this is mikel.org — Page 30 — Michael Boyle's weblog

Leopard’s here tonight

October 26, 2007 by Michael Boyle

I have to admit I’m a little excited about the arrival of Leopard (aka Mac OS X 10.5) tonight – though I’m not sure at this point when I’m going to pick up my copy. The Guided Tour gives a good overview of what’s in store during the upgrade. Most interesting for me might be Time Machine, because I’ve become particularly obsessed with having good backups at all times, and Time Machine looks like a great addition to the effort.

I say might be for two reasons. First, I’m disappointed that it won’t work via connected Airport Disks. I have two external drives at the moment. One I keep connected via USB because it’s my backup drive (via Super Duper!) and I never got the backup-to-a-network-drive thing working properly. The other (much larger) disk hangs of my Airport Network. I’d love to use it for one or the other backup, but alas it isn’t suitable for that purpose. So at this stage, I’m not sure how to set things up for convenience, tidiness, AND a super-effective backup scheme. One idea I have had is to split the large drive into partitions – one for Super Duper and one for Time Machine – and use the smaller drive as the network file server.

Facebook goes (more) mobile

October 24, 2007 by Michael Boyle

Facebook has announced their platform for mobile devices: Introducing Facebook Platform for Mobile. Developers will have the ability to target content directly to the mobile site and to access Facebook’s SMS platform. This is important for a few reasons, but chief among them is that outside of North America, the mobile internet is a primary means of access for many. In many countries, no mobile literally means drastically reduced access to users.

Interesting blog on Data Mining

October 23, 2007 by Michael Boyle

I’ve recently been taking an interest in how to compile and analyze unstructured data and text to learn interesting things about the world around us. This blog looks like an interesting resource: Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media.

Keeping it real

October 23, 2007 by Michael Boyle

Patrick Tanguay has written a great manifesto about the central role of tone of voice in the blog world: I Am A Media, Not The Media.

It’s in the tone and it’s part of a pattern (or lack thereof). When Sylvain Twitters about his company looking for a job candidate, he’s reaching out to his tribe, to his friends and colleagues. You know he’ll be happy to give a hand in turn when he can, you know he’ll give credit, mention partners and cite sources. He’s using the technology to enhance the social aspect. When Bubba links to his most recent ad-ridden post, without any comment and you see he’s got 666 friends, you have to wonder if the tone is right.

I’ve always been very skeptical about the whole “personal brand” movement – although I hope I come across well in my blog, and I do write here about things that are professionally relevant to me, this space is always about me as an individual, not me as simply a commercial entity. I think that anyone who is involved in this kind of thing professionally would do well to keep a clear distinction between their commercial activity and their personal space on the web.

That’s where the “personal brand” people often lose me. I want to have a beer with a person, not with a company, and all too often that distinction is lost on people. And when the lack of such distinctions starts to invade my “social” space – well, it’s boring and somewhat abusive of my time, trust and goodwill. It’s almost as if a kind of mild autism is at play – autism in the sense that there are people can’t gauge context very well and don’t understand that what is cool in one environment is the opposite in another.

See also Sylvain (cited above by Patrick) and the post to which he linked on the weekend, HOWTO network without becoming a disingenuous weasel by Merlin Mann. As Sylvain put it, it’s about an ethic of reciprocity.

Walt Mossberg on mobile carriers

October 22, 2007 by Michael Boyle

Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg has published a piece on the extremely limiting role that US mobile carriers have forced on consumers in the US: Free My Phone.

A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.

As bad as things are in the US, they’re that much worse in Canada, where the same conditions apply – except that here, we get to pay a huge premium for the “privilege”.