Earth to WIRED: it's 2008 and links are your friend

I fight the linking issue on a weekly basis, it seems. Even within our own company I'm befuddled when my bloggers, or more high-profile blogs just ignore sources or don't link to quality sources, instead choosing to incestuously link ad nauseam or just lazily tag-link. So today I was really flummoxed when a TUAW blogger, Christina, was able to get Fortune to actually link to her piece on TUAW, but so far at WIRED, citing the same article, can't seem to figure out what we've been calling "hyperlinking" since 1997.

I'm sure Bryan Gardiner is under crazy pressure from his bosses to crank up those PV's, just like we all are-- I get that. And I'm guessing his people are being sold the same crappy snake-oil SEO junk regarding incestuous linkages, because the WIRED piece is just chock full of links to other WIRED pages. Oh, there's a requisite link to Apple forums, whoopee!

But I think it hurts credibility to not backlink. It sure doesn't help your karma! And frankly, linking OUT is a good thing for SEO. Not that CNN or PageRank 1 sites need that kind of magic, but why not share the love?

So I linked back to the Fortune piece, and not to the WIRED piece. Until they learn the magic of linking, they can really just f*** off. We don't need your blogtard audience, complete with inane comments and crappy understanding of tech and Apple.

UPDATE: Really nothing new to report, but after 2 emails to the editor I haven't heard a thing. I'll be sure to remember this next time one of my bloggers is hung out to dry because some journo decides we're not real reporters because we don't capitalize The Internet.

72 hour-ish Twitter blackout

Hope nothing cool happens! I'll try back on Friday :)

NOTE: Twitter isn't down, I'm just taking a break.

The trouble with web apps

You don't control them, they control you. In our den we've got an old blue (not bondi) iMac running OS 9. I've got iTunes 1.0 on there, and it does exactly what I need it to do: play CD's and MP3's with a snazzy visualizer. I'm sure Steve would barf dalmation chunks if he heard me say "iTunes 1.0 is just fine for me, thanks." And it isn't as though I don't love the latest version of iBloat, er, iTV/Movies/Podcasts/Tunes'n'Such-- it's just that in one case what we've got is just fine.

So with web apps you don't have the choice. It is made without your consent, your input and often without your knowledge until something breaks. Case in point: Gmail improvements. I had the first version of "hacks," including color labels, saved searches and labeling macros. Google finally caught a clue and added color labels, but to be fair, those were a very kludgey implementation. Saved searches? Well, that's nice, and once or twice I found them useful, but overall search is a temporal thing: you need it at the time and that's that.

But labeling macros, oh god, why must they be broken? Now I'm not sure if this is a Greasemonkey update thing or a Gmail "update" thing, but my productivity and GTD-esque workflow took a major nosedive when this broke today. I've studied user interface design, hell, I love a good UI (maybe why I love Apple so much-- when they do it right, and they more than often do). Have someone time you going to a checkbox, clicking it (or dozens), then navigating through a drop-down menu, selecting an item, THEN hitting a keyboard shortcut (y for archive). The alternative, or what the macro provides, is 95% keyboard: check the boxes you want, type 'l' then the first few letters, then 'y'... I'm serious when I say this is up to 50% faster. I practically live in Gmail, and this one thing is going to kill me. I actually developed wrist pain the last time Gmail broke the macro.

Which brings me back to my point: if a supposed benevolent dictator like Google, who "do no evil" but sure as hell don't listen to anyone other than the cabal of experts they make live in overpriced, insular Silicon Valley, if THEY change something for the worse, what can you do? Nothing. You have no control. The web app owner makes your decisions for you.

I think you should have at least the option of staying behind (and Gmail did have this option when they rolled out some big changes).

UPDATE: and just like that, the macros are working again-- go figure. Still, web apps suffer from this problem, and the problem of "how long do you support legacy code?" But even desktop apps suffer that issue (except that you can effectively freeze the state of an older machine once it is stable).

UPDATE 2: Chartier points out it is a gmail thing: as explained on their blog.

Me am not journalist!

From the land of Bizarro comes this rather puzzling article from InformationWeek called "Top 60 Little-Known Technology Web Sites." In case you're confused (as I was, and I'm still sleepy), here's a rundown:

Assertion: "The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) carries information in the form of postings from iPhone users to podcasts (sponsored by BestBuy, which doesn't seem to interfere with the content)."
Rebuttal: I'll be the guy who mangles the English language, thank you. Oh, and our podcasts a) don't exist anymore (we do talkcasts now, via TalkShoe) and b) they aren't sponsored by BestBuy. Not that we'd let that cloud our commentary anyway, but I haven't heard from BestBuy in ages.

Assertion: "The first page is slow loading but it's worth the wait."
Rebuttal: Our ads load slow, and our page is a wee sluggish over EDGE on the iPhone. That sucks, and we're working on it (although we've taken steps to improve the load times on our post content). Try m.tuaw.com or RSS. It is worth the wait, 2.1 seconds and all.

Assertion: "There is also a blog section that lists scores of diehard Apple users blogging away on their hopes and dreams and, alas, sometimes horrors regarding Apple."
Rebuttal: Believe it or not, the entire site is one big blog! We've applied to be in the Ripley's Museum-- stay tuned true believers!

All kidding aside, I want to thank the poor soul tasked with this clearly thankless article. To know that we're so little-known that nearly 2 million readers tune in each month... Well it brings a tear to my eye.

Damn you long, luxurious eyelashes!

PS - I realize this is not the long-winded, well-researched blog post I'd hoped to be cranking out. But after I had to write several hundred words admonishing some very pissy TUAW commenters, I just didn't have it in me. Maybe next time.

Right, what's all this technology then?

This past Sunday I saw a neat segment on CBS Sunday Morning about how kids today walk much less than two generations ago. Now this isn't because of technology per se, nor is it a rant about exercise. Consider this: my grandfather easily walked several miles to a fishing hole on a regular basis. My mom walked a couple of miles to school. My kids typically won't leave our eyesight unassisted... So what? It's obviously a more crowded, developed world, and a bit less safe. What matters, however, is what we lose in all this.

You see, as anyone who hikes will tell you, a simple walk in the woods gives you perspective. It allows time for self-reflection, exploration, encourages self-reliance and provides ample opportunity for curiosity. How are we encouraging these traits today?

The segment on CBS wound up rationalizing our kids' hermit-like lifestyles by saying kids today can have hundreds of friends (as opposed to a few close ones), travel virtually around the world in a click and discover all sorts of things online. So that's true, but isn't really the point.

What we're seeing is that people are becoming and thinking more shallow. If you spread yourself thinly across a large area, you aren't equipped to handle complexity or depth. If you never self-reflect, how are you supposed to know yourself-- eHarmony be damned? Without that simple walk in the woods, you lose the tactile, auditory, sensory overload of nature, you lose the exploratory nature of wandering, and you certainly lose the peace and knowledge that comes with ending an adventure.

Is it ironic that microwaves are the primary cooking tool? Nope, not at all. Makes perfect sense for our shallow world. It is true that computers are like bicycles for our minds, but it is also true that just because you can go farther and faster than ever before does NOT mean you'll know how or why you got there.

My point is this: if the world's problems are becoming more complex (due to more people, less resources and our continuing need to find yet more interconnected issues to deal with), and our ability to process complexity is diminishing, aren't we on a collision course with disaster?

And given that, is there anything we can do with our mighty technology to deal with the situation? I can't keep my kids off MySpace forever, after all...

Click to see how screwed we are. The area to the right is when Idiocracy kicks in.

2008 blows up

There's a massive front moving in as I write this, and yet, if the power and my internet connection were lost, I can live on battery and EVDO for a while. This is the speed at which I am moving. While 2007 felt like a series of sprints, I can already feel the gentle but constant, steady forward motion of 2008-- like a marathon.

So it was with relative pleasure that I read Steve Rubel's piece "The Lazysphere and the Decline of Deep Blogging." I posted my own thoughts in his commentary, but I also think this came at a great time in my life...

For example, I'm reading the book I'm in and discovering how similar and yet unique my blogging peers are. I'm being inspired by my teams on TUAW and Download Squad with their intense fervor and passion for their areas of interest. Is the noise in the blogosphere louder? Damn straight. All the more reason for the voices of reason to argue more diligently and clearer than ever.

So why the blow up? I see good and bad happening in 2008, from further Google shakeups (SEO douchebags beware), a moderate collapse in the economy (resulting in a tightening of ad monies) and some real web success stories.

Wait, there's no bubble? Uh, there's a glut of services on the market, and far too many duplicates. So yeah, there's a mini-bubble, and this is the year it'll explode. That's good for the consumer in the end, but bad for many of us in the near-term.

It isn't all bad though. Pushing way past 2008 I see the web becoming an agent for change in some powerful ways. Sure, ebay has connected lost toys and owners. But what about local growers and local cooks? What about sourcing supplies to save emissions and waste? The force is strong with this one.

My personal goals involve just being a better person, which is all the bucket list one could ask for.