On Having "Too Many" Books....

I say to all of you who, like me, have "too many" books: Stop thinking that way. You actually have far too few books -- as evidenced by the fact that you keep getting more books.

Books are inexpensive, in most cases printed on paper from tree farms to it's a crop, emit no noxiouis gases, take up remarkably little space considering how many you have, harm no one when sitting on shelves or in boxes under the house, and give great joy to the holder.

Of all obsessions, weaknesses of desire, and unrealistic visions, surely having 'too many books' is the least harmful...

Why We All Hate Facebook's New Not-Email Message Service (And Why We're Probably Full Of It)

I am puzzled by the seemingly intense hostility to the mere *idea* of FB organizing its info feeds in what they hope will be a more convenient way. I'll have to see how it's executed, which I haven't been able to do yet, but notionally it seems like the start of a good idea.

But the reviews by Steven and other tech commentators seems along the lines of "No! You will NOT reorganize your communications method! Not, do you hear me?" and "What would anybody NEED such nonsense for, anyway?" and "They say it's not email, but we KNOW it's email, and so they're full of shit and so is their product!" and "*Nobody* needs this! *I* don't need it, and I can't imagine why anybody else would!"

1. FB's main comm use is the Wall; which is just an unorganized stream, and that's the most criticized part of its operation. Reworking that so you can find things in your Wall is a good idea, if it works - not a bad idea in principle.

2. This is clearly aimed at people who basically live in FB. Not at people who have 14 email accounts, their own servers, deep technical knowledge, and complex online and offline lives. For its intended audience, I am guessing at this early stage, merging their wall and their email messages and their IM messages into one organized presentation will be a good thing. For them, a very good thing. Not for us, maybe -- but FB's 500 million are, if nothing else, *not us.* My guess is that the typical satisfied future user of this system will be someone who gets most of their input from their Wall, a limited amount from their email, and a bunch from their IMs. They will love it -- and they will probably use even less of their email going forward than they do now. If they incorporate SMS as well, they've already won -- our manic hostility notwithstanding. (My daughters, for example, can only reliably be reached by telephone text message. It's the one mechanism they pay timely attention to.)

3. FB has, at 500 million members, reached that lofty plateau where all commentators are obliged, apparently as a condition of servitude, to disdain every single thing they do -- their mistakes, their attempts to make up for their mistakes, their attempts to respond to their actual customers (as opposed to the loudest complainers), their old products, their new products, every feature they have and every feature they change and every feature they leave unchanged. Their very existence is a blot upon the universe -- judging from what I read. Google would be in this boat if it hadn't managed to accidentally get positioned as Savior Against Microsoft, but that string has run out now that Microsoft is subconsciously viewed as a giant-sized loser, so Google is beginning to get the I Hate You Because You Are So Big And Successful treatment, which will only grow.

Apple should be big enough for this treatment, but its Fanboyz are effective at rear-guard action, which dampens the (much deserved on occasion) criticisms. Microsoft of course is the poster boy. IBM once occupied this chair but is now emeritus. Dell's stumbles have earned it an eventually-fatal combination of hatred and dismissive disdain. 

This emotional reflex tendency has the unfortunate effect of undermining the persuasiveness of much critical commentary - sometimes unfortunately. All I know is, if Facebook announces it, it will be shot down as Dead On Arrival within minutes. It's like watching partisan politicians battling. Sometimes, of course, it deserves to be shot down, but you can't tell just from the incoming fire.

Mac McCarthy

Remember when you had a train set? Look at this one!

My brother Dennis sent me this link to a video of the doggonest miniature train setup you've ever seen:

http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/exhibit/video/4-minutes-wunderland/

in Germany, covering nearly half an acre, at a cost of 8 million Euros (paid for by charging admission). 

My friend Mark Cappel remarked when I sent him this link:

"Have you ever had a train set? It's a maintenance nightmare. Any humidity at all and the tracks corrode and the trains halt or run erratically, which would be hell with the 46-ft train. They must have a humidity controlled room and a trapeze device for flying people in to clean the tracks."

But for most of us kids, the train set never got to the point where it was able to become a maintenance nightmare: It was everything you could do to get the engine to run completely around the track; the set never had enough power; you were always adding track in an attempt to make an actually interesting layout -but the more track you laid, the harder it was for the electrical system to drive the engine, and the slower everything went. My most common memory is of stationing a younger brother at the far end of the track to nudge the engine around the far corner when it stalled, as it did every time.

A few hours of that and we'd had enough for a few weeks. A few hours every month, over the course of a couple of years, then it sat in the basement for a couple of decades - until my mom threw the whole thing out one year -- to the shock and dismay of me and my five brothers. "But you haven't used it in years. In fact, none of you have been down into the basement since you moved away!" "Yeah, but you should have *told* us you were getting rid of it!" [Wives of same brothers, sub-voce to my Mother: "Thank you for throwing it out! He would just have stored it in *our* basement for the next twenty years!"]

Mac McCarthy

Editorial Director

Anti-Pied Piper: The Difficulty of Leading for the so-called Influencer

A discussion of the file-sharing utility 'Dropbox' reminds me of a nagging problem that is only slowly surfacing in my consciousness as an ongoing issue: the difficulty of "leading" people when you're supposed to be an "influencer."

It's wonderful to have friends, and followers, and club fellow members, and all the other relationships, but it can be disillusioning when you actually have a chance to test your influence over others, and get to see just how far it goes.

Or doesn't.

I subscribed to the Web file service Dropbox because it allowed me to send photos to an editor without worrying about file sizes. These days, even the simplest camera generates pictures that are two megabytes in size each, and attempting to email a dozen or so to friends and family can be a discouraging experience: Many people have emailboxes that fill up rapidly, and/or won't accept messages with more than a couple of megabytes in attachments.

But if you have someone you exchange pictures with regularly, if you both have Dropbox you can just drag as many files into a Dropbox folder, and after a while they can drag the same files out of their own Dropbox folder on their computers. It's easy, free, and painless.

Well, setting up a specific shared folder can be a little head-scratching, but it can be figured out eventually and only has to be done once for each correspondent.

Still, I have found it surprisingly hard to get my friends to set up on Dropbox. Even ones who download and install the software put off the folder sharing setup. And even those who have gotten that far can't necessarily be nagged into clearing out their folders of photos and videos and other documents you're sending them. I have two daughters and three other friends who have left their Dropbox folders sitting there with my offerings untouched for months. It's irritating.

Mainly because it underlines once again how little actual influence I have on the actions of others. I am a member of two winetasting groups, and organizer of one of them, with 30 members each. I used to do a wine-events newsletter to one of the groups, until after a year of piecing together the newsletters each month I finally realized that nobody was using the information. They were reading it, and often commenting on how they enjoyed it -- but nobody went to any of the  local events I listed! OK, once -- one couple came to an event, once.

Some Pied Piper I am!

When my consumer Web startup went into beta testing, I invited the same wine group members to sign up, to see if our site's group and events features would do a good job of organizing our monthly wine parties. Half a dozen signed up; the other two dozen didn't even respond. And I see these people every month at the wine event! I post wine tasting notes to my blog and manage to get only a small handful of my 400 Twitter followers to click on the link and go read a posting! Only three of the wine club members Follow the wine blog directly!

Our site will be launching in a week, and I worry that I won't be able to lure more than a small, guilt-ridden handful of my many friends will go to the trouble, despite my determined nagging, of visiting the site and considering signing up. 

Biblical quotes about voices crying in the desert arise unbidden as I consider my  status as the non-Pied Piper of my circle of friends.... Most discouraging.

 Mac McCarthy

Editorial Director

Le tour du monde en 80 secondes

tourdumonde80s — March 31, 2010 — http://www.tourdumonde80.fr
A tour of the world in 80 seconds. Directed by Romain Pergeaux & Alex Profit. A project done in only 3 weeks. The making of the video, pictures and an interview of Alex Profit can be seen at www.tourdumonde80.fr.
Our tour included stops in London - Cairo - Mumbay - Hong Kong - Tokyo - San Francisco - New York - London. This route is a tribute to the famous Jules Verne's book "Le tour du monde en 80 jours".

The Tragedy of Caffeine

I'm more of a night person, or I used to be. As I get older (old), I am turning into more of a no-time person.

My personal tragedy is that caffeine doesn't work on me. I am always trying a cup of coffee in the morning, or to rouse myself from my midafternoon nappytime feeling, but it never works. Finally one evening I had a hearty cup of coffee before going to bed -- and slept like a baby.

There are two tragedies here.First -- if you can't rely on caffeine to give you a kick when you are lagging -- what is there? Only illegal and dangerous drugs. I'm screwed!

Second -- I read once that caffeine's effects reverse with old age: It may pep you up when you're young, but when you're 80, it calms your nerves and, for many people, helps them sleep -- the opposite of the effect it usually has when younger. I am only 63,but the conclusion that forces itself on me is -- I'M OLD!

Sob!

mac

Ukelele Virtuoso Shimabukuro Plays George Harrison: While My Ukelele Gently Weeps

VIrtuoso indeed. By the end you'll be totally sucked in.



How the heck does he *do* this?

Wonderful