Nels Wadycki

…but I may never know.

Part 1: Shock and Awe

I made a decision to try to just focus on positive things with this blog, but given my previous obsession with Lifestreaming, I can’t help but comment on this.

I read about AOL’s Lifestream earlier today on TechCrunch who, rightfully, said that it might be what Google Buzz should have been. From what Michael Arrington says, it may be all that and more.

The problem is, when I tried to sign in using Facebook Connect (which I would normally say is a great use of social network integration by AOL), I get this:

Whawhawhat? Really? No, really?

I’ve never seen that permission asked for before, and I hope I never see it again. While Facebook may be the Walled Garden with Reinforced Steel and Concrete Walls, I kind of like it that way. I can post stuff that I know only people I’ve friended will see.
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Nels Diatribes, Facebook, Lifestreaming, Twitter AOL, Facebook, Facebook Connect, Fail, Lifestreaming, Twitter

While it wasn’t one of the major factors I talked about in my previous post, the following is a quick and easy example of another reason that webapps kick ass: No Upgrade Cycle

Google launched Buzz 2 days ago, and already their making changes based on user feedback. But the best part is not that they’re making changes and responding so quickly, rather it’s that the update gets automatically pushed to everyone. No download. No install. Just, roll out, and boom, it’s there.

Nels Diatribes, Gmail, Google, Misc Tech, Social web Buzz, Gmail, Google, Web Development

I declare that emphatically because I want it to be so. I’m sure I’m not the only code monkey out there praying that “write once, run anywhere” doesn’t leave us like ###… Even now web developers have to test across at least 3 different browsers,* but at least things are trending towards standardization and it’s becoming easier to create a web app that will behave the same independent of a user’s choice of browser.

Smartphones pose a serious threat to that ubiquity in the same way that the differences between Windows, Mac OS, and Linux made developing desktop apps an elephant-sized pain in the ass. Web developers have long wished and advocated for browsers that run everything the same way. While that is probably never going to happen, the difference between developing for IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera is much (much much) smaller than the difference between developing for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

if (Portability > Usability) then ?

There is a reason that desktop-style web apps are popular. Yes, people still use Outlook, Thunderbird, and many other fat desktop clients for email, but there’s a reason that there’s 300 million people using Yahoo Webmail, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL Webmail (I extrapolated that number from these percentages of market share), and that given the choice, 49% of people choose Gmail as the best email client. There’s also a reason that Google has basically given a big fat middle finger to native iPhone apps with their Gmail client in HTML5 (and now Google Voice web app, also in HTML5). There a reason that there’s a lot more “mobile touch” web sites than there are iPhone and Android apps. There’s a reason that I get practically all of my links from Read/Write Web and not Read/Write Native Smartphone App.

That reason is Portability. That is: I can run a web app from anywhere on anyone’s computer (or phone) as long as I’ve got internet access. So, while a client like Outlook or Thunderbird offers a slightly faster response time and some extra features, if you use one of those and don’t use a web-app version in addition to the desktop client, you suddenly sound like someone who doesn’t really know how the internet even works (do you really want to be the person who says: “I have to check my email on my home computer”?)

And for the second part of the equation: Usability – the gap between web app and desktop app is getting smaller every day. Web developers continue to push the limits of what web-based applications can do with respect to speed and user interfaces. Sure, web apps (even the good ones) are slow compared to native apps when they’re running on a (relatively) slow phone with a (relatively) slow 3G internet connection. But the speed of the phones and the connections is improving even faster than the speed of the apps themselves.

So, now take the difference in Portability (we’ll say this difference is a fairly large positive in favor of web apps) and add the difference in Usability (we’ll say this is slightly negative with respect to web apps) and then add in the fact that you can write a web app in one language and have it run on every single phone and computer with internet access and see if you don’t come out with a conclusion that says: HTML is the Future.

And, if you want some awesome tips for developing in HTML5, check out Alex Bosworth’s post.

* Yes, all you Opera and Safari heads, I said at least.

Nels Diatribes, Misc Tech, The New Web, Web Development Alex Bosworth, HTML5, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, Web Apps, Web Development

Two hits from Lifehacker today: Hustle When You Want to Learn New Things and Ira Glass on Getting Creative Work Done.

The first is the key to the door, and it’s easy to insert and unlock: Hustle. Simple as that.

If you want to do something: do something. If want want to make progress towards a goal: do something. If you want to learn something (like Matt Nowack in the post): do something. Just keep doing something (hustling) and you will get things done.

So that pretty much covers that. Except, it also leads into the second post, which is: the reason you have to keep hustling.
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Nels Diatribes, Getting Things Done, Personal Improvement Fail, Getting Things Done, Hustle, Ira Glass, Lifehacker

From a (sort of) recent Facebook status update:

While I agree for the most part with the “Tumblr > Twitter” sentiment, well, that’s kind of obvious. Twitter is definitely good for some things (mostly sharing short fleeting thoughts, but also sometimes for sharing links, and conversing with people who use Twitter as their main form of communication). I did not see “being a blog” in that list, though. And as Commenter #1 points out, you can view Twitter updates on your Tumblr dashboard while posting slightly longer commentaries on Tumblr. Of course, Commenter #1 also makes the fatal mistake of saying that he (or she) wishes they knew HTML.
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Nels Blogging, Diatribes, RSS, Social web, The New Web, Twitter Blogging, Diatribes, RSS, Social web, Tumblr, Twitter

I’ve never been a huge fan of Kiplinger’s, but they do provide solid advice sometimes. I haven’t been needing as much financial advice (at least not the Hot Stock Top kind the magazines use to fill in around the stuff that’s the same every month) since I finally got most of my stuff automated (and invested in a single general mutual fund). But in the February issue, they’re really pushing it…
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Nels Diatribes, Personal Finance Kiplingers, Personal Finance, Retirement

Cause they’re near-sighted!

Get it? Get it?

Anyway, if you hadn’t heard (I first spotted it at my non-blood relative with the same last name’s blog), Warner Brothers and Netflix have reached a deal whereby Netflix won’t let people get new release DVDs (or Blu-Ray discs) from them until 28 days after the release of the DVD/BRD.

Netflix gets some sort of discount on the physical discs and also will supposedly get to stream some additional movies that they might not have gotten otherwise.

Conclusion: Netflix smart. WB stupid.

That said, the terms of the deal don’t actually affect me. I mean, the last “new release” that I got from Netflix was Wolverine, and that was about 6 months after it came out (so, definitely outside any sort of 28 day waiting period).

If WB was the smart one here, they would have done the opposite of what they actually did and told Netflix, release our DVDs whenever the hell you want, but give us a bigger slice of the old (or new, I guess) streaming pie. I mean, do the execs at WB not think that streaming video is the future of the business? Or are they so pompous as to think that they’ll just renegotiate another sweet deal once streaming video becomes mainstream (pun intended)?

Initially it made me want to boycott Netflix for kowtowing to the studio, and to somehow try to demonstrate that I disapproved of the deal, but then I realized that as long as Netflix can continue to increase their power in the streaming space, then it’s a good deal. That, and my wife and still have 2 seasons of How I Met Your Mother to marathon, and the third and fourth seasons are more expensive to buy outright than the first two.

Nels Diatribes, Misc Tech Netflix, Streaming Video, Warner Brothers

From Read/Write Web.

I just still feel like I’m missing something. I can’t get past the fact that Twitter is not a feed reader, yet people insist on using it as one. I mean, if I were following all the people whose feeds I read on Twitter instead of using Google Reader, I don’t feel like I would see even half the posts that I do now. Granted, I skip over half of them anyway, but at least I know that I’m consciously skipping things I don’t want to see instead of just losing them to a Devil’s Kettle whirlpool of information.

Here’s the Top 5 Reasons I Still Use An RSS Reader:
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Nels Diatribes, RSS, Twitter Diatribes, RSS, Twitter

I tried making this into a Facebook Status Update but it kept trying to expand itself into something more. So, here we are.

The beginning goes: Do I lose geek points because I don’t like real-time communication?

Of course, my friends on Facebook would need some explanation because most of them aren’t anywhere close to as geeky as I am… and I didn’t feel like trying to cram it all in to the Facebook character count. And even if I did post it on Facebook, well, how many people are going to see it? And there in lies the first crux of the post. The second crux is that I don’t like (and I’m sure many people can relate to this) the Information Overload that comes with real time communications.

First Crux

When you have something like Facebook that currently shows either a) everything all your friends have posted, or b) an algorithmically selected subset of the firehose, well, most people are going to opt for the second because trying to look at everything is pretty much impossible (especially without an RSS feed – even if most people still don’t know what RSS actually is).

Second Crux

Have you ever tried to follow your Facebook feed (or Twitter Stream) in real-time? It’s like watching a TV show that you really want to be good, but is mostly just crap punctuated by a good moment every once in a while. Me, I don’t watch TV shows like that. I want ones that are good all the time. Or, I want to be able to speed through the parts that suck, to read (and respond to) the parts that are actually funny/fascinating. Maybe it’s fun to watch, say, on Christmas or New Year’s Eve when all your friends are updating with what they’re doing. But then, guess what? Your status update becomes: I’m watching my real-time Facebook feed, because you guys are doing cool stuff and I’m sitting in front of my computer. Awesome.

Nels Diatribes, Facebook Facebook, Real-Time Communication, Twitter

No, not an ad for Facebook (like they really need that?)

This one is for EZTrader, who evidently makes options trading easy…

As tempting as the %75 return per hour sounds, it’s really the strange punctuation and capitalization that made me question the quality of this company. Okay, no. It was the %75 return per hour.

I don’t think I’ll be opening an account with them any time soon.

Nels Diatribes, Facebook Advertising, Facebook