“Don’t you worry about the iPad lacking an SD card slot and USB port. Apple has you covered with adapters! How nice of Lord Jobs. Instead of building in two industry standards, users are forced to buy extra items with their new iPad. It’s not like the these standards are large and would take away from the oh-so-important design.But it really is ridiculous that the iPad doesn’t have an SD card slot built-in. USB port, fine. Apple is sticking with its massive dock connector, but an SD card slot — or microSD card slot — would actually open the iPad to some niche markets.
Just think about photographers. The SD card slot would allow them to quickly and efficiently preview their shots on a large screen. The USB port would even allow them to control some DSLRs directly from the iPad with the right app. But nope, can’t do it without an adapter. Even then, they would only be able to use one at a time because of the single dock connector.
So it seems that the iPad is designed to milk every last penny out of buyers. You see, having a flush-mounted SD card slot would allow consumers to get away with buying the 16GB model and increasing the storage themselves. That’s clearly not in Apple’s financial favor, but it’s not like anyone expected Apple to look out for the buyer anyway. This is a dealbreaker for me.”
If I were to think about situations where I would want to use an iPad instead of a regular computer, it’s on-the-go and traveling. It’s a nice, lightweight alternative to the laptop– except the reason I would want a laptop is, partly, so I can upload photos that I’m taking on my travels (I’m thinking particularly here of long periods on the road or even backpacking– markets that the iPad seems deliberately designed to appeal to). But without the add-ons, your left with an oversized iTouch– a cliche, I know, but one that I agree with even more now that I’ve had a chance to use one.
What really drove it home for me is when I saw beside the iPad display some new netbooks. Windows 7, Flash-compatible, USB and SD-port having netbooks. Yes, they lack a touchscreen, yes, they aren’t tablet-sized, but they play nice with the internet AS IT IS, not as they want it to be (I really don’t think everyone should have to give up on Flash just to give iPad users a full experience) and guess what? They were less than half the price. I’ll take the lack of shiny design and tablet capabilities over the lack of being able to use some of my favourite sites and upload photos any day, especially when it saves me $300.
So last week I wrote a review of Tumblr in which I lauded Tumblr as a blogging platform but lambasted it as a social networking site. I ended by saying I was essentially going to stop using a Tumblr account since I had no need for one when I already had a Twitter and a Google Reader. I lied.
Turns out as soon as I stopped trying to use it as a social network and started JUST using it as a micro-blog, I started enjoying it a lot more again. As a place to share links, videos, photos, and music it’s a great tool, sort of like a visual Twitter. Here’s the best things I found and shared from the past week:
The Arbitrarys and the Concerns of Royalty are bands/friends of mine from Prince George currently on tour across Canada. If you happen to be on any of their stops, why not go out and discover some great music (and I say this as a genuine fan): Read more →
The DJ of In the Mosh Pit, the heavy metal show on CFUR Radio, generously invited us to her wedding. The theme was consistent with the music she plays, and it was awesome. Here’s some pics:
The Bride and Groom
The CFUR Table
The Cake
Cutting the Cake
“Bike Lane” coming off of the main highway in Prince George
“…we rode almost exclusively in dedicated bike lanes, which as Canadians we’d come to believe consisted of a stripe of paint on the edge of a busy roadway, or even just a pictograph of a bicycle floating helplessly among parked and idling cars (serving mainly as practice targets for passing motorists). Copenhagen’s bike lanes, by a comparison so stark it makes little sense to use the same term, are flawlessly designed and maintained, with physical barriers such as curbs, medians, and parked cars between them and the motorized traffic, and their own traffic lights at major intersections…
““Here, the bicycle is a vehicle,” he explained. “It’s a tool. We have 500,000 people who ride every day, and I always say we don’t have any cyclists in Copenhagen. None of them identify themselves as cyclists. They’re just people who are getting around the city in the quickest way.””
Look at the picture above. That’s not uncommon for a bike lane along the main commuting lanes in Prince George. It’s better in places, but if a sign asking motorists to “share the road” is all we can ask for coming off one of the main highways in the city, it’s not exactly encouraging newcomers to commuter-biking culture.
With that in mind, This Magazine argues that bike share programs in Canada may be on their way back »
One of the most brilliant pieces of environmental PR I have ever seen is IfItWasMyHome.com. Basically, it takes a visualization of the British Petroleum oil spill and lets you use Google maps to put it wherever you want– for example, here’s what it would look like if it was in my hometown of Prince George (which is engulfed, along with large tracts of wilderness and half-a-dozen other communities). Now, I was aware this was a huge disaster, but seeing it visualized over a tract of land that I actually understand makes it hit that much closer to home which is, of course, the point. I’m curious to see how people would react to this on other things– putting the Site C dam in Vancouver, for example, and then finding out how voters felt about the project.
Another great reaction to the spill is the BPGlobalPR Twitter account, which is essentially a satire of the BP public relations team, tweeting such comments as “I’ve gotta say, at night the gulf really doesn’t look that bad.” and “Listen, we were just drilling into the Earth’s crust a mile beneath the ocean with shoddy off switches. Don’t blame us!” A designer has turned some of these Tweets into posters, some of which I’ve shared here (thanks to bikesbooksbaking for the tip-off). Read more →
via the Nothing Corporation
***EDIT on February 24 2011***
How naive I was. I use Tumblr everyday now. I prefer it to Twitter. It’s a great way for sharing things. Community is still a bit low, but I think that’s just because my community hasn’t migrated there yet (or I haven’t found it). Comments have pseudo been implemented with “replies” on the dsahboard. But once I started using it is a digital scrapbook, everything changed. It’s NOT a blog. It’s NOT Twitter. And it’s not competing with them. You can read this if you want, but I recommend you sign up, follow some accounts, and start being creative.
***
I realize that a while ago I promised I would be reviewing the various social media forms out there and what I thought of them. Well, today, I figured I would officially kick things of with Tumblr.
The Best Free Blogging Service Out There
Despite what the title of this post may indicate, I like Tumblr. I really do. It is now the number one platform I recommend to new bloggers. It is, in my opinion, the best free blogging platform out there. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I like to a) customize my designs and b) have /pages on my blogs (ie. “andrewkurjata.ca/blog”; “andrewkurjata.ca/about” rather than something like “andrewkurjata.ca/20100903&p=iz110”). These two areas are where Tumblr shines. Yes, Blogger is customizable, but it lacks the pages (I don’t count that “/p/” thing), and Tumblr theme garden eclipses Bloggers default choices by many, many miles. Sure, you can do just about anything you want with Blogger, as I have in the past, but if I’m looking to quickly and easily make a visually appealing sight, I’m going to Tumblr.
But… at this point in time I’m not looking for a free blogging option. I just bought this domain. And that means I can use the WordPress.org software. So, for my purposes, what does an individual Tumblr account offer me?
Microblogging… whatever that is
While you can really use it for anything you want, Tumblr as an experience is sold as being a microblogging service, meaning everything too big for a Tweet and too short for a blog goes there. Think of it as Twitter, except instead of linking to pictures, videos, and songs, you actually get to see the pictures, videos and songs right there. My issue is that after a few months of using it, I just don’t feel like the service is serving a niche that I need filled. If I want to save a link, I’ve got Google Reader or Delicious, I can put photos on Flickr, I can save music to my playlists CBC Radio 3 or the Hype Machine (where I can actually manipulate playlists), and all these thing and more that I want to share I can put on Twitter, Facebook, or this blog. It’s a generalized service competing against single-use services that beat it every time.
A Lack of Cohesive Community
The one thing that could get me to stay, if it were there, is community. But I’m just not seeing it. When I joined Twitter, I immediately found myself communicating with other people working in a similar field to my own, all across the country, who were sharing ideas and advice. The same goes for different areas of interest that I have. This is a network that I feel benefits me in a professional and personal capacity. On Tumblr, that’s yet to happen– I find myself hesitant to follow anyone, and when I do I often stop following soon afterwards. If I want to look at a bunch of random photos and links, I have Facebook, where I at least know the people. And any Tumblr blogs that I DO think are worth following are more often traditional blogs, in which case I prefer to read them linearly in Google reader, rather than mixed and matched with a bunch of other random shots.
A Lack of Commenting Makes for A Lack of Conversation
In Tumblr, like Twitter, you “follow” people and they can follow you, at which point each other’s posts will appear in your dashboard. But you know how people complain about Twitter users who have too many @replies or retweets? In Tumblr, the default is to not have comments on your posts, but instead, reblogs. Which means if you put up a picture with a comment and I feel like commenting on it, I have to “reblog” the photo and add my own comment to my own stream. Which is OK, but then if you wanted to reply to MY comment, you would reblog your own photo, along with both sets of comments, with your comment at the bottom. To use Facebook as a comparison, imagine if rather than your news feed saying “7 people commented on so-and-so-‘s post” with the ability to expand and read the full comments, you actually received, in order, 7 separate status updates, each saying the exact same thing minus the later comments. That’s Tumblr.
But That’s Just Me
The only other person I know in real life who has gotten really into Tumblr has had a really good go of it. He very wisely saw what Tumblr excelled at (niche blogs) and started an origami-themed Tumblr that has garnered hundreds of followers and a great community. He uses it as a personal blogging platform and for his band, as well. I imagine I could dig deeper and find a great community of Tumblr users with similar interests, but the fact is I’m not looking for a new network anymore– I’m quite happy with my exisiting ones.
The Bottom Line
Tumblr is great for blogging. No questions asked. If you are a not-for-profit, a business, a band, or just a person wanting to see what blogging is all about, I direct you there. But I already have a personal blog and I don’t need another.
So Will I Continue Using It?
Yes. But not in a highly personal way. I have a few blogs on different subjects that I may or may not pursue, and they are all being hosted on Tumblr, because of its ease of use. As for my personal account, I don’t see myself spending much time creating original content there. I’ve set it up to automatically import my favourite Flickr photos, shared items on Google Reader, songs, and links from this blog, giving it sort of an automated lifestream feel that I can supplement whenever I find a picture or video I want to share but don’t want to put on this blog. In those instances, Tumblr will be acting as a giant Twitter client, since you can send posts to Twitter as well. I don’t expect a lot of followers, but it’s there for people who want to use it and gives me a nice visual layout of what I’ve been doing with very little effort.
I’ve sort of played with doing this before, but now I’ve found a better system for doing so. Google Reader is by far the best way to keep up with your favourite blogs, but it also has a handy note function (a great tutorial on getting started with Google Reader can be found here). So I’ve started (re)using Google Reader as a means of sharing articles that I find interesting or useful, and the note function for adding my own comments. Now every once in a while I can just copy the best of this and share it here. If you’re interested in getting this stuff more often, my Google Reader page is here. Feel free to connect.
A note about the format: the italicized text is my own comment, followed by an excerpt from the article itself that I deem a good explanation of what it’s about.
1. What Twitter Must Learn From TechCrunch in Oder to Thrive via The Steve Rubel Stream
I’ve yet to see a really good example of something emerging as a Twitter account without that account being linked to something else: a corporation, a celebrity, or a blog. It’s a good place for real-time conversation, but I don’t think it will ever be a medium in the same sense that blogging is.
“Nevertheless, in many ways, I believe TechCrunch and others from the Blogging Class of 2005 (like Mashable) are the last of their kind — superstar blogs with iconic founders. The good old days of democratized media, where anyone can launch a blog and achieve worldwide influence, have come to an end. While there are still untapped niches that are crying out for good blogs — ones that I believe corporations, not just entrepreneurs can fill — the most profitable topics are spoken for. The window has closed. The game has changed.”
2. Recreate Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on Foursquare with Chicago Tourism Promotion via mashable.com
From what I’ve read, Chicago’s tourism department has really grasped the opportunities that geolocation services offer municipal governments– here in Prince George (and anywhere) the “Be a Tourist in Your Hometown” or Golden Raven events are basically offline versions of these, so I’m somewhat surprised they’ve yet to even touch these things. Even if not many people in the city use the services (yet), it’s a relatively low-cost, low-risk way to be viewed as cutting edge.
“Chicago’s tourism office is giving away a free trip to so that two out-of-towners can visit Chicago and try their hand at the Foursquare mission. “
3. The PARKS Problem via TV Guidance – Macleans.ca
Jaimie Weinman gives fantastic insights into the medium of TV. Ever since I discovered his blog, I’ve enjoyed television viewing a lot more because the community he’s built (along with the Onion AV) offers an opportunity to take a deeper look at a medium that doesn’t tend to have the same sort of cultural discussions surrounding it as books, movies, and music do. This is a good look at why Parks & Recreation, despite being one of the best half-hour programs currently airing, is having such a hard time finding an audience. And it’s true. I only gave Parks & Rec a second look because I trusted the critics saying it had turned around and was willing to go with it. The really hard part is that so many of the jokes are character based, so it’s somewhat helpful to slog through the uninspired first episodes to get to the pay-off in season 2– which doesn’t bode well. You had to watch every episode of Arrested Development to get all the jokes, but at least if you watch them from start to finish you don’t hit any weak spots.
“So now the show has righted itself and become a first-rate half-hour of TV. But who, having seen the first season, is going to believe that, unless they know how good Greg Daniels is? In a strange way, P&R is suffering from the fact that it improved without a major re-tool: no characters were dropped, no major format shake-up was instituted. So there is no hook for NBC to use when trying to get people to give the show a second chance; you can’t make an advertising tagline out of “We didn’t change anything, but it doesn’t suck now.” “
4. Best Party wins polls in Iceland’s Reykjavik via BBC News
Ha!
“The new Best Party wins local polls in Reykjavik, promising transparency, free towels and a polar bear for the zoo. “
5. Iceland has longest-lived men, U.S. scores poorly via Reuters
Maybe it’s because Iceland elects political parties that win on a platform of free towels and a new polar bear.
6. Canada’s game not so Canadian via the Vancouver Sun
Curling. Hockey. Golf. I think most sports will eventually be traced back to Scotland.
“Two hockey-history researchers from Sweden have unearthed the first seemingly unassailable evidence that Canada’s national winter sport — the subject of a long-running debate over its true birthplace — originated not in Nova Scotia or the Northwest Territories in the early 1800s, but in the British Isles decades earlier. “
7. Cats Can Now Tweet with New Liveblogging Device via mashable.com
Eliminate the Tweeting aspect and just give me the GPS of where they are– THAT would be a heck of a lot more efficient than shaking a bag of catfood out on the back porch.
“This revolutionary new toy, which was created with the help of the University of Tokyo, comes all pimped out with a camera, an acceleration sensor and a GPS, which monitors kitty’s every move, translating actions like walking, eating and sleeping into tweets. Sadly, there are only 11 fixed phrases currently available (I’m guessing, “I left a lovely hairball in your sneaker” is not among them), but Sony CSL is hoping to improve Fluffy’s conversational skills soon.”
8. The CBC, and the difference between soccer and hockey via the Globe and Mail
An interesting starting point for a discussion about sports and identity in Canada.
“Thus, I’m not sure Kenney understands that soccer is a social signifier. While hockey represents certain core Canadian values, it is essentially insular. Don Cherry and his rants, and all that. Skepticism and even derision for soccer signals Canadian traditionalism, if not patriotism itself. Scorn for soccer – and it exists here, though not as emphatically as it does in the United States – is a kind of signifier of small-c conservative attitudes. That scorn amounts to a hard-line belief that soccer, unlike hockey, is not a manly game that requires strength, skill and masculine fortitude. Soccer is seen as metrosexual – David Beckham epitomizes that – and urbane, representative of small-l liberal values.”
9. And lastly, here’s a a little hack that the social media savvy among you may want to implement. It was a great find for me, since a lot of CFUR‘s fan base interacts with the station on Facebook, and for whatever reason blog posts from the main page were taking days and in some cases up to a week to import.
How to Connect Google Reader Shares to Facebook via Hootsuite via SheenOnline
Really well done illustration and talk about human incentive structures by Dan Pink, revealing some fascinating truths about how knowledge workers are fundamentally different from every previous type of profession.
It’s about the purpose motive, not the profit motive.
Hat tip Rand Fishkin, head badass at SEOmoz.
A short while ago, I saw the old Weenie King cart in a junkyard. Now, I notice this operating in the downtown area:
So to my mind, one of two things happened:
1. The Weenie King wanted to appeal to more an urban market, so replaced “weenies” with the more vaguely-ethnic sounding “Kabobs”; or
2. The Kabob King has actually forced the Weenie King out of his once-unchallenged throne as the monarch of food in downtown Prince George.
Thoughts?
The weather wasn’t perfect, but we spent a good portion of the long weekend getting our yard ready for the summer. We bought a ton of plants, including two varieties of honeysuckle (one of which produces edible berries), raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, a northern variety of kiwi, and a ton of herbs (including a curry plant) and vegetables. Here they all are set up in the basement shop when the weather was just a little too cold outside:
In the front yard, we (meaning my girlfriend), planted a variety of bushes, giving us colour even without blooming. We planted appropriate memorials for Hobbes and Oreo where they’re buried, as well:
Read more →
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June 17 2010 | ∞
This post is exciting for me because I get to combine my two passions– social media and civic boosterism of northern BC into a single post. Here goes:
***
What is Foursquare?
Foursquare is a social networking site that encourages users to share their location with friends. You do this by “checking in” when you visit a new location and are rewarded in two ways: 1. receiving badges for certain tasks (for example, “Adventurer” for checking in to 10 different venues or the “Don’t Stop Believin'” badge for karaoke) and 2. becoming the “mayor” of a venue if you check in somewhere more than anyone else. These rewards may or may not have real-world value (most famously Starbucks offers discounts to mayors of their outlets).
What is Golden Raven?
Golden Raven is a marketing campaign created by the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George, Tourism Prince George, and Tourism British Columbia. It brands cultural tourism destinations in northern BC as part of an overall “Golden Raven Experience” that lends itself well to cross-promotion. It also has some great visual design (my opinion).
How Should Golden Raven Be Implementing Foursquare?
Very simply. They should be working with Foursquare to create a Golden Raven badge that users get from checking in to a set number of Golden Raven destinations. This isn’t unheard of by any means. The City of Chicago has an “On Location” badge that encourages users to explore the city by checking in at locations used in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Frankly, this is no-brainer. Heck, in 2008 Golden Raven engaged in an offline version of exactly this sort of thing with the Golden Raven Passport Contest. In this promotion, you picked up a passport-style booklet with some information about each of the cultural destinations. Then, when you visited a site, you got a stamp. At the end of the year, everyone who participated was entered in a contest to win cash that corresponded directly to the number of locations you had visited. Substitute “smartphone” for “passport” and “check-in” for “stamp” and there you are, with the added benefit of participants being able to share their experiences on Twitter and Facebook, thus increasing the chance of these locations being promoted via word-of-mouth advertising.
Problems?
There are a few possible ones.
1. Most obvious is that people might check-in without actually checking the place out.
Of course, places that are actually offering cash value for this would be most concerned, but solutions are coming into place– and if big brands feel its worth the risk of abuse, why wouldn’t Golden Raven? If you really want it to be fool-proof, just put the physical stamp-and-passport thing in place alongside the Foursquare promotion. Trust me, smartphone addicts will still want to use Foursquare. Which brings me to number two…
2. Not everyone has a smartphone.
I don’t have stats, but my gut instinct is that people in northern BC are later adopters than Foursquare centres of New York and San Francisco. That said, the market is growing, this would attract people who are younger that might not normally take part in such promotions, word-of-mouth, blah blah blah. But if you fear alienating non-smartphone users you could let them check-in at the mobile site using public computers and/or you can offer the physical stamp-and-passport promotion alongside it. Or, you could just offer the stamp to Foursquare/smartphone enthusiasts and use other promotions for other segments (it’s not like having a badge has to cost you anything).
3. What if Foursqaure doesn’t want to work with Golden Raven?
I sincerely doubt this. Any user can suggest badges and my gut instinct is that official representatives of a regional or provincial tourism body could attract attention from Foursquare (which is still a start-up looking for name-recognition, after all). And if there’s right-out rejection, it’s not as if there is a lack of other location-based services in existence.
And even if there isn’t an official partnership in place, tourism offices should be on these geolocation services– now. It’s a great way to communicate with people who like to go out and explore new places anyways (that’s why they’re on Foursquare), share tips (the History Channel’s Foursquare page is a great example for what a Golden Raven brand on Foursquare could and should be doing), and, frankly, add a little hipness to heritage sites. It’s also a good way to make other promotions– I manage the CFUR Foursquare location, and any special you can come up with, Foursquare lets you implement. This could be anything from mayoral discounts to free visits after a certain number of check-ins– things that are pretty standard practice in the tourism marketing world already.
***
So that’s it in a nutshell. I’m actually going to email this to the Golden Raven representatives and see if they respond. I’ll let you know if they do.
Filed under: ideas, Prince George, social media | Discussion