Joi Ito's Web: December 2003 Archives

December 2003 Archives

December 31, 2003

Off to Munakata shrine

23:33 UTC » Japanese Culture - Joi's Diary - Religion

Mizuka and I are off to Munakata shrine, the local Shinto shrine for the New Year count-down. We'll be celebrating it with our new neighbors. See you all on the other side!

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Cheers Halley

18:54 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Health and Medicine - Joi's Diary

Halley, thanks for having #joiito over to your party. Thanks also for sharing your interaction with your wine bottles after the party. I'll be doing a lot of the same over the next few days. Ever since I noticed that I am now the top result for a google search on "quit drinking" I have this sense of responsibility to myself as well as others to show my/our resolve and share this.

I was talking on the phone today with someone trained as a professional in treating addiction. It's interesting to note that when AA was started in the ~~60's~~ 30's, it was difficult to find other people who would be supportive during the process of trying to quit drinking. There was also quite a bit of social stigma associated with recognizing an addiction and trying to deal with it. It is much more common today and with chat, email and blogs, it's easier to find people to talk to about this.

Nothing against AA and I am fascinated by it, but I think that this cross-blog support network we are creating for people who have chosen to quit drinking is really amazing and it will be interesting to see where this leads. If anyone else wants to join Halley, dav and me, this is a good a chance as any. ;-)

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Wikipedia needs money

10:45 UTC » Activism - Cool Web Sites - Joi's Diary

I just donated to Wikipedia. If you haven't, you should too. While you're at it, donate to the EFF and Freenode too. ;-)

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can #joiito come to your Dean New Year House Party Halley?

10:33 UTC » IRC - Joi's Diary - US Policy and Politics

Halley, can #joiito come to your Dean New Year Party? Can you like project us on the wall or something?

Good idea Lisa

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Switching to Canon EOS "Kiss/300D" Digital for my 35mm photography

10:08 UTC » Photo

Ever since I saw a $30K digital back for my Hasselblad, I've been waiting for digital photography to come to REAL cameras. The guy at the store said, "some day they will be cheap enough to be worth it." Then I saw the article about the Digital-Modul-R digital back for the Leica R8/R9, I decided that I was going to go that route. I have a whole R8 system with many many lenses and this just made sense to me. Yesterday I went to a camera shop and asked when they would have them. "Oh, probably about a year from now." !!! I broke down and bought the Canon EOS "Kiss" Digital or a 300D as they call them in the US. I'm very happy with it. It's reasonably priced and just works. I was getting really frustrated with crappy digital cameras and using the 300D just feels right.

I'll still use my Hasselblad and my Nikon Coolscan 8000 film scanner for medium format work, but I think I'm going to dump 35mm photography and switch to digital for awhile and see how it goes.

Yesterday, I played with my camera and posted more pictures of the house and of Bo. Still messing around...

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December 30, 2003

Dvorak explains why Americans are behind on cell phone culture

18:37 UTC » Consumer Electronics - Heckling - Joi's Diary - Wireless and Mobile

So here's someone who has "social norm tensions" around gadgets and cell phones.

John C. Dvorak
Cell Phone Hegemony - PC Magazine

Let me walk you through my tale of woe. First, picture this gathering: New York Times reporter John Markoff, San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gilmore (sic), Andrew Orlowsi from The Register, author Gregg Pascal Zachary, blogger/investor Joi Ito, lyricist/pundit John Perry Barlow, and me. Everyone there had some relationship to the computer scene, and we were about to have dinner at a pseudo-swanky San Francisco eatery. Each reveler was political, opinionated, and outspoken. What transpired made my flesh crawl. Everyone, with the exception of me, like beings possessed, pulled out one, two, or maybe three cell phones, and while collectively drooling, began the macho 21st century showdown game of "who has the coolest cell phone?" It was horrible. I left, nauseated and shaken after witnessing this cult-like phone-features feeding frenzy. When I was a kid, we talked about football.

Since this dinner was officially "off the record" I didn't blog much about it, but you can imagine it how it could have been a rather awkward dinner. It was part of my "round up the journalists" dinner that we occasionally organize. It's amazing how gadget talk seems to bond most geeks (except for Dvorak) regardless of what they think of blogs or techno-utopias. We kicked off the evening with cell phone talk and had a great time.

John C. Dvorak
I've complained previously about idiots on cell phones in public, but I've given up.
[...]
Cell phones now rule the world's collective unconscious in untold ways. What astonishes me about all this is the sociology that has crept up on us. Why do we have this incessant need to chat on cell phones all day long all of a sudden?

I do agree that different countries seem to have different manners, the Finns seem to have some of the best manners. Maybe it's because American learn to talk on their cell phones when they are in cars... but you're right. Many Americans tend to shout into their phones.

But Dvorak... Why are you freaking out about cell phones man? Why don't you freak out instead about why American's can't seem to figure out how to use them or make them. ;-p

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CSS in RSS feed

08:42 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - LOAF

Richard showed me how to put my style sheet (Which Boris made) in my feeds (RSS 1.0/RSS 2.0). Take a look at it in your news reader and tell me what you think. Also, if you think this is "funky" please let me know why. It is sort of a weird thing, but at least in NetNewsWire, it looks pretty good.

Richard describes how to do it on his blog.

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Which comes first, technology or social norms?

02:35 UTC » Japanese Culture - Social Software - Wireless and Mobile

A few days ago, I quoted Wendy Seltzer in a entry about building norms together with the technologies.

Wendy Seltzer
I wondered at first if privacy tensions would ease as more people became more technically sophisticated, but I'm inclined to think that gaps in understanding will just move with the tech, and social norms will follow still further behind.

danah responds with an interesting point.

danah boyd
I think it is quite dangerous to believe that social norms are "falling behind." Social norms aren't behind; they're baffled at the direction in which things are going. They're pushing for a different direction and they aren't being heard. People are using technology to meet their needs, but they are not prepared for how the architecture is pulling them in a different direction.

Arguing that social norms can fall behind suggests that there is a hierarchy to the four points of regulation. Those points are valuable in discussion because they provide tensions. Social norms pull in different directions than the market, the law or the technology. This does not mean that it is behind. Quite often, social norms leapfrog everyone else. For example, social norms pushed Napster into creating an architecture that challenged the market and the law. It wasn't that the market was behind, but that it was pulling in a different direction and with a new tension, things need to be worked out.

Thus, rather than thinking about how social norms are behind, i truly believe that we should be understanding why social norms are pulling in a different direction. What does this say about the population being served by the technology?

This is a good point. A agree with danah that it is probably not a hierarchy. Sometimes there is a tension and sometimes norms drive technology.

I am reminded of the days when pagers were really popular among the youth in Japan. Back in the day, the pagers only sent numerical codes so kids came up with special codes to mean a variety of things such as "I love you" or "see you at 6pm". There were eventually code books published with a variety of numerical codes for phrases. You would see kids touch typing with two fingers encoded messages on public phone REALLY FAST. This was a technology being pushed beyond the limits of the designers by a need in society and a whole social norm built around a pretty skimpy architecture. These pagers eventually became alpha-numeric and when text messaging became available on cell phones, kids switched to cell phones. It is this pager culture from which the text messaging culture emerged and it was this youth culture that the carriers were tracking and designing their products for.

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Mameyoshi becomes a Geisha

01:46 UTC » Japanese Culture - Joi's Diary

Mizuka and I went to Kyoto yesterday to celebrate Mameyoshi becoming a geisha. Mameyoshi was a maiko until recently. Maiko are young girls who live in okiya and are in training to become geisha They generally start when they are 15-16 and can be identified by their long flowing obi and the fact that they use their real hair for the hair styling. Typically maiko become geisha and become independent when they are 18-20 years old. There are two types of geisha. Geisha who perform with musical elements and geisha who are focused on dancing. Usually, geisha who perform with musical instruments are not maiko first, but Mameyoshi took the irregular path of going from maiko to geisha. They do a ritual called erikaishi where they change their kimomo style and switch from their real hair to wigs. Mameyoshi became a shamisen player and performed for us yesterday. The two maiko dancing are Teruyuki and Terukoma. The first dance is kagamimochi and the second one is gion kouta (one of my favorites). Apologies for the noise in the background. There was a fire engine outside.

I've uploaded a 55M QT movie of the performance. Here is a torrent of the file.

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Institutionalizing Japan's "Gross National Cool"

01:12 UTC »

Gen Kanai points to the Gross National Cool article by Douglas McGray in Foreign Policy which triggered a serious of articles along the same idea. The thrust of the article is that although Japan's economy is in the dumps, the export of trendy culture like anime is strong and that Japanese biggest asset is it's "cool". I like the original article and I think McGray makes some good observations. Tony Kobayashi mentioned this in his remarks at the Japan Dinner at Davos last year and many people have begun to talk about this -- so many people, that the Japanese government has taken notice and begun to pursue this line of thinking in ernest.

I'm not as cool as some, but I'm cooler than many. From my experience hanging out with the cool people in Tokyo, my observation is that they are cool DESPITE government and other un-cool people. In fact, I would assert that in most cultures, it is the oppression and stifling of freedom that often allows a strong counter-culture to form. This counter/sub-culture is often the basis of "coolness". I think that the government's efforts to "support" and fund coolness in Japan could be disastrous. Just like most funding of venture business by government ended up going to people with "connections," I believe that an organized effort by the bureaucracy to make Japan more cool will have to opposite effect. I think that the government should focus on supporting the traditional culture and arts of Japan which are dwindling because of lack of support. They are more used to interacting with the establishment and I believe that the root/heart of a healthy pop culture is a strong base in historical culture.

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Sanji-Chion-Ji

00:52 UTC » Japanese Culture - Joi's Diary

Mizuka, Zuiko-san and Kaoru

Mizuka, Kaoru and I visted Sanji-Chion-Ji temple today. Zuiko is the lone abbotess who takes care of this temple. I met her through an introduction of a Monk the last time I was in Kyoto. She was once a politician but decided to throw away her career and become an abbotess. She is now 60 years old, but she has a beaming smile and does not look 60. She welcomed us and gave us a tour. The temple was built during the Oei Period 1394-1428 when the Irie Gosho, an area inside the Kyoto Imperial Palace was moved here. Unmarried daughters of the Imperial Family lived here and became abbotesses. It is now in the care of Abbotess Zuiko who has become of a friend. The temple is closed to the public and it's a great honor to be able to visit Zuiko-san and see the wonderful treasures and garden inside. There are around five such Imperial Abbotess temples in Kyoto.

I have some photos in my photo album.

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December 28, 2003

Japan officially bans imports over U.S. mad cow disease case

08:43 UTC » Eating and Cooking - Health and Medicine - Japanese Policy

japantoday
Japan officially bans imports over U.S. mad cow disease case
TOKYO — The health ministry officially banned imports of U.S. beef and beef-processed products Friday after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Thursday that a British laboratory confirmed initial U.S. test results indicating the first U.S. case of mad cow disease.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare notified the quarantine stations across Japan of the decision. On Wednesday, Tokyo halted imports of beef products after the USDA revealed the discovery of the case in Washington State. (Kyodo News)

I remember when Japan was first warned that we may have a BSE risk. I read about it in the Japan Times but didn't see any of the Japanese media covering it. Several months later, the first case in Japan was discovered. The country went into a panic, the government coverup machine went into overdrive but the issue punched through layer one. The had to act like they were going to do something about it. They implemented nationwide testing and tracked of the cows.

The meat packing industry is one of the most "organized" industries in Japan. I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no faith in the Japanese government's claim that they have checked all of the cows. The Japanese are claiming that since they check all of the cows, Japan is the safest in the world. The Japanese bureaucracy has rarely shown itself to be trustworthy on self-regulatory issues. For instance, the health ministry has been under investigation for some sort of ethical issue almost continuously ever since I was born.

I saw one ripple in the fabric when talking to a source I can not reveal here. Although they are supposed to tag and track all of the cows that are born and shipped around Japan, in fact the networks are prefectural and do not track the cows as they cross prefectures. When said acquaintance complained about the ineffectiveness of such a system, he was told to look the other way and move on. They said that it was a "dangerous area" he was treading in. I have no idea whether they fixed this system, but I doubt it.

So please excuse me if I laugh when the health ministry so proudly claims that Japan's beef is safer than American beef because of all of the effort they have put into this.

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December 27, 2003

Building norms together with the technologies

11:58 UTC » Photo - Privacy - Social Software

danah has a good rant in response to Cory's thoughts on technologists that create technologies which cause awkward social situations.

danah boyd
So, in fleshing out Cory's call to technologists, i'd ask all technologists to consider not only what problems a technology solves, but what new ones could emerge. Start thinking like a writer or an abuser of technology. Imagine how people could misuse a technology to hurt others. Consider who gains and loses power from such technology. It's a fascinating exercise and far more fulfilling than just thinking about who benefits from something. And besides, then you won't always be thinking "but the users shouldn't do THAT with this technology."

I commented on her blog.

Joi Ito
I agree with your point danah. On the other hand, a lot of the consequences of technology are not predictable and emerge as the technology develops and is adopted widely. I think that in addition to trying to have a vision about the negative effects of technology (which I agree is important) and trying to design around the issues, I think that identifying tensions as they arise and providing feedback to the toolbuilders is important. One of the problem of commercial enterprise is that technologists are often forced to sweep these tensions or problems under the carpet for the better good of profits or commercial interests. Also the cost of changing a design or an architecture often makes such change difficult. I think designing systems to assume they will need to be changed is important. This does get difficult as technologies mature. This is why I think the social software / blog space is interesting. We can still change a lot of the basic architecture of this space. So although I agree it is important to call our to technologists to think, I think that the dialog between technologists and people like you and Cory is more important.

In response to my thoughts on people inadvertently collapsing context because of a lack of understanding of the technology, Wendy Seltzer blogs about Technology and Norms of Publicity.

Wendy Seltzer
I wondered at first if privacy tensions would ease as more people became more technically sophisticated, but I'm inclined to think that gaps in understanding will just move with the tech, and social norms will follow still further behind.

When I am posting a photo album, I think about the situation, the people and decide whether to post a picture, ask permission or not even bother. I'm making a very deliberate decision based on my understanding of the technology and the social norms. The technology and the norms are evolving and the understanding of both is spotty. We WILL have tensions. I guess the key is to identify the critical irreversible risks and work just as hard in developing social norms as we are in developing technical solutions.

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Stories from Christmas past and brining your turkey

09:21 UTC » Eating and Cooking - Japanese Culture

Justin's post from his Christmas in Japan last year describes the Japanese Christmas experience well. Here is my entry about brining, which is the key to the turkey he talks about. As I was opining to MG the other day, it's all in the bringing. MUST brine the turkey. Innovations in cooking are much more interesting than any of this social software stuff. {{gobble}} {{gobble}}

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Welcome to our world Esther Ann Werbach

08:51 UTC » Joi's Diary

Welcome to our world Esther. Sorry it's not in very good shape. Hope to get around to fixing it up a bit more before we pass it on to you.

Congratulations Kevin!

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December 26, 2003

del.icio.us

09:29 UTC » Cool Web Sites - IRC - Software

Delicious is a social bookmarks manager. It is still pre-pre-alpha, but it's already become quite a useful part of my daily routine. You bookmark sites as you surf and you can subscribe to bookmarks of your friends and receive them as RSS feeds. It all started during a rare productive discussion between tangra and _joshua on #joiito. The two of them came up with the idea and _joshua coded it.

_joshua is aka Joshua Schachter and is also the developer of memepool and GeoURL.

If you want to subscribe to my bookmarks, I'm joi_ito on Delicious.

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Announcing ecto

09:00 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Software

Adriaan, the developer of the award winning blogging client Kung-Log now works for me and has re-written it from scratch and renamed it ecto.

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Halley's Barlow Christmas song

02:09 UTC » Humor - Music

Halley just posted a song about Barlow sung to the tune of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. Soo good. Now I can go to sleep with Christmas cheer in my head. ;-)

And Halley sings it for us.

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David Weinberger on Howard Dean answering machine messages

01:59 UTC » Humor - US Policy and Politics

David Weinberger
Suppose Gov. Dean were to record a message like the following and make it available for download on the campaign Web site:
[...]

Hello. ____[suitably long pause]_____ have agreed to let me answer their phone. I'm Howard Dean and if you elect me president, I'll answer your phone, too. Now, here's the beep.

Knowing David, who IS the Campaign's Senior Internet Advisor, he'll probably suggest this to Howard Dean. ;-)

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December 25, 2003

Pictures from the Creative Commons Party

20:45 UTC » Creative Commons - Joi's Diary - Photo

I just posted some pictures from the Creative Commons Anniversary Party. Thanks to Jonas and Cory for contributing their photos.

It was also my first party since my sobriety and I enjoyed myself very much.

PS: If anyone has any other pictures that would be willing to contribute to this photo album, please email me or post a link here. Thanks!

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Phillip Torrone's moblog maddness

16:53 UTC » Moblogging

Armed with his hotel alarm, a docomo picture phone, a clie and a pocket pc, Philip just finished 3 weeks of moblog madness.

Philip Torrone
what would it look like taking 1 picture, every 30 minutes, every hour, for 24 hours, 7 days a week, for 3 weeks, no matter what. click here to view.

An update for those who wonder what he did when he was supposed to be sleeping:

#joiito
JoiIto : How did you wake up in the middle of the night?
ptorrone : i had 3 alarms
ptorrone : one for each 30 min
ptorrone : i'd wake up, turn on light, snap pic, fall asleep
ptorrone : i don't sleep that much, so it wasn't a big deal

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Jonas on curing addiction

14:04 UTC » Health and Medicine

Jonas has a good blog entry in response to Marc's comment about the 12 steps. Interesting and thoughtful deconstruction of obsessive-compulsive disorders and curing and managing addiction. The only place where I would disagree is that I actually do exhibit a variety of symptoms of addiction and that's why I've chosen to stop drinking.

Update: Jonas comments on the 12 steps. I have never been to an AA meeting, although I've ordered the book and intend to try going, but the comments from Jonas are... sobering. Any thoughts from people who swear by the 12 steps?

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Smartmobs wins Utne Independent Press Award for Online Cultural Coverage

11:35 UTC »

Smartmobs won the Utne Independent Press Award for Online Cultural Coverage. Congratulations!

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Gary Wolf's "How the Internet Invented Howard Dean"

11:25 UTC » Emergent Democracy - US Policy and Politics

The Gary Wolf article, "How the Internet Invented Howard Dean" in Wired Magazine that I blogged about earlier just came online. As David Weinberger says, it's a covers the theoretical side of the campaign and is a good addition to Ed Cone's article on the operations and the NY Times Magazine article about the spirit of the campaign.

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Corrupting holidays

08:39 UTC » Email - Japanese Culture - Joi's Diary

Merry Christmas everyone. Many years ago, I stopped sending Christmas cards. Last year, I stopped sending out traditional Japanese New Years cards and sent email instead. This year, I'm going to stop sending email greetings as well. I hate to be a scrooge, but firing up my bulk mailer, importing my address book and spewing forth my seasons greetings feels way too much like spam.

Thanks to my birthday script, I have a way to spread greetings to my friends across the whole year instead of having to pack it all into one day. (By the way, if I don't know you, you're not going to get a personal greeting...) So please excuse me if you don't get a electronic greeting card from me for the holidays. As Seth says, I think this is one more treasured tradition that has become roadkill along the information super-highway.

On that note, does anyone know who decided that in Japan, Christmas was the day that you were supposed to go on a date with your honey and end up in a hotel room? Every restaurant has a special Christmas menu tonight for couples and ALL of the hotel will be booked by couples for a romantic evening.

Did you know that Japanese families will be lining up in front of Kentucky Fried Chickens today to get their chicken for Christmas? I DO know where this comes from. When my friend Shin, introduced KFC to Japan, the ad campaign showed wealthy American families all eating friend chicken for their holiday feast. KFC was marketed as an upscale food of the privileged in America. This triggered a tradition in Japan for families to eat friend chicken on Christmas.

(I'm on a roll now...)

And you DO know that in Japan only men receive chocolates on Valentine's Day and that women receive their chocolates on "White Day" one month later. (This notion was introduced by the confectionary industry in Japan.) People are encouraged to give chocolates widely and these chocolates are called giri choko (obligatory indebtedness chocolates) in Japanese.

So, although I'm a sucker for ritual, this is all getting a bit crazy for me. I think I'm going p-time on this whole situation and will give people gifts and greet people spontaneously and in a load-balanced way so I don't get thrown out with the spam.

UPDATE: No room at Japan's Love Hotels at Christmas - BBC
Thanks for the link Khalid

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"I'm talking ABOUT you, not TO you"...

08:01 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Privacy - Search - Social Software

How many people who blog know that many blogs automatically send trackbacks or send pings to pingers sites like weblogs.com? How many bloggers know that these pings trigger services like Technorati to include their posts in an index and that any mention of my blog in their private diary cause a link to their diary to show up in my sidebar within minutes? One of the things that some of us forget is that it's not all about attention. Most people want a little more attention than they get, but they usually want it from the right people and only when they feel like it. One of the problems of using the "big time bloggers" to design the technology is that we often forget that many people would rather NOT have their contexts collapsed.

I've recently had the experience of receiving inbound links from people who write very personal diaries. I struggled when trying to decide whether I should comment, link to them or otherwise shed attention on a conversation or monologue that appeared to be directed at someone other than me or my audience. A lot of people will say at this point that posting on the "world wide web" is publishing to the public and information wants to be free, yada yada... I would disagree. The tools are just not good enough yet. Live Journal has a feature that allows you to post entries that only your friends can see. I would love to be able to add special comments interspersed in my blog posts for only my close friends.

I know the point is to keep it as simple as possible, and I can already hear the arguments, but wouldn't it be useful if there was a way to manage your audience better on a blog by blog or a post by post basis? It might also make sense to be a bit more explicit to new bloggers/journalers about what the consequences of pinging/trackbacking is.

I remember a message board where activists were preparing to march in protest against the wiretap law in Japan. This message board showed up in search engine results. A well-meaning policeman dropped into the message board and mentioned that they might want to get a permit. The community was in flames about being "wiretapped". So this isn't a new problem. Just bigger. What technology actually does and what people expect it to do are very different so the "technically speaking" answer is not always the real answer. Also, the tensions caused by the technologies should be viewed as opportunities for the innovators.

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December 24, 2003

See you at ETech

08:52 UTC » Emergent Democracy - Identity - Joi's Diary - Moblogging - Wireless and Mobile

I'll be at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference February 9-12 in San Diego. It looks like I'll be doing a session with Ethan Zuckerman on the Emergent Democracy Forum day February 9th and a session with danah, Mimi, Howard, Scott and others on the 10th about mobility, identity and culture. Hope to see you there.

The panel members are not "final-final" so they are not on the web yet. I'll post the description of the sessions and the final-final members here when we get everything confirmed.

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The Dean for Iowa Game

07:39 UTC » Cool Web Sites - Social Software - US Policy and Politics

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The "die puny humans" facet of Joi Ito

05:57 UTC » Identity - Joi's Diary

Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropoitan and "die puny humans", asked some of us to do something for his blog on thinking about the coming year. I took the opportunity to expose the "die puny humans" facet of my identity. It's a slightly different persona than the one I use here so it was fun to write. Warren's got quite an interesting roundup of people.

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Yo Marc!

05:48 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Health and Medicine - Introspective - Joi's Diary

Actually, I guess the technical term is, "yo duuuude."

Marc Canter
Well maybe those days are over, but there's one thing for sure - Joi will have a drink - again. Maybe on New Year's Eve - maybe 20 years from now - but once an addict, always an addict. I mean that in a nice way.

We can try and intellectualize our way out of our problems, manipulating our actions and behavior to suit our health - mental, physcial or economic - but you'll always go back to being - just you.

I would beg to differ on this point Marc. Since I announced that I would stop drinking, I've been contacted by a lot of people who have chosen to stop drinking and that was the end of that. I realize that it's quite difficult and you can't go back to NOT being addicted, but that doesn't mean you have to end up drinking again or that you don't have a choice.

As for:

Marc Canter
So as Joi dumbs down his persona, going for only the lowest denominator, he'll still pick his battles, stand his ground and make his point on all the right issues. But he'll be doing that less and less.

I'm not sure I'd use the phrase "dumb down"... I'm not dumbing myself down for my blog, just performing for a more public audience. It's not about "smart/dumb". In fact, I'd suggest that I'm having to be a lot smarter in some ways and am filtering crap that only my close friends would let me get a way with.

Anyway, I know you didn't mean any disrespect Marc. I just want to clarify my position on these two points.

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VoIP enables ambient virtual co-presence

05:37 UTC » Social Software - Wireless and Mobile

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December 23, 2003

Address book poker

14:57 UTC » Humor - Wireless and Mobile

Reading Jill's comments over on misbehaving reminded me of a game that some people play in Japan. (I learned it from Eno-san.) It originated with business cards, but has moved to mobile phones. There are three people: two players and a judge. The two players pick someone from their address books and reveal them to each other simultaneously. The judge decides which one is more famous or important. The loser has to shred the business card or in the case of mobile phones, delete that entry from the address book. It's quite funny because you try to play important people to beat the other person, but if you lose, you lose a valuable phone number. The judge's perspective of what sort of person is important also comes into play in an interesting way.

It's no fun when you have backups of your phone numbers, but in Japan, where most people don't backup their mobile phone numbers, it's often for keeps.

Don't try this at home.

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My Nokia 6600 vs my Sony SO505iS

11:08 UTC » Gadgets - Wireless and Mobile

I know this is comparing apples and oranges, but that's what I've got: apples and oranges.

The Nokia 6600 has a 65,536 color 176 x 208 pixel display and a 640 x 480 pixel camera whereas the Sony SO505iS has a 262,144 color 240 x 320 display and a 1280 × 960 pixel camera. Both displays are bright, but the Sony display and camera win.

They're about the same size and weight, but the 6600 feels much more comfortable in my hand. Warm, round and buttons in the right place. The SO505iS is cold and a bit awkward (as if a digital camera and a phone got merged in the machine in "The Fly"). Having said that, the SO505iS is much better than the SO505i that it replaces. It's thinner and generally better designed. (The antenna doesn't stick out of your chin, the camera turns on when you open the camera cover, etc.)

The SO505iS runs J2ME and Flash applications whereas the 6600 runs J2ME and Symbian applications. The UI on the 6600 is utilitarian and simple whereas the Sony sports an animated background and a OS X sort of zooming icon wheel. The Sony has a two speaker stereo system and a stereo mini-plug for headphones where you can listen to music and watch videos from the proprietary memory stick in their proprietary media format. (You can record your favorite TV shows onto your memory stick and watch them on the train.)

The biggest difference is that you have to be a rocket scientist to figure out all of the message and data modes on the 6600. The blessing and the horror of the open system is that 6600 has to deal with all of the carrier inconsistencies and trying to figure out how to get online with the 6600 reminded me of just how screwed up the telco standardization process is. The SO505iS, on the other hand comes from the dictatorship of Docomo so what it lacks in flexibility and openness, it benefits in simplicity. Shoot a photo, click and send. Moblog away. I have yet to be able to send a picture via email from my 6600.

Both phones have lots of applications, but the Symbian applications are impressively Internet aware. There is an IRC client and IM client. Docomo, with it's rather closed architecture regarding networking has some cool applications, but they are really focused on providing content and services.

I would probably have a different opinion if I still used my Vaio, but the SO505iS really doesn't want to have anything to do with my Mac. The 6600 on the other hand, loves my Mac, talking to it in Bluetooth and even happily becoming a gprs modem for it. Zooming in a cab in San Francisco with my 6600 in my pocket and my PowerBook on my lap online was a great feeling. (Thanks for showing me how to do this Rael!)

Having said that, this is a totally useless review because you can't use the 6600 in Japan because we don't have a GSM network and you can't use the SO505iS anywhere outside of Japan because it uses Docomo's proprietary PDC network, or rather Docomo uses the SO505iS. Thus apples and oranges.

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I'm glad I'm not intexicated

09:25 UTC » Gender - Wireless and Mobile

Emily - Smartmobs
«Intexicated»: Texting under the influence
The Sunday Mail reports that the problem of texting under the influence has become so common, it has been given a name; «intexicated».

According to research by Virgin Mobile, out of the 60 million texts sent daily in December, 15 million of them are sent by people who have had one too many.
Virgin said that two thirds of women who text while drunk send messages to former lovers and some text the wrong person.

A public relations officer in London sent a sexually explicit message to dad instead of boyfriend Dan after hitting the wrong button.

Lucky for me I don't drink anymore. I can see how intexicating could seem fun at the time, but could be trouble.

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I'm glad I'm not intexicated

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