http://www.cocomment.com/comments/ejp1082 Copyright 2007 coComment.com 2009-11-26T11:08:28.961+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/images/logo4rss.gif http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1563069&comment_id=30063178 ericjohn > Self Righteous virgins who think their worth lies within the flap of skin between their legs. The entire basis of religion - at least the Abrahamic ones - is brainwashing people (and girls especially) into believing that a woman's value *is* tied up in her "purity". Only it's not for reasons of love or romance or the sanctity of marriage - those are all modern inventions of the last century or two. Rather, it's because a virginal woman is more valuable to her father, because she can get herself a better husband, who in turn finds more value in her because she comes with a paternity guarantee for any children. It's that male insecurity that makes it so important for a patriarchial institution like the church to want to control female sexuality. It's incredibly backwards, primitive, anti-sex and anti-woman. I almost feel sorry for those types. My advice is just throw it right back in their face - they're wasting their sexual prime, their first time will be clumsy and suck, and odds are they'll wind up getting divorced down the road and have "saved themselves" for nothing. 2008-08-06T17:35:25.303+02:00 2008-08-06T17:35:25.303+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1498431&comment_id=28721223 Eric There's still any number of books out there from the 35mm era which would cover exclusively what you're looking for. There might be some info on film and darkroom techniques which are now obsolete, but I still have one or two old ones on my bookshelf which deal exclusively with "photography" as you're defining it (They weren't written for any audience that would have been doing their own darkroom work). I imagine newer ones are merely responding to the market, and covering the subjects audiences are demanding to be covered. I look at photography as a three stage process. There's everything you do before you snap the shutter, snapping the shutter, and then everything you do after you snap the shutter. I think it's useful to study each separately. The art of setting up (or finding) a scene, using lighting, and everything else that happens outside a camera is one topic. The nuts and bolts mechanics of shutter speed, aperture, ISO, lenses, and optics is another topic. And post processing (be it Photoshop or a darkroom) is another. The relative importance you ascribe to any of those three stages depends on the individual. Personally I like balance - I try to get the scene right, and use the right settings when I take the picture - but I'm not afraid (and see nothing wrong with) a little post production to make it better where necessary. 2008-07-15T20:53:22.227+02:00 2008-07-15T20:53:22.227+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1454087&comment_id=27625945 ericjohn Meh - like I said before, I really hate to see these incidents discourage you. I hope your wounds are only temporary and you get comfortable enough to try it again, because I for one would love to see the resulting work. Nothing should stop you from pursuing your passion. I can't claim to have come from anywhere as far away as Africa, but I do know I barely keep in touch with any of the people I knew in high school, or even college for that matter. And I live now within five miles of where I grew up. I think that's just a part of growing up, irrespective of where we live - we change, and as we change we grow apart. We can just hope that we meet and grow closer to new people as we do. I really love this latest picture of you on this post. It's a bit more than you usually show - I like it. I think your comfort with nudity and your body is as beautiful as you are physically. And thank you so much for visiting my site and commenting on one of my photos :) (at least, I assume "Orchid" was you - if not then never mind, heh) And BTW, would you be interested in chatting over email or IM? I'd be interested in keeping in touch and chatting about photography and whatnot some way other than trading sporadic comments. 2008-06-22T00:15:33.411+02:00 2008-06-22T00:15:33.411+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1398333&comment_id=26731530 ericjohn Though I only know you through this web site; and only for the couple of days since first reading it - I can still say with some confidence that no, you're not a sick girl, not in the least. In fact, you seem more sane, healthy and intelligent than most :) I think everyone has dark fantasies - those privatest of private thoughts that we dare not to admit to anyone we like. Pursuing them in a reckless and risky way would certainly be sick, as would seeking to bury, repress, and deny them entirely. The healthiest answer is exactly the one it seems you're pursuing - a safe, sane, balanced exploration of these desires with someone we can know and trust. It does sound like you have a lot to be grateful for from your Lover; but it also sounds like you deserve a lot of personal credit as well. Just my two cents, of course :) 2008-05-20T00:42:36.863+02:00 2008-05-20T00:42:36.863+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1378388&comment_id=26353829 Eric > Converting to DNG [...] eliminates the need to use separate sidecar files for raw settings. This, incidentally, strikes me as more negative than positive. In a nutshell: Differential backups. For example, my Nikon D300 generates ~12mb .NEF Raw files. I back those up once (to Amazon S3), and then they never change, so I never have to upload them again. Instead, I only have to re-upload the ~5 kb .xmp files should I change anything. A much more desirable state of affairs, and consequently I'd rather stick with the two file solution. (Not for nothing, but I'd love if you guys found a way to split up the Lightroom catalog file for the same reason) Still, standardization is a good thing and I'm glad this step is being taken. 2008-05-04T18:28:27.619+02:00 2008-05-04T18:28:27.619+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1376255&comment_id=26321744 Anonymous So let me see if I can summarize the complaint here: "Damn kids with my Rock n' Roll devil music - get off my lawn! In my day we respected our elders! Conform! conform!" > How far does the freedom of personal expression extend, and where do the limits begin? The limits to one person's rights end when it starts to infringe on the rights of another person. Just because you're too prudish to handle teen fashion doesn't mean the teens are infringing upon your rights; consequently you have no power to limit their free expression (which we still value as a society, right?) 2008-05-02T17:14:39.385+02:00 2008-05-02T17:14:39.385+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1348962&comment_id=25415406 Eric I'm pretty happy with Jungledisk + Amazon S3, although it's probably one of the more expensive solutions out there. But I like the flexibility and scalability of it, and it's one of the few solutions that seems able to handle backing up my complete, 300+ GB digital photo archive. Whether I use Google's offering would depend entirely on the feature set. If it offered a drag & drop for getting files into, out of, and syncing with Google Docs, I might use it. 2008-04-16T01:04:37.476+02:00 2008-04-16T01:04:37.476+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1301188&comment_id=24805034 Eric Ugh. I've put up with stupid policies, censorship, and innumerable other issues from Flickr in the last four years. To the point that I've seriously wondered exactly what it'd take to get me to abandon it wholesale. I'm pretty sure this will be it though. Why the hell would someone, anyone, want to put videos on a site dedicated to photos and photography? The two are completely separate and distinct activities, and I simply can't imagine how including video won't be a huge detriment to the existing community. 2008-03-16T18:53:28.859+01:00 2008-03-16T18:53:28.859+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1271703&comment_id=24535545 Eric It's only #2 if you ignore the 800 lb gorilla in the room, that being bittorrent and other methods of file sharing. If you consider piracy as a distribution channel, then Apple finds itself as a very distant #3. 2008-02-26T20:02:54.279+01:00 2008-02-26T20:02:54.279+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1022253&comment_id=19836895 Eric This is a great feature, but I don't think it's Technorati's *last* stronghold... mostly because the blogosphere is a much bigger place than just tech and politics. Technorati still has an advantage as far as the long tail of blogs goes - and I think they could easily get their mojo back if they'd just refocus their efforts on helping bloggers find and discover more blogs in their niche (and do something about the damn spam). Techmeme, minimally, would need to expand into more verticals to be a Technorati killer - and even then, I don't see Gabe Rivera building a Techmeme for such topics as gardening, knitting, photography, etc. While Technorati doesn't do a great job of organizing these kind of topics, it's the only site that really makes any attempt to. That's it's real last stronghold. 2007-10-01T17:31:16.811+02:00 2007-10-01T17:31:16.811+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=1018888&comment_id=19705924 Anonymous I wonder if there's anywhere on Earth where the police focus their resources on stuff like keeping us safe and investigating *real* crimes, rather than making big shows out of arresting a bunch of consenting adults for what they voluntarily choose to ingest? 2007-09-27T21:10:32.862+02:00 2007-09-27T21:10:32.862+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=970464&comment_id=18413566 Eric I file this under "I'll believe it when I see it". But then again, I did the same thing with the iPhone, for which rumors flew around for years before the announcement. I agree with whoever said above that Google isn't a hardware company... but I think they're locked in a war with the telecoms right now over the future of the mobile internet - this could be an end run around them. Or just a way to threaten them by cutting them out of the picture entirely. I kind of like the idea of Google as a Wireless ISP - their incentive is to get as many people doing searches as possible, which means offering them fast, cheap, convenient connections - the dumb pipes that everyone wants and the existing telecom industry is terrified of becoming. Plus, I'm already in love with the *idea* of a Google oriented phone. I want a real portable internet device. The iPhone doesn't quite cut it for me (mostly due to AT&T) 2007-08-24T22:01:21.987+02:00 2007-08-24T22:01:21.987+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=968774&comment_id=18397808 Eric Ads, in general, piss me off. All intrusive ones piss me off - but even the easily ignored ones annoy me, because I have no interest in them. They're useless to me, they're irrelevant, and consequently they're little more than background static as I consume information. Ads, if I must see them, should be relevant to me. Useful. Communicate information to me that I might not have easily stumbled upon otherwise. As a 20-something guy, I'm sick of seeing ads for tampons, cars I can't afford, TV shows I hate, and "ask your doctor about..." conditions no one under 60 has. If an algorithm can look at my profile and friends on Facebook and figure out what sales, deals, and products I might actually be interested in - this is a win/win, as far as I'm concerned. 2007-08-23T20:21:10.674+02:00 2007-08-23T20:21:10.674+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=965450&comment_id=18372956 Eric The Simpsons peaked somewhere between seasons 3-5 and 8-9. Many of the early episodes were pretty rough around the edges, and for the last 10 years it's just been slapstick comedy - and not particularly good slapstick at that. But in those middle years it was simply brilliant social satire and intelligent comedy. It was satirizing a lot of things. Part of it was the the American family. But mostly, it was satirizing the TV "family sitcoms" of it's time (like Roseanne) and the view of reality those shows presented. I think you have a point - it did focus on a working class family and the dumb dad stereotype which fueled a lot of the jokes* - but it is a show that truly targeted everything. Religion, politics, people, philosophy, the media - it was truly a commentary on the human condition of the mid-90's. And more often than not, the working class comes out looking good, even if Homer himself is portrayed as an idiot. The movie sucked. But those years will always have a treasured spot on my DVD shelf. *But not all the jokes in those years. It's also famous for it's math and geek humor. Just look at how many Simpsons quotes are memes on Slashdot. 2007-08-21T22:57:57.583+02:00 2007-08-21T22:57:57.583+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=958545&comment_id=18277722 Eric Can't say it's surprising, though I'm kind of sad about Technorati... it used to be useful, but then they lost site of their core audience - bloggers doing ego searches. I'd have liked to have seen it evolve into a competitor to Techmeme and offer more social networking features for bloggers, but those things never seemed to have materialized. Instead, over time there seemed less and less a reason to prefer technorati over google blog search. Shame. 2007-08-16T23:35:31.682+02:00 2007-08-16T23:35:31.682+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=918143&comment_id=17774766 Eric Everyone uses a web browser - hence the popularity of Firefox. Pretty much everyone uses webmail. Good for Firefox, bad for desktop email clients. Those who don't use webmail tend to use Outlook, because it hooks into Exchange - which is something Thunderbird doesn't/can't offer. Suffice to say, I don't think spinning off Thunderbird will help much. Fact is, the interest just isn't there, and that's the core of the problem. 2007-07-26T19:12:21.316+02:00 2007-07-26T19:12:21.316+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=901913&comment_id=17466399 Eric Duncan... drugs are bad for you. Seriously, stay away from them. 2007-07-20T16:46:54.825+02:00 2007-07-20T16:46:54.825+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=900560&comment_id=17438017 Eric I got one word for that scenario: antitrust. I don't care how right wing and big-business friendly the federal government is these days - there's simply no way they'd let a merger go through given that the combined entity would control 80+% of the search market and some similarly large share of the online advertising market. 2007-07-20T04:12:03.046+02:00 2007-07-20T04:12:03.046+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=890359&comment_id=17249682 Eric The lack of support for Vista kind of boggles my mind. It's now been out for 6 months - 8 if you go back to the business version launch, and that was preceeded by a beta release of over a year. So developers have now had 18-24 months to get their software to work right with Vista - which makes it kind of shocking just how many haven't. What's frustrating isn't the software that won't install on Vista. It's the software that installs but won't run. Runs, but unexpectedly crashes. Runs, doesn't crash, but doesn't work as expected, or can't perform some function. And there's no way to know how a given piece of software will behave on Vista before trying it. The OS itself is a modest improvement over XP, but the third party support just sucks. IMHO, Microsoft screwed up by trying to accommodate backwards compatibility when it's pretty obvious a clean break was called for. Apple managed this twice in the last 10 years - I don't see why Microsoft couldn't have pulled off the same feat. If Vista only ran software that was designed for Vista, it'd end up being a much better user experience. 2007-07-16T19:09:00.002+02:00 2007-07-16T19:09:00.002+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=874574&comment_id=16959908 Eric Exactly how do they come by time spent, exactly? Just thinking about it.... I have something like 20 tabs open in Firefox right now, but I'm only looking at one. And I think I opened this one probably over an hour ago... just because it's been open an hour doesn't mean I've spent an hour looking at this page. (No offense - I mean I like this blog and all, but sheesh...) Anyway, I think you're absolutely right here. Why doesn't "user action" count for more? Once I'm done typing this comment I'm going to close this tab, as opposed to say clicking elsewhere on your site (again, no offense). But I'd think that kind of behavior is what advertisers would want to know about. 2007-07-10T17:44:37.546+02:00 2007-07-10T17:44:37.546+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=856242&comment_id=16659725 Eric Personally, I don't have any great desire to use applications within Facebook. What Facebook has become for me is kind of a glue holding together the vast majority of the web 2.0 apps I use. In the case of Twitter, I update Twitter the same way I normally do, but it shows up in my friends' news feeds - even of those who don't use Twitter themselves. That's valuable to me. Similarly, I have no desire to use Digg/del.icio.us/flickr/last.fm within Facebook. But it's great that they're all on my profile page, where my friends can see them without needing to join those services or friend me on those services. I agree with you that a deeper level of integration would be nice, but meh, it doesn't really bother me. 2007-07-03T19:31:40.663+02:00 2007-07-03T19:31:40.663+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=853652&comment_id=16624937 Eric Tetris is the greatest by most any metric you'd care to use. Hours played, sales volume, system ports, etc. I'm suspect of any list that doesn't put it right on the top. I object in principle to the inclusion of any Final Fantasy title... ugh. And I'd substitute Halo for Goldeneye... It was Goldeneye that brought FPS to consoles, and Halo stole a lot from it. Doom is conspicuously absent. As is Starcraft. As is Street Fighter II. As is Sim City 2000. 2007-07-02T22:09:43.924+02:00 2007-07-02T22:09:43.924+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=840543&comment_id=16379942 Eric I agree, that's the thing that made me cringe way back when he announced the thing in January. AT&T by far has the worst network of any wireless provider, for voice and for data. And then one has to wonder - his solution for third party apps is essentially "web 2.0", yet they don't even support 3G... The only thing I'll say in fairness though, Verizon is merely the best out of a pretty pathetic bunch. The mobile web will be a revolution... when it happens. It's not a device that'll cause the revolution though - it'll happen when the first mobile carrier gets their head out of their butt and offers true unlimited data plans, at true broadband speeds, for a reasonable price (competitive with wired broadband). As it stands now we're in the stone age. 2007-06-27T21:54:11.705+02:00 2007-06-27T21:54:11.705+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=816279&comment_id=15902941 Eric What's funny is that I thought this is where I thought Yahoo was going two years ago when they started buying web 2.0 sites like Del.icio.us and Flickr with strong tagging components. I'd assumed they were looking to build a "social search engine". Searching on Flickr already blows away any image search engines on the web. The data about what links people are saving with Del.icio.us, and how they're tagging them, should be invaluable to search algorithms (to say nothing of the fact that the links I've personally saved should rank higher when I do a search). Results from Yahoo Answers should show up. Data from MyBlogLog should be used. Etc. Maybe now that Semel's out, they'll finally execute on that. 2007-06-19T19:32:11.892+02:00 2007-06-19T19:32:11.892+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=813802&comment_id=15888644 Eric Here's to hoping that Yahoo turns things around. The web ecosystem needs a strong competitor to Google (and face it, it's never going to Microsoft). Yahoo still has a number of great properties - Flickr, Delicious, Pipes, Answers, to name a few. I'd love to see them continue with smart web 2.0 acquisitions and finally execute on a vision of social search to differentiate and compete with Google. 2007-06-19T15:27:14.526+02:00 2007-06-19T15:27:14.526+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=809633&comment_id=15758994 Eric Heck, I'm 24 and I don't find Facebook nearly as useful as I no doubt would have a couple of years ago in college. (I do wish it had been around when I was in college though, because it would have been useful to me then). I use it, but my life doesn't revolve around it the way it does for some of my younger college-aged friends. What it says to me is that there really isn't "one social network to rule them all". I don't think that Facebook can change itself too much with losing some its appeal to its core of college students. So I suspect that there's probably room in the market for one or two more runaway hits that cater to different demographics - my prediction is that we'll see it emerge in the next year or two, as many of the "facebook generation" graduate, enter the real world, and find their social networks have changed. 2007-06-17T16:57:56.503+02:00 2007-06-17T16:57:56.503+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=765108&comment_id=14869407 Eric > In reality, Facebook’s social graph could have provided the bread to connect Yahoo’s far-flung empire. Yahoo's already got Yahoo Messenger, which means it already knows which users are friends and which ones aren't. One would imagine it'd be trivial for them to put together a "social networking" page that shows what those friends are doing across all Yahoo's properties. 2007-06-01T21:09:31.424+02:00 2007-06-01T21:09:31.424+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=732629&comment_id=14325961 Eric Facebook would be better off staying independent and cutting a deal with Google or Yahoo for advertising rights, IMHO. Facebook succeeds in large part because it's a relatively closed network tailored to fit the needs of a specific demographic. It's not something that's really generalizable to fit the whole internet. Think about it - what advantage would it get from a "Try Facebook!" link on the Google homepage? Not much. The problem is that it's not primarily a content aggregation site the way Flickr/Youtube are - I have to imagine the vast majority of those photos are kept private, and they're probably useless to index unless Google wants to launch a "College Party Search". So there's not much synergy between other properties. 2007-05-21T18:30:05.767+02:00 2007-05-21T18:30:05.767+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=731739&comment_id=14289937 Eric Why, why does Yahoo want to waste cash on these things? There's so many better things that Yahoo could do with a billion dollars. 2007-05-20T22:19:30.601+02:00 2007-05-20T22:19:30.601+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=719436&comment_id=14111269 Eric I like Amazon. I really, really do. I think they're by far and away the most innovative and technologically adept company on the web today. (Yes, more than Google). And they deserve big kudos for this one; they've held out for a long time so they could do it DRM free. This is also what the RIAA needed to do from the beginning to really fight piracy. What really separates Amazon apart from iTunes is that Amazon has the associates program - which gives thousands of bloggers, web site owners, and would-be pirates a stake in *selling* mp3's rather than implicitly (or explicitly) endorsing piracy. It's game changing, and I expect to see a big shift in the net's culture as a result of this. That said, this also highlights what a steaming pile of crap Unbox is, and it's a shame that they couldn't/wouldn't have held out to strike the same deal for movies and TV shows. 2007-05-17T01:26:57.400+02:00 2007-05-17T01:26:57.400+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=693284&comment_id=13649569 Eric It still makes no sense to me. I can't imagine that there's anything about the underlying technology that would benefit Ebay, and while you can sort of imagine people "stumbling" around auctions, that seems far fetched and unlikely to work. I'd love to know what Ebay's thinking is here (But then I'd love to know what they were thinking when it came to Skype too...) It's actually a shame, as I'd have much rather seen Stumbleupon wind up with a Google or Yahoo than Ebay. 2007-05-09T17:08:43.529+02:00 2007-05-09T17:08:43.529+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=678446&comment_id=13334669 Eric Google can't offer advertising revenue to "all members" until certain copyright issues are worked out. The billion dollar lawsuit with Viacom is *nothing* compared to what it would be if Google was actually making money (and paying money to users) from copyrighted video clips. The other consideration is that advertising alienates people. Do it wrong and you chase your community away, then Google is left with a $1.65 billion lemon. So it makes sense that they're treading lightly. I'd suspect that those are the real reasons for the aversion to advertising, not technology. 2007-05-04T15:49:24.155+02:00 2007-05-04T15:49:24.155+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=678361&comment_id=13333227 Eric This announcement makes me fear for Flickr. First of all, the temptation to rebrand it to something lame like "Yahoo Photo Sharing Engine" just got that much bigger. Secondly, the influx of new users has a potential to create another "September that never ends" And finally - video? I can only hope that part is wrong. Flickr has a great reputation among photography enthusiasts, but photography has nothing to do with video. Just look at the difference in the community between Flickr and Youtube... the two just don't mix. And talk about peanut butter - they do have Yahoo Video, are they going to be shutting that down as well? 2007-05-04T15:21:49.234+02:00 2007-05-04T15:21:49.234+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=660592&comment_id=12918652 Eric While I think it's great to see Bittorrent supported by Firefox directly (even if only by extension), the lack of seeding is a dealbreaker (for those of use who believe in Karma) and I hope that they fix that soon. 2007-04-27T18:34:50.773+02:00 2007-04-27T18:34:50.773+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=643110&comment_id=12519227 Eric There's lots of interesting things they can do with this, and it fits in well with their other collaborative productivity offerings... Though now I fear that my beloved Google Talk is going to lose even more of the minimalism that I love about it... 2007-04-20T21:07:03.620+02:00 2007-04-20T21:07:03.620+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=634892&comment_id=12350063 Eric Does this mean that we can expect Jot to be integrated into Docs&Spreadsheets in the same timeframe as well? 2007-04-18T15:58:48.784+02:00 2007-04-18T15:58:48.784+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=634160&comment_id=12294052 Eric There's a pretty big aspect to this that you're missing - "Cumulative Advantage" relies on knowing how other people or voting. "Network Effects" rely on each person acting individually, not knowing how other people are voting. I've often criticized Digg for this reason - the site does everything it can to get you to vote for things that are already popular. You see the number of Diggs next to every article, and you can even sort by that value. But other sites deal with it better. Google's magic is based on network effects where each inbound link is a vote, as every person who creates a link is doing so pretty much independently and unaware of what anyone else is linking to. Flickr's interestingness is opaque enough that it doesn't seem to be subjected to cumulative advantage. The blogosphere is a bit of a gray area where we can see both at work. Cumulative advantage, incidentally, is also why publishing political polls ought to be illegal in a campaign season. 2007-04-17T18:07:03.323+02:00 2007-04-17T18:07:03.323+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=568789&comment_id=10786714 Eric How dare you suggest that my blog on debt consolidating mesothelioma dentistry has no purpose other than to get people to click on adsense ads! On a more serious note, didn't Amazon pioneer this like 10 years ago with their associates program? CPA advertising isn't new - Google might spur more people towards using it, but I don't think the web is going to be any different as a result. 2007-03-21T21:10:57.835+01:00 2007-03-21T21:10:57.835+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=468724&comment_id=8478718 Eric I'm curious what you mean by "Offline Access". Not that I've played with it that much, but can't you save any document as either .doc or .odt to your hard drive? And thus, edit it offline? Personally I find the product handy, mostly because its an easy way to keep documents synced between the multiple computers I work on (and the Gmail integration is sweet). Mostly I just write with it though and treat it as an online text editor - formatting is just too basic and too unwieldy to be of any use. For that stuff I just drop the text into the equally free openoffice.org 2007-02-10T21:28:37.148+01:00 2007-02-10T21:28:37.148+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=390505&comment_id=5809331 Eric The thing that's stopping it? DRM. At the end of the day, that's where things will wind up being. But in the meantime every one of these vendors is still trying to lock you in and control the standards that the stuff operates on. Sure, that video might play on your TV, computer, or phone... but only if those devices are made by Apple. Want that video on your XBox to play on your computer running linux? Too bad. Want to zip those photos you just snapped over to your friend's cell phones? Only if they're on the same network. That DVD you have? It's still technically illegal to rip it to your laptop hard drive for viewing on a plane. HD DVD and Blu-Ray offer even more draconian anti-consumer measures as well as being incompatible with one another. "Connectivity" and "Availability" are wonderful concepts and everyone can see that's exactly what consumers want. But there's absolutely no big player that's offering that outside their little ecosystems. It's reminiscent of when the internet itself was a bunch of walled gardens - Prodigy users couldn't email AOL users who couldn't interact with compuserve users. That's the big shift that has to occur before what you're talking about can come to fruition - an end to DRM and embrace of open standards. We wouldn't even have to wait 3-5 years; we'd be there today if, for example, the RIAA embraced the mp3 format. But sadly that kind of thinking takes a long time for these companies to figure out. 2007-01-10T00:11:41.096+01:00 2007-01-10T00:11:41.096+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=356607&comment_id=4911767 Eric I'd be curious to see what measures they'll take to keep spam and marketing departments out. What's to stop Toyota marketing from going in there and editing the entry to remove negative press, or put their preferred advertisements as top links? It's a problem that already exists with Wikipedia and I don't think they do enough to stop, particularly when it's done subtly. (I remember I was reading the article on "Dandruff" a while back and stuck right in the middle was the sentence "The gold standard for Dandruff prevention is yadda yadda, found in Selson Blue" If this thing ever takes off, the problem would only be compounded. With enough money at stake, there will be some serious attempts at gaming the system - just look at the problems that Digg has. 2006-12-24T18:23:04.328+01:00 2006-12-24T18:23:04.328+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=147750&comment_id=1765231 Eric It's amazing how many people in this thread don't get it, both ways. Google and Microsoft are not competing. Google is clearly targetting small businesses. Mom and pop shops. Ones that likely don't have their own server to speak of, and are probably pirating MS Office anyway. Google isn't going after enterprise customers, which are Microsoft's bread and butter. At least not yet. Google is going after everyone in the world who pirates MS Office by offering them a legal alternative for the same price. Google's suite is probably already functional enough for those people. And the strategy is pretty clear... it's focused less on advertising to these users than it is in turning these users into adwords customers. "Hey ma and pa gift card shop - come set up your web site with us (no need to hire anyone to do it!), use base/checkout to put your inventory online, and oh yeah, you can advertise locally with us too!" THAT'S the billion dollar opportunity here: the long tail of businesses. And yeah, whoever said there's no need for collaboration? Please. I work at a small company where 80% of us are telecommuting on any given day. The ability to edit the same document at the same time and have the changes appear instantly on both sides is a godsend. 2006-08-28T14:35:20.292+02:00 2006-08-28T14:35:20.292+02:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=ejp1082&conv=26589&comment_id=41576 Eric The only thing I can say about online feed readers is that they all leave a lot to be desired, given how much I've bounced around all of the above. (Thankfully, the cost of switching is no more than exporting/importing your OPML feed). I had been using Google Reader for a while, I liked the keyboard shortcuts but I eventually got sick of the interface limitations - no "mark all read", doesn't tell you number of new items. I think Rojo is the best of the bunch - it incorporates a lot of the best stuff about Digg, Memeorandum, delicious, etc. into an all-in-one application, which I like. Problem is I'm very picky about the interface, and Rojo just didn't do it for me. I do keep an eye on it though, it'd be easy to get me to switch if they just make some slight adjustments. I've been using Newsalloy lately - it's not perfect but the interface gives me what I need and it has all the features I look for - and by the looks of it they're slowly building up to some of the more advanced ones. It's a tad slow at times, but I can deal with that. Bloglines, I dunno, I never liked it. Newsgator I've used, but it only displays current feed items, which is the main reason I've steered clear of it (For example, the slashdot feed only has the most recent 10, it makes it hard to "catch up" if more than 10 items are posted since you last checked). Feedlounge seems nice but I don't see how they're superior enough to the competition to earn that $5. 2006-03-31T16:41:18.816+02:00 2006-03-31T16:41:18.816+02:00