maramine blog

Human Bitcoins

Sat, 19 May 2012 07:04:12 -0400

Facebook is now a public company. Shares opened this morning at $42.05 and closed the day at $38.23, having been prevented by underwriters from dipping any lower. At the closing bell, Facebook’s market capitalization sat just north of $105 billion.

And the company has you to thank.

How does Facebook earn money? By using your personal data to build a targeted advertising platform it bills to advertisers as the best in the business. That model helped it raise more than $16 billion on Friday, making its offering the largest Internet IPO in history.

The title of biggest-ever Internet IPO was previously held by Google, which raised $1.9 billion when it went public in 2004. How does Google earn money? By using your personal data to build a targeted advertising platform it bills to advertisers as the best in the business.

Noticing a trend?

The digital currency of this era is us. Human bitcoins.

Companies like Facebook and Google collect your personal data, as much of it as they possibly can, and they use it to serve you targeted ads. Those ads are paid for by companies sold on the idea that Facebook and Google have so much information about you—information you yourself gave them, both knowingly and unknowingly—that they know what kind of products you might buy and what services you might be interested in. Or, as far as Facebook and Google are concerned, what kind of ads you might click on.

And the human bitcoins become dollars in their pockets.

All of the data you store, all of the messages you send and receive, all of the photos you share, all of the status updates you post, all of the webpages you “like,” all of the things you “+1,” all of the locations you check into and all of the pages you’re a “fan” of help Facebook and Google convince advertisers that they can target your eyeballs and wallets better than any other company.

Google and Facebook are the best in the business when it comes to collecting your data, and this is what investors are really buying into.

Looking for the next monster IPO? Find companies developing newer, better ways to collect and analyze your data, and you’ll find companies that understand the digital currency of this era.

Overthinking

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 09:58:38 -0400

“The mind of a child is the greatest gift we will ever receive. As embryos in our mothers’ womb, our heart, the first organ to develop only to power the next organ – the developing brain which is soon making a quarter of a million new neurons every minute. In the first 10 years of life, our infant brain will have made billions and billions of connections. It is an supercharged engine for learning and creativity. Yet by adulthood we have lost most of this creativity. We now think like adults. That is we think too much and our thoughts are too influenced by our knowledge. We need to get back our ability to think like kids again. How?”

Source: Principia Arbiter

The Method to Salvador Dali's Madness

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:07:56 -0400

“[Dali’s] favorite technique is that he would put a tin plate on the floor and then sit by a chair beside it, holding a spoon over the plate. He would then totally relax his body; sometimes he would begin to fall asleep. The moment that he began to doze the spoon would slip from his fingers and clang on the plate, immediately waking him to capture the surreal images.”

Source: Psychology Today

Stupid Ideas, Apple Edition Pt.2

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:09:51 -0500

Know what Apple should do with the even more massive pile of cash* it’s sitting on? Build its products in America.

*$96.7 billion last quarter

Stupid Ideas, Apple Edition

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:05:34 -0500

Know what Apple should do with the massive pile of cash* it’s sitting on? Build its products in America.

*$81.57 billion last quarter

On Progress

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:20:32 -0400

“Not long ago, if you wanted to take your business laptop on the road with you, you had to strap it on a burro. [Holds up iPhone] I can download 3 million vaginas in a minute onto this.” - Lewis Black

Larry? Are You There? Hello?

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:13:15 -0400

Jonathan Berger, former Apple intern, recalls a conversation in 2000 during which he asked Steve Jobs why he decided to return to Apple. Jobs’s answer:

When I was trying to decide whether to come back to Apple or not I struggled. I talked to a lot of people and got a lot of opinions. And then there I was, late one night, struggling with this and I called up a friend of mine at 2am. I said, ‘Should I come back, should I not?’ and the friend replied, ‘Steve, look. I don’t give a fuck about Apple. Just make up your mind,’ and hung up. And it was in that moment that I realized I truly cared about Apple.

Good thing Jobs didn’t make that call from an iPhone.

Via Daring Fireball

The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled Was... Disclaimer: The Devil Doesn't Pull Tricks

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:52:00 -0400

It looks like Facebook is finally winning a PR battle. Good for them.

Earlier this week, it was brought to light (again) that Facebook uses several of its smartphone apps to take all of your contacts and store them on its servers. Numerous sites ran with the news, but Facebook came forward and calmly pointed out the fact that it displays a disclaimer before taking a user’s contact data and storing that data on its servers.

Well fuck me! A disclaimer! My mistake!

Numerous sites that reported the news backed off, posting updates and new articles explaining that all this user outrage was misplaced. You bunch of peasant idiots! You did this to yourselves. There’s a disclaimer! A dis-claimer!

Let’s forget that not all versions of Facebook’s smartphone apps have had this disclaimer in early iterations. Let’s forget the numerous reports from people claiming they never used Facebook’s contact sync feature and yet STILL found their data stored on Facebook’s servers. Let’s also forget I fall into that category.

Here is Facebook’s disclaimer:

Zing!

If you clicked that pretty blue Sync Contacts button, you agreed that all contacts from your device could be “sent to Facebook and be subject to Facebook’s Privacy Policy.” Obviously, that also means you gave Facebook permission to store all of your contacts’ names and phone numbers on its servers forever, unless you manually delete them.

Obviously.

This, of course, is bullshit. The steaming kind. Facebook knows as well as you and I that agreeing to send your contacts to the company’s servers so that “your friends’ profile photos and other info from Facebook will be added to your iPhone address book” absolutely does not mean you’re agreeing to let Facebook store this data forever. Is there some clause in Facebook’s privacy policy that mentions this kind of douchebaggery? Probably. Does that make it ok? Probably not.

But you signed up for the service! You agreed to the terms! It’s YOUR FAULT!

Congratulations, you’re a contrarian.

If you think it doesn’t matter that Facebook is being sneaky with the disclaimer because it has the right to steal and store your contact data as per some barely-English legal jargon buried somewhere in its privacy policy, that’s cool. Rock on.

And if you believe that Facebook is being completely forthcoming with its users and explaining exactly what it intends to do with their data in the disclaimer above, regardless of its privacy policy, that’s cool too. No worries.

In fact, just to show you I’m a good sport, let me take your car and get it washed for you.

If after an hour you find out that I’m keeping your car and not coming back, that’s OK, right? I didn’t steal it. After all, I told you I was taking it.

Bias

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 11:38:14 -0400

Every writer who covers tech gets accused of bias. These accusations most often come from young, passionate readers with strong biases. Oh the irony. I get comments and emails accusing me of being biased several times each week. Typically, I ignore them. Sometimes, I reply.

When I do reply, I try to be frank and also to use little-boy words under the assumption that most of the people who send these emails are young teenagers who read headlines and then draw conclusions. If my responses are too wordy, these kids will likely lose interest after a few sentences.

Below is an example of one such exchange. I publish this for young writers who will inevitably be accused of being biased. Repeatedly, in all likelihood. If this is your chosen line of work, you will often be inclined to defend your writing, but consider your approach. When I see bloggers publicly respond in the comments section below a post with aggression and insults, I shudder. It’s easy to be defensive but it is infinitely more productive—and less embarrassing—to explain to your accusers why they might be wrong.

If you must reply, keep it simple and honest. You will be surprised how often such responses will either silence your accusers, or even help them to understand why their feelings may be misguided. On numerous occasions, my responses have led to great exchanges and readers who become more loyal than ever.

From: [redacted]
Reply-To: [redacted]
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 04:49:22 -0400
To: Team <team@bgr.com>
Subject: CONTACT Bye Bye

Name: Chris [redacted]
Email: [redacted]

So,

I’ve been subscribed to your feed for ages. This morning I removed your feed and I felt I needed to tell you why.

You have some good content, but it’s eclipsed by your apple evangelism; which is totally biased and not professional. Please say you’re making money out of it, because it’s sad otherwise.

regards

Chris

—

[Response]

It’s easy for people unfamiliar with the way this business works to toss out the oft-misused “bias” accusation, but I assure you that if the bulk of our coverage focused on a company or companies that you favor, you would not believe us to be “biased.”

As it stands, BGR is a business and we have to write about what people want to read about. We cover numerous companies extensively, of course, but Apple is currently the most popular tech company in the world. As such, we cover them more than other companies for obvious reasons: this is what our readers want to read. Apple stories are almost always our most trafficked.

We’ll continue doing what we do, and we’re sorry to see you go. Thanks for being a BGR reader as long as you were, though, and hopefully when the tide turns and the bulk of our coverage focuses on the next big tech company, you’ll come back around to check out the site again.

All the best,

-Zach

The Skeptic

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:40:47 -0400

“The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.”
-Miguel de Unamuno

Narrowing the Gap

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:34:00 -0400

For those keeping score at home, the narrowed gap between product announcements and launches Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker assured us of was just over 3 months for the Veer and over 4.5 months for the HP TouchPad. And the Pre 3? It looks like that will be a gap not even Evel Knievel would have been able to jump.

On Journalism

Thu, 12 May 2011 11:18:20 -0400

I was recently asked by Jack Oughton to answer four questions for Catch 22, an endeavor that takes a unique approach to cultivating journalists. Here are the questions, followed by my responses:

1: What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to aspiring journalists?

Be bold. It doesn’t take much to write a report, but it often takes plenty to have a reader walk away with something he or she didn’t have before.

2: What was the most important thing you did for your career?

The most important thing I did for my career was align myself with the right people. Everything in life is a team sport, and if you don’t find the right team you’ll never be happy. I work with great people and even on terrible days, I’m better off than I would be had I decided to compromise and play for the wrong team.

3: Did you always want to work in the media?

Definitely not… I went to school for business. Then I took a wrong turn somewhere and worked as a marketing exec for about four years. Then I took another wrong turn and found myself working as a business development exec for another three years. It wasn’t until I grew thoroughly tired of constantly addressing the same challenges that I wandered into writing and editing professionally.

4: Lastly, what is good journalism to you?

To me, good journalism answers burning questions people didn’t even know they wanted answers to. Good journalism translates the emotions of a situation so accurately and profoundly that the reader has no choice but to feel them as though he or she was there first hand. Good journalism leaves the reader in a better place than he or she started, or in a worse place, but never in the same place.

Good journalism addresses both sides of a story thoroughly, but it also inherently expresses opinion. People have opinions and people want to read opinions. They want desperately to nod their heads in agreement, and even more desperately to shake their fists in outrage. Journalists are sometimes trained to be impartial messengers who merely regurgitate news. This has its place, but one would be hard pressed to find a respected journalist who didn’t get his or her hands dirty quite often. In fact, in the eyes of many, good journalism might not be journalism at all.

—

It should be noted that while my work does often intersect with that of a journalist, and while my objectives do, at times, align with some of those mentioned above, I do not consider myself to be a journalist. More on that here.

Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with the pentatonic scale....

Mon, 09 May 2011 11:00:06 -0400

Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with the pentatonic scale. Phenomenal.

Greenspun on the BlackBerry PlayBook: Not useful as a computer; too light to serve as a doorstop

Thu, 05 May 2011 10:13:47 -0400

Greenspun’s review is just a draft right now, but ouch.

Steve Jobs: How to live before you die

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:51:48 -0500

Confessions of a Professional Cheater

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 16:10:00 -0500

This is easily the most fascinating article I’ve read in months.

The idea that higher education is a joke is hardly new. Reading about it from the perspective of the skilled, underprivileged people responsible for the success of the privileged, however, is beyond captivating.

The Shadow Scholar

from The Chronicle of Higher Education

“I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.”

“From my experience, three demographic groups seek out my services: the English-as-second-language student; the hopelessly deficient student; and the lazy rich kid. […] While the deficient student will generally not know how to ask for what he wants until he doesn’t get it, the lazy rich student will know exactly what he wants. He is poised for a life of paying others and telling them what to do. Indeed, he is acquiring all the skills he needs to stay on top.”

I could quote it all day… Go read it. Now.

—-

And if the essay interested you, go here to read the replay of a live chat with the author.

Yes, UI Matters

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:19:26 -0400

One of these screen captures is Apple’s App Store. The other, is not.

Click the image above to enlarge.

Video of a Heidelberg in action at @StudioOnFire. Badass.

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 22:52:00 -0400

Video of a Heidelberg in action at @StudioOnFire. Badass.

How to Clear Google Search History

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:37:00 -0400

I find that many people don’t know they can clear their Google search history.

Yes, Google will still store all of this information somewhere on its servers, but there are many reasons to empty out what Google calls your “Web History”.

Here’s how to do it:

Navigate to google.com/history
Toward the bottom of the menu on the left, click Remove items
Along the top, click Clear entire Web History
Confirm by clicking the Clear History button

Your search history will now be cleared and Google will stop recording your future searches in Google Web History until you resume the service.

If you don’t want to clear your entire history, you can also select individual history items and delete them.

Personae Non Gratae

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:41:00 -0400

When asked my opinion on the difference between a journalist and a blogger, my half-joking response never changes:

A blogger tells you what happened and what he thinks about what happened. A journalist tells you what happened and then uses other people’s words to tell you what he thinks about what happened.

In other words, bloggers are forthcoming with their opinions. Journalists feed loaded questions to analysts and experts until they get the quotes they need to share their opinions.

This is true. But I say it jokingly because it is one item in a laundry list of differences between journalists and bloggers.

For a more complete assessment, see How to Tell a Journalist from a Blogger, by Jolie O’Dell.

This is a post that every blogger should read.

Calling yourself a journalist simply because you write about politics or technology or anything else on the Internet is, simply put, ridiculous. It is akin to calling yourself an Interior Designer because you selected your own shower curtain, or a “Social Media Guru” because you have a Twitter account.

It’s stupid.

Journalists, as O’Dell points out in great detail, belong to a specific subset of professional writers. Bloggers, or at least those who blog professionally, belong to a very different subset.

In speaking with a journo friend of mine about O’Dell’s piece, we both agreed with her on almost every count. There was one area, however, where our mutual opinion strayed greatly from hers. The idea that journalists are inherently better than bloggers.

My friend and I both laughed at this notion.

This blanket concept shines throughout O’Dell’s piece, and it clearly comes from someone who has been called a blogger one too many times, and who has taken great offense to this repeated error. It’s an honest mistake, though, considering she writes professionally for a blog.

Like any other line of work, there are good journalists and very, very bad ones. There are also good bloggers and very, very bad ones. To suggest that one profession should universally command more respect than the other is patently ridiculous.

And directly comparing these two professions might be considered ridiculous as well - like comparing a novelist to a copywriter. Are they similar? Yes, both jobs involve writing.

There was a time when journalism was sensationalized. Journalists were enviable studs who raced against deadlines, had sex with secretaries and received barking commands from cigar-chomping Editors. They worked for respected newspapers that the country relied on to learn about the latest evil Communist plot.

Times, however, have changed.

Journalists now work for struggling media giants that regret having invested more in M&A and real estate than their own futures. Journalists themselves are no longer enviable studs, but are instead aging curmudgeons who spend more time dancing around the obvious than reporting the facts.

(Stop crying - these are all intentional sarcastic generalizations)

Each of O’Dell’s points still holds true, for the most part, but the devil is in the details:

Journalists are professionals. Bloggers are hacks.

Had bloggers existed in the 1950s, this would have probably been true. But it’s 2010 and I know many bloggers with far more skill, professionalism and integrity than most journalists. I also know many bloggers who can write circles around most journalists.

Perhaps these are a couple of the reasons so many old media companies now employ bloggers.

Journalism and blogging each have a very important place in the business of disseminating information. One, however, is not invariably better or more worthy of respect than the other.

Compare individuals, not generalizations or prejudices.

—

Postscript:

Am I a journalist? No.

I didn’t go to school for journalism. I studied business (and later, music).

I tell it like I see it. I write what I want.

I make my opinions clear. I make my biases known.

I make generalizations. I care more about being engaging than being careful.

Oh, and I tell readers where I got my story, not just where stats and quotes came from.