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the singularity of being and nothingness
The Foursquare/Facebook Places Debate: It’s ‘And’, Not ‘Vs.’
Aug 25th
Since the release of Places for Facebook (you know, the super-cool new feature of Facebook where you can tell all your friends exactly where you are with maps and such?), there has been a flurry of discussion about what the emergence of Facebook within the realm of geolocation means for other, more established services like Foursquare. Some have predicted that Facebook, with its 500-million+ user base, will quickly rise to prominence out of sheer mass, crushing other services in its massive wake. Others-myself included-have argued that other location-based services can survive by focusing their efforts, refining their services, and looking for strategic ways to deliver amazing content and services in a more agile manner than the behemoth Facebook.
In the midst of the conversation and debate, however, the predominant view has been to see the discussion as one of Facebook vs. Foursquare (or Gowalla, or Britekite, or whoever else). While there are certainly valid points in this line of thinking, let me offer some ideas on Facebook and Foursquare living in harmony, or at least occupying relevant spaces in individual users’ smart back pockets.
How Do We Get to the “And”The key to finding the “and” is to keep in mind More >
An Anniversary Ode to My Wife
Aug 23rd
This August 23rd marks the 8-year anniversary of my marriage to my beautiful wife, Brooke. Eight years seems like a long time, but honestly it has flown by, and through the good and the bad, I’m grateful for and humbled by the blessing of the time that we’ve had together.
I could continue on in a sappy vein, but I thought I’d share a “Top Ten” (or so) of the very best reasons to be married to Brooke.
- She’s hot
- She wrangles will phone bills, car payments, and all the other fiscal responsibilities that would be left undone if I were left to myself
- She’s a great mother to our wonderful daughter
- She consistently takes care of the laundry
- She is hilarious, and is patient with my feeble (read failed) attempts at the same
- She doesn’t let me mope, and calls me on it when I try to pretend that I’m not bothered about something!
- She has a very positive outlook on the future for our lives, and motivates me (or drags me, when needed!) to get the best out of it
- She’s extremely empathetic, and is able to comfort me and lift my spirits when I’m sad, sick, hurt, and everything in between
- She’s a constant inspiration for More >
Initial Impressions of Facebook’s Places?
Aug 22nd
Ok, so I know Places has only been available for about 4 days or so. But still, I’m curious what others think of it? I certainly have opinions, but I’ll share them later…
So…
- What is your favorite thing about Places?
- What do you not like about Places?
- Do you use it to check-in everywhere you go, or only certain places?
- Have you tagged others in your check-ins, and if so, what’s the greatest number of check-ins at one location so far?
- Has Places been responsible for an impromptu meetup with a friend?
- How much do you think you’ll use Places in relation to your general Facebook activity?
If you want to weigh in on these questions (or any that I didn’t ask), leave a comment!!!
The Imaging of God and the Creating Word
Aug 21st
The Creating Word
In describing the mechanism of God’s creative energy, the writers of the biblical creation narratives may have employed any number of devices to communicate the unfathomable act of creation ex nihilo. Unlike other narratives that imagine creation taken from the body of a deity, or even one in which the universe springs forth from pure, divine thought, the whole of creation in the biblical drama issues forth from the spoken word of the Creator. This is profound, for speech is ultimately not an act of isolated engagement, but as Heidegger notes, is equally speaking and listening, a hearing and uncovering, an equal state of showing and beholding.
In this way, the speaking-Creator in the act of primal, universal becoming signifies something of the way in which the Creator is related to the creation. Because the spoken word underpins the entire drama and energy of the universe’s becoming, that which is brought into being-the spoken-into-is made to participate in the one who speaks. Through its emerging existence, the creation forms a conversation with the Creator, concomitantly the outcome of the word and the reason for it.
Moreover, the logic of this creating/becoming conversation unveils a suggestion of the meaningfulness of the creation to More >
What Foursquare has to Fear from Facebook’s Places
Aug 20th
UPDATE: As of today (August 20, 2010), Places in Facebook is available natively for iPhone (update your FB app, if you haven’t already), as well as on any mobile device that has a browser that supports HTML5 and geolocation. If you have a non-iPhone mobile browser that fits the bill, visit touch.facebook.com to get started with Places.
On Wednesday (August 18th, 2010), Facebook rolled out its much anticipated “Places” for mobile. Like other location-based services, Places allows users to “check in” to locations and venues that are already in the system, or even add their own. Additionally, Facebook users can tag their friends at the same location and add a brief description of the outing, providing something of a mini-history of the individual’s or group’s night out on the town.
With Facebook wading into the fray of location-based services, what do already-established contenders like Foursquare have to fear?
If we examine the idea on the basis of the kinds of services that Facebook Places and Foursquare offer, I don’t think Foursquare has much to fear. Places is very stripped down in its current iteration-there are no badges, no points, no mayorships for the checkin-er to win and display proudly. You can’t add tips to Places, and More >
Foodspotting Evolved
Aug 19th
The other morning, I woke up early from an uncomfortable hotel bed and decided to catalog the previous night’s food exploits in one of my favorite apps-Foodspotting. (If you don’t know, Foodspotting is a cool social-networking type of app for logging and sharing cool foods from cool places with friends, strangers, and really anyone who loves to eat.)
Because my location was a bit remote (Watertown, SD), the restaurant at which I ate was not in the database. No matter, I thought, I’ll simply add it.
Now if you know me, you’ll know that things like adding address and phone number information is something of a religious practice for me. I’ve spent dozens of minutes in FourSquare and Foodspotting making sure that my locations are properly tagged, categorized, and addressed. So when adding Dempsey’s (the joint in Watertown) to Foodspotting, I had to open Safari. The problem? The Foodspotting app was still “old school,” meaning it had not yet been optimized for iOS4, so I spent several frustrating minutes switching to Safari, copying this bit of address or menu item, and then reloading Foodspotting to enter and save the information. Ugh.
Once finished with this ordeal, I launched a new email, intent on expressing my desire More >
Heading Home
Aug 18th
Over the last several days, my family and I have been in Watertown, South Dakota visiting my grandparents. We’ve had a wonderful time, and are hitting the road today to make the trek back to Cincinnati.
Watertown is a pretty interesting place. Although it’s population is only 20,000 or so, there is a TON of stuff to do in the area. From the beautiful Terry Redlin art gallery, to several surrounding lakes, to a large and vibrant downtown, it’s like a mini-metropolis in the middle of mostly nowhere.
My family and I had a great time, and will definitely remember this trip for many years to come!
Emails in Outlook 2010…Ugh.
Aug 14th
At work, we recently kicked off an effort to make sure that all of the emails coming from our applications are Outlook 2010 compliant…meaning that they render in a reasonably acceptable manner-at least as emails go. On the surface, this doesn’t appear to be that big of a deal. However, for us it is, because the prior version for which we tested emails was Outlook 2003.
So what’s the problem? Well, if you didn’t hear, Microsoft made the brilliant move of deciding to switch their email-rendering engine from IE (Outlook 2003 and before) to Word. In short, this means a massive decrease in support for HTML standards, CSS support, etc. In fact, the move is so counter-standards that an entire movement has been started to try to pressure Microsoft into fixing the problem…so far, nothing.
But arguments about the “smartness” of this change aside, the facts on the ground still require that my co-workers and I fix some emails. So far, my experience has been that in terms of layout, not a huge amount of revision has been necessary. What has caused issues, however, is the lack of CSS support. If you ever find yourself needing to get an email looking decent in Outlook More >
MOG for iPhone: Better, but Still Lacking
Aug 12th
MOG, one of the newer contenders to wade into the fray of online music streaming and downloading, followed up on the release of their iPhone app last month with an upgrade yesterday. Among other things, this upgrade corrected what I feel was a huge blunder in releasing without multi-tasking support for iOS4.
I downloaded the upgrade yesterday, and immediately began enjoying the benefits. But then I found the limitations.
The biggest lack still in the app, IMO, is that it is not fully integrated into player controls. If you’re running MOG with headphones in the office, you’ll need to be sure to pause the music before disconnecting your headphones. Unlike Pandora and the native iPod players that automatically pause the stream when headphones are disconnected, the MOG app apparently has no idea whether or not your headphones are being used. Unplug, and you’re bound to make nearby cube-dwellers angry, amused, or worse: they’ll launch into their own musical counter-offensive.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad for the upgrade to basic multi-tasking support. This upgrade prevented me from ditching MOG altogether and checking out greener pastures like Rdio. Hopefully upgrades for the other player deficiencies are in the works and will be released soon…otherwise, I’ll More >
WordPress: Add Featured Image to Old Category Posts
Aug 12th
My blog has been through the ringer.
First, it’s really the combination of 2 custom blogs that I had created and manually ported to WordPress.
Second, none of the posts in my old blogs were really “categorized”, so my posts came to WordPress meta-data-challenged.
Third, some of the ways that WordPress handles content is a bit weird.
Fourth, it takes FOREVER to go through and apply a featured image to EVERY SINGLE POST.
Let’s Back Up: The StoryEver since I ported my old blogs into this single platform, I’ve wanted to do a better job of categorizing my posts. Fortunately, WordPress makes this pretty easy with the “Quick Edit” options. Once I finally got all my posts properly categorized, I wanted to be able to associate an image with each category, to sort of spruce up the look of my posts and associate each category with a visual aspect.
While there are a bunch of plugins that allow for this sort of thing, I didn’t really want to mess with implementing some kind of code solution. After all, I don’t mind picking an image for each post…it was really just getting all the old posts associated with a particular “featured image” that was the issue.
The More >
