blog.vanillacokehead.com

I was asked by a fellow Twitter user, RhondaUSA, a soon to be new Android user, for a list of “essential apps”.

For her – and everyone else – I’ll share a list of the apps I have installed in my phone; this list is in two parts – the ones I immediately install after upgrading the OS – and the rest.

The “immediate install” list includes:

1) WeatherBug Pro – worth the 2 bucks – it’s nice having the current conditions and three-day forecast on my home screen.

2) Gtasks – a great app to use for Google Tasks – I have two widgets on my home screen: one for my task list and another for the grocery list.

3) Laik Agenda Widget – my wife and I use Google Calendar to share our schedules and the kids’ schedules. The widget is front and center on my home screen.

4) Battery Watcher widget – I like being able to quickly see the percentage left; this does a great job.

5) Retro Clock – I like having a large, easily visible digital clock on the main part of the home screen.

The rest of my downloads include:

6) Speed Test (from Ookla) – nice being able to check your data speeds wherever. This is an easy and effective speed test app.

7) MySpeed – a great combination of a GPS speedometer superimposed over a Google Maps image of where you are right now.

8) TiKL – Touch to Talk – gives Android phones a Nextel-style walkie talkie functionality – the wife and I use this pretty regularly.

9) DigitalClockMini – worth a buck – a very efficient use of a 1 x 1 space on a homescreen – time, day, date, and seconds indicator.

10) TweetDeck – still in beta – but a very promising combination Facebook/ Twitter/ Google Buzz client.

11) T-Mobile My Account – a decent app to show your account balance, SMS quota status, minutes used.

12) Ringdroid – a great app to choose and set audio clips as ring, notification, and alarm sounds on your Android phone.

13) Sleek Camera – a decent camera app with a great zoom feature.

14) Opera Mini – a slick, quick, efficient app for when you don’t need all the bells and whistles of the stock Android browser, especially when you’re not on 3G or Wi-Fi.

15) gReader – a decent Google Reader Android app.

16) Solitaire (by Ken Magic) – a nice game to fritter away time when needed.

17) AutoRotate OnOff – for times when the auto-rotation of the screen can be inconvenient or annoying.

18) ES File Explorer – a great file explorer app that works with the phone’s SD card, a home or business Wi-Fi network, or Bluetooth file system.

19) ixMat Scanner – a quick and efficient barcode app.

20) Google Voice – a tightly integrated front end for Google Voice – can handle calling as well as SMS and voicemail. I mainly use it for the voicemail and SMS (without using my allotted messages from the T-Mobile account).

21) mVideoPlayer – a stable, easy to use video player.

These are the main apps I use on a daily basis on my T-Mobile G1. I have a 8GB Micro SD card on it and run Android 2.2 “Froyo” with CyanogenMod 6.0 RC3.

Enjoy! :)

I saw LeBron James’ decision to go to the Miami Heat coming in the one or two days leading to it. Between the rumored desire for close friends James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh to play on the same NBA team – and the reports James had put down an offer on a house in the Miami area - to me the writing was on the wall. Sure, I’m bummed; but such is the life of a longsuffering lifetime Cleveland professional sports fan.

I agree with folks such as Terry Pluto who have criticized the way LeBron James turned this into a long, drawn out soap opera. The whole thing could have been done quickly, easily, and with more class than it was. James turned the whole saga surrounding his choice of where to play next season into an egopalooza – sure he tried to make it “for charity” and about having the best prospects to win an NBA title; but in the end, it was about LeBron.

From the beginning of his decision making process, I never faulted LeBron James for wanting to look for the best opportunity to win an NBA Championship. Any professional athlete worth his or her salt wants the best chance to win and be part of a championship team.

The way LeBron James turned this decision making process into an ego-driven, drama-laden, excruciatingly drawn out soap opera showed a marked lack of class.

It reminded me of when I was active on LiveJournal a few years ago – and a user decided to unfollow me there. The person wasn’t just content to just unfollow these people. This person listed – in a public post – all the people who were gone from her friends list; she also requested said people to unfollow her. It was insensitive. It was crass. And it was an unnecessary public manifestation of what should be a private, personal decision. I had no problem with being unfollowed – I had a problem with this LJ user turning it into a spectacle.

Terry Pluto made a great point when he said that “Twenty-five year-olds are usually not the most mature people on the planet.”. I know this first-hand. Nearly 20 years ago I was an emotionally immature, hot-headed, wet-behind-the-ears television news photographer in Jackson, Mississippi. I shot off my mouth first and asked questions later. I took things way too personally. I didn’t fully realize then the consequences of my actions and utterances. It took me another 10 years to start to mellow out and mature emotionally.

I look back at how I acted in my 20s and realize what I might have done differently. I have a feeling that in 10 or 20 years LeBron James might just look back at “The Decision” he made in 2010 and wish he had handled it differently.

Call this a way to adjust the signal/noise ratio on my Twitter account, along with a way to better share web clippings that catch my fancy – and a way to force myself to comment more on said web clippings rather than just put them “out there”:

Before this weekend, I handled interesting (to me anyway) links in one of two ways: If a link simply “catches my eye”, I’d click the “share” icon in Google Reader – and up to three of these links would be automatically ported each half hour to my Twitter account. If a link really got my attention, I’d manually share it, add a usually snarky remark, and post it to Twitter (and maybe Facebook too).

One of my pet peeves is seeing “blowhards” on Twitter: users who just spout off and show little if any sign of interacting with other users. More and more lately, I felt like I was slowly showing signs of becoming a blowhard; I decided some adjustments were in order.

In addition to the already established daily journal of my Twitter posts, I’ve added a new daily post: the “link dump” – an automated blog entry that will post early each morning showing the web articles during the last 24 hours that I’ve flagged as “shared” on Google Reader.

I may or may not pimp out the daily link dump post – if there’s nothing that looks interesting on second glance I won’t tout the daily post on Facebook and/or Twitter. If I want to immediately share things that I consider pressing, I’ll still manually share said web links via Twitter and/or Facebook – or even as a standalone blog post here.

It’s my hope that these changes will make my Tweets – and Facebook posts – more interesting – and that the feeds for those who follow me on these platforms are less cluttered.

It amazes me to see how many people who give themselves the title “social media guru” or “internet marketing expert” who in reality have no clue about the basics of using services such as Twitter.

It’s become a daily ritual for me to check my Twitter followers list. And it’s become a daily frustration: most times when I check new followers, I’m lucky if I follow back one or two users – one or two who even come close to using Twitter as a true social medium. Most of my new followers are little more than cyber-blowhards.

More often than not, the new Twitter followers I encounter seem to use the service as a “mass medium” – feeding a steady diet of links, quotes, promotional pabulum, braggadocio, and/or vapid crap. At a minimum, I tend to block users whose tweets show little sign of true interaction. If they’re particularly obnoxious, I’ll hit the “block and report spam” button.

There are many people out there using Twitter who truly “get it” – who take great pains to interact with other users – and who don’t primarily use Twitter as a one-way soapbox, a virtual version of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations”, a megaphone, or a brag book. I’m sick of those who use it as the latter.

Twitter’s about interaction – hence the term, “social medium”. The obtuse twits who use Twitter as a mass medium are little more than shrill popinjays and cyber-nuisances. Such twits need to grab the clue phone – lines two, three, and four – STAT!

One year to the day before the inauguration earlier this year of President Barack Obama, I embarked upon a new social media adventure – Twitter. I have to thank @klively for getting me intrigued with Twitter. After seeing her tweets, along those from her fiance, @jmilles, porting over to Facebook, I took the plunge and signed up for Twitter.

Since January 20, 2008, 545 days ago, I’ve tweeted 10,000 times. For the math-inclined, that’s a 18.35 tweets average per day. I have to thank Trish, Emma-Grace, and Jacob for keeping me grounded and not completely addicted to Twitter (just 80 percent addicted).

The best lesson I’ve learned during the last 545 days? How to cut the BS and get to the point. I’ve said this before and will say it again – having only 140 characters to make one’s point is the best writing coach around.

There also have been a number of people who have made this social media adventure interesting. This is by no means an all-inclusive list; if you’re not listed here, please don’t take it as a personal affront and/or an indication you’re “chopped liver”.

First off, thanks to @9to5to9 for commiserating with me as a fellow parent and media alum. Props to @ladycurmudgeon for the familiar face I knew previously from LiveJournal – and for the support. Thanks to @ParadisaCorbasi for being a consistent voice of reason and not being afraid to call “bullshit” on me when needed. Also on the “no BS” train is @Phoena, whose willingness to not mince words is awesome. And then there’s @MustBeBenHughes, who is one of the most scheming and enterprising folks I’ve encountered online.

I can’t forget @promodiva, whom I’ve known for more than 20 years – and who along with her hubby, @engineernerd, have been accepting of me, even if I am a dirty pinko commie crackpot. ;)

Then there are six of my favorite muses on Twitter, @Dmular (who also lives a short hop from me near Akron), @velvet_trope, @TheDailyBlonde, @JaedaDewalt, @shannonkringen, and @LizStrauss. Thanks for the inspiration.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to some of my long-time online friends who also jumped on the Twitter parade – and have stayed along for the ride: @Allyson13, @stevesheeky, @russindc, @JameyKarr, and @eliz_beth.

Then there are the northeast Ohio media types who have opened themselves up to this former media type; thanks to @EdwardEsposito, @EricMansfield, @FMacek, @chuckcollins, @VincentDuffy (also a fellow Walsh grad), and @telichtwit8.

And it’s also been fun keeping up with other media folks such as @MissAttitude, @JayHMT, @ohmygoff, @WeatherKim, @dlkeough,@DanaWillhoit, @JasonNBC4 (aka “the human scanner”), and @ishwie.

Then there’s the group I call “the fun bunch” on Twitter. These include: @fabgirl, @RandomNicole, @Trillian1117, @JamiMiami, @CherylHarrison, @jooleeanna, @JuliaGoolia, @wizzardsblog, @qualityfrog, @YatPundit, @LorettaK, @WubbzyJen, @gemmegirl, @amyramirez, @MtnMom, @CesLSU, @CavsGirl4Life, @CindyTG, @SandiHockeyMom, @Windstream,@mdsuburbs, @iconic88, and @hookbill – plus the three whom I call the “LA Trio” – @pinksugacupcake, @AnneKinLA, and @RosevilleRockLn. Thanks, everyone.

Last, and certainly not least, I need to give shoutouts to @JosetteMarie and @Jason_of_DS, both cool folks from my workplace; and give props to my longtime good friend and former fellow Rochester media colleague, @racyguy14619, who is just getting started on Twitter.

And if I didn’t mention you, thanks. Here’s to tens of thousands more Tweets! :)

For most of the four months I’ve had my T-Mobile G1, I’ve found app support for Facebook to be for the most part lame. I tried FBook – but it was flakier than an apple pie. Since then, I’ve mainly used the Android browser on Facebook’s mobile site, http://m.facebook.com – until yesterday.

A new and very promising native Android app for accessing Facebook was unleashed on the Android Market Friday (7/3/09). It’s called “Bloo” and it arrived with a lot of advance hype and buzz that it would be “the” killer app for Facebook for the Android platform. When it was released, I decided to take the plunge and spend $1.49 for it.

After having it for about 12 hours, I can say the app lived up to the hype – and was well worth the money. I gave it a “four star” rating on the Android Market. Two things I wish it had were the ability to see more than one page of the Facebook “Feed” and a button to retrieve more than one page of it. The other thing it needs is a screen to read the inbox.

The setup went reasonably well – being able to retrieve a six-character security key from Facebook and enter it into Bloo made authenticating a snap. Setting the access permissions to read and write to the FB account took a few minutes but worked well once it was done.

I was pleasantly surprised to not even have the app for eight hours and have an update for the app in the Market already (and a second update is coming this weekend). The developer has done well with his first effort – and this app has the potential and promise to improve and be the definitive native Facebook app for Android.

Here are some more looks at the app:

All in all, MAJOR props to Dimitris Couchell for a GREAT initial effort on Bloo. You did very well – and I look forward to seeing this app grow and develop further.

This just left me shaking my head:

I got the customary new follower email and added this Twitter user back today – was on the bubble about whether to block or add back this user. I initially gave this dude “the benefit of the doubt” and followed him back. This spammish “thanks for following” auto DM convinced me that my initial instincts were a FAIL.

All right, dude – if you know auto DMs are annoying – why in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks did you use one in the first place? And why did you make it a spammish one to boot?

I wonder what would happen to me if I approached a woman I didn’t know and said, “I know unsolicited kisses from strangers are annoying but I’m going to steal a kiss anyway” and then kiss her. I’d probably come out of the episode with a sore cheek from being slapped – and maybe a black eye from being punched by her significant other.

Methinks this dude might not be the brightest bulb in the box.

*block* thank you for playing. we have lovely parting gifts. don’t let the door hit ‘ya where the good Lord split ‘ya. buh-bye!

This was originally a reply to a post in the blog of WKYC-TV anchor Eric Mansfield – expressing his concern regarding many news outlets last week being so eager to break news regarding the fatal accident involving Cleveland Browns player Donte Stallworth that facts weren’t being sufficiently checked or confirmed before going on-air or online or to print.

Michael Fleming of “Variety” has an excellent look at how the internet in general and bloggers in particular have exacerbated the whole journalistic issue of “getting it first” vs. “getting it right”:

He uses as one example the media maelstrom leading up to Natasha Richardson’s tragic death last week.

I agree with Fleming that the 24 hour news cycle of the internet and the eagerness of many bloggers to break news rather than slow down and wait for confirmation is “lowering the bar” for many other news organizations and media outlets.

This situation isn’t dissimilar to the way many software companies, pressed to meet announced deadlines, will release a software package with some known flaws then fix said flaws later with “service packs” or patches or upgrades. Many web sites are in an almost perpetual status of “beta” and are works in progress.

Problem is that computers can just swap out the old code for new code and move on. Humans, like elephants, have long memories and don’t as easily forget erroneous information or allegations.

When I taught computer classes in the Seattle area a while ago, one of the classes I taught was about browsing the web. The first piece of advice I’d give to my students entailed relating the old saying “you can’t believe everything you read in the newspaper” – and urging them to multiply that by five or 10 with things read online.

An amusing part of the Facebook user experience is seeing on my home page the “people you may know” sidebar on the right side of the screen. Most of the time, I hardly know the people suggested in the sidebar. About once or twice a month, I actually know or am acquainted with someone listed in that sidebar.

I understand these people are chosen based on how many “mutual friends” a particular user has with the suggested people in the sidebar. It’s a reasonable application of logic: “friends of friends” may also be friends. But I love the way Facebook tries to convince me that I might know a particular person:

I chuckle most of the time when Facebook suggests a friend and says “You and XXX went to Kent State”. Every time I see that, I say to myself, “yea, this person and tens of thousands of other people.” Frankly it makes Facebook look a little clueless. Just for giggles, I went to Kent State University’s web site – and it says the university has about 184,000 alumni.

Note to Facebook: if you’re trying to persuade me to add someone you suggest in the “People You May Know” list, use something other than the fact we both went to the same college. I bet the prevailing reaction to the latter is, “so what?”

There are lots of questions swirling out there about how micro-blogging site Twitter will make money. Twitter certainly has the eyeballs – they need a clear plan to evolve the audience into a sustainable business model.

Twitter has floated the prospect of charging business users of its service – which I think is a perfectly reasonable strategy. However, making the distinction between “business” and “personal” use might be a tricky proposition since many people mix business and personal content on their twitter accounts.

I think one of the things from the beginning that blogging site LiveJournal has done right is its handling of different levels of service. Free users get a limited set of features (still pretty generous IMO); “Plus” users get a few extra features: extra user pics, search capability) in exchange for agreeing to view ads; “Paid” users get access to faster servers, even more user pics, and other goodies). Occasionally-sold “Permanent” accounts get even more features for a one-time payment.

Twitter should take a page out of LiveJournal’s book and offer similar “tiered” levels of service. Free accounts could basically include what Twitter offers now, including limited API calls. Perhaps a “plus” level could be created where customers agree to having ads on their Twitter pages and perhaps in their Twitter stream – in exchange such users could get higher API limits and the ability to customize the layouts of their profiles. And a paid account might have access to quicker servers and the ability to avoid the dreaded “Fail Whale”, along with the highest level of API limits and a high level of ability to customize profile pages, including widgets and links.

What do y’all think?

Just as long as Twitter doesn’t adopt LiveJournal’s repeated gaffes with enforcing its “terms of service” and having a “hair trigger” suspending accounts for the mere allegation of having improper content…