Beating The Social Media Feedback Loop

I use a lot of social media websites, some are genuinely used to share with friends and family. But there are other sites I use because I am geek and I have to try every new and shiny widget that comes along. And this week with the introduction of Google Buzz, the social sharing world is getting even more fragmented. This would be a good thing if we were worried about competition. But frankly no one will ever pay for social media websites. If the Facebook were to put up a pay wall today, someone would invent the next best social site tomorrow. So competition for the sake of the end user (meaning you and me) is not that important, financially speaking. Yes there is goodness in pushing the technological boundaries, but these interesting times are also volatile and confusing times. Especially if you are trying to make a living on the social web. Should I be on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Buzz? Yes, no, and maybe. Each have strengths and weakness resulting from there complexity. Twitter is darn simple with 140 character text messages. Facebook is way more complex. So which is right? Well, there is no simple, right answer for everyone. But the simple answer is be everywhere. But that isn't easy. Let's take a look at the layer of services I use to get a message everywhere I want to play. I will admit I have not tried to optimize this "social flow", so perhaps I could be using fewer services or a different service to combine many into one. But for now, this works for me. I have painstakingly reworked it to eliminate feedback loops. For example, posting a tweet on Twitter that is fed to FriendFeed and then fed back to Twitter, and so forth.

• Original message to a consolidated point
• Google Reader, blogs, Digg, Pandora, AudioBoo, Picasa --> FriendFeed
• Consolidate to disseminate (Twitter is my focal point, for now)
• FriendFeed --> Twitter, Google Buzz
• Disseminate further to various end points
• Twitter --> RSS Graffiti, Twitter Feed
• RSS Graffiti --> Facebook Pages
• TwitterFeed --> Ping.fm
• Ping.fm --> Posterous, Tumblr, Ning, Brightkite, Yammer, Flickr, LinkedIn, Diigo, Gtalk status

So what I would like is one hub site. It would know what site an update comes in from and sends it out to all the others. My goals of this omni-service should be reliable, fast, and no duplication. Still waiting. Or maybe I am doing something wrong. If you know of anything please let me know.

Apple iPad: Could Have Been Better

Today Steve Jobs debuted the Apple iPad, a device that promised to finally give the tablet PC market the breakthrough it has so desperately needed.  It came up disappointingly short.  I think this 1st generation iPad would have been Earth-shattering, if not for the fact that there are 3 generations of iPhones that came before.  The bar was set by the iPhones, and the iPad came way under that bar.  For me, there are too many missing pieces to make the investment for even the $499 16GB base model.  The flaws that break this deal for me include:

• No camera.  So much for mobile communications such as video chat over Skype.  Since the iPad is using stock iPhone OS, this lack of hardware to save a few bucks is disappointing.
• No GPS.  Mobile devices and their apps are increasingly location-aware.  Yes the 3G device will have AGPS, but this isn't enough.  Why include a compass if there is no GPS?  Again, the iPhone already supports GPS, why start a few steps back?
• No SD card reader.  This feature was recently added to MacBook line.  The iPad is marketed as a media consumption device and I can think of no better device to look at photos taken in the field than an iPad.  There will be an adapter you can plug into the iPad, a la the Nike+ receiver for the iPods, but it seems so unlike Apple to rely on adapters given the cheapness of SD card readers.
• No background apps.  Android can do background apps with ease.  The iPhone 3GS and the iPad have the horsepower to handle backgrounds apps but don't.  So much for listening to Pandora while typing out a Keynote.

Not to be all negative.  This device does seem to the best eBook reader around and that alone may salvage the deal.  Plus it has new mobile versions of Keynote,  Pages, and Numbers that make it a mobile professional's office for the road.  Other than that, I am not seeing the advantages over the iPad-Mini, also known as the iPod Touch.

Books for Learning Electronics

I recently picked up "Make: Electronics" by Charles Platt from Amazon from $23 (vice $34 on MakerShed). It is one of the best introductory books written for those with little or no electronics experience. It is fantastic mix of theory and practical, and is all based on experiments that are well explained and illustrated. The book also does a great job of recommending tools, components, websites, and other books for the novice electronics DIYer. I find it be a terrific companion to two other books "Physical Computing" by Tom Igoe and Dan O'Sullivan and "Making Things Talk" by Tom Igoe. What sets "Make: Electronics" apart though is the attention to fundamentals, it does a great job taking you from the basic science of electrons and atoms, through the basics of voltage, current, power, resistance, capacitance, and inductance. It works through basic switch and resistor circuits, through transistor based circuits then onto to integrated circuits and finally a brief introduction to microcontrollers and basic software programming concepts. The only shortcoming is the lack of detailed microcontroller discussion, but that can be easily supplemented with the other two books I've mentioned. Speaking of microcontrollers, ff you are interested in the Arduino specifically, I would also recommend "Getting Started with Arduino" by Massimo Banzi. Lastly, another good book is "Encyclopedia of Electronic Circuits" by Rudolph Graf and William Sheets. So go check them out, they are all available on Amazon.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the "Maker's Notebook" also available on Amazon or MakerShed. This customizable notebook is more than your average graph paper notebook. It contains many useful references specific for hackers and makers. It is a great little book to carry around with so you can brainstorm your ideas anywhere you go.

Geocaching on Android with GeoBeagle

Today I got the oppurtunity to do my first impromptu geocaching thanks to my new Droid and the free app GeoBeagle. The bottom line is that it does work but it is very much a beta, if not an alpha release. It does fall back to the web browser to access geocaching.com to find the caches, but once you select a cache you use the GeoBeagle app to navigate to the cache. You can also use Google Maps for a map view once you get close and I found that to be most useful.

For more information, visit my blog Ultimate Geocaching.