I can’t live with or without you … and my cell phone.

via Milica Sekulic on Flickr

My friends, right now, they’re at a Wichita bar called the Anchor, celebrating our friend Barett’s birthday. My brother (also in Wichita): he’s totally jealous I’m going to see Kool Keith this Friday in Seattle. Yesterday, my best friend’s bulldog got nearly-mauled by our former neighbor’s dog. Miles apart, in different timezones. And we still know.

I bet you can see your mobile phone right now. While you’re at a computer — with the world at your fingertips — your phone is your crutch, it’s in your pocket, in your sights, within reach at all times. It’s your connection to your son that’s away at college, your wife that’s in Italy on business. You know they aced the test, went shopping and ate chocolate mousse for dessert.

You’re in the club, but, then, I’m sure you have been for a while. The club of being always on. Always connected, always in the know. I hope you’re happy. This is the end of anticipation.

The term, as far as I can tell, was first presented in Naomi Baron’s book Always On. Because of mobile phones, not to mention the internet, we spend increasingly less time “away” from each other. Even if that time being together is virtual, we need not wait days for a letter to arrive (or take the time to write said letter) or wait until we reunite in person to share the momentous — or minuscule — details of our lives.

The sharing of our lives via mobile technology — particularly simple, speedy text messages — enables us to live with each other, without living near each other. We are never alone, never far from our family and friends, even if they span the globe.

So, does absence make the heart grow fonder? If I refrain from mobile communication with my pals and family, will I miss people/appreciate people/look forward to visits home more?

Nah. Rather than supplanting face-to-face communication, mobile communication lets us pick up where the text discourse left off. And visa versa.

Will it redefine the way we handle relationships and our in-person encounters? You betcha. We’re still humans. We still crave being around other humans, especially those that we actually enjoy: those that send us the most texts. Rather than pouring over the last three months of our lives, leaving out the silly details we’d forget three months later that seemed funny/important/relevant at the moment a text was sent, we can rehash, ask detailed questions, relive the moments we witnessed via mobile. Mobile communication makes our lives, if we so choose, more intimate than ever before.

Does being constantly on, always connected, living with those that are who-knows-how-far-away from us have its consequences? Most def. We have less time for our own thoughts if we’re always fiddling and wasting time on our mobiles instead of soaking in our own thoughts. And, in those moments we are face-to-face with those we haven’t seen in a week, a month, a year, we’re likely to be fiddling with the phone still. This is the dance the mobile phone has choreographed for society, and so many of us fall in line for it.

I’m on my phone. A lot. It’s my favorite time-waster while I’m commuting and so long as I use it for good (living with my friends from afar), and not for evil (distracting my listening abilities from real humans), I’m okay saying I can’t live without it.

You already do, so enjoythin.gs with the world

Another social bookmarking tool, enjoythin.gs aggregates your favorite media from Last.fm, Vimeo, Flickr, Tumblr and Twitter, as well as text and images from any site on the web. 

The concept is simple: drag the Enjoy This tool to your bookmark toolbar. Click Enjoy This once when you want to save an entire web page; click again on an image if that’s what you enjoy; highlight text first, then Enjoy This if you want to save a piece of text. Each medium shows up differently on your homepage. Note: I DID have to watch the video tutorial to figure out how to enjoy a single image. But now you won’t =).

Authorize enjoythin.gs to access your external accounts if you want to import media you favorite from those sites. I ended up disabling access to my Last.fm account because I’m pretty liberal with loving tracks, and while it looks like you should be able to listen to tracks on enjoythin.gs, it wasn’t working for me.

Need some inspiration to enjoy things? Much like StumbleUpon or Flickr Explore, you can access random items others enjoy from the enjoythin.gs homepage. And as is social media, you can comment on media others enjoy and friend users.

Its beautiful interface is simple and fun to use. For the visually inclined, it’s more appealing than delicious and allows for more detailed, customized favoriting than StumbleUpon. You can check out what I enjoy here: http://ronijean.enjoysthin.gs/.

Give me flexibility or I’ll stay in school forever

At the beginning of this quarter, one of my professors asked each student “why are you here?” in his evolution and trends class, in the master’s program.  My simple answer, “I’m not ready and don’t want a full-time job.”

It’s the among the best decisions I’ve made, especially now that I hear from former classmates and friends who chose to enter the workforce. My list of reasons why I’m not ready and don’t desire a full-time gig are plenty. But one in particular is that too many employers are still focused on passé rules of the workplace and don’t recognize that flexibility is perhaps one of the most desired benefits of recent generations. I’m simply not willing to trade my life, sanity and happiness right now for a paycheck and health care.

New media can be potent, emobodied versions of unsettlement.

– Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New

the old (new) bait and switch

The rise and fall and sorta rise again of Napster

File sharing software Napster created a distribution channel that threatened to eliminate the record industry’s control over production and distribution, putting the power in the hands of the consumer.

And it began years before Napster was a thought in young Shawn Fanning’s head. It began, with a new industry standard.

Poll: How will you watch the Inauguration?

I’m interested in the results of  the How will you watch the Inauguration? poll from flipthemedia.com. The larger, more diverse audience that responds could launch a dialogue on the relationship (if one exists) between the value events hold for us and our consumption choice.

So think about it. What does our choice say about us? What factors come into play? Is there a relationship between the perceived value and significance of events and the way we choose to consume? And what might it say about the next era of convergence?

Are we really clamoring for the ultra-portable, all-in-one device? Will we log off GTalk for one hour to watch what is, for sure, no matter your political views, a historical event? Is there still room for watching TV on the TV after all?

Personally, the only thing I’m certain of is I won’t watch it on TV at home because of the lack of TV at home. My guess is I’ll be in a public setting because it seems so silly and too significant to, in 30-years, be saying, “Hells yeah, I watched the most historical Inauguration of my generation on my crockety 13-inch MacBook in my bedroom in Lake City.”

But, see, I waiver. I can’t make up my mind. Because when I think about it, really focus on the historical signifigance, maybe it doesn’t matter if I’m alone in Lake City, witnessing history, connected to millions of people that will view the ceremonies from across timezones on the Internet because that is the only medium available?

No surprise here: mobile social network subscribers consume more mobile content

Keeping tabs on your Facebook and Myspace friends via your cell phone? You’re probably also playing games, watching video, emailing, listening to music and texting on your phone twice as much as the average mobile phone subscriber.

ABI Research attributed the findings to three possible reasons.

75 percent of social network subscribers surveyed were between the ages 18 and 29, while regular mobile subscribers ages were distributed normally between 14 and 59 years. The 18-29 age group is known to consume more mobile content than older moible phone users.

Avid users of online social networks are expected to be more tech-savvy. Their keen use of technology translates also to the mobile phone in most instances.

Outgoing links on my Facebook Newsfeed entertain me when I've run out of my own content to surf.

Finally and perhaps the only insightful conclusion in this whitepaper is social networks don’t just aggregate the activities of friends but links to content as well. Right now, I can access video clips, news stories and online games from my Facebook Newsfeed. And I’m more likely to follow the links since they’re coming from people I know and, sometimes, with interests similar to mine. And if I’m stuck on the bus with a capable phone, I’m even more likely to entertain myself with this mobile content.

As phone technology evolves, data plan rates fall and Internet on mobile phones become standard as text messaging, “the mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.”

Questions for discussion

At what point will the “mobile phone” turn into a data consumption device more than a voice communication tool? We’ve already added a video and still camera, mp3 player, countless applications and games. Are these current “extras” or “features” going to be central and perhaps more important to consumers (regular mobile consumers) in the future? I’d say they are already more important to me, but I’m a geek and totally dig being connected at all times.

Finally, what will it take for mobile subscribers, particularly demographics that don’t adopt technology quickly, to embrace the mobile phone as more than just a phone?

Are you a writing wizard or a wimp?

Let’s recognize, celebrate and practice fabulous writing in 2009.

After that, she’s running home to pack. She’s slinging around a string of keys as noisy as anchor chains. A string of keys like a cluster of iron grapes. These are long and short keys. Fancy notched skeleton keys. Brass and steel keys. Some are barrel keys, hollow like the barrel of a gun, some as big as a pistol, the kind a pissed-off wife might tuck in her garter and use to shoot an idiot husband.

Misty is jabbing keys into locks to see if they’ll turn. She’s trying the locks on cabinets and closet doors. She’s trying key after key. Stab and twist. Jab and turn. Each time a lock pops open, she dumps the pillowcase inside, the gilded mantel clocks and silver napkin rings and lead crystal compotes, and she locks the door.

Today is moving out day, another longest day of the year. — From Diary by Chuck Palahniuk

Palahniuk crafts short, nimble sentences to manifest the scenario in the reader’s brain. You visualize Misty’s actions. You taste her emotions.

The verbs Palahniuk chooses: sling, shoot, jab, stab, twist, turn, pop, dump behave as good little verbs should and create drama for the reader. They’re diva verbs, demanding Cristal champagne and a puppy for the night in their private dressing rooms.

Constance Hale, former editor at Wired and author of Sin and Syntax, says verbs are the part of speech that determine if a writer is a wimp or wizard.

The pros make strong nouns and dynamic verbs the heart of their style; verbs make their prose quiver. — Constance Hale

Better verbs for 'die'

Before you go willy-nilly replacing ‘to be’ verbs with dynamic verbs, break out the Roget’s or, more likely, head on over an online thesaurus and select an exciting verb that reaches out and smacks (or caresses, or pinches, or elbows) your reader’s face.

Verbs should tell the story, create the happening, elicit the emotions. Check out all the kick-ass verbs for ‘die’ my 1989 copy of The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus gave me. I could write about death all day without using the same verb twice …

What’s black and white and completely over?

What’s black and white and completely over?  Newspapers. — Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, Dec. 9, 2008

Even Stewart sees the bleak future ahead for newspapers. He followed up his twist on the age-old newspaper joke with commentary on the Tribune declaring bankruptcy. Moreover, the New York Times company is said to be next.

The New York Times Company has a $400 million debt payment due in five months, and management has not yet explained how it plans to meet this. The company is nearly out of cash, its operations are now burning cash, and its attempts to sell assets have, so far, been unsuccessful.

As part of my digital democracy class for MCDM, I created a mini-site on how newspapers are (finally) embracing the Internet. Certianly, however, it’s going to take more than a shift in business models, newsroom strategy and attitudes on the part of newspaper companies for them to stay alive.