Doesn’t The Social Web Realize that People Talk?

Trevor Baca asks: Doesn’t The Social Web Realize that People Talk?

From the linked page:

In the course of putting together the presentation I asked myself why much of the 2.0 hoopla isn’t about voice.

We’re telecom innovators. We think about people and communications and technology a lot. And we look at Myspace and can’t help but wonder how all that happened without us. Put another way, just how did social computing get so social without voice?

First, let’s check the observation. Tens of millions of messages, perhaps, pass through Myspace daily. Those messages are text, images, or both. But not voice. And yet voice seems so obvious. Friend online? Click here to ring both your phones. But no.

On flickr we find photos from everywhere in the world. And looking at everybody’s stuff even turns out to be fun and engaging. And we can see exactly who took what, and why. But click here to ring the photographer’s phone? Again, no. No voice.

Perhap’s it’s because voice communications are too real-time – you immediately demand the other party’s immediate and full attention.

Continue reading Doesn’t The Social Web Realize that People Talk?

Are all drivers selfish ignorant idiots?

Okay, my first rant post for my new blog :)

Maybe not quite all, but the majority of drivers out there seem to be inconsiderate idiots who care about nobody but themselves.

I ride to and from work in London on my motorbike, and I’ve lost count of the number of times people randomly change lanes without even looking.

Tonight on the way home, I came across a broken down car – a girl, on her own, in the right-hand lane at a set of traffic lights, with a broken clutch cable.  All the other drivers were squeezing past, some even beeping horns and looking generally annoyed, but not one of them bothered to actually see if they could help.  Even when helping push her car across the road into a side-turning where it was safe, people weren’t leaving room, just endlessly trying to fight their way through.

I know London traffic is horrible and we all want to get home as quickly as possible, but c’mon, surely a tiny little bit of common decency isn’t that hard?

Welcome to my blog

OK, I’ve been considering blogging properly for a while, and sod it, I’m actually going to give it a go.

I had a very basic custom “blog” facility on my main website, but I managed a post about once every 6 months (if that).  I briefly considered writing my own blogging system in Perl, then I came to my senses and realised that wheel has been re-invented way, way too many times already.

Besides, we may be using WordPress at work soon, so becoming familiar with it would be pretty useful for me.

Right, now it’s time to set WordPress up just how I want it, and figure out how to add my “shared items” feed from the excellent Google Reader to the sidebar, and a blogroll of links to friends blogs.