Disqus - Latest Comments for spragued

Re: Too Anti-Social For Social Media

spragued — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:25:03 -0000

I think this is an excellent blog post -- exactly what I look for in personal writing: honest and very insightful. It's a very rich irony, isn't it, that social media networks are invented by exactly the kind of people who are least likely to crave great amounts of social interaction? Maybe that's why they don't really *work* very well...

Someday some big brain at Stanford will tell us what we were really engaging in all this time.

Re: Quitting FriendFeed

spragued — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:24:32 -0000

What a surprise - this post gets more comments than most others (sometimes I think I should just open a shop that sells nothing but references to FriendFeed...) ;-) I appreciate your frustrations but FF is still a good aggregator for feeding blog widgets etc. and you can post multi-media there. Aren't those reasons to continue using?

Re: Robert Scoble leaves Fast Company

spragued — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:52:35 -0000

Robert's great value to me (and I imagine many others) was when he operated inside a large opaque organization (Microsoft), putting faces to previously anonymous technology. His transition to "startup gadfly" reduced his value to me and perhaps others simply because most startups are not important. I regret that he has become collateral damage in this horrid recession, but hope this propels him back into an established company where he can again do what he does best.

Re: This is the Microsoft I want to see

spragued — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:07:47 -0000

The concept videos are fun but I've seen enough of them over the years to know that, like concept cars, they rarely lead to actual products. I'm more excited about the coming retail stores that are planned. Given their wide array of product lines (everything from enterprise software to consumer entertainment) they have the opportunity to create amazing destinations where people can *do* lots of stuff besides merely shopping (this is what Apple accomplished so well). Lets hope they don't blow it and just make them boring software department stores.

Re: Movie Notes: Chinatown

spragued — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:21:24 -0000

Chinatown is one of the best of the "second Golden Age of Hollywood", the 70's. Supposedly, Polanski tortured Dunaway emotionally on the set in order to ensure her portrayal remained brittle and vulnerable.

Re: Windows 7 doesn’t need to dazzle

spragued — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:48:55 -0000

PC consumers "upgrade" their OS when they purchase a new system -- they take what the OEMs provide, which explains the current Vista adoption numbers. Microsoft needs to be concerned with enterprise customers who have delayed upgrading to Vista. Windows 7 is scheduled to roll out at about the time of XP End of Life, so it needs to be a compelling proposition for the wave of corporate upgrades that will happen in 2010.

Personally, when I purchased a new rig last month I downgraded to XP SP3. Vista's user experience wasn't flexible enough for me. Hopefully, W7 will fix the quirks that drove me from Vista.

Re: Movie Notes: Blow Up

spragued — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:11:44 -0000

Nice. I watched Blow Up recently and was struck by the pacing -- surprisingly slow for the period. An odd movie, but certainly worth a re-watch.

Re: Fear of thinking

spragued — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:25:14 -0000

Steven, thinking is hard. Careful thought requires time and testing but the accelerated nature of online communication, which values novelty over depth, makes that unusual. One of the reasons Robert gets slammed is because he often comments glibly on subjects that he hasn't taken the time to fully understand. It's not entirely his fault -- the ecosystem rewards quantity over quality.

Re: Wordpress could face serious competition - from Microsoft

spragued — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:01:10 -0000

Probably a non-starter since it requires Visual Studio (Express) to develop and most blog nerds are congenitally allergic to anything Microsoft. But I'll look into it for quickie enterprise blogs in my company. Anything that allows me to avoid Sharepoint is the shiz in my book.

Re: AatomBomb - The Artist Formerly Known As My Favorite.

spragued — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:56:47 -0000

Self-loathing androgyne says, "What"?

Re: A bit of a trip down memory lane

spragued — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:42:13 -0000

Were you writing under a pen name then? Or are you now? Just wondering. Love these profiles. Do you miss reporting on people? You did it well.

Re: Windows 7 to play nice with all decoders

spragued — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:03:57 -0000

It's just getting better and better. You can really sense a more "open" approach in their strategy. Less bullying of their own customers. Yea!

Re: AatomBomb - Shepard Fairey, the graphic designer and...

spragued — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:27:31 -0000

I'm getting that old Queer Nation tickle... though I haven't been on the front lines of the gay marriage hoo haw, a street full of angry queers is awfully hard to resist. ;-)

Re: Wrist-slitting email of the day:

spragued — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:14:27 -0000

I think you would make an excellent Greeter. And, by the way, can you tell me where the Lunch Meat department is?

Re: AatomBomb - Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the...

spragued — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:32:12 -0000

I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to be president now -- but I'm glad Obama feels he's up to the job. It will be an interesting four years, for sure. And just think, once Ted Stevens is locked up -- Sen. Sarah Palin might be riding into town. You betcha'!

Re: louisgray.com: The Importance Of Blog Linking Seems to Be Declining

spragued — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:14:24 -0000

It's all good. Blog linking was an inefficient method for sharing info/ driving traffic. Socnets are far more efficient. For example, yesterday something I wrote was Twittered by Dare Obesanjo, which drove a bunch of traffic, then someone picked it up from Twitter and put it on their Facebook wall. Lots more traffic. Waiting around in the "old days" for my blog buddies to pick up an item and share it was far less productive.

And, as a content producer, I like the fact that socnets are depleting the blogging pool by reducing the number of sites of people who were just looking for conversations. The hordes of eager commenters on all the new outlets need content to chew on, which means those of us who continue to write will see our value increase.

Re: Movie Notes: The Untouchables

spragued — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:59:04 -0000

Granted, it's easy to hate on Kevin -- but his bland good boy persona was critical for the scene on the roof where he drops Frank Nitti. His Anakin/Darth moment that turns him into a fiercer lawman. I love this movie, can you tell?

Re: The future of content may come in the form of a Cavalcade

spragued — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:36:01 -0000

Not sure it's a game changer -- more like a clever way to grab eyeballs -- a real game changer would be finding a way to incorporate Google's ad network into published *content* -- akin to the product placement trend and overt sponsorships (Jimmy Kimmel, for example) that is happening in broadcast.

Re: QMeme Day One

spragued — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:02:49 -0000

Duncan,

I think you're onto something great. But is Qmeme hardcoded to use your view (feed)? If someone places the widget on their site, is there a way to tailor it to their own feed? I didn't see a parameter in the sprout object code to allow that. Thanks.