the tindog coffeehouse

If this photo from ZDNet of an early iteration of Internet Explorer 9 is any indication of what the final product will look like, I have to say it’s downright horrid.

I know, I know, I’m probably the only person in the world who thinks that. Just like I’m the only person to not really care for the stripped-down look of Google Chrome (which Microsoft is clearly imitating).

I understand the trend toward leaner and cleaner browsers: fewer buttons, consolidated toolbars, a fear of anything that might impede upon the sacred real estate that is the interwebs. I understand it, I just don’t fully agree with it.

Personally, I would rather sacrifice a few pixels for more functionality. Let me add toolbars if I want them, add buttons, move them around. That’s why I still prefer the slower Firefox over the slightly more nimble Chrome.

IE 9, however, (or at least this version of it) is even more minimal than Chrome, putting the tabs on the same row as the address bar, which might be fine if you only have 2 or 3 tabs open but could get really crowded after that. And as with IE 7 and 8, the home button is as far away from other navigation buttons as possible, which makes no sense whatsoever. Plus Microsoft has followed Google’s lead of ditching the print button, just in case you had any notions of killing the earth with your print-happy clicky finger.

Of course, the final version of IE 9 might not look anything like this, and it’s not clear how much of the UI users will be able to change to fit their preferences. But copying Chrome isn’t necessarily the best move to make from a functionality perspective. Sometimes less is more, but in this case, less is just less.

Previously:
Even with extensions, Google Chrome needs polishing
Internet Explorer 8: Faster but no Firefox

Go!

My 12th-grade English teacher would kill me if she read this blog. As is the case throughout most of the blogosphere, the style of writing here is extremely informal. So if you’ve read any of my posts, you’ve probably noticed I often start sentences with the word “so”, a common practice in conversational English but technically incorrect since it’s used as a conjunction.

So who should we denounce for this scandalous practice? According to the New York Times, it’s all Silicon Valley’s fault:

So it is widely believed that the recent ascendancy of “so” began in Silicon Valley. The journalist Michael Lewis picked it up when researching his 1999 book “The New New Thing”: “When a computer programmer answers a question,” he wrote, “he often begins with the word ‘so.’ ” Microsoft employees have long argued that the “so” boom began with them.

In the software world, it was a tic that made sense. In immigrant-filled technology firms, it democratized talk by replacing a world of possible transitions with a catchall. And “so” suggested a kind of thinking that appealed to problem-solving software types: conversation as a logical, unidirectional process — if this, then that.

This logical tinge to “so” has followed it out of software. Compared to “well” and “um,” starting a sentence with “so” uses the whiff of logic to relay authority. Whereas “well” vacillates, “so” declaims.

So even though I’m violating at least ten grammatical laws by beginning my sentences with “so”, I can rightfully blame my technical background for the habitual mistake. That may not appease my 12th-grade English teacher, but at least I know I’m in good company.

So there.

(Click to enlarge.)

Source.

Let the AT&T backlash begin, er, continue.

The much-maligned phone company and sole provider of iPhone voice and data service (when you can get it), has decided to put the kibosh on its $30/month unlimited data plan. From now on, new users must choose between a $15/month plan that allows for 200 MB of data usage, or a $25/month plan that allows for 2 GB (with fees for going over, of course).

And if that wasn’t evil enough, they also agreed to let you pay them an extra $20/month for tethering service so that you’ll hit your data usage caps even faster.

Of course, you can always save your iPhone internetting for wi-fi hotspots, which would presumably not count against your quota while simultaneously making you less mobile and possibly much more open to security threats. Or you can fork over $150 for a MicroCell doohickey, which would let you funnel your 3G browsing through your home Internet connection (although again, it’s not clear whether that would count toward the quota or not). (Plus, once your ISP begins implementing broadband usage caps, that may not be an attractive option, either.)

Confused yet?

Now, before we go any further with the pitchforks, it’s probably worth checking into how much data people actually use currently. According to AT&T, 65% of smartphone users use less than 200 MB per month, and 98% use less than 2 GB. So theoretically, this change will save all but 2% of its customers at least a little money.

I went back and pulled my bills for the last 9 months, which is most of the time I’ve had my iPhone. The most data I’ve ever used in one month was 147 MB, and the average was 75 MB. Not once did I even come close to hitting that 200 MB mark.

But here’s the deal: This change of policy by AT&T isn’t about the money. They’re not trying to save some customers money or extort others. It’s solely about changing the behavior of its customers.

When something (anything) is unlimited, it has no value. If it’s wasted, it’s wasted, no big deal. There are no opportunity costs because it’s not costing you anything. After all, you’re gonna pay 30 bucks a month for data access whether you use it or not.

But once the concept of scarcity is introduced, all of a sudden that resource takes on real value. If you’re on the 200 MB plan, then you’re acutely aware that you only have 200 MB to last you the whole month, and you’ll naturally begin to conserve this now-limited resource. That’s basic human nature, and it’s what differentiates an inefficient allocation of resources from an efficient one.

I noted this same phenomenon a couple of years ago when I monitored my own bandwidth usage during a month-long experiment:

Something really weird has happened since beginning this experiment. Even though my ISP doesn’t currently set any usage limits, just knowing that my usage is being monitored has drastically affected how I think about the Internet. I’m hyper-aware of every song or video I download, every website I visit, every desktop application that polls the Internet for updates.

It used to be in the early days of home Internet access that a dial-up account included a limited number of minutes. As you used it, you unconsciously counted each minute spent online so that you wouldn’t hit your limit before the end of the month. Now imagine that same scenario but with a limit based not on minutes but on megabytes.

So the real evil here (if you want to call it that) is not in the actual elimination of the unlimited data plan but in AT&T’s use of price tactics to affect its customers’ behavior. Which of course is something companies do every single day, often without us realizing it.

Previously:
Choosing bars over batteries
The evil genius of AT&T MicroCells
Metered broadband vs. cloud computing

On top, the Microsoft Kin, a “social media phone for teens”. Below that, a fancy phone used by evil organization “The Ring” on NBC’s Chuck.

Insert your own Microsoft jokes here.

Previously:
Where have I seen this before?

I’ve had my iPhone for about 10 months, and almost since Day 1 I’ve used a Mophie Juice Pack Air to provide both protection for it as well as extra battery life. For the most part, I’ve been pretty happy with it, even though it was expensive and even though it added a lot of extra bulk to the phone.

While some people had complained that the Juice Packs negatively impact cellular reception, I had never really thought about until yesterday. We were waiting for church to start and I wanted to check something online really quick, but I couldn’t get a signal. Just one row in front of me, however, another guy was happily browsing on his iPhone with a full 3G connection. The only difference? He only had a standard plastic case on his phone.

Curious, I ran some network speed tests later from my kitchen, home office, and bedroom — three places where I’ve gotten historically bad reception. In two of those tests (the office and bedroom), I couldn’t get a 3G signal at all and could just barely get an Edge connection. I then took the Juice Pack off and ran the same tests. The kitchen test was a little slower, but the others were much faster. Needless to say, I was shocked at how big of a difference removing the Juice Pack made.

I did the same test at work, yet another location where I’ve always gotten bad service. And again, removing the Juice Pack made a huge difference.

While I hate giving up the convenience of having an external battery for my iPhone, I’m at the point where I don’t feel like I have a choice. I’m tired of either dropping calls or not even being able to make calls in the first place. If switching to a standard case will help that, then I guess that’s what I’ll have to do.

Previously:
13 things I would change about the iPhone
OK, so I got an iPhone. So what?

According to Mashable, the first non-Latin domain names have been issued by ICANN. The three issued domains are all in Arabic.

Screenshot from Mashable:

I doubt the majority of Americans will be impacted by this change. After all, the people likely to visit a website whose URL is in Arabic or Cyrillic or Chinese probably already speak the language. And in terms of national security, I don’t think it will be an issue since people in the intelligence community who monitor Arabic websites will be able to make sense of the URLs.

Where it could be an issue, though, is for the average user who doesn’t speak a non-Latin language. As Gizmodo and others have already pointed out, they pose a greater phishing threat. But even for legitimate sites, will there be a way to translate the URLs into Latin characters for non-native-speaking users, similar to Google’s “translate this page” feature?

I guess the rule of thumb for such sites is that unless you can speak (or at least read) the language, don’t go there.

(Also interesting to note how many Arab commenters on Mashable say that Arabic domains are unnecessary and will only cause confusion. Therefore it makes me wonder how many of these we’ll actually see other than from official government sites and extremist groups.)

An Apple employee supposedly loses a prototype of the upcoming 4th-generation iPhone after a night of heavy drinking to celebrate his birthday. A stranger then sells it to tech blog Gizmodo for $5000. Gizmodo makes millions from all the publicity. And now police have gotten involved, breaking in to Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s house and confiscating several computers and other property that may have been “used as the means of convicting a felony”.

Not to defend Gizmodo’s actions, but I just have to state the obvious:

It was only an iPhone.

A phone that was going to be publicly announced in two months anyway and whose operating system has already been announced. In other words, it wasn’t that big of a story to begin with except to the tech blogs and die-hard Apple fanboys. But because of Apple’s extreme overreaction, it’s become a big story, and not the kind that benefits Steve Jobs and Co.

Not that it’ll hurt their bottom line in the short run, but it certainly adds fuel to the fire for those who criticize Apple for being overly controlling and secretive. That kind of approach to doing business may have been tolerated at one time, but as Android continues to mature, I have to wonder how long it’ll be before a significant number of customers go Google for good.

Previously:
13 things I would change about the iPhone
‘How Apple Plays Upon Our Insecurities’

There’s been a lot of talk this week about Facebook’s new Open Graph platform and its “connections” feature and what all that means to users’ privacy, and I even considered writing up a blog post about it. But I just couldn’t. I tried, though. Twice. But I realized that honestly I just don’t care.

Is Facebook really “positioning itself to become deeply embedded in almost every single website”? Will your privacy truly be “crushed with impunity”? Has Facebook “removed its users’ ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information”?

Or is everyone overreacting?

Listen, I get it. Facebook doesn’t really care about your privacy; they’ve proven that much. But at the same time, what they’re doing isn’t that different than what Google, Twitter, and a host of other companies do. So if you’re really that upset that the photos you posted of your kids are now viewable to the entire Internet or that everyone now knows what college you went to or the fact you “like” Lady Gaga (which really, you should just keep to yourself), then maybe the best thing to do would be to remove said content from the site so it’s no longer an issue. Or don’t put it up there to begin with.

In the meantime, Facebook, like any other Internet-based company whose revenue depends solely on advertising, will be using every available opportunity to increase its bottom line and fulfill its “manifest destiny”.

Is that news? I guess. Do I care? Not in the least.

Previously:
Why I closed my Facebook account
How exactly is Facebook connect good for users?

Over the weekend it was announced that Twitter has bought Atebits, the company that makes the Twitter iPhone client Tweetie. Apparently, they’re going to rename the app “Twitter for iPhone” and offer it for free. (It currently costs $2.99.)

It’s likely a good move for Twitter since it gives them an official iPhone client, but it may not be the best for users. Here’s how I see it playing out:

1. Twitter renames Tweetie to “Twitter for iPhone” and makes it free.
2. They then make the app ad-supported, probably using Apple’s new iAd platform. This gives Twitter a greater potential for revenue than what they would otherwise get by charging a one-time fee of $2.99.
3. Users balk at the new ad-supported version and give it up for lesser quality but ad-free alternatives.

Come to think of it, that’s probably a pattern we’ll see repeated over and over as advertising makes its way into a greater number of mobile apps and services.

The question is, can a church exist completely online? A lot of other Christian writers and bloggers have already addressed this pretty extensively, but the question keeps coming up.

The short answer is no, and here’s why:

First, as Northland’s Joel Hunter (who looks eerily like George W. Bush) pointed out, a church is more than just a building. The church is the people, and those people can meet anywhere: a traditional church building, a house, at Starbucks, or even online. But it’s about more than just meeting at the same place to hear a sermon or sing some songs; it’s about relationships. The church, at its heart, is a community of believers who learn together, worship together, pray for each other, and serve one another. And an online-only church can’t do that effectively.

I’m sure some would disagree with me, arguing that it is possible to build such a community online. But just because you communicate with someone via Twitter or Facebook or a blog or whatever, that doesn’t mean it’s a community in the truest sense of the word. As author Anne Jackson points out, that’s not a community, it’s a connection:

In some instances, these online conversations have translated into personal communication (by email, chats, or phone) and some have even turned into face-to-face meetings. The platforms of social media certainly give these personal interactions a “jump start” so to speak, because you do, in some regard, know bits and pieces of the other person’s life.

But this is where it gets muddy for me. Is it community?

Given my experience living in both worlds, it may be surprising to hear, but I am beginning to lean on the side of no – what happens online is not community. Before you send me an army of frowning emoticons, please hear me out:

I believe what happens online is connection – not community.

People can be vulnerable and honest online. And at times these online connections can be more life-giving than many of our offline relationships, but they are not the same.

Can you have a church comprised solely of online connections? Absolutely not!

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the Church as the body of Christ, with each member having different spiritual gifts and different roles. Just as each part of a physical body has to do its job in order for the body as a whole to operate successfully, each member of the Church body has a responsibility to do their part. How is that possible if the extent of our church experience is watching a live stream of a worship service over the Internet?

Simply put: going to church and being a church are two totally different things. Sure, you can go to church online if you want. But that’s not the same as being an integral member of the church body.

You can go to a worship service every Sunday, come in, sit down, sing a few songs, listen to the sermon, then leave without ever talking to another person. Yes, you went to church. Yes, you worshiped alongside other believers. Yes, you heard a message. But you didn’t participate as a member of the body.

That doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with what Northland, Lifechurch.tv, or other churches are doing. Certainly, there are a lot of benefits to using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to help reach out to people all other the world. That’s a good thing, it just doesn’t need to be the only thing.

Previously:
Who are you following?
A little social network housecleaning
Proof that in social networking, smaller is better