoft and Yahoo! ended their latest round of merger discussions.

Did the talks end sometime Friday, after the Post story boosted YHOO?

Stay tuned.