Followers, Friends, and Likes. Oh My!! Engagement is a Social Lie.

via And Now, I Unfollow Thee – The New York Times

Take it all “with a grain of salt…”

More help for the Nverts. TechWite dashes another social myth!

The brilliant analysts of Wall Street, looking for better ways to blow more air into the bubble of Social media believe that “engagement” is everything. But what is it?

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“Engagement*” – Catch word for ‘user involvement’ –  the popularity of your web site, application, social feed, page, etc. “Engagement” supersedes “eyeballs”: the number of people who looked at a page. Engagement sounds more scientific, and is therefore more useful to analysts, stock brokers, and journalists in declaring the success or failure of an online campaign, and especially in applying a monetary value and potential for advertising revenue. But unfortunately, there is no standard “measure” of engagement. Is it: How many members have signed up? “Daily Views” of a page, or video? **  How many times they ‘click’ from one page to an advertisement? How many “likes” they post for your business on Facebook? How many “friends”, how many “followers”, how many? How many? And how many of those are even real???

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Wake up world. This is all vapor. Not even the kind of vapor you can inhale.

Today’s lesson is easy: Whatever anyone tells you about the popularity and massive use of a site, page, or “social network” is probably not (I’m being kind here…) exactly what is going on. Review your own experience with social. You are a VALID user. Your experience is probably not much different than anyone else’s. Think about it:

• Facebook—In spite of the many ads you can now find all over “your” Facebook, how many times have you ever actually used one of those ads to make a purchase? Have you? Tell me!
• YouTube, Web Pages, and elsewhere—The pop-up ad on the web page, do you want to see it? Or skip it?
• Twitter—Poor Twitter. I like Twitter. Do you choose to read Tweets that Twitter inserts in your feed? Do you have any idea where they come from? Can you really keep up with the tweets of the 50 Twitter feeds you follow? 150? 500? Do you think those people who claim to follow over a thousand other Twitter feeds ever even LOOK at the tweets?? How do you feel about being followed by all those robots and porn sites?
• Instagram – More robots and porn sites. More opportunities to buy followers.
• Followers – That’s right, you want to have a popular Twitter feed or Instagram?? Buy yourself 10,000 followers. Or more. It doesn’t cost that much.*** We are really talking about a hall of mirrors here.

You can read more about it using the links below. I won’t waste more words. I want to get off my computer now because I have a real book I am reading. One made with paper. Seriously. So, because it means nothing:

• Don’t follow me on Twitter!
• Don’t like my Facebook page!
• Don’t follow me on Instagram!

Peace Out,

—TW 

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(Links below open in a new window.)

*Engagement (Rate)
Trackmaven – Engagement Rate is a metric that measures the level of engagement that a piece of created content is receiving from an audience. It shows how much people interact with the content. Factors that influence engagement rate include users’ comments, shares, and likes. <http://trackmaven.com/marketing-dictionary/engagement-rate/>

“4 Instagram Analytics Tools for Your Business”, HootSuite, <https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-analytics-tools-business/>

**Daily Views
“Snapchat Video Traffic Has Caught Up With Facebook”, Fortune <http://fortune.com/2016/03/01/snapchat-facebook-video-views-2/>

“Facebook Daily Views get New Metrics”, International Business Times <http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-inc-fb-daily-video-views-get-new-metrics-publishers-2342825>

***Buy Followers:
“Big Business: Buying Fake Instagram Followers”, Huffington Post,<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shayla-r-price/big-business-buying-fake_b_6322362.html>

That VR is so hot right now.

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VR is HOT right now. Do you know why? You probably see those goofy goggles and imagine some gamer shooting aliens. That is WAY off. The whole VR world has changed. TechWite helps you understand how.

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• “Old VR” – Think of Google Maps “Street View”—flat, boring…
  • 2D – although you can “move”, the images have no depth.
  • Viewed through a porthole – big screen, little screen, it’s still like a submarine.
  • Controlled manually – by a keyboard, joystick, or game controller. It kind of works, but it’s not like being there.
  • Still images create the 360 degree “dead” world
  • No interaction with anything “in” the images

• “New VR” – Think of Star Trek TNG’s “Holodeck”—mind blowing, you are there!
  • 3D – What you see has depth, you can see “around” objects
  • It Devours your vision – that’s what those goofy headsets are for- everything you see is part of the VR world. Add stereo sound, and that’s why it’s called “immersive”. You are in it!
  • Controlled by your movement – Turn your head to the right, you see what is on your right in the VR world. Look up, look down, ditto. This alone is a bit of a shock the first time you experience it!
  • Content can be 3D 360 degree video – Want to go for a helicopter ride over Manhattan? Be sure to hold on to something before you look down!

That’s just the beginning. Size, gravity, time – they can’t stop you. Examples:

• RTVR – Like drones? Be one. Experience flying, in Real Time Virtual Reality
• Remember Fantastic Voyage? You are now a tiny submarine inside a living human body. Explore the arteries and veins and organs. You see this, and experience it.

There’s so much to learn about this, to think about. Fortunately, the Tech media is all over it. (Links for you, below.) Start reading about it. But no words can do this justice, you must experience it. Get some Google Goggles, get the New York Times app for your iPhone or Android, and download one of the demos. Then take some time to imagine the possibility of experiencing the impossible.

—TW

via TidBits On the iPhone, Virtual Reality Is Unofficially Real

via AirWatch Blog  5 Epic Examples of Business Using Virtual Reality

via Google Filed Patent For Injecting A Device Directly Into Your Eyeball To Improve Vision – Forbes —Yes, another suggestion that we are not that far from “The Matrix”.

via Augmented and Virtual Reality: A New Vision – Deloitte CIO – WSJ

via Virtual Reality Therapy: Treating The Global Mental Health Crisis | TechCrunch.

via Samsung Announces Gear 360, a New Virtual Reality Camera – The New York Times.

 

Cloud Risk: “The Hotel California Effect”

via Wal-Mart Considers Open Sourcing Hybrid Cloud Tools – The CIO Report – WSJ.

This Desert Life

You gotta love this. It’s a problem for customers, but cloud vendors love it. You move your data, maybe even your apps, and probably outsource most of your administration activities (making a big chunk of  your IT team “redundant”). The corporation achieves the dream of freeing itself from IT and making infrastructure a utility service. But then, the Cloud or Hosting vendor doesn’t meet SLAs, you don’t have the in-house talent to challenge them when they use technical excuses for long delays or missing capability. And you are stuck. Locked in. They call it “The Hotel California Effect”. Now what? Anyone with experience moving from one hosting service to another knows it can get real ugly real fast.

Wal-Mart may open-source tools that make such moves easier. Hop from one “cloud” to the next. And I’ll thank the Counting Crows and call that, “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby“, to wit: “…You can never escape, you can only move south down the coast.“

Happy Birthday Windows 95

I Love Working on a Macintosh.

Does that sound weird? After all these years? To me it doesn’t. But to people who have never worked on Macs—or for some reason that I cannot fathom—have worked on Macs but just not liked it, let’s face it, it sounds weird. Because even in this enlightened new millennium, most computer users use Windows, and sure, they eventually get work done, but honestly, how many Windows users love working on Windows?? Seriously? Even the geekiest of Windows Weenies, the hottest Windows programmers, the most talented of Windows technicians, how many “love” working with Windows? I’d wager, very few. Very, very few. And Mac users? When they switch, when they get their first Mac, what do they say? You’ve probably heard it too: “I love my Mac!”

This is not just hearsay or advertising. I’ve been in this business so long. For years people would tell me their sob stories about their Windows computers, their malware, viruses, their crashes, and slow downs, and on and on. As a consultant I refused work on Windows. There was plenty of work; Windows is a job-creation-machine. But to me, it was always the same nightmare, helping with the same stupid problems. It was no challenge; it was an affront to my creativity. It was “stone knives and bear skins”. Friends, relatives, and potential clients whose business I refused all got the same answer: “Why don’t you get a Mac?”

The price difference was often the reason, and that has diminished over the years, but even deeper, the answer, in the old pri-mac-evil days was pretty basic: “If I get a Mac, who will help me when I have a problem?”

And this was true. With Windows, you could have your brother, father, sister, friend, colleague at work, TOTAL STRANGER, or homeless person on the corner help. The power of ubiquitous monopoly meant that nearly everyone knew someone who could help them reboot their their Pee Cee, format the hard drive, and re-install Windows. (Which was the standard process to fix 95% of the issues with Windows – which, by the way, is why it was called “Windows 95”).

Telling people, “If you get a Mac you won’t have all those problems,” was not enough. Apple support in those days was notoriously hit-or-miss. Apple had a 90 day warranty! (I kid you not! Ninety days!!) There was no Apple Store. There were no “Geniuses”. And Apple had yet to launch a convincing and brilliant Mac vs. PC advertising campaign.

So Microsoft helped. By releasing Windows 95. Ten years after the original Mac, Microsoft embraced the interface so completely, copied the Mac OS so totally, that in the end they won over more users to Apple. “Windows 95” legitamized the Macintosh just as Apple was suffering the “Time of Darkness.”

And here again we have to acknowledge a strategic vision that moved Apple. Maybe it was Steve Jobs—he always gets the credit, for all I know it was Phil Schiller—or someone else at Apple, but they built a comprehensive strategy to address all those objections, one at a time, piece by piece.

Over time, it started happening, they all started to get Macs. For awhile I helped some of my clients move their stuff, but Apple had the tools, and the Apple Store, and the Geniuses available, and soon there wasn’t much work there, and that was okay. It was satisfying to have all these people tell me, “I finally got a Mac! You were so right! It works great!” These days, Macs have become so mainstream, so accepted, so successful, that I don’t even hear that anymore.

Being a Mac user isn’t special or unique. It’s just a good choice. You’d hardly congratulate someone for buying a Mac any more than you would congratulate someone for buying a decent car. And…most people nowadays even understand and accept the emotional attachment that people have for their Macs.

And on this important anniversary, I just want to say, thanks Microsoft. Happy Birthday Windows 95. I love working on a Mac!

Surprise! Your Yoga has some holes in it.

Researcher Discovers Superfish Spyware Installed on Lenovo PCs – NYTimes.com

Surprise! Your “Yoga”, has some holes in it. Designed to be as attractive and useful as any Apple device (and marketed unconvincingly as a replacement for your MacBook Air), the Yoga unfortunately came (past tense, according to Lenovo) with Superfish Spyware pre-installed. “Adware” and “Bloatware” – collectively known as “crapware” – are de rigueur for Windows purchasers, but Superfish takes this to a new level with an unsigned certificate providing easy access to your data for anyone who knows how to use it.

I met an insider years ago (p.s. – Pre-Snowden), who told me he was convinced Lenovo had code embedded in the computer ROM that allowed Chinese authorities full access to the device. He gave up on trying to expose this security “flaw” after everyone, including the FBI, told him he was paranoid. So, who’s paranoid now?

Tip: Savvy computer buyers shop for those “special” Windows computers without crapware. Or buy Macs.

 

CLI

CLI: Command Line Interface—How people controlled computers PM (Prior to Mac). THERE WAS NO MOUSE. A “prompt” – that is, a colon, or carat, or some other obscure character from your (physical) keyboard – appeared on the screen. This was equivalent to your dog looking up at you with THAT LOOK. If you knew the commands, you could TYPE one in and probably press [Return] or [Enter], and the computer would DO something. For example, in MS-DOS, if you typed in DIR (which stands for “directory”), you would get a list of FILES, with names like: CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, WORD.EXE, and HELPME.TXT. Whoopee. Believe it or not, a lot of people STILL enjoy this kind of interaction with a machine. “Geek Speak Review”, February 5, 2001

Unpredictable Issue #5 

Unpredictable Issue #83

Unpredictable Issue#83.  That’s right, I’m re-discovering old content. From the end of 2000 to 2007, I wrote 83 issues of my newsletter “for Macintosh” and eventually also “iPod” users. Those were the days my friend. The final days of Microsoft’s Monopoly Game, the Return of the Steve, Windows Ex Pee, and the introduction of Oh Ess Ten. The Eunuchs took over Apple and forgot a Whole Lot about what makes a good user interface. Features that were GFD (Good for Demos) and interface options that were TOTE (Too Obvious to Explain). It was the era of the Geek Speak Review, when for a short time, I offered to work at Apple as the EVIP of DRAT.  Times haven’t changed much, we’ve got the FCC giving away the Internet, and Comcast buying it, the iOS team re-learning what works and what doesn’t, and everybody lost in the cloud. LIfe is good, and Tech is worth Witing about!

Lost in the Cloud

How did we get here?

Many years ago, before there was yet a new millenium—much less a generation to be named after it—Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates had clearly dominated the desktop computer marketplace with their super-successful Windows operating system and Microsoft Office combination. They had done very well, but not everyone was using Windows. That pesky Steve Jobs was still chipping away with his “non-business” Apple products. Especially in the Education market – that is: schools. Bill kind of enjoyed watching Jobs to see what he’d come up with next, but not Ballmer. He wanted to crush Apple. Period.

Turning their attention to the education market, Bill and Steve opted for the best and fastest way to compete. Philanthropy. They gave away Windows and Office to schools. This polished Microsoft’s image in the press. And at low cost. Microsoft’s many corporate clients had already financed Windows and Office, and with little competition, were locked into complex licensing agreements for years to come. This was great; Bill and Steve could write off the education donations at their full retail value—hundreds of dollars per unit. But, this wasn’t good enough for Ballmer. The problem was, it still cost Microsoft to ship boxes with disks, and manuals, and marketing materials to schools. “There’s got to be a better way!” He told Bill.

Bill thought about this. And then, he brought up a new idea with Ballmer: “What if we just gave them the ‘software license’? They can download and distribute it themselves. No disks, no manuals. We just send them a fancy postcard with a number on it. They’re responsible for the electrons. We just host the stuff on our servers. What do you think?”

“Brilliant!!” Ballmer beamed. “Full retail price tax write off for the cost of a post card!!”

And so began Microsoft’s ventures into electronic software distribution, to be rapidly followed by the “subscription model”.

To be continued…

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Size Matters

How big is your screen?

"This guy has a card table on his lap."

This guy at Starbucks has the biggest laptop I’ve ever seen. He pulls it out of his backpack. The backpack looks like one of those traveling crashpads that rock climbers use. Have you seen those? It’s hilarious to see those guys hiking up a trail with what looks like a folded up single mattress with straps on their back. Anyway, he pulls this thing out, and he has to hold both arms over his head to get it out of the bag. When he puts it on his lap, I think he is going to unfold legs from the bottom of it. But no. It’s a Lenovo. It makes a 17″ MacBook Pro look like an iPad mini. He opens the lid and I think he might need a pry bar. It’s like watching someone open a big sarcophagas. But finally he gets it open and sits there staring at it. I think he’s typing stuff, but all I can see is the top of his head. The rest of him is completely hidden behind the card table.

I’d tell you about the huge guy in the corner with the tiny MacBook Air, but I gotta go.