UberNoggin

A few of you might remember me Twittering a week or so that I was frustrated that my nails prevented me from being able to get an iphone. Since then I played with a few and realized that I could, in fact, use one without trouble so four days I ago I made the plunge. Or rather, I tried to. I went to the mall, card in hand to buy one and after putting my name on the list for customer service, standing around for over a half an hour, and then being greeted by the grumpy twelve year old who runs the store I was told that the man before me in line had bought the last iphone in stock. I was told that they’d get more the next afternoon but it was three more days until I was actually able to purchase one.

Purchase, not activate.

In the store, the fourteen year old manager of the twelve year old service guy, tells me that I need to take the phone home to activate on Itunes (which I knew) and that there would be a credit check that might make me come back into the store. Never have I had to have a credit check to pay for monthly service on anything. After all, if you don’t pay they can just shut you off. Anyhow, since I couldn’t activate mine in the store we couldn’t replace Mark’s Verizon phone with another (we’re on a family plan) and so had to leave without purchasing a phone for him. After a day we decided it would just be easier for Mark to get an iphone as well (I didn’t really have to twist his arm) so we could activate them both at the same time.

I log in to Itunes, say that I want to activate two phones, keep numbers, move accounts over etc, then get a weird error message and  end up activating only my phone. Three phone calls later the AT&T folks tell me that Mark will have to come into the store to add his to my plan. So, leaving me behind with four five year olds he heads down to the mall. And again, waits in line for an inordinate amount of time just to find out that, in fact, we have to activate his over the phone. So he comes home, tries to follow the instructions they gave him and rather than adding his line to mine the software wants him to pay for a whole new plan. Not wanting to double our bill he calls AT&T who tell him that he has to come into the store again to have his credit checked even though he’ll be on my plan. Frustrated, he heads out again to a different store where he hopes the line will be shorter, talks to the ever mature staff, and comes home with an activated phone.

Three days, $1200, five trips to the AT&T store, and about ten calls to customer service and we finally have two active iPhones on the same family plan. Geesh! Why do they make it so hard to give them money? Geesh!

I will say, though, the phone is amazing. I love its intuitive interface and I’m very glad I bought it. Second, the iTunes activation is a stroke of genius. Had we not needed to add two lines to a plan etc the home activation would have saved me spending time in the hellish mall. Also, as with Mac laptops, I suggest you personalize your iphone pretty quickly so it doesn’t get picked up accidentally by someone else.  They all look the same when they’re asleep.

So without further ado, I introduce you to…..the Intellaphone!

In my constant search for desktop “pull” perfection I’m always looking for some kind of aggregator that truly pulls everything I care about in one place. Google Desktop definitely shows some promise.

Yes, it sits on your desktop. Yes, that can be distracting. Yes, it has all kinds of feeds that might shove info in your face that you’re not interested in. BUT! You can change all of that, customize it in really powerful and handy ways, and make it exactly what you want.

For example, mine has short cuts to all of my Office apps (which I use, oh, a MILLION times a day), my Skype connections, the local weather, my gmail, news headlines (from sources I picked), a little notepad, a feed from my Flickr photos, my RSS feeds, a to do list, and a Google search bar.

Some of the gadgets you can add are a bit silly like the one that tells your the Star Trek stardate for the day. But hey, I’m sure someone is in love with that gadget.

What I like most about it is that it really does aggregate the first four or five tabs that I open every day when I sit down at my desk. It saves me time. Yes, it actually saves me time! So much of the technology I play with is cool for about a day and then I realize that I’m not able/willing to integrate the technology into my daily routine. If you can’t make easy use of it then it doesn’t work for you and you have to move on.

My only wish for the Google Desktop is a TV plugin. I have Media Center on my machine and I have a guilty habit of watching schlock like Dr. Phil while I work. It would be lovely to have it on a little screen on my desktop sidebar. Hey, a girl can dream, right? Maybe Google knows what’s best for me and doesn’t have this little plugin to save my productivity.

Give Google Desktop a try and tell me what you think. Is it great? Is it horrible? What gadgets do you like best?

On Friday August 10 I’ll be presenting another “Web 2.0 Business Secrets Seminar” and we’ll be streaming it live on the internet! Please feel free to pass these instructions onto anyone and everyone who may be interested in watching the presentation.

To view the seminar live on the internet, you will need Quicktime player. If you do not have quick time player, you can download the software at http://quicktime-downloads.com/.

To get started:

1. click “start”
2. click “all programs”
3. click “quicktime”
4. click “quicktime player”
5. click “file”
6. click “open URL in new player”
7. copy paste this URL: rtsp://in-info-webmac.informatics.iupui.edu/live.sdp

You should then be set to go! The presentation will begin at 9:00am EST.

“What if someone posts something bad about us?”

“Anyone can edit our wiki? Can we block them?”

“How can we limit our employees from leaving our island in Second Life?”

“If we post our pictures can just anyone look at them?”

If I had a dime for everytime someone in business asked me these questions…well I wouldn’t need to blog anymore. I’d be lying in a beach somewhere where the humidity index is below %100 percent (it’s so hot in Indiana right now Al Roker actually put a clip art toaster on top of our state during todays weather forecast). It’s not that I mind the questions. I completely understand where they come from. Insecurity and Ignorance.

Gartner is at it again. Releasing press releases that cause a flury of fear mongering regarding Web 2.0 and virtual worlds. First of all, is this really a press release? I thought press releases were intended to make us aware of NEWS! Warning that corporations should be careful in virtual spaces is only news if you’ve been living in a bunker for the last two years. There’s absolutely nothing new in this release unless you were previously ignorant of the risks of any marketing and PR undertaken by companies. The only way to absolutely protect your company’s image is to have no image at all. The minute you advertise your service or product you open yourself up to scrutiny. Same goes for IT investments. Second, if you create a database, a website, a file sharing system, or just an email address you shouldn’t do it without first investigating the technology, understanding its usefulness, and the security risks involved. ‘Nuff said?

No.

Back in June, Gartner released the devastatingly useless news that by 2010 50% of governments would pull out of web 2.0. How many web 2.0 government applications do you know of? **crickets** That’s what I thought. I don’t remember any wiki-fied 1040EZ forms when I did my taxes this year nor do I recall any participatory sites for telling Bush what we all think about the war. Even more than business, government is a somewhat closed system. There are lots of ways to voice your opinion but aside from hearings and voting there are really no bottom-up models for open-source participation. So, half will pull out? Half of what? And the reasons for Gartner’s conclusions are almost laughable. They boil down to these: 1. If you give people voice they might not say what you want to hear and 2. If you give government empoyees a voice they might actually show themselves to be real people rather than bureaucratic robots. Gasp!! No, as near as I can tell the only politicians interested in web 2.0 are the ones currently running for office and pretending to care what we all think. Once elected their doors are shut.

But enough ranting, back to my point. The concerns and fears that businesses and governments (and I’ll lump some education institutions into this as well) have about web 2.0 come from two sources: insecurity and ignorance.

Insecurity: the fear that you aren’t what you say you are and that other people might notice. There are really easy solutions to this. Either be what you claim to be: put out a good product, offer a worth while service, represent the values of those who elected you OR don’t let people have a voice so those who notice your fraudulence can’t spread the word. The fears about web 2.0 in business and government basically boil down to these issues. Why not let your customers voice their problems with your product? Chances are they’ll tell you exactly what you should do to improve it and bygolly you could actually make a better product or at least explain to your audience why your product is flawed the way it is. Dialogue is key here, folks!

Ignorance: operating without all pertinent information on a situation. We don’t even teach children to run away from things they don’t understand. We teach them to be inquisitive, to ask questions, and to experiment. If you set up a web 2.0 site that gets vandalized or you establish an island in Second Life that gets taken over by malicious scripts you have no one to blame but yourselves (or the lackey you relied on to do your research, assuming you did any). There are successful ways to use web 2.0 technologies to your advantage and they rely on understanding the purpose of these shifts in technology. People want to be heard. They want to participate. They want to be a part of your product/government. If you give them the correct channels and actually listen to what they have to say web 2.0 can be incredibly beneficial.

Maybe I should tack a list to the end of this blog and publish it as a press release.