Jon in Seattle

I don’t really like crossword puzzles.  Why?  First, I’m a creative thinker: I use words that express my current mood and quirkiness.  It’s very difficult to think of a 4 letter word for what tourists do (Hint: It’s not "ogle") when there’s plenty of playful 5 and 6 letter words that’d be just as effective.  Second, half the time you get a crossword puzzle it’s on an airplane and someone’s already half-finished it.  And third, I never finish them!  Never!  It’s an exercise in futility.

Thankfully Merv Griffin took everything I hate about crossword puzzles and put them into a TV show.  There’s one crossword that everyone tries to pick at throughout the game.  You still have to think of a very specific word, or sometimes concatenated words, or the always fun Trivial Pursuit-like clues about 1960s pop culture.  On the show, I can only guess about a third of the words, which about matches my expertise on local newspaper crosswords.

But that’s the easy part.  That part’s obvious to duplicate.

So how did Merv copy the half-done frustration?  Well, after the two contestants are half-way through the game, 3 random people pop out.  If either contestant can’t solve a clue, and one of the new people can, the new person gets to replace the person of their choosing.  So if you’ve kicked ass on the first half, you’re bound to be replaced — and lose everything!  It happens every game to the top player.

And the third?  At the end of the game, the person with the most money gets 3 minutes to solve the rest of the crossword: Whatever’s left from the 30 rounds previously — which is usually around 30-40 clues.  No one ever solves it.  I don’t even know what the prize is.  Do they even bother announcing it?  Maybe the producers don’t even know!

Over the past few days, Seattle has gotten about 11 inches of snow.  Sounds fun, and it was for a while, but Seattle’s roads are now completely covered in 3-4 packed inches of snow.  Even the downtown shopping area, Pacific Place, has not been plowed and only 4×4 vehicles can safely travel through even the densest areas of the city.  Even walking around downtown, you’re walking on packed powder and ice.  I’ve seen at least a dozen pedestrians cross-country skiing through town.  King County owns a mere 22 snowplows, and they’re 100% focused on freeways and the port: Not places people live and work.

Like most other urban Seattleites, I’ve started to take the bus everywhere.  But many buses have gotten stuck on hills, stranding them, and now there’s fewer buses to go around.  On Saturday and Sunday, routes that normally run every fifteen minutes ran a half or a third as often, completely packed with people.  Many routes aren’t even running.  Friday, Saturday, and Sunday it took me about an hour to get to downtown or back, or about an hour and a half to Fremont or back.  This is about three times longer than normal by transit — but normally it’s a 5 to 10 minute drive in my car.  It shows a general breakdown of transportation in Seattle.

With this backdrop, I have to get to the airport Tuesday morning for my 6:30am holiday flight to Virginia.  But how do I get there?  1) I can’t drive, my car would get stuck.  No question.  2) Cabs won’t take advanced reservations because they can’t predict which taxis will get stuck.  And if I call when I need it, do I really think they’re going to come?  With leaves me with: 3) The bus.  But as I just said, half of buses aren’t even running!  The tracking website is down due to too many requests.  But it’s worth a shot.  To reduce my risk, I’m going to aim for one bus earlier than I need.  Which means I have to leave my house at 2:45am.  Almost 4 hours before my flight.  Ridiculous.

According to the Seattle PI, our Mayor Greg Nickels said "he believes the city’s response to the snow has been ‘very good.‘  But most cities don’t completely shut down, with residents waiting 45 minutes for buses on major arterial routes or resorting to cross country skiing.  I haven’t been able to make it to work for 3 days.  I haven’t been able to shop 2 miles away without it taking me multiple hours just for travel.  And many stores are just closed because their employees can’t make it in — 3 days before Christmas!  I have to imagine many others are in a similar situation to me: Three days more or less wasted thanks to snowy streets.

This problem would have largely been prevented if Seattle had a sufficient snowplow fleet — at least enough to plow downtown arterials.  But Nickels thinks it’s not worth the investment.  But isn’t it?  How does Seattle’s lack of snowplowing impact our city’s productivity in economic terms?  3 days is almost 1% of a year, affecting almost everyone.  And it’s not that there’s no snow in Seattle: Between 1979 and 1995, 7 out of 16 years had months with over half a foot of snow.  While other snow storms aren’t this bad, there’s usually one or two days a year I can’t make it to work due to snow.  And nor can many others.  The Seattle metropolitan area generated $166.9 billion in goods and services in 2005.   If people could go to work and go shopping even on snow days, would that be 0.1% higher?  That’s $167 million a year.  Are we spending even $16 million a year on snow removal?  With 22 snowplows, it’s doubtful.

I’ve lived abroad, I’ve spent non-trivial amounts of time in non-English speaking countries, so I know the deal.  When in another country, you gotta speak their language enough to get around, otherwise you don’t.  However, in Mexico I’m in a gray area: I can ask where stuff is, say I want something, give a taxi driver directions… but as soon as a question comes out of the blue, like whether I’d like mineral water or still water in my limonada, I’m a dear in the headlights.  I don’t know what they’re asking or how to reply.  It’s all very stressful.

For a while I was asking, "que?"  And usually I’d get a simplified version back, which was nice, and it gave me a moment to think about the context of their question.  But that works less and less as I start branching out and trying to ask for new and different things I’m completely unfamiliar with.

So I’ve started to revert to just pointing at stuff on a menu.

That only works when there’s a menu, though.  Tonight, before blogging, I wanted to have a beer while tapping out these words.  The minibar is locked, and it’s US $3.50 for a beer in it anyway.  So I put on my clothes, head downstairs, and ask the doorman if he speaks English to find out where I can buy one or two beers.  He says no, he doesn’t speak English, then points me as the front-desk, but there’s people in line there.  So I ask "Donde estas un mescelane, o, me puede da una o dos cervezas — no seis cervesas - solo una o dos… donde …", reverting to English a bit at that point.  He replies in Spanish that "solo [on] la primera [floor]" can I do that.

I go up there, but I know the beers there are like US $3.  And I think, "da" means "have", so he probably thought I wanted to drink them on site.  Wrong!  So I go back downstairs, out on the street, see a gas station across like 20 lanes of traffic on Reforma street, and head that way… running across streets to avoid the unpredictable taxis.

I pick up two Negra Modela.  I bring them to the cashier, she rings them up, and I look confused.  Confused because I’m trying to read the computer screen and count the right pesos: 15 — or around $1.20.  I hand her a 20 peso bill.  But she takes my confusion to mean I’m confused by why the price is so "high".  She explains in depth (while I look blank and confused, but somewhat understand) that they’re imported, and in glass bottles, so there’s a 3 peso deposit.  She was acting like I didn’t pay her enough.  She printed out the receipt to show me, 15 pesos, with the 20 peso bill in her hand. 

It did not dawn on me that she thought I’d be concerned about 30 cents. But yes, she did think I was concerned about 30 cents.  As I went to take my 20 peso bill away so I could go get Victoria or some non-imported beer (which she was explaining I should get to save money), she just dropped 5 pesos change in my hand and that was that. 

And again I’m frustrated that my Spanish remains poor.  Back to pointing at stuff!

At 5pm, we changed hotels from the wonderful The Red Tree House in Condesa to Emporio Reforma in Zona Rosa.  It seemed like a good move, since we’d explored Condesa extensively and we were interested in seeing the northern part of downtown — including Centro Historico and the center square, known as "The Zocalo."  Zona Rosa is a lot more like Midtown and Hell’s Kitchen, whereas Condesa was a mix between Greenwich Village and the East Village.  Lots of tall buildings, building set-backs, very businessy.

We get to the hotel, relax a bit, and enjoy the view from the top floor.  Then we headed out towards Centro Historico right near dusk.  We go up Paseo de la Reforma street, which is kinda like Canal Street in New Orleans, then down Avenida Juarez eastward, through the Alemeda Central park, and then we continue east on Bellas Artes and Tacuba.  This part was all pretty nice, and there were some interesting buildings along the way. 

When we finally get to the Plaza de la Constitution o Zocalo, it’s stunning.  There are religious buildings around, including the Zocalo, a humongous Cathedral, and several temples. We go inside the Cathedral, which is preparing itself for the Days of the Dead, and walk around looking at the different scenes and alters they have lit up.  Maeve and I believe the priests must illuminate different scenes depending on the religious season, and what lessons ought to be learned during that time.  All the alters related to Mexican saints, plus the Virgin de Guadelupe, and were all very beautiful.  We took no pictures.

Away from the Cathedral, we walk around the Zocalo Plaza which is absolutely packed with people celebrating the Days of the Dead.  There is a large offering table set up on the southern side, 30 feet high, decorated with marigolds and symbols of the dead.  There is a concert stage being set up, and many merchants selling everything from dolls and figurines to fried foods.

While definitely a larger and largely impersonal walk compared to exploring Condesa, it was a very memorable experience.  I would recommend it.

Our first day in Mexico City was awesome.  The air is SO much cleaner than Puebla.  It’s pretty close to as clean as New York — which is saying something considering the (mis)conception that Mexico City is the dirtiest city in the world.  We can walk around here without getting headaches, there’s trees on every street, and tons of boutiques, independent restaurants, beautiful historical Art Deco residential construction, and pretty and stylish people.

We stayed in Condesa for our first night.  It’s south of the central financial district.  Maeve picked out a very friendly bed and breakfast here, The Red Tree House, where we have a private bathroom.  The location is wonderful: We’re a block from the Hipodromo park, which used to be the circle of a race track.  In fact, the entire Condesa road layout is based on the old circular route of the track.  And throughout, since its initial construction in the early 1900s, there are nothing but Art Deco and Modern Contemporary buildings — many of which are worth a second look (and some pictures).

As for food, there are half a dozen upscale Italian boutique restaurants around the park, including a cafe mentioned in the airplane magazine we read coming in, plus trendy "international" cuisine restaurants scattered around the easily walkable neighborhood.

My favorite restaurant was "Ocho," on Avenida Amsterdam.  It was completely packed on a Thursday night, despite the chilly open air flowing through the entire restaurant.  I had a hamburger which was pretty friggen close to an American hamburger: pink in the middle, mayo, normal lettuce, tomatoes — plus avocado with no additional cost!!  Maeve and I also split the "humos de garbonzo," which was great, and Maeve had a very cool looking salad with black sesame seeds.  Part of my love for this restaurant may be our homesickness for America, but for food in general, it was darned yummy by US standards.

The following morning we went to Chapultepec Park to see the castle there.  The castle was apparently built by the French invaders in the 1800s, but Mexico has since converted it to a national history museum.  It is built on top of a hill with amazing views of the entire city: It is worth the $3.90 admission just to see the views.  But the museum itself was fascinating.  It’s interesting to see the Mexican perspective on the Spanish-American war, in which America gained California, Arizona and New Mexico: The museum’s placards in no uncertain terms expressed that Mexico felt swindled.

Puebla kinda sucked.  The hotel we stayed at, however, rocked… for the most part.

Puebla is an hour and a half east of Mexico City.  We flew in to Mexico City, then bought a one-way ticket there from the airport for MX$ 170 / US$ 14 each.  It was a breeze to get there.  We showed up at the Puebla bus station, and there’s a desk there for buying taxi fares so that the taxis can’t rip you off.  We paid $4.50 for a crazy ride through the city, entirely more distance and work than any Zihuatanejan taxi driver did for $4, and showed up to our hotel in one piece.

But once we got there, it was incredibly polluted.  There’s really no emissions standards for cars there.  A car drives by, then instead of a pleasant draft afterwards, there’s a stench of unburned fuel.  Walking down a street with more than one or two cars on it, you get a headache in a hurry.

Second, I had food poisoning.  I think it was from some red melon fruit I had in the Zihuatanejo airport earlier in the day.  Regardless, that, plus the pollution, was a recipe for quite a night of fever, nausea, chills, and a wonderful second taste of my dinner.

But our hotel was amazing.  We stayed at La Purificadora, a designer hotel built out of the ruins in a historical area.  A famous architect here in Mexico designed in, putting away his usual bright color palette and using only one non-natural color: Purple.  But in the natural stones and woods, plus the aquamarine chlorinated pools behind centimeter thick plexiglass, there was plenty of contrast and interest.

The only complaint I’d have about the hotel would be the restaurant.  We had dinner there the second night.  It was more expensive than a US restaurant!  I had a $17 entre of duck which was pretty small, luke warm, and too sweet.  We also had two $9 cocktails a bit later, which were entirely too sweet!  Yuck.  But what takes the cake is the US $9.50 bottle of water I bought, without knowing the price until later.  $9.50 for 500ml of water??  It was "imported" from Costa Rica.

In retrospect we probably could have skipped Puebla.  The air was nauseating, the food was definitely blah, and for city life, Mexico City beats it hands down.  But the hotel will be a fond memory.

Maeve and I went to six or seven restaurants in our time in Zihuatanejo.  More than anything, we learned taking the advice of others was well worth it.  We mainly took advice from our hotel manager, Heiko.  When we didn’t, and chose purely on normal signals like number of people in a restaurant, we were often disappointed.  But, without Yelp for Mexico (yet), we have no place to write our precise findings.  So here they are for now:

Doña Prudencia at Villa Mexicana. $$. Score: A (Jon: A, Maeve: A). Playa de Ropa. 

Very delicious.  Even though not a soul was in there when we arrived on a Saturday night in October, the food was good, the drinks were good, and the service was good.  The food had inventive ingredients and spices, and despite being Mexican, was not heavy like Mexican food in the states.  We sat 20 feet from crashing waves on the beach, with coconut palm trees all around us.  Wonderful.

Paty’s. Score: B (Jon: A-, Maeve: C+). $. Playa de Ropa.

I really enjoyed my chorizo omelette here, though Maeve’s veggie egg scramble didn’t meet her liking because they scrambled the egg in the pan rather than before frying.  The chorizo was delicious — best I’ve had in a long time!

Restaurantes Mexicanos "AnY". Score: B/B- (Jon: B-, Maeve: B). $. Centro.

Over a dozen kinds of tamales!  Chicken, pork, veggies, picadillo steak, in red sauces, green sauces, and more.  They screwed up my order and gave me a chicken and a pork in green sauce, but I wanted the pork with red sauce, so my plate was a little redundant.  And there wasn’t much sauce to help flavor the corn.  But generally it was an enjoyable experience.

Il Mare. Score: B- (Jon: C+, Maeve: B). $$. Carr Escenica La Ropa.

The view is absolutely fantastic, the service is good and the servers had the best English of restaurants we’d been to, but the food was eh-alright.  Of course, it’s Italian food, in Mexico, so it’s weird for me the American who’s used to either Americanized Italian or actual Italian, not Mexican Italian .  The salad was okay, Maeve’s ravioli were pretty decent, but the wines by the glass were blah and my pork chops tasted a little like their mango sauce had been used for fish previously.

La Perla. Score: C+ (Jon: C, Maeve: B-). $. Playa de Ropa.

We just stopped by here to get a cabana, some chips and guacamole, and some drinks.  It was only US$4 to get a cabana, so that was nice.  We first tried to rent nicer cabanas at The Tides but they refused, since we weren’t staying there.  The guacamole at La Perla was absolutely delicious, but the fresh tortilla chips were a bit undercooked, and they brought (and we paid extra for) some really weird and watery salsa we didn’t order.  The drinks were basic.  They didn’t bring us back the right change.  Overall, it was less than optimal, but we did have drinks on the beach!

Daniel’s Restaurante y Bar. $. Score: D (Jon: D, Maeve: D). Centro.

Pretty gross.  I had "chorizo molletas" — it was basically like having garlic bread with chorizo on top for breakfast.  I wonder if Mexicans actually eat it.  I can’t find any recipes for it on Google, so maybe they just made it up.  Maeve had pancakes — and yep, they were pancakes!  Two of ‘em, on a plate, with a bottle of supermarket maple syrup.  It was a mistake to go here.

Elvira. $. Score: D/F. Playa de Ropa.

We didn’t actually eat here, but we made friends who said it was an absolutely gross experience.  The ceviche was apparently like fish in sweet and sour sauce.

Maeve had her heart set on breakfast at Casa Cafe close to centro Zihuatanejo.  It felt like today was a bit cooler than previous days, so we dressed a tad more normal for the walk over the hill from Playa de Ropa.  But today was no different than yesterday: by the time we were halfway there we were drenched in sweat and the 100% humidity would not help us cool off.  And to make matters worse, Casa Cafe is closed on Mondays, so we had even more walking ahead of us.

It’s not hot so much as humid here.  After any trip to the store, walk from the beach, or trip to Centro, a dip in the pool afterwards is mandatory.  That means we’re jumping in the pool four of five times a day just to keep our sanity.

After being denied at the gates of Casa Cafe, we wandered further into Centro for breakfast.  We found the first restaurant where we actually had to speak Spanish to ask questions.  I asked if they had "desayunes," and the woman was confused, so I mangled it more and she realized I meant breakfast, replying "Si, damos desayuno."  Maeve didn’t see much vegetarian on their menu, though, so we kept moving.  Ultimately we found Daniel’s Restarante y Bar, a popular gringo-oriented place on the downtown waterfront, and had some pancakes and molletas.

Finishing breakfast, we were still hot.  It’s hotter in Centro than at our hotel, and even just sitting under an umbrella downtown, one stays hot.  We roamed the streets popping into any store that had fans to cool us off.  Jewelry stores, some regional coffee bean shops, tequila boutiques, and art stores with textiles and Oaxacan skulls.  There are no chain stores here.  Out of all the stores we popped into, only an expensive jewelry store had air conditioning… so we looked over everything in there twice!  Then we jumped in a cab and headed back to Cinco Sentidos for a long awaited dip in the pool.

I felt very anxious being an English speaker transplanted to Mexico.  I’ve always been anxious about Mexico, since I haven’t learned Spanish, and if anything were to happen I’m not sure I could explain my situation to others — like the police.  So I’ve been madly learning Spanish from Maeve’s tiny little "Mexican Spanish" book, and trying to use Spanish whenever I go into stores or restaurants.

It’s much harder to practice saying a phrase in my mind vs. saying it to someone whom it actually means something.  When I took German, I had my German instructor and my fellow German students to bounce mispronounced phrases off of.  But here, my butchered phrases bounce off of real Spanish speakers.  Fortunately they’ve been very forgiving.  After margaritas and guacamole on the beach this afternoon, I said "Me puerde da la cuerta" to ask for a check.  "La cuenta?," the waiter responded.  Oh yes, damn, of course!!  CUENTA!  Disculpe, gracias.  When he came back, I was prepared with my 200 pesos.  "Puerdo combien esta?," I asked.  "Si, of course" he responded.  I finally got a full sentence right!  Yes!

Having a few phrases and nouns under my belt has made me feel more comfortable walking around.  I’ve mellowed.  At breakfast this morning we were able to make simple small talk with the maitre d’, and that was motivating.  Of course, he asked my name as I was leaving — and I didn’t know that question yet!  Next time!

We made it in to Zihuatanejo at 5pm on Saturday.  The airport here is tiny!  It’s one story, we got out onto the tarmac and walked into the terminal where we waited in line for immigration, then customs.  Maeve declared that she had some Tylenol, which I was worried about (since she had to check "yes" to something prohibido en Mexico), but she explained what she had and they were pleased with it.  After an hour of waiting and showing our forms to people, we took our US$32 (fixed price) cab ride to Cinco Sentidos, our hotel.

The cab drove along unstriped streets and highways, finally going into town, then taking some one-way side roads.  In the city there were motorbikes passing us, random dogs roaming around.  We took a roundabout after driving about 20 blocks in the city and headed north towards Playa la Ropa, the gringo hotel area.

We got in, paid our chofer a mix of dollars and pesos, and a helper carried our things upstairs.  The hotel owner, Heiko, is very friendly.  He talks and talks about each thing we ask about: restaurants, how taxis work, exchange rates (1 USD to MEX$13.8).  Each time, he starts rambling after a while, then apologizes that his cervesa hangover from last night causes him to talk a lot.  We start to pay but the hotel owner is too hung over to set up the credit card machine.   We will pay later.

Heiko says the best place for dinner would be Doña Prudencia, in Hotel Villa de Mexicana down on the beach.  And the restaurant IS immediately on the beach.  It was high tide, so we ate literally 20 feet from the waves coming up on the sand.  To quench our thirsts and nerves from a day of traveling, I had a Victoria beer to start, and Maeve had a Chilean sauvignon blanc (Casillero).  For starters, I had a very delicious tomato based ceviche, and Maeve had an interesting salad consisting of sliced local tomatoes, Oaxacan cheese, with a sweet cilantro salsa.  Dinner was excellent.  I had a traditional Mexican chicken dish, grilled chicken stuffed with local cheese and mushrooms, served in a bed of pureed almonds and avocado, topped with crema, with spanish rice and steamed vegetables on the side.  Maeve had yummy chile rellenos.  All the food was surprisingly light and well balanced, nothing like Mexican restaurants in the states … and very affordable considering we were sitting right on the beach!

We all know the woman behind the Eliot Spitzer scandal today, Ashley Alexandra Dupré.  But how she was discovered isn’t as widely known.  After she left the federal court house in New York to sign a deposition against Emperor’s Club VIP, her anonymous face was shown walking out of the court house.  Video circulated.  Friends of friends recognized her, started blogging, and suddenly links to her MySpace page are spreading through IMs and Twitter.  The Smoking Gun published her MySpace profile and link at 2pm on Wednesday.

But how does traditional media write a story about a web site?  The first traditional media article was published by the New York Times at 4pm.  Both it and the Associated Press article that followed were 50% quotes from her MySpace page.  (Articles have since been updated to be less obvious rip-offs.)  NBC’s Today show brought on two "friends" of her’s, which seemed barely to be acquaintances during the interview, and proceeded to use them as an audio backdrop while filling the screen with scrolling shots from her MySpace pictures and her blog posts.

Few press outlets simply told people the link to the MySpace page.  Many articles didn’t even identify that the primary source is MySpace — solely MySpace, in fact.  And the New York Times gave no credit to the Internet for uncovering Ashley’s identity, and every other press outlet graciously credited the New York Times for breaking the story — not The Smoking Gun, not the people writing small blogs about where additional photos were found.

To me, it’s almost as if traditional media is scared.  What value do they provide if I can hop on my computer and see for myself?  They don’t want me going to the primary source, they want me to keep going to them — but it won’t work forever.  This time I knew before traditional media reported it, and I liked it.

After reading Robert Scoble’s post, "How is the Web screwed up?," I’ve been thinking more about how my data spreads throughout the Internet.  He complains that "there are too many silos that don’t know about each other," but I find that many of the applications I’m using are quite open to aggregation by other services.  Here is how all the services I’m using are playing together as of today:

The problem I have is that the points where my data finally comes together — mostly FriendFeed and Facebook’s News Feed — aren’t where I need the data, or where I want people to view it.  I don’t want people to view "me" through Facebook, I want them to view me through my web site.  I can’t use my picture viewer of choice through Facebook’s photos application.

Plus, right now all data is glommed together.  My ideas about tech are merged with photographs of my friends on vacation, and as we get to Facebook, merged again with spam about friends of friends playing Scrabulous.  I would actually like a data flow for my social activities, like photos, Yelp reviews, and Upcoming events to be viewed in one place, with some access restrictions, my blog posts about home improvements someplace else, and my tech ideas yet another place.

Once I have all this data organized by purpose, I want to pull together all my friends photos of their parties and vacations and open them in a slide show viewer or Photoshop.

The good news is that FriendFeed now has more data from more places than Facebook.  It has the beginnings of what can make the world of consumption applications possible.  But until I can start building applications on top of FriendFeed, Facebook news feeds, or emerging competitors, we have a ways to go.

Sites like FriendFeed, Google Reader, Tumblr, and Facebook’s News Feed are defining a new type of web applications: aggregators.  They primarily pull together data from lots of different sites, allowing you to view them together without hopping all over the Internet.  In my previous post, I mentioned how there’s actually three types of web applications emerging: Creation apps, aggregators, and consumption apps.  What is a consumption application?

Imagine that instead of viewing your Facebook news feed in a terse, textual list, with images reduced in size, you could view pictures from all your friends, whether they’re on Facebook, MySpace, or Picasa, in a single application designed for viewing photographs.  Imagine if people could visit your personal web site and see what you’re up to from across the web, with a personal style specific to your site.  These are consumption applications: applications that take data already pulled from across the web, letting you use it in new ways.

Sites like Google Video are starting to show how aggregated content from across the web can be displayed in a single application.  The most blogged about videos and the recommended videos are not just from Google Video and YouTube, but from MySpace and AOL Video too.  Remember: Google Video started as a stand-alone site with only it’s own videos.

Truly useful, truly social consumption applications haven’t been possible until recently, though.  The data social networks are collecting and the social graphs they are growing are inaccessible to other applications.  And without their social graphs, it’s very time consuming for a user to configure aggregation himself.  But the new openness I’m hoping to see from FriendFeed, Tumblr, and Google OpenSocial as aggregators will make consumption applications possible.  They will define social graphs based on people and their ownership of third-party data, breaking our dependence on social networks themselves.

So now that we know what a consumption application is, it’s time for us to start building them.

The web is changing.  No longer will users use one site for their photos, another for reading and writing blogs, and another for networking with friends.  Instead, sites are beginning to specialize in either the creation, aggregation or the consumption aspect of content.  An early example an aggregation and consumption application is Google Reader, and RSS readers in general, where instead of going to Blogger, LiveJournal, or individual blog sites, people could just read them all in one place.

The next step was Facebook’s idea of aggregating all your friends activities, Facebook Posted Items, photographs, and status updates and displaying them mixed together as a diary of what your friends are doing. 

Today, FriendFeed and Tumblr are going even further.  FriendFeed, in particular, pulls together the content created by you and your friends throughout the web to to create for you your "News feed for the entire web."  In one place, suddenly I can see all my friend’s Twitter updates, their Yelp reviews, blog posts they’ve written or favorited, vacation photos they’ve uploaded to Picasa or SmugMug — all best of breed applications, not applications that happen to be embedded in Facebook.  And my friends can see what I’m up to just by visiting my FriendFeed page.

But this, as with anything, is not yet the perfect experience.  I don’t want people to view "me" through the inflexible FriendFeed status feed.  I want to style it, I want people to view it on my web site, and I want to chop it up into "here are my photos" vs. "here are my restaurant reviews," with different experiences for both.  FriendFeed, or the next competitor (Google Reader? Tumblr?), needs to open up.  Give us an API.  Let me make my web page my friend’s portal into my online life.  Just like Facebook can’t possibly have the best app for every media type, FriendFeed can’t possibly display the data it’s collected the best for every user.

But why should FriendFeed open up?

Here’s where FriendFeed should take a page from FeedBurner.  FeedBurner lets people wrap their RSS feeds, from their blog, Picasa, etc., and clean them up while injecting contextually relevant ads into them.  The ad revenues get split between the user and FeedBurner.  If FriendFeed created an API for me to retrieve my data, I’d gladly also query their API for ads I should display on my web site.  I’d display them because they can be more relevant than Google ads for an entire page, since FriendFeed knows exactly what’s the content and what’s fluff. 

Ads could be specifically targeted at a specific event in my feed.  Say I went to Hawaii and FriendFeed pulled in my pictures through Picasa.  I’d sure put an ad for Hawaii vacations on my site, right below my Picasa pictures, if I’m paid $1 a click.

So, in my view of the web’s future, there are three kinds of web applications: 1) Creation apps, where I write my blog, set my Twitter status, upload pictures. 2) Aggregation apps, like FriendFeed, that pull together data from throughout the web for consumption elsewhere.  And 3) Consumption apps, where I actually read and annotate what’s been found for me.  Today most apps are still trying to be all three, and there are few (if any) apps dedicated only to the display of data for consumption.  FriendFeed is in a powerful position to own the aggregation layer, if they open up, but who will identify and own the consumption layer?

This week at a European tech conference, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer made a reference to a watch that would push advertising to you based on where you are and the time of day.

“Once that ecosystem is in place, Microsoft thinks it will be able to target consumers anywhere, anytime with advertising. Ballmer said he went for a jog in Paris the morning of the conference and wondered why it was not possible for a message to be piped to his watch that would say ‘Bonjour, have you bought breakfast yet?’ and then suggest where he could go.”

My ex-Microsoft friends and coworkers love to talk about Bill Gates’ and Ballmer’s irrational love for watch-based mobile devices.  Even after the abysmal failure of the Microsoft SPOT watch, their love continues.  But could this be Microsoft’s vision for SPOT Watch 2.0? Instead of a $9.95/monthly fee, people will get advertisements pushed to them a couple times a day.  I’ve heard rumors from inside the company that the SPOT watch team still exists and is working on
something — and Ballmer’s announcement (or testing of the waters, as the case may be) confirms it for me.

But a SPOT Watch 2.0 is a bad idea.

Why?  The amount of information I can physically intake and divulge using a watch is minimal.  I can only use one hand. The screen has to be small in order for the watch to look presentable.  And having advertisements tacky! — watches are status symbols and style definitions.  Meanwhile, the mobile phone is better in all measures.  It can be interacted with using two hands, has much better network transfer speeds than SPOT watches, and is something I need to carry around anyway. So it’s nonsensical that consumers would use a SPOT watch, even if it’s for free, since alternatives are already more effective and stylish and do not force advertising.

What advantages does Ballmer see for consumers in having an advertising delivery watch?

This week I compiled a list of some of the more popular social networking sites and their distinguishing features. Currently MySpace has the highest market share, but other sites quickly carving out niches and stealing market share with cleaner interfaces and unique features. Here is the list, sorted by market share according to the March 2007 Comscore Social Networking total unique visitors numbers. Continue Reading »

This afternoon I was setting up an Apache/MySQL/PHP system on my laptop, and I kept getting this error message:

httpd: Syntax error on line 115 of C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf: Cannot load C:/php/sapi/php4apache2.dll into server: The specified module could not be found.

I followed every step in the PHP installation manual, and searched Google for twenty minutes before I found this useful post explaining that PHP4 Apache2 modules do not work with Apache 2.2 — only with Apache 2.0! Unfortunately I can’t find php4apache2_2.dll anywhere on php.net, but there’s a couple places to download it elsewhere on the web, including from this site.

Following news that the Microsoft Zune market share has yet to exceed 2.5%, a spokesman for the Microsoft public relations agency declared that a new polyethylene box for discarding broken iPods must be management’s latest “morale booster” while the team ignores the product’s failure. Also of interest, “In light of the highly anticipated release of the ‘Halo 3′ Xbox game later this year, Microsoft unveiled a limited edition, ‘Halo’-themed Zune.” The Halo 3-theme will also help remind owners that when they share songs wirelessly with the Zune, they can only listen to them 3 times.

Kristen Nicole on Mashable wrote, “Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg is promoting the social site’s news feed function as the world’s biggest source of published information. With people constantly uploading information about themselves, and with their Facebook activity being automatically dispersed to friends and acquaintances, Zuckerberg says in a Wall Street Journal interview this morning that over 300 million “stories” a day are being posted throughout Facebook.” Interestingly, this blog post will syndicate over to Facebook and become one of those 300 million stories . Continue Reading »

The past two weekends I’ve been installing new doors in the hallway (master bedroom so far) and drywalling everything I’ve been creating. Here’s pictures. It’s pretty boring straight-forward work. But one thing I noticed that the bedroom door was an inch out of center on the hallway!! So I reconfigured the studs to center. Interesting part: the hallway’s walls aren’t straight up-and-down, they’re about an inch out of level. It’ll be interesting to see if the slight angle is noticable once everything’s painted and the trim is put on. But the new door is amazing, it sounds beautiful when you close it (very sturdy), and it cuts out traffic noise when it’s closed!