DISQUS

Sadly, I came along after these machine were already old school. They were similar to the ones I played on my neighbor's Atari, though.

I remember being amazed at the original Combat, where you were little more than a rectangular blob that shot pixels at another similarly-designed opponent. For the love of God how can I steer and shoot in different directions? And what was with the invisible opponent?

Nils,

I like to think that, at least on some levels, I'm moderately socially connected. Then I read through the lists of everything that you're on, or subscribed to, or a contributor of, and it makes my head spin. I can't imagine how you manage to get anything done in the way of a job plus all the social media avenues that you're pursuing, and thinking about diving any deeper into that arena makes me literally glaze over.

Along the lines of what Tom said, I think that this whole plugged-in digital world is going to have to be simplified (somehow) for most people to be able to get their heads around it, much less make it an integral part of their lives. For example, how long did it take people to understand email, and how simple is that concept?

Nils, get yourself a downhiller bike and some race gear and you could be making your own extreme videos. Seems like your time is pretty quick. You're half way there! Strap a cam to your helmet...it'd be great fun.

What an awesome app. I've been grabbing and compiling in Photoshop...what a headache.

Thanks for the tip.

Now that's cool! Wow. Just wow. Talk about forethought!

I love that the IO people are having a conference- a forum to discuss IO. Yes, you may be suffering from information overload, but just squeeze this one more teensy thing into your schedule and it will be all better. Only $150!

Should be a good time.

It's be much easier to swallow if it were able to be run on different networks. I hated AT&T when I was locked into it, and once I got free I never looked back. Not even for the coolest toy ever.

I too have done that, but it hasn't been over the span of a year. Maybe my memory isn't what it should be/used to be, or perhaps the knowledge that I've bookmarked an item allows me to file it in the short-term memory, thus purging it too soon.

Wait, what were we talking about?

Good for you Nils. My wife and I went from living completely sedentary lifestyles to running a marathon in four months on a program like that. Unfortunately, only one of us has decided to keep up with any sort of physical activity.

The other one of us decided to crawl back into his cubicle and slowly become a square again.

If the client ever finalizes the design, I'll shoot you an image. The pop-up conference table was fun.

I once made a die-cut conference room and angry manager "pop-up" invitation. The client was bent on how good it would look, and once we were done it didn't look bad.

Right now I'm in the middle of a die-cut backpack containing a laptop for a direct mail piece. With all the Apple logos chopped out, of course.

So, on Twitter, you generally follow everyone who follows you? I have nowhere near the number of followers that you do, but even at my meager fifty-and-change, I wouldn't be able to get anything else done with my day.

Maybe that's more a testament to my lack of multitasking ability or my OCD-esque tendencies, but still.

I tend to only follow people if they have a rough one-to-one follow to following rate, or people who seem to have interesting tweets if I wander across them in the time line. Even then I've ended up following some strange people, and certainly more people than necessary who don't tweet in English.

Which brings me to another problem: I can't seem to break up with them, either.

Not even the spammers and robots.

Although I still default to Google, every now and then I pop into Ask.com for a more visual approach. If they work on the usability of these fancier interfaces, I'm sure they'll take off.

Thinking of my parents using Google, still the nuances of search are lost on them. Without fail my dad will click on the first link, without even considering that they paid to be there.

That made me literally laugh out loud (LLOL?). Only because it's true.

Interesting...that's the first time I remember a brand mark being known by association rather than the actual logo. Nice observation.

Amen!

In the past I've managed to pack my life so full of things that the day is one commitment after another from the time my feet hit the floor in the morning to when I fall exhausted into bed at night.

It required the downsizing of my list to give me a chance to breathe. Probably like you, I'm still busy, but now not drowning. The secret: leave the insurance paperwork to the wife. It would put me over the edge.

A few more points:

One: the older folks who think that kids are so smart are the ones who can't figure out how an iPod works or what flash media is. The people without the clue are the ones making the judgement towards those who only know a little better.

Two: these kids who "are so smart" in things technological are the same ones who have no concept of the real, material things in the world. For example, the kid taking a 35MPH corner at 85 and wondering why their car doesn't stay on the road (physics), or why their ears are constantly ringing so badly they have to crank up their iPods to hear them (biology).

At some point the population is going to split into the Morlocks and the Eloi, and technology will be one defining factor.

Cheers.

Creating a Yahoo login for my Flickr was enough of a hassle for me to notice it, so by my standards that's too much of an impact. If I have to go back to an MSN login for anything I may just give
up the internet altogether.

Great comic...extremely relevant. And that makes me sad.

I like how a the end the woman singing along tries to keep a straight face through the end of her performance. Interesting sound.

Whose blog? The Apple blog (don't even know if they have one) or Twitters?

I don't use Twitter now I'm curious...

Yeah, definitely go for the zeppelin route. I mean, especially now that your URL will fit on the side of one. ;)

Cheers and congratulations.

But if it isn't a game, how can you tell if you're winning?

Good New Years post!

Looking forward to your 2008 musings.

Cheers,

JD

While I'm in the camp of using technology to make our lives easier, the concept behind that movie Look is more than a little unnerving...