Techgasm

As a so-called “creative,” I spend most of my day on the computer. Not immune to the brand of technological ADD that has infected my generation, I tend to surf the net in between bouts of productivity. I read a variety of blogs, many of which discuss the confluence of design and emerging technologies, two topics that inspire me vocationally as well as personally. These blogs discuss the latest developments in social media, hyping the newest tools for simplifying and enriching everyday life.

Each day a new application emerges that one-ups the benefits of the last, or an idea surfaces that is so obvious and clever I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it. Then comes the feeling. Sometimes, after a few minutes of breathless clicking from link to link, discovering potentially world-changing ideas, I will experience a certain frisson of excitement, a thrilling moment of happiness to be alive and anticipation for the future. After experiencing this thrill, I become ready once again to take on the world. I remove my earphones, rub my eyes, and resume my presence in reality, motivated to get things done.

Sites that provide this feeling on a regular basis include Mashable, Engadget, and Google. Keep reading...

What have I done today?

The other day I emerged from my office building to find a row of brand-new streetlamps standing handsomely on the sidewalk. They’d all been installed during the time I’d been inside, sometime between 9:30am and 6pm. My immediate reaction was one of gratitude to the men who’d set up the lamps, but this feeling quickly morphed into one of shame. What had I done that day of value? Had I made an impact on the world in any way, done anything to change my environment the way these men had?

Hardly. I’d written a few paragraphs of copy for an internal document, copy that would likely never be seen by anyone outside the office. I’m not naïve—I know there are millions of desk jockeys and cubicle monkeys who slave away at monotonous, uninspiring work each day; I also know that being a blue-collar construction worker is not a dream job, and that those men probably did not consider their labor particularly fulfilling or interesting.

Nonetheless, I was humbled by the juxtaposition of our respective accomplishments this day. I consider myself a “creator”—I chose the career path of a writer in order to bring original ideas into this world. But on any given day, who’s creating more value for the citizens of my community, a construction worker or myself? The answer is clear.
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Democratization of Personalization

Virginia Hefferman takes a look how the ability to customize nearly everything in our (digital) lives has become a major time sink, and a detriment to productivity, in her weekly The Medium column in the New York Times Magazine.

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The Lurking Danger of Perms

I’m sick of perms. Not perms for hair, though that type of perm could be included under the umbrella perm: per-month fees. Living at home and still sheltered from the full breadth of real-world expenses, I don’t even come close to experiencing the drowning sea of monthly fees many people incur. The average independent young adult faces not only the traditional monthly payments for rent (or mortgage), insurance (of several kinds), water, electricity, and other utilities, but also some or all of the following: car payments, loan payments, cell-phone bill, cable bill, internet bill, and gym bill, plus any number of membership fees, from tanning salons to Tivo, from Netflix to online communities (Match.com, Xbox Live, etc.). Some of these may start out as single charges (like a cell-phone plan), but quickly balloon with extra charges for texting and WiFi capability.

Modern living means much of our life is automated; chunks of our paycheck small and large are deducted like clockwork, no matter how much we make use of the amenities they pay for. It’s no wonder many Americans, particularly the younger generation, are in debt. Between perms, variable monthly credit card payments (often accruing massive amounts of interest), and other basic costs of life, much of what we spend leaves our pockets quietly and dangerously, like a cat-burglar sneaking off into the night.

It’s time people started paring down their expenses and paying attention to what products and services they actually need. Do this, and a bad perm is guaranteed to go down. Keep reading...

iTunes: How It Differs Across the World

Searching through iTunes recently I discovered that users may change the country the store is tailored to, simply by choosing from a list of a dozen or so nations in a menu at the bottom of the page. I ended up visiting the home page for most of the possible options, curious as to the variety of artists that I would find topping the charts. Soon I realized there were more points of differentiation than musical taste alone.

Some countries, like the U.S. have free tracks available for download each week. This offer seems to be only in English-speaking countries (the U.K., Australia, and Canada), with the notable exceptions of France and Japan. Why of all the EU nations France is the only one deemed worthy of free music is an interesting question to ponder. Tracks are by far the cheapest in the U.S. and Canada—all other countries pay at least $1.60. Japan is most expensive, with most songs costing 200 yen, or about $2. As a sidenote, Japan’s store is the only one to use non-Roman characters; songs that do show up in English are displayed using a presumably easy-to-read, bitmap-type font.

Not surprisingly, the music that tops the charts across the world varies greatly. Using the U.S. as a benchmark (for the sole reason that American music is so popular and well-distributed), one finds Canada mirrors American taste almost exactly, whereas other countries have just a handful of tracks in common.

Australia’s top ten, for example, resembles the American chart of 3-4 months ago, with songs like Florida’s Low and Finger Eleven’s Paralyzer. Europe’s charts range from the intensely nationalistic Mediterranean nations of Italy and Spain (each of which had 5/10 domestic tracks) to the more open France and Germany (only 1 out of 10 homegrown). Europe in general proved itself more willing to experiment with music beyond American pop, with songs from across Europe being equally popular. Sweden’s chart was the most generically (that is, by genre) uniform, with most of the top 10 being dance tracks. Expectedly, Japan’s chart is heavily Japanese, with only two English-language tracks languishing near the bottom.

The most popular songs across the world (in late May 2008) were Madonna’s 4 Minutes (appearing in every list but Japan’s) and Estelle’s American Boy (feat. Kanye West), which was popular just about everywhere except, ironically, America. Keep reading...