Tag Archives: google
15 years of Day-Timers
I burned fifteen years worth of Day-Timers today, the culmination of a months long project. I went through each day from 1984 to 1999, creating a corresponding entry in my Google Calendar. By ’99 I had started keeping notes in Act! (now on a rusting hard drive in some landfill).
I considered shredding these but the wire binder made that impractical. So I put them in a wash tub, soaked them in gasoline and burned them.
In addition to being a long, tedious (and pointless?) task, I found it a bit stressful. The pages were filled with more unpleasant memories than I would have imagined. Don’t get me wrong. I worked for a great company, with some really wonderful people. But, in retrospect, I wasn’t having as much fun as I always though I had. Does that many any sense at all?
Flipping through those old pages brought back some physical sensations. A little stomach clinch over some bad news… tightness in the neck muscles as some unpleasantness unfolded. I was glad to get through the final month. And the burning ritual seemed therapeutic.
Why Twitter and Facebook users don’t get Google+
In this Computerworld article, Mike Elgan explains why Twitter and Facebook users don’t get Google+.
In general, Twitter is dominated by news, celebrities, pundits, professionals and narcissists. Facebook is mostly about family and friends. And narcissists. And each social network draws people who are seeking the type of engagement a particular network specializes in. That’s why Twitter and Facebook people don’t get Google+.
They’ve tried it. The Twitter people come to Google+ looking for Twitter type engagement, but they don’t find it. Likewise, the Facebook people come looking for Facebook-like engagement (family and friends) and don’t find it.
It’s like a Chinese tourist going to France looking for Chinese food and concluding that the food in France is terrible. Or a Hawaiian surfer bringing her surfboard to New York City and, finding no waves, concluding that there’s nothing to do in Manhattan.
I’m an active Twitter user but I don’t expect (or need) any engagement there. It’s a source for news. Don’t do Facebook because I don’t have much in common with “friends and family” other than they are friends and family. Most of my online time is now spent on Google+. I post here mostly for archival reasons.
Google Glass in Sports
A two-minute clip from Noble Ackerson, just shooting around by himself in a mostly empty gym, but the perspective Glass gives while still letting Ackerson move around freely is pretty cool. And for you hockey fans, this six-minute upload from Joseph Lallouz playing some pick-up hockey. The clip gives us views both from the bench and as he’s skating around in the thick of the action.
Watching these, I have to believe it won’t be long before we see what an NFL QB or wide receiver sees.
Thanks to Mashable for pointing to these.
Scott Adams: Knowledge is Health
Scott Adams tells us 50% of second opinions from doctors contradict first opinions? And that 80% of the findings in medical literature are wrong.
“A new company called Metamed offers to be your personal medical researcher. For a fee of $200 per researcher per hour, with a $5K minimum, you can make sure the full force of science is on your side. Metamed analyzes the medical literature and tells you which study results about your condition are reliable and which are not. They assess the value of various diagnostic tests, and create a map of all possible medical correlations. It’s the sort of thing your doctor would love to do for you if he had the resources.”
And those Google glasses everyone’s making fun of?
“I can also imagine a time in which Google Glasses will observe all of your food choices during the day and keep a running record of your nutrition. When you stray from a healthy diet, your glasses might start suggesting a salad. When you don’t exercise all day, the glasses might suggest using the stairs instead of the elevator. For all practical purposes, a human with Google Glasses and a smartphone is already a cyborg. And your future cyborg half will do a better job of keeping your organic parts functioning than you are doing on your own.”
UPDATE: Metamed went out of business in 2015