Long-time viewers/readers know that there’s one person in the tech industry whom I idolize. No, it’s not Steve Jobs. Not Bill Gates. Not even the genius creators behind The Joy of Tech. It is New York Times Technology Columnist and CNBC Contributor David Pogue.

I idolize him because when it comes to covering the latest trends and gadgets in tech, Pogue does it right. He cuts through all the complex specifications and marketing hype that the tech industry spits out and goes straight to the point. And on his videos that he produces for CNBC and the NYT website, he throws in a healthy dose of humor to help him say his piece.

Pogue’s column in today’s paper, “For Those Facebook Left Behind,” is a very well-written article for those who are still unfamiliar with all of this social networking stuff. Sure, social networking has become second nature for those of us who use it all of the time. Heck, my first instinct when I read this article was to tweet about it, but I stopped myself when I realized the irony of using Twitter to link to an article that was written for people who have no idea what Twitter is.

But even so, I would highly recommend reading the article, as you may still learn a few things about social networks that you aren’t using. I for one have never touched LinkedIn or Foursquare and really had no idea what those services were for, partly because I’ve never bothered to check them out myself, before reading this article. Or maybe you’ve got some friends or relatives who are still in the dark about social media. Or if nothing else, watch the embedded video. It’s quite entertaining to see David Pogue in a dress.

If that didn’t grab your attention, well…

Problem #1 is that the Mac OS X Finder does not support FTP, hence demonstrating the need for a client. But even if the Finder did, it would not be adequate. People who really use FTP clients aren’t merely managing files that they’ve created on their computer; they’re uploading files to the server from their computer and downloading files from the server to their computer. En masse. (There’s a reason it’s called “File Transfer Protocol,” after all.) The Mac Finder simply does not give you what you need to make that work efficiently, even if it did support FTP.

The long-time king of Mac FTP clients has been Panic’s Transmit, which I’m pretty sure was the first FTP client to implement the two-column browser, implementing a blatantly obvious label of “your stuff” versus “their stuff” to differentiate them. No longer was it necessary to have multiple windows to find your files or have to drag them on- and off-screen.

The problem was that the Panic folks let a lot of time lapse between versions. Transmit 3.0, a major improvement to their software, was released in February 2005 amidst much fanfare and many awards… and then sat there for over five years. Other Mac FTP clients with snazzier interfaces and newer features emerged over time. Even I switched earlier this year to Flow when I got it as part of the last MacHeist bundle. (The MacHeist Bundle page for Flow took direct jabs at the staleness of Transmit 3, declaring “1998 called, it wants its file transfer app back.”)

About two months ago, Panic finally roared back onto the scene with the release of Transmit 4. Boy, did they make up for lost time! This new release of Transmit is packed with features and refinements that launch it at least five years ahead of any other FTP client out there today.

The most obvious new feature in Transmit 4 is its completely redesigned user interface. Much like comparing the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 3GS, Transmit 4′s interface makes Transmit 3 look downright clunky in comparison. The two-column “your stuff”/”their stuff” view is still there, though the names have been replaced by a new white vs. black color scheme that clearly differentiates the two sides. But the line between the two has been blurred dramatically. Transmit now includes a toolbar button that lets you switch into a single-column view if you prefer, and each column has a little icon in the upper-right that lets you switch the column from a “your stuff” view into a “their stuff” view. Which means you can now use Transmit in completely new ways, such as transferring files between two folders on your own hard drive, or transferring files from one FTP server directly to another. (The server->server transfer really does work, but it’s kind of slow because it probably has to cache the files on your hard drive first. But it’s nice flexibility to have.)

Transmit includes built-in support for FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, and WebDAV directory access, not to mention browsing the files on your own computer. It also has built-in MobileMe support and can connect to your iDisk or another user’s iDisk, and can also connect to network systems using Bonjour. Managing favorites also includes a much-improved interface that lets you set a favorite icon for your sites if you wish. Plus you can identify one of your favorites to automatically upload files to if you drop files on the Transmit Dock icon using the “DockSend” feature, or even save your favorites as a droplet. This creates a “mini-application” on your computer that you can drop files onto, which will automatically upload them. These features are great if you’re frequently uploading files to the same location on a server.

Browsing files is easier than ever in Transmit 4, thanks to its complete support for the browsing features Mac users are used to. All four views that the Finder uses (icon view, list view, column view, and even cover flow view) is fully supported in Transmit 4, and you can switch between them with the toolbar icon. (I personally prefer list view, so I can view the size and date of each item.) Transmit even has full support for Quick Look–even when you’re previewing directly from an FTP server! No need to download the file first. And when you’re navigating, Transmit shows you the path of directories you’ve opened as breadcrumbs along the top–a single click on any of the directories instantly jumps you back there. It’s much more efficient than using a pop-up menu to backtrace, but a pop-up menu is also available if you wish by clicking on the name of the current (highlighted) directory. And at the upper-left of each column, Transmit 4 has a feature called “Places.” Essentially, this lets you specify your most frequently-accessed directories on a server (or on your local hard drive) as a “place.” Then, just click the Places icon in the upper-left (or Shift-Command-S) and a translucent view fades in, giving you single-click or drag-and-drop access to each of your Places.

Transmit has long had a Synchronize feature that allowed you to synchronize the two directories that showed up in both columns so that they matched each other. Transmit 4 greatly enhances this feature and makes it a lot less scary. When you click on the Sync button in the toolbar, a pane slides down allowing you to specify the direction of the sync and optionally control a number of the rules that determine the sync. You can even simulate the sync if you want to make sure that you’re not going to lose anything sensitive, and a nice blue thought bubble explains exactly what you’re about to do before you do it. Nice feature.

And that’s just looking at how you browse the user interface of the application–Transmit does a fantastic job of actually transferring the files. Panic’s website claims that Transmit 4 is up to 25 times faster than Transmit 3. Of course, a lot of that depends on how fast your internet connection is and how fast the server on the other end is; personally I can’t wait to see how fast this baby screams when I upload a file from the faster internet connection at my university. Also, part of the reason that Transmit 4 is so much faster is because it tries to establish multiple connections to the FTP server so it can upload multiple files at once. This won’t work with every server; my old web host locked me out of my account because I had so many FTP connections at once. My new web host seems to be better able to handle the load. Even so, Transmit is definitely noticeably faster at uploading files–especially large numbers of small files–than its predecessor. It also has a great interface for monitoring uploads. Not only does it have a unique kind of progress bar–which uses different opacities of progress to show the overall progress and the progress for just the current file on the same bar–but it has a nice queue that you can slide up by clicking on the arrow in the lower-left of the window. It’s a very tight and intuitive interface that is leaps and bounds ahead of the old floating Activity window.

Transmit 4 also includes a novelty feature (it’s “One More Thing…”) called Transmit Disk. This feature actually allows you to mount a remote FTP server on your desktop as though it were an external hard drive, and browse it in the Finder. It’s a really interesting feature, but in my limited use it seemed to feel a little quirky. I had some initial difficulty getting files that I saved in the Transmit Disk to upload to the server, and not having the visual indicators that I’d come to love in the Transmit application made me treat the Transmit Disk as though it was a piece of delicate, fine china than just another disk. Plus, I kind of found that for my purposes, I preferred working within Transmit’s interface, or else editing files directly from the server using Panic’s integrated Coda application, over working from within the Finder. Quite frankly, I consider Transmit Disk to be more of a novelty extra, not part of Transmit’s core reason for being.

But overall, Transmit 4 is a must-have upgrade for anyone who lives in FTP, the way I do. The masterful integration of features, functionality, polish, and raw file transfer power make Transmit hands-down the best FTP client out there, and arguably one of the best Mac apps ever designed. Apple could not produce a better FTP app themselves if they tried.

In terms of my use going forward, I’m going to be using Transmit alongside Coda, which I reviewed three years ago. Coda will be my app of choice when I want to make edits directly to files on an FTP server, and Transmit will be my app of choice when I’m in the market for transferring big bulks of files around.

But seriously, if you transfer files around regularly and use a Mac, give Transmit 4 a try. I got hooked on it within the first minute of using it, and I’m sure you will too. Transmit 4 costs $34, but believe me, it pays for itself. An upgrade from Transmit 3 costs $19.

I would just like to ask every member of AU’s Undergraduate Senate, every member of AU’s campus media, and every student at American who has ever been critical of or pessimistic about the AU Student Government to watch this video.

This is what Student Government is really about.

(As a side-note, the funniest new feature that strikes me is the addition of a filter called capital_P_dangit() that forces any instance of “WordPress” being written without the P being capitalized gets automatically fixed to what it should be. I’d try to demonstrate, but you know, the filter would eliminate that effort!)

After working with WordPress 3.0 very closely for the past week, and also playing with the Release Candidates for a few weeks before that, here is my list of my six favorite new features in WordPress 3.0.

#6: Changeable Admin Username
Finally, one of my biggest pet peeves about WordPress has been addressed. Until 3.0, when you installed WordPress for the first time, the default administrator username was set to “admin” and you couldn’t change it. Not an entirely big deal for single-user blogs, but when I add a bunch of users to a site I generally like to utilize some kind of system for logically managing usernames, and “admin” flew in the face of that effort. Finally, upon installing a fresh WordPress 3.0 site, you are prompted to set the initial admin username to whatever you want. Yay!

#5: Help on Every Screen
Ever since the advent of the new admin interface in WordPress 2.7, there’s been a little “Help” tab on the upper-right that, when clicked, would slide down some information about what the different options on that page did. At least, for some pages. Most pages only showed links to the WordPress Codex and the Support Forums. Finally, WordPress 3.0 ensures that every admin page built-into the default WordPress 3.0 gets a full help treatment.
Now this isn’t really going to be directly helpful to me, because I know my way around WordPress quite easily. But a lot of my sites are soon going to be introducing a lot of brand-new wide-eyed users to the WordPress admin, and so now I’m quite glad that I can finally rely on those collapsible help screens as a resource to help the newbies. Which means I won’t have to spend as much time being a support technician.

#4: Twenty Ten Theme
I first started using WordPress when it was at version 1.5, in 2005. At that time, WordPress had just adopted Kubrick as its new default theme. It was a gorgeous theme, with custom header options, and even custom do-it-yourself gradients! Wow. But then, WordPress evolved, and became more about building a “site” than a “blog.” Site-wide navigation bars became hip. Widgets started moving beyond the sidebar and into new places. Kubrick stopped being so much of a “default’ theme as a “placeholder” theme to use until you found a better one.

WordPress 3.0 finally retires Kubrick (and the even older “Classic” theme, which no one used) with a new theme called Twenty Ten. This theme is loaded with awesome features that set a new standard for other themes to cling to. It comes with a number of custom header images, or you can specify your own. It even integrates the custom header with a featured image for each post, if you’ve set one. It also supports custom backgrounds, while still maintaining a bit of whitespace around the content to make the background look more like a nifty wallpaper. Throw in a navigation bar with great drop-down menus, special styles for asides and galleries, choice of one- or two-columns, support for widgets in the footer alongside sidebar widgets, and enhanced support for printing posts, Twenty Ten is now a default theme that many bloggers would be more than happy to stick with. I’m even using it for the website for my upcoming OSCONvasion 2010 meetup.

Probably most important about Twenty Ten is that it represents the most visible evidence of an official change in methodology for WordPress truly being recognized as a CMS, not just as a blog. Other terminology tweaks throughout 3.0 properly refer to a WordPress installation as a “site” now, not just a “blog,” because that truly is now how WordPress is being used by most people. And my next top 3 feature picks go much further into defining WordPress as such.

#3: Custom Menus
Navigation bars have become all the rage in WordPress themes, but getting them to look right has always been a pain. Navbars for different themes worked differently depending on whether your homepage = your blog posts or a different page. Getting them in the right order required tweaking the “order number” of your pages to be what you want; creating submenus required establishing a hierarchy of pages, which wasn’t always what you wanted (not to mention that it lengthened permalinks). And if you wanted to exclude a page from the navigation, or add a custom link that was unrelated to your pages, time to dive into the PHP code!

Finally, WordPress 3.0 introduces a custom menus interface that is quite slick, and fairly familiar to anyone who knows how customizing widgets works. You can create an unlimited number of different menus, and then boxes listing your site’s pages and categories are provided, which you can use to select the ones you want and add them to the menu. Then, simply drag-and-drop menu items to get the order you want, and create sub-menus by indenting menu items. Expanding the menu item lets you change the display text used in the menu (great for SEO) and add a title attribute (tooltip) if you want. Adding a custom link is also easy, just enter the link in a separate box, provide some display text, and the menu item is added.

Themes that offer support for custom menus will allow you to pick one (or more) of your menus to be displayed in a particular location. You can also display any custom menu of your choice via a new Custom Menus widget as well. However, I actually found that it wasn’t too difficult to add custom menu support to my existing themes using this tutorial. All you have to do is add a few lines of code to the theme’s functions.php file in order to a) let WordPress know that this theme now supports custom menus and b) register the place(s) in the theme where menus can be added. Then, dive into the theme’s header.php (or wherever) and identify where the HTML code for the current navigation bar is located. This is where you have to be clever, by customizing the elements passed to the wp_nav_menu() function so that the custom menu output will properly emulate the <div&rt; (or <nav&rt;) and <ul&rt; elements that are already being used by your theme, with the proper calls to CSS classes and ids. It takes a bit of trial and error, but for each theme I’ve tried I was able to get everything to work in no more than 15 minutes.

Custom menus plugs a big hole in terms of providing customization abilities for key areas of WordPress, and again is a big plus to have for CMS veterans. Now all I need is for WordPress to add customizable footers, and I’m all set.

#2: Custom Post Types
This is a big feature specifically for developers, ripped right out of the feature list of a traditional CMS. It took me a bit of reading to recognize just how powerful this feature can be, but I’m really excited to start working with it.

Here’s the idea. WordPress comes with a number of different types of items that are postable. These include blog posts, pages, links, media, etc. They are each treated differently because they have different metadata and are displayed in unique ways. But as far as the WordPress MySQL database is concerned, all of that info is actually being deposited into the same places alongside each other.

Custom Post Types let developers define additional types of posts that can be created and displayed independently of these other types of posts. For example, let’s say that I enjoyed cooking, and wanted to have a place to post my favorite recipes, but I wanted to display them on a page of my site completely separate from my normal blog posts. I could create a ‘recipes’ custom post type, and this would literally add a completely new tab to my WordPress admin (under Posts/Media/Links/Pages/Comments) called Recipes. I could go there to post a new recipe or manage my posted recipes, just like managing regular posts or pages.

What’s even cooler is that as the developer, I could dictate to WordPress a whole bunch of other options to truly customize my recipes post type, such as:

• Whether my recipes should be public–for everyone to see, or private–just for me to see
• Whether they should appear in search results if someone runs a search on my site
• Whether my recipes should be hierarchical (act like pages in WordPress) or chronological (act like blog posts in WordPress)
• Specific control the types of capabilities and permissions available to users to read/write/edit/delete recipes
• Full control over what posting options are available, such as title, text editor, comments, trackbacks, revisions, author, excerpt, thumbnail, custom fields, page attributes, etc.
• Ability to create custom taxonomies (kind of like categories of tags), which I could use to allow visitors to filter my recipes by types of ingredients, or type of meal, or season–three examples of custom taxonomies–the same way users can filter blog posts by tags
• And lots more.

Then by creating a custom template for my WordPress theme, I can create a completely separate section of my site for browsing and viewing my recipes with a lot of available display options based on the WordPress Loop.

I can see a lot of possibilities for using Custom Post Types–probably the first place I’m going to try them will be on the next version of the ATV website where I’m going to create custom types for video clips and full episodes for the different shows. But I truly believe that as I get more familiar working with Custom Post Types, it’s truly going to change the way that I develop for WordPress going forward.

For more info on Custom Post Types, check out this tutorial, or check out the Custom Post Type UI plugin.

#1: WordPress Multi-Site
WordPress MU has been around for a couple of years now, and I started working with it last fall when I developed the ATV website. Essentially it’s a wrapper around a number installation of WordPress which allowed multiple blogs to spawn off of a single installation of WordPress, either through virtualized subdirectories (example.com/blogname) or subdomains (blogname.example.com). It powers the tens of thousands of blogs running on WordPress.com, and it really offers some nice functionality.

But there were a number of downsides to using WordPress MU:

• WordPress MU was pretty much maintained by a single WordPress developer, who had to pull an all-nighter or two to update the MU package by merging over changes made to the regular WordPress package–this meant that WordPress MU updates would generally come out 2-10 days after their standalone-WordPress counterparts.
• As a separate product, fewer people used it & supported it, and finding plugins specifically to take advantage of MU features was a challenge.
• The instructions for using MU were unnecessarily intimidating and confusing, which is why it took me a long time to get up the nerve to start using it.
• Lots of confusion over the name. MU was supposed to stand for “multi-user,” but really MU’s functionality was to create multiple blogs. The standalone WordPress already supported multiple user accounts. Not to mention that it was intended to be referred to as “mew,” after the Greek letter μ, but many people called it by its initials “emm you”. (The website also suggested that if you were feeling bovine, you could all it “WordPress moooooooooo.”)

WordPress 3.0 takes the brilliant step of formally merging the old MU functionality in with the core WordPress, which fixes all of those downsides. Now, if you want to create a multi-site version of WordPress, you merely download and install the regular WordPress normally. Then, in wp-config.php, you add the line define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true); — this line magically makes a “Network” page appear under the Tools menu in the admin. From here, you enter some multi-site-specific configuration options, and then WordPress spits out some more code that you should add to wp-config.php and your .htaccess file. And just like that, you magically have a working multi-site version of WordPress!

**A word to the wise: You have to choose right then between subdirectories and subdomains; you can’t change your mind later. If you’re choosing subdirectories, make sure that you’ve setup a “virtual subdomain” through your hosting control panel — usually this is done by adding a *.example.com subdomain, pointing to the root of your WordPress install. Your WordPress install also has to be on the top-level directory of your domain name if you’re doing subdomains, and you need to make sure that your WordPress URL settings DO NOT have “www” included in them.

By merging the multi-site functionality in with the core WordPress, all of those downsides that I mentioned go away. Multi-site users will now get updates at the same time as standalone users (since it’s the same package), and now that this functionality is more readily available to everyone, more people will certainly start supporting it. We may even start seeing multi-site-capable plugins in the Plugins Directory now, hopefully.

There’s also a lovely terminology overhaul for multi-site users. The confusing “multi-user” name becomes “multi-site,” much more appropriately. Whereas you used to have a “site” containing “blogs,” now you have a “network” containing “sites,” also more appropriate. And because of that, the person who has total control over the entire network is no longer a “Site Admin,” but a “Super Admin.” The only terminology that hasn’t changed is the mu-plugins directory, except “mu” now stands for “must-use.” Even better, “must-use plugins” now show up in a special section of the WordPress admin, which is a welcome improvement.

This is my #1 feature of WordPress 3.0 because I’m now heading up three different multi-site based websites, and after maintaining the ATV website under versions 2.8 and 2.9 of WordPress MU for the past nine months, all of these changes have made working with multi-site installs far more intuitive and enjoyable. Think of it like Steve Jobs’ “one more thing” on top of all of the other great features that have been delivered as part of this upgrade.

So thank you, WordPress developers, for all of your hard work that you’ve put into this new release of WordPress. I can’t wait to see how much more I can do as I continue developing under it during the weeks and months to come.

I lived through my first ever snowfall last December. Washington, DC had its first snow of the season on Saturday, December 5, and I actually got to be out in it–while the snow was falling–for the first time in my life. It was certainly an interesting experience, as I watched from my dorm room and trekked out in it briefly.

I flew home for Winter Break on Tuesday, December 15, rather late considering that my final final was the Friday before. But just three days later the huge nor’easter became the big news, hitting DC with a blizzard that dumped a foot to a foot and a half of snow on DC, crippling the Metro, canceling flights, etc. And thus my primary line of winter break smalltalk became about how lucky I was to make it out of DC unscathed before the storm hit.

Turns out that storm was just a warm-up act. In what has been dubbed as either the “snowpocalypse” or “snowmageddon” (I prefer the format, President Obama apparently prefers the latter), American University received 27.5 inches of the white stuff, compared with just 16 inches during the mid-December storm. This in addition to the 6 inches we had already received last Saturday (1/30) and about two inches we received overnight on Tuesday (2/2).

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow last Tuesday and I’m going to begrudgingly give him some credit this time around.

I’ve been watching FOX 5 pretty much full time since Friday evening which has been doing a great job of tracking the storm and its effects on the DC region with full-time coverage from 2:00 PM-Midnight on Friday and 6:00 AM-11:30 PM on Saturday. Kudos to them for that and for live streaming their broadcasts online. Even so, this has been quite a storm, one that even my friends from Minnesota and New York have said has been the biggest they’ve ever seen.

But enough on thoughts for the moment, how about some hard facts? Here’s somewhat of a rundown of how this has been the perfect storm:

• The snowfall was a cold, wet snow–the kind that sticks. To trees. And power lines. And trees with branches right above power lines. Take the hint.
• We had thunder snow overnight between Friday and Saturday with snowfall rates of 2″-4″ per hour. I’ve sure never heard of “thunder snow” before this; it’s apparently exceedingly rare for this region.
• How many warnings do you want? At one point on Saturday we were under a winter storm warning, a blizzard warning, a gale warning, and a coastal flood advisory (primarily for the Maryland counties east of us near the Atlantic coast).
• Right after the snow ended, temperatures dipped down below freezing. Tonight we’ve got a low of 12Àö, and tomorrow’s high will be only 34Àö. That means the snow will be freezing and turning to ice, plowed-but-still-wet streets will become black ice, and don’t expect snow to melt anytime soon.
• Don’t look now, but we’ve got another round of snow coming on late Tuesday/early Wednesday, with a currently projected potential of 5″-6″ more. Let’s hope the projections for that round of snow don’t go up as fast as the projections for this weekend’s storm did.

However this is only going down in the official books as the fourth-largest snowfall to ever hit DC, due to the fact that the official records are taken at Reagan National Airport, which only got 17.8″. That still makes it the biggest storm since President’s Day 1979, when 18.7″ was measured that that site (which, for obvious reasons, did not carry the Reagan name.) But Reagan Airport was the only place in the region to see less than 20″ of snowfall. As I mentioned, AU got 27.5″. Dulles Airport got an all-time record of 32.4″. And the majority of the 30″-40″ records were north of us, in central Maryland, which apparently got the brunt of the storm.

I should actually back up a little bit to tell my fun story from Thursday evening. I’ve been meaning to get to Whole Foods over in Tenleytown since I got back here this semester, and the uncertainty of how much I would need to rely on myself this weekend prompted me to finally get over there on Thursday evening, at around 6:30 PM. There were checkout lines going down every single aisle all the way to the back of the store, which not only made it fun to try to actually get items off the shelves (which were, for the most part, still well-stocked), but my time in the 15-items-or-less express lane was exactly 20 minutes, end to end. I’d hate to imagine how long the wait was in the other lines! Of course, by the next day, identical scenes at supermarkets across the region were all over the news, this time with mostly empty shelves. Reminded me very much of an iconic scene of the video that I’ve embedded at the very end of this post.

The snow started rather innocently at around 10:30 AM on Friday morning, started to pick up stronger that evening, had the worst of it overnight, and then continued at a rather good pace throughout Saturday, tapering off at around 4:45 PM. AU canceled classes starting after 12 PM Noon on Friday, and subsequently canceled classes for yesterday, today, and now tomorrow as well. (Yay, considering I have twice as many classes on Mondays as I do on the other days of the week.)

But that’s not the least of it. Perhaps you’ve heard of the adage that Washington, DC freaks out when even a few snowflakes start falling–which is true. But that’s nothing compared to the anomalies that we’ve been seeing over the weekend.

• Metro has been restricted to serving underground stations only since 11 PM on Friday, and this is going to continue tomorrow (Monday) as well, even more than a day and a half after the snow stopped falling. (It is their policy to do this when the snow exceeds eight inches, making it impossible for their trains to receive power from the electric third-rail.)
• There has been absolutely no Metrobus service since 9 PM on Friday, though 18 routes will return to limited service on snow emergency routes tomorrow. Other regional bus services have been in the same predicament.
• All three DC region airports had little-to-no service whatsoever since Friday afternoon, and still may not have service until midday tomorrow at best.
• While AU avoided a power outage, at one point, 250,000 people in the region were without power. 60,000 were still without power, and the news is saying it may take until the end of the week to get power fully restored for many customers.
• There have been a significant number of roof collapses as the result of the snowfall, including an airplane hangar at Dulles Airport and one or two churches in Northeast DC. Absolutely devastating.
• Ploughs have been lucky to keep the snow emergency routes (primarily major thoroughfares) somewhat clear of snow–there’s still quite a lot of slush on many of them (which is bound to freeze). A lot of residential streets still have yet to see a single visit from a snowplough.
• Cars have been getting stuck all over the region. On Friday night at around 10 PM, I was watching FOX 5 as they had one of their reporters driving around Northwest DC (near Friendship Heights) and streaming with uStream, and just happened to drive by Senator Tom Daschle, whose sedan had gotten stuck. (They were able to give him a push.) And while I was writing this blog post earlier, a reporter in Bethesda, MD was trying to help about six other guys get a car unstuck from the snow, and a full hour later, they were still trying unsuccessfully to move the car.
• The postal service actually suspended mail delivery on Saturday, something that they haven’t done here in many years, apparently.
• And what’s snow without opportunities for fun? Yesterday saw the organization over Facebook of a huge snowball fight at Dupont Circle which had nearly a thousand people show up, and today the Secret Service relaxed security restrictions to allow people to sled down the slopes at Capitol Hill–probably the loosest that security at Capitol Hill has been since September 11th, according to the news.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that everything is still closed tomorrow. The federal and local governments are closed, the Smithsonian museums have all been closed (also an extremely rare occurrence, except on Christmas), pretty much all school districts are closed, and of course AU has made it clear that they will be closed tomorrow. Primarily because it would be unrealistic to expect the professors–most of whom live in suburban Maryland or Virginia–to try to get to campus; that can also go for a number of off-campus students as well, especially when Metro is still running at not even half-service.

Heck, there was actually an e-mail/Facebook uproar earlier this evening when DC Public Schools initially announced that school would be in session tomorrow, but starting 2 hours later than normal, resulting in parents complaining about the unsafe conditions for children getting to school, given the terrible state of many of the roads in DC. Not to mention how strange it would be for DC Public Schools to be open when essentially all other public/government services in the area are closed tomorrow. DCPS reversed its decision and formally closed all schools for tomorrow at about 8:30 this evening.

I did actually borrow a camera from ATV yesterday morning and went out and captured some video from around campus as the snow fell; you can see the raw, unedited video below. (Obviously the white balance isn’t great, nor is the exposure, nor is the steadiness of the camera–or lack thereof.) I’m just glad that I stayed upright the whole time, given that this was one of ATV’s brand-new $4000 cameras!

And yes, despite the wet snow, the camera survived without any problems whatsoever. No, I didn’t ask them for permission to do that beforehand.

So where do I stand–er, sit–now amidst all of this? Well, it’s certainly been a fun weekend. I got to be a part of history, and got probably the biggest induction into the experience of East Coast weather that one could ask for. And after the snow ended on Saturday, I got to have a Of course, having uninterrupted power, heat, and internet certainly helped out quite a bit to allow me to ride through this storm comfortably.

But the DC region isn’t out of the woods just yet. The area is going to be just as much closed down as it was during the snowstorm tomorrow, and it likely won’t be fully back up and running on Tuesday either. (I’d wager a 50-50 chance on whether or not AU will cancel Tuesday’s classes or not.) And then we’ve got the next snow storm coming between Tuesday and Wednesday which is still very much an unknown quantity. So far they’re saying that it will be nothing next to what we just went through, but it’ll be more than just a light dusting, and it might be enough to add insult to injury. So we’ll have to see.

But what I can say is that if there’s one allusion that kept running through my mind throughout this experience, it was one episode of Arthur, one of those kids cartoons that runs on PBS. This episode is from October 1999, and almost perfectly mirrors the type of environment that I’ve been witnessing here in DC. It’s a great watch to reflect on, so enjoy.

Part 1:

Part 2:

I’ll be sure to keep my Twitter updated as this event continues to unfold. Until then, I’ll keep the layers running, and do my best to make good use of whatever bonus free time Mother Nature sends my way.

Welcome to the end of another decade in American history. That’s right. With all of this “change” stuff sweeping the country this year, perhaps you forgot that the 2010s will be sweeping in in just a few months’ time. Looking back at the 2000s, the “golden millennial decade” (I actually just made that term up), it’s painstakingly obvious that a whole lot has changed in this country in the past ten years. But probably nothing else has changed as dramatically as the media.

Think about it. When the 2000 presidential election came down to a great big mess in Florida, or when the 9/11 attacks happened, how did those stories spread across the country? You most likely heard about those on the TV news, or if you were a bit on the slower side, you read about them in the newspaper. Nouns such as “blogs,” “podcasts,” or “tweets” weren’t even a part of our consciousness yet. Now fast forward to this year. The January 2009 plane landing in the Hudson River first broke on Twitter. This summer, journalists who were barred from covering the controversy and protests following the Iranian elections turned to the internet and social networks to find news postings and online videos from people who were on the ground in Iran. Newspapers across the country are shutting down every week or converting into online-only reporting. People get their news not just from television, radio, and newspapers, but now they also get their news from blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, aggregated news sources via Google, and a whole host of other sources. Not only can they get their news whenever they want from wherever they are, but they now have the power to choose the news they’ll use, and even make it themselves.

“Traditional” news media has realized this, and has attempted to catch up to the trend by trying to get “hip” to this new social media realm, with CNN arguably leading the charge. In 2006, they introduced their “iReport” feature, inviting anyone to submit videos, photos, or just text that they considered newsworthy. CNN would then identify certain iReports that they deemed newsworthy (and claimed to have “vetted” for factual accuracy) to air on their network. Late in the 2008 presidential campaign, CNN also took the lead in broadening out to incorporating existing social networks as well, most notably Twitter, and to a lesser extent, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace. These moves have definitely been popular, as CNN’s competitors have also hopped on board with their own iReport-equivalents, along with their own use of blogs and social networks. Many people, especially in the tech world (like in this article from Mashable) have praised the networks for adopting and pushing social media forward. But is this big move to social media really pushing journalism and freedom of speech forward? Or is it just using Web 2.0 as a fad to add entertainment value to the news? Or furthermore, is it trading actual, experienced, vetted journalism for cheap crowd-sourced anecdotes?

Now I’m certainly not one to criticize social media: I use it every day. I’ve been using Twitter since the beginning of 2007–back when it was still a thing when most people hadn’t even heard of before. Okay, I’m not as avid of a social networking user as some people are: I don’t spend hours poking friends of Facebook, I don’t make videos of myself on YouTube, I only follow 22 people on Twitter (because who’s crazy enough to be able to follow thousands of other people?), and I’ve never touched MySpace. But in the grander scheme of things, social media has exploded with the unintended side effect of revolutionizing what the First Amendment is all about.

Why do I say unintended? Well, look at the face that social networking put forth when it got started. Facebook was developed by a couple of college students who wanted a way to stay connected to their friends; but now, campaigns and organizations are using it to directly connect with their grassroots supporters. Twitter still presents you with the rhetorical question “What are you doing?” when it prompts you to right those famous tweets of 140 characters or fewer (THAT’S the grammatically correct way to say it), even though the tweeting community has come up with all kinds of uses for it, from marketing, to research, to back-and-forth messaging, to spurting random thoughts from your brain (my specialty), to actually sharing what you’re doing right now. In one of the most interesting examples, New York Times Tech Columnist David Pogue has published a book, The World According to Twitter, exclusively featuring responses to random questions that Pogue issued to his half million followers. Despite many of its obvious shortcomings, it’s clear that social networking has revolutionized and democratized the way we communicate.

But there is a major caveat to consider with social media: it is not a journalistic medium, but rather, a collection of people’s opinions. Journalism, on the other hand, is a profession with a number of core values, arguably the key value being the principle of objectivity. It is this principle which states that the journalist has a responsibility to the public to fairly and accurately present all sides of the story, and to set his personal biases aside. Journalism is about digging beneath the surface, verifying statements by one source with other sources, and questioning the authority. There’s a reason that American University still has an active School of Communication, and why it’s not going away anytime soon. Practically anyone can write a blog, make a podcast, or film a video these days; we don’t need to go to school to learn how to communicate anymore because the tools are right at our fingertips. But there are still core values to journalism that have to be learned, and that’s why journalists get paid the big bucks.

At least, that’s a very idealistic view of journalism, which in recent years, particularly on cable news channels, has largely sacrificed journalism for entertainment value, and introduced a significant amount of widely perceived bias, which has now become quite stereotypical for the networks. Fox News Channel is generally regarded as an extremely right-wing channel, and MSNBC is generally regarded as an increasingly left-wing channel. CNN remains generally regarded as being “in between,” but they’ve been adding so many gimmicks recently–from awkwardly-titled segments like “Just Sayin’” to magic touchscreens to holograms–that it seems that they’re more interested in entertaining special effects than reporting the news. And the way that they have embedded social networking into their news shows isn’t much better.

Let’s take a look at an example scenario from last June, after the murder of George Tiller (the abortion doctor). After covering the story, CNN anchor Don Lemon headed over to Twitter to see what the viewers were saying. Julia1970 said, “I think this is just awful. I don’t understand why people think its ok to kill grownups but not babies. I just don’t get it.” bugsact said, “Fighting for the life of children should not include killing a doctor. This kind of logic is crazy thinking.”
Okay, that’s great, and I’m sure that it’s a big ego boost for those tweeters who get to see their weird username on TV, and may get a few more followers in the process. But how does that really enhance the value of the news that I’m watching? Or as Jon Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show, “Whenever I’m troubled with the difficult moral question of abortion, I think to myself, ‘What would bugsact say?’”

Now I’m sure that some people will question my disapproval of the traditional media’s obsession with social networking. After all, isn’t this a way to give a voice to the general public? Doesn’t this break the barrier of having to have a whole bunch of equipment, people to work that equipment, and an FCC license in order to make your voice heard through the traditional media of television or radio? Don’t the declining ratings of television and radio, and the consistently-predicted death of newspapers mean that the internet is only going to grow as the means through which we get our news? Isn’t citizen journalism, as it’s commonly called, the future of journalism?

Maybe that is what the distant future holds. No one can really tell. But as for the immediate future, I reject this view. “Crowd-sourced journalism” would be better than “citizen journalism” as a means to describe how traditional media companies are currently using social networks. Individuals may be producing tweets or iReports on their own, but it’s still the media company that decides which of them hit the airwaves and which of them don’t. The media is still chief in establishing the national news agenda, reporting on the stories they want in the manner that they always have, and then cherry-picking comments from viewers via these social networks in order to get a sampling of public opinion, which often (particularly on the more niche issues) reflects the conclusion that the news story already made. The main difference is that in place of paying reporters to go to places to cover the news and get opinion from members of the public, they can now pull up an iReport and do the same thing for free.

But what about the future growth of social media? It’s true that the growth of Web 2.0 has definitely introduced some serious competition to traditional media, and has stolen a bit of “market share,” if you will, away from them. But contrary to what one would expect, making it so much easier for people to have instant access to information, and to just as easily be able to post information, actually does not lead us to a clearer understanding of our shared reality. We have actually seen the internet be used to help spread misinformation. In Farhad Manjoo’s book, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, which I read this summer as assigned reading for AU (it was a great book though, in my opinion), he identifies a number of examples in which the net has been able to spread false facts. A clear example is the Swift Boat Veterans ad campaign that took place in 2004, planting what was later found to be completely false claims concerning John Kerry’s military conduct in Vietnam. There was no factual basis for their claims, yet they spread from a small internet site into a national TV ad campaign to the mainstream media to the national consciousness, and may have been a key component in costing John Kerry the presidency in 2004. He even shows the same fallacies on the left side of the aisle, identifying a number of people who posted “findings” on how the 2004 election was stolen from John Kerry within hours after the polls closed, and were even accepted by journalists such as then-New York Times columnist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yet within a few months, nationally acclaimed scholars from major universities in the area of studying election procedures subsequently published studies proving that despite any possible misconduct in Florida or Ohio, any votes that could have been gained by Kerry would not at all have been enough for him to win the election. Therefore, it seems to me that if the future of journalism lies in social media, journalistic integrity will diminish, not expand.

But why does any of this matter? So what if the news media misrepresents the intent of social networking to add to the entertainment value of the news? It matters because, whether we realize it or not, the media affects all of us, either directly or indirectly. Even if we barely acknowledge the established media, what’s going on in our world still affects the conversations that we have with friends, right? It establishes the national conversation, and therefore direct impacts our country’s national policy. Unless you make the pilgrimage to your state capitol or to Congress every single day, then your view of our national politics, world events, or basically anything outside of the neighborhood where you live and work, is based on looking through the spectacles of the media. And when the media doesn’t do its job and uphold its journalistic integrity, it can lead our entire country astray. We saw this during the run-up to the war in Iraq, when the media failed to question the lies about there being weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Thousands of people would still be alive today had the media done their job then.

Now the media, like so many other parts of our lives and our world, is in a stage of significant and constant flux. It is critical for us to keep a very close eye on how the media operates and where it heads in the future so that we can protect not just our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, but the integrity of that freedom of speech as well.

1) It’s All About Where the Next Meal Comes From
There is something to be said for a home-cooked meal: it’s got a perfectly-portioned smidge of love baked right in. But the opportunities for those of us living away from home to get some of that love are few and far between, so the consumption of food here is directed by two guiding principles: “Variety is the spice of life,” and “The best things in life are free.”
No way to overemphasize the latter point. If you plan a college event and want people to show up, you offer free food. If you’re a college student, you know where the events that offer the free food are. I mean, yes, we’ve got meal plans for TDR (the Terrace Dining Room), where you just have to swipe your card and you’ve got an all-you-can-eat-in-one-sitting buffet there. And the food is actually pretty good. Except that it lacks the love, because it’s prepared in bulk. Who can spend all of their time eating food in that type of loud environment (which could definitely benefit from a bit more atmosphere) when it doesn’t have any of the love?
Consequently, there are some other places to eat on-campus that you can use EagleBuck$ (stored value on your ID card) for, with more of a fast-food style. Or you can go off-campus, either to Tenleytown or to wherever the Metro will take you to explore the scene. All of which is also very good food, and provides some variety to the palette, but again you lose the love. Throw in that you’ve got to plan where you’re going to go to get that food and how you’re going to get there, and juggle the schedules of when certain places to eat are open and when they’re not, and then plan to do this for at least three meals a day, and you can see why food is on the college student’s brain very, very frequently.
In other words, after eleven days here, I’ve really got a craving for a home-cooked meal. I crave some of that love in my food again.

2) If It’s Free, Let It Be
This piggybacks off of the last section, but that’s the truth: people here like stuff that’s free, whether it’s on-campus movies, games, or food (obviously). But here’s an example of how free-mad people can get. AU has this thing called eSuds, which is a thing that lets you track the washers and dryers on each floor. You can see live which washers and dryers are in use and which ones are available, can get notified by e-mail or text message when one becomes available, and can also be notified when your cycle is finished. And you pay for the cycles with EagleBuck$, just $1 a cycle. Except here’s the catch–the washers and dryers in my section of my floor aren’t hooked up to eSuds. So that means that the system has no idea there’s washers and dryers on this floor, which throws the whole convenience factor out of the window. BUT, and here’s the big but, this means that for now, our washers and dryers work for FREE. And so no one wants anyone to report this issue because they all love having free laundry–and this even goes for the Resident Assistants (RAs), who are supposed to report these kinds of things, because they ALSO love the free laundry! Personally, I wouldn’t care about paying for the laundry just to have the convenience of eSuds, but I’m sure that if I reported anything, my head would get chopped off! (Metaphorically speaking.) Heck, we now even have an issue with people from other floors taking our washers/dryers to get free laundry. I guess it’s a dog eat dog world out there…

3) Coffee!!! Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee…
While I’m sure that most of the people here aren’t as bad as my roommate, who I consider to be a coffee-holic (in that he claims that he needs a couple of cups a day in order to stay active, and that I’ve seen him struggle to get out of bed in the morning when it’s been awhile since his cup of Joe), there is no shortage of places to get coffee out here. There’s The Perch, open nightly 8 PM-2 AM, part of the first floor lounge in Centennial Hall that has been turned into a coffee house/hangout spot with music and board games, where you bring your own mug for $1/cup of coffee (or buy one of their iconic biodegradable tumblers for $3 with a picture of a bird that almost looks like it was ripped off from the Twitter logo). Or there’s the Davenport Coffee Lounge, a student-run place in the School of International Service building (SIS) (that quite frankly makes the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had). Or there’s the Mud Box, located in the basement of Bender Library and open at not-quite 24/5, but close to it, which I haven’t actually been to yet. Or you can get coffee almost anywhere else on campus (my roommate says that the McDonald’s coffee is the absolute worst of the bunch, although being a writer, he has some much more interesting adjectives to describe it). And of course Starbucks lovers (generally looked down upon here) could take the shuttle to Tenleytown for their cup of Joe.
And here’s little old me, who only occasionally dips himself into a cup of decaf (“Gasp! Decaf??? That’s not even real coffee!!”), so loaded up with cream and sugar that you wouldn’t even know what it came from. Whatever, it’s still a part of the culture out here. Just wait until exams start…

4) “Traditiooooooooon! Tradition.”
And that’s my horrible typing impression of what the song from “Fiddler on the Roof” sounds like. Still, there’s plenty of awkward traditions at any college, and this place is no exception. You could start with “Wings and Water Ice” that happened on my second night here, where everyone was invited to an event in McDowell Hall with games, music, socializing, and–you guessed it (or didn’t)–barbecue chicken wings and water ice in cherry, lemon, mango, or pineapple flavors. Without a doubt one of the weirdest combinations I’ve ever encountered, even though each were individually pretty good. Or there’s commencement, which was last Friday (hot day!), where they paraded the 1500+ freshmen around campus with bagpipers playing in the front, eventually leading into Bender Arena, where the marching band played the AU fight song at least 40 times in a row while waiting for all of the freshmen to find seats, and then had a number of people give speeches. And I’m sure that there’s plenty more of these traditions coming up very soon that I don’t even know about yet.

5) Campus Bookstores Stink
For half of my classes, they got the textbook listings messed up, they run out of textbooks quickly, and quite frankly the prices they charge are big ripoffs. ‘Nuff said.

What’s the point of this somewhat random post? Well, after eleven days here, I’m still not very settled in yet. Welcome Week certainly had some fun activities, but it definitely was not normal in terms of helping to formulate any kind of living pattern to get used to. Getting used to not having seven classes a day, every day, all in sequential order is not easy, and there’s definitely going to be a lot more high-stakes work to do on my own time for those classes, which will have to push me out of summer-break mode to start doing those. And of course, I’m trying really hard to avoid the world of pain that I fell into during my last freshman year: where I got involved in so many interesting activities that I over-committed myself. Trying to avoid that world isn’t easy when I have to apply for everything I’m interested in participating in, and a lot of the things I would like to commit myself to are pending upon hearing back from something else.

Anyway, the honeymoon is over. Right now is the rough patch where I’ve got to dig in the trenches and hold my breath. After all, “we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure of what is normal anyway.”

* Quote from Chapter 9 of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, according to Wikiquote, anyway.

Daniel spends a good portion of his post comparing teens’ opinions on Twitter to those of Facebook and MySpace. And granted, there is no dispute that those sites (mainly Facebook, these days) are more popular in the eyes of high school/college-aged teens. But I just don’t fit in the same category. Facebook still feels very foreign to me when I try to use it, yet Twitter is something I practically can’t live without these days, and I’ve been Twittering for two and a half years now. Heck, I now consider my tweets equal in importance to my blog posts, which is why they get equal billing on the home page of my new site. So in response to Daniel’s article, I wanted to take the opportunity to discuss why I am using Twitter and prefer it over the more traditional social networking sites.

Here’s what Daniel wrote in comparing Facebook and Twitter:

Facebook is about connecting people, and sharing information with each other. The way my friends and I see it, Facebook is a closed network. It’s a network of people and friends that you trust to be connected to, and to share information like your email address, AIM screen name, and phone number. You know who’s getting your status messages, because you either approved or added each person to your network.

With Twitter, it’s the exact opposite. Anyone can follow your status updates. It’s a completely open network that makes teenagers feel “unsafe” about posting their content there, because who knows who will read it. Sure, you get emails notifying you when you have new followers, but that doesn’t compare to the level of detail you get when someone on Facebook adds you, and you get their information.

Everything that Daniel wrote is completely correct. Yet I prefer Twitter over Facebook for some of those very reasons, and a lot of it is based on the way that I prefer to communicate online.

Part of the reason my comfortableness on Facebook is different than Twitter is because of the differences in who the people that become part of my network “are.” I’ve got 184 friends on Facebook. I only follow 22 people on Twitter. I will be honest: I don’t actually know who a lot of my Facebook friends are (or at the very least I don’t know them that well), and a good number of them are people that I’ve met at school, or who at least say are in my high school’s network (usually if I don’t know them, I go by the “friend of a friend” montra–I’ll add them if they are mutual friends with a significant number of my current friends). Ugh, did that make much sense? Then they end up treating their Facebook status updates virtually the same as Twitter,and that’s the first thing I see when I log in. Most of which is stuff I don’t care about, a lot of it contains comments that are somewhat inappropriate that I certainly don’t want to see.

And Facebook adds so much more to make it quite a bit cluttered. In addition to sorting through friend requests every so often, I also have to sort through event invitations, group invitations (so some pretty weird groups, pretty much the only one I actually joined was “When I was your age, Pluto was a planet”), and creepy things like superpokes and werewolfs. Facebook just has a lot of creepy stuff that people turn on that also invades my part of the neighborhood (long enough for me to click the Ignore button), and all it does is make me want to use Facebook less. Hence why I only log in once every two weeks or so, unless I’ve got an important reason for being there.

Twitter, on the other hand, honestly provides me with a lot more control over my experience. Unlike Facebook, where you can install everything including the kitchen sink to your experience, Twitter is centrally a 140-character-or-less microblogging service. The focus is on the messages (tweets) that I want to write. Unlike Facebook, where the only way someone can see more about you and what you’re doing is for you to add them as a friend right back (which is part of the reason why I have 184 friends on Facebook), Twitter is one-way. Unless you choose to make your tweets private, anyone who wants to can follow you, and you don’t have to worry about it (Twitter will send you an e-mail to let you know unless you turn that e-mail off, like I have).

Yes, Twitter is open. And some people may not like that about Twitter, and will prefer Facebook for that reason. My response? I’ve been doing personal blogging since 2005, for over four years. And that’s obviously a communication medium that’s wide open. I pretty much consider Twitter to be an extension of my blog. Back before Twitter was a hit, WordPress users were big on this thing called “Asides”–special blog posts that were just short snippets as opposed to big long posts like this one. Asides have kind of disappeared now as Twitter and blog integrations with Twitter have taken over, and that’s why I give Twitter equal billing on my home page now, as I have already mentioned. And I’ve got 206 people who follow my tweets on Twitter. I don’t know who they are, I don’t know why they’re bothering to follow me, and quite frankly (unlike a number of tweeters out there), I don’t care. I write both my blog and my tweets to express myself when I’m inspired to do so, not to make the readers happy. And I only follow 22 tweeters, because currently, that’s all that I really care to see when Twitterrific pops up on the right side of my window. If I start to get bored or annoyed when a particular person’s tweets show up in my Twitterrific window, I stop following them. Don’t ask me about the folks who follow hundreds or thousands of other tweeters live with it, I have a fun enough time keeping up with my 22.

Daniel also says some more on why teens wouldn’t want to use Twitter:

Twitter is also seen as more expensive to keep up with than Facebook. Most of my friends spend their time playing video games, watching TV, surfing online, and text messaging to actual friends who you know will reply back. In an economy like this, most parents don’t want to spend the extra money on unlimited texting to total strangers. So why spend money on sending SMS updates to Twitter, when you can send updates to someone you know will read it and reply?

This is probably his weakest argument, because it focuses on only one way to use Twitter. Sure, when Twitter started, tweeting really came down to either visiting Twitter.com or using SMS messaging. Well, you know what? I’ve been tweeting for two and a half years, I’m just about to cross 6,000 tweets, and I’ve never made a single tweet with SMS yet. (I might do it for the first time next week when I have to coordinate a meetup location with other folks.) And that’s because I don’t obsess with keeping the eternal “What are you doing?” question answered. I don’t know about you, but I often have internal thoughts that I just want to express to nobody in particular, and Twitter offers me a great way to do it.

Take a look at some of my tweets that I’ve marked as my favorites:

• There is one thing that I think is indisputable: Antonio Vivaldi was a genius. 7/12/09
• Reason #1 why media companies should embrace YouTube: Most of my iTunes purchases these days are BECAUSE I found them on YouTube. 7/9/09
• YouTube video comments. A collection of writings that will go down as the most embarrassing set of words ever attributed to the human race. 5/31/09
• I’ve got a song in my heart and music in my head. Oh wait, the latter is because I’m wearing headphones. Duh. 4/3/09
• “Are you goin’ to Macworld SF? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Remember me to one who speaks there, he once was a true love of mine…” 1/6/09
• I’m a money launderer. I just found two $1 bills that I put in the washing machine by mistake. :/ 12/14/08
• For me, tweeting isn’t just saying what I’m doing. Tweets come about by instinct, inspiration, with a small dab of boredom mixed in. 5/12/08

Not to sound too self-praising, but those are noteworthy remarks or moments for me. Who would I text them to? Who would care if I said or wrote them to someone? Why would I blog them, when such a short context-free blog posts would seem weird and the process of getting a full blog post posted takes time and is not immediately available at my beck and call the way Twitter is? I don’t care who sees it (and I’m usually self-disciplined enough that anything that is particularly private for me does not find its way onto my blog or my tweets), but looking back on them continues to be enjoyable, just as looking back at some of my old blog posts continues to be enjoyable.

That’s why I am using Twitter. But then why am I using Facebook?

I first signed up for Facebook two years ago. I didn’t really know what it was or anything, but that was right after Facebook had launched its API for applications and everyone was talking about it, so I signed up. And then my classmates started flocking to me. But it has been useful. I have been able to use its chatting platform to chat with friends that I can’t find on Twitter, or IM, or anywhere else. I’ve been able to find out about missed assignments from classmates, and there was even one project this past year where we worked together on it via a Facebook group. Thanks to its ability to tag faces in photos, I’ve been able to find photos of myself from Macbeth or from my graduation (and from there to see other photos taken from those events) that I otherwise wouldn’t have stumbled upon. And now that I’m headed to a brand new place, and likely won’t see many of my friends from school again anytime soon, it will probably prove to be a nice tool to reestablish old acquaintances. And for now, I have a Twitter app installed on there which makes my Facebook status messages reflect my tweets (and of course, then I get Facebook friends commenting on them, and often kind of missing the point, but oh well). And who knows, things can always evolve; who knows what I’ll be using when summer of 2010 or 2011 rolls around.

I don’t see Twitter and Facebook as mutually exclusive; I primarily use them for different purposes, and aimed at different audiences. I will say that people who are successful on Twitter, like people who are successful at blogging, need to be a bit more mature and proficient at writing to a general audience than many of the people who post on Facebook. And while I would love to see teens embrace blogging, tweeting, and more creative and productive means of self-expression like that (and perhaps a note to teachers that they should start embracing these as a way to improve writing skills among teens, hint hint), it seems that at least for now, the majority of teens will prefer the video games over the keyboard.

Fortunately, there are exceptions to every rule. And I’m one of them.

MacBooks Refresh
Man, even six days later, I’m still trying to reconcile the name “MacBook Pro” with the 13″ label. Nevertheless, I’d say that Apple’s decision to make the 13″ aluminum MacBook a MacBook Pro is smart, and makes a lot more sense. Plus, it gives them an excuse to bring back FireWire (yay), make the backlit keyboard standard (yay), and really unify the whole lineup. And finally, the white MacBook can be the only “MacBook” again, rather than being listed on Apple’s site as the “MacBook White,” thus providing some more significant distinction between the “MacBook” and “MacBook Pro.” Not to mention that the latest refresh of the white MacBook actually made it faster than the aluminum MacBook at a cheaper price. And then Apple brought the prices of all of their laptops down, while bumping specs–again a smart move. So overall, can’t complain. Not that it matters to me, my 2 GHz white MacBook from April 2007 is still doing plenty well and I’ll stick with this thing until it drops. And unless I start doing more intensive tasks on here, that won’t be anytime soon.

Snow Leopard
Now the announcement of Snow Leopard was also quite nice to hear. Finally, Apple taking a break from new features and instead focusing on taming the oversized cat that is Mac OS X. I mean, for Pete’s sake, OS X takes up quite a bit of space on one’s hard drive! I would never have thought that I’d be fighting to keep enough free space on my MacBook’s 80 GB hard drive (my iBook had only 20 GB and with a little added elbow grease could run Tiger), but that’s what I’ve been doing this past week: trying to clear up drive space. Did you know that System 7 was the first Mac OS to require a hard drive for installation? And now look at where we are! So I dare say, the fact that upgrading will give you back 6 GB of hard drive space should be awesome enough right there to qualify for paying $29. Speaking of which, kudos to Apple for making this a $29 upgrade; I’m so looking forward to it. But as usual for Mac OS X releases, the features that I’m most excited for are the features buried in the “other new features” section, not the premiere features. (Spotlight? Dashboard? Time Machine? Stacks in the Dock? I hardly use ‘em.) So here’s my personal list of top features I’m looking forward to in Snow Leopard.

• More Reliable Disk Eject. A new Finder feature, Apple claims that Snow Leopard will be more reliable in stopping background processes that prevent you from ejecting external drives, and if it can’t eject, will let you know what program is hogging it up. Sounds great to me as someone who frequently can’t eject stuff for unknown reasons.
• More functional Stacks. Stacks were a big selling point to Leopard, but they really were a dumb way to get to only a limited number of items in a folder, compared to the scrollable lists you got pre-Leopard from right-clicking a folder in the Dock. Now the ability to scroll a stack and navigate through folders in an iPhone-like interface offers a much more convenient and rather pretty/stylized way to drill through folders to quickly launch the file I want.
• New Services Menu. Thanks to hearing from Macworld what Services are, they seem quite useful, but trying to navigate the Services menu is a messy proposition. I look forward to Snow Leopard filtering out the services that actually are useful, and making them more accessible via the contextual menus, I look forward to taking advantage of them. Oh, and Automator can write services as well, which sounds even cooler.
• AirPort menu signal strength. Now the signal strength will be displayed next to each network in the AirPort menu, which will make my difficulties in trying to find some good free wifi when I’m on the move much easier. Or at least help me not to waste as much time trying to fulfill that idea.
• QuickTime X. Not only is it free, have a cool interface, and incorporates a “lite” iMovie in its editing/trimming/sharing capabilities, but it also has its own screen recorder, which I’m sure will be easier to figure out than any of the other screen recording apps out there. I use iShowU (with a little difficulty), and have never figured out how to use Snapz Pro X, so I’m looking forward to what QuickTime X delivers. Now if only the new logo didn’t look so weird.
• Google/Yahoo! Support in iCal. Who needs BusySync or Spanning Sync? iCal promises to let you just enter your password to Google Calendar or Yahoo! Calendar, and it will take care of the rest!
• “Multi-touch gestures in older Mac models.” I don’t know if this means that all Macs with scrolling trackpads will get gestures (like my MacBook), or just the newer ones with “multi-touch trackpads,” the language here is confusing. Still, if my MacBook gets to have gestures, that will be very cool.
• Core Location. Like the iPod touch, OS X will use Skyhook Wireless to figure out where you are, and it can reset your timezone automatically using that. As someone preparing to do lots of traveling between the Pacific and Eastern timezones, that sounds good to me! And I’m sure that it could open the door to some future Core Location-based Mac applications. After all, why should the iPhone get all of the fun?

It’s too bad we have to wait another three months until Snow Leopard is out, but I’m very excited for the update! Let the countdown begin…

iPhone 3.0
The iPhone 3.0 software update is obviously the most anticipated thing to come out of WWDC. I don’t think one can say much that’s bad about it. The implementation of Cut/Copy/Paste and that Shake to Undo feature is quite nice (who would have thought two years ago that shaking a device would be a means of user input?). Given how insane eleven home screens would probably be, I’d say that the Spotlight search feature is a great idea, and would probably get used more often on the iPhone than it’s big brother in OS X gets used. The Voice Memos app? Nice. It’s all good, is what I’m saying, and really helps to fill the remaining holes in the iPhone. Whereas two years ago, I had plenty to say regarding reasons I would never want an iPhone, I think Apple finally has an offering that doesn’t feel like a “version 1.0″ system, and finally feels fairly feature-complete. It’s like Mac OS X, which didn’t really start to feel feature complete until Jaguar’s debut, and more so with Panther. If I had the money/credit rating/all that other silly stuff needed to support a $70/month cell plan, I would totally go with the iPhone. But I don’t, which is why I’m not even bothering to waste my energy envying the thing.

AT&T’s Word is Disconnected
I love how on Tuesday, I got an issue of Macworld magazine with an article on reasons why Apple should ditch AT&T (or at least ditch their exclusive contract with them). They wrote that article too early, because the reasons doubled during Monday’s keynote. Between MMS and internet tethering, AT&T is dead on arrival when it comes to delivering these key features. And when was the last time that people in Canada or Europe got features in Apple products/services BEFORE customers in the U.S.? Never, as far as I know. Heck, I don’t even like SMS/MMS one bit, and I consider it the biggest ripoff in the cell phone industry. But when it comes to Apple’s implementation of MMS, they’ve actually taken something that was kind of trendy and made it useful for sharing information–not just photos, videos, and all that, but useful things like locations and vCards. That’s pretty good. But AT&T, of all folks, can’t get their act together? And as for tethering, that would really help bring me in towards the iPhone, but AT&T can’t make that happen either. Yet they had to pull NetShare from the App Store, when those lucky few who downloaded it in time are still using it beautifully. It was clear at the keynote that Scott Forstall was not happy about AT&T and he quickly brushed over their obvious absence. Apple, move on already!

iPhone 3G S: Anyone for Alphabet Soup?
“The ‘S’ stands for ‘speed.’” Okay, great, but isn’t this just getting a little bit like names that use weird letter/number combinations, rather than just real names? Or maybe this Joy of Tech comic really tells it like it is. You still can’t complain about much here, though. Faster is obviously great (and for a few apps, much-needed). Though I love how we’re just supposed to take “faster” at face value without any hard numbers to back it up, the way we would get with “faster” Macs. The built-in video camera is quite nice. As funny as it may sound, iPhone may become the biggest competitor to The Flip; I really see those in the same zone. And iMovie-like (okay, I guess it will be truly compared to QuickTime X once Snow Leopard comes out) editing and sharing right from the phone? Like I said, I could see using this over the Flip easily. And who needs an HD camera? Not me.
Voice Control is also quite nice, and I love the floating blue interface, it’s quite cool-looking. Though I will say that I’ve watched the iPhone 3G S Guided Tour a few times, and the system voice that confirms what you just said still creeps me out thoroughly. The Digital Compass is cool, now that I get the point of it (the Google Maps orientation). And of course, the lower price point of the 8 GB iPhone is still nice, but it still can’t woo me in because of that lingering AT&T plan right behind it. At least with the Palm Pre, Sprint’s plans are more reasonable.

But What About the iPod touch?
3.0 is another $9.95 update for the iPod touch, but it’s not going to get as much stuff as the iPhone, obviously. MMS support won’t be coming to the iPod touch, but that’s really a “phone” feature, along with SMS, so I wouldn’t expect to ever see that. Voice Memos won’t be coming to the iPod touch, according to Apple’s website, anyway. It would seem to me like it would be nice to have the Voice Memos app if people attached a microphone accessory, just like the iPod classic and iPod nano have its own Voice Memos functionality. No word on that yet. Apple doesn’t indicate that the iPod touch will get the “improved Stocks app” that the iPhone gets, but I would be surprised if that isn’t actually a new feature. I just love how it’s screenshot-worthy on the iPhone page, and not even mentioned for the touch. The iPod touch doesn’t get internet tethering, but then again, who needs to tether wifi?

As someone who would be more likely to get an iPod touch than I would an iPhone, here’s my personal wish list for the iPod touch (which will likely get its chance at an update this fall):

• The built-in video camera with editing. I know that rumors have been supporting this, and I would really think that it’s a great idea. The iPhone is really a convergence device done right, and I’d love to have that in the iPod touch for those of us who can’t converge on an expensively-planned cell phone.
• Voice Control. It’s creepy, but it’s cool, and there’s no reason why it wouldn’t be great in an iPod touch, even if the only thing you could do is control music. Quite frankly, I think the appeal of Voice Control is that it makes up for the lack of physical no-need-to-look-at-them-when-you’re-pushing-them buttons on these touchscreen devices.
• Digital Compass. Sorry, but being able to orient the map in the direction that you’re going is just too cool.
• Microphone. I really think that the Voice Memos app would be SO useful, and I’d like to see a microphone on the earbuds at the very least, if not integrated into the device. (If there’s a video camera added, it would probably need to be integrated into the device.)
• GPS. Okay, this is very unlikely to come down from the iPhone, but one can dream, can’t he? GPS and Skyhook (wifi location) DO complement each other nicely.
• Apple to stop thinking of the iPod touch exclusively as a gaming device. I mean, already, the iPod touch is a PDA that far beats out anything that Palm’s PDAs could ever do, courtesy of the App Store. Not just the Games Store–the APP Store. Heck, Palm doesn’t even make PDAs anymore, just smartphones. And for that matter, if Apple really is working on a bigger multi-touch tablet device, that would be cool too.

So with iPhone 3.0 and the iPhone 3G S, Apple takes another leap forward and AT&T takes another leap backward. It’s business as usual. I’m just looking forward to seeing what they do in the fall with the iPod touch, since I’ve been eyeing that thing for awhile, but I want to see that the 3G iPod touch brings before I throw down any money on it.