By the by, I am sick as a dog and stoned out of my head on TheraFlu, so if I say anything really wacky today (or if I said anything really wacky yesterday) that’s why. I keep thinking I’m writing pithy witty paragraphs. I am very probably wrong.
Population: One
Glenn Reynolds slips into the surreal, saying it’s a good thing the South didn’t win the Civil War because then the United States would look like Europe. Yeah, and I seem to recall there was some other issue involved, too. Can’t put my finger on it, though.
Oliver Willis (blogging maniac) is already pushing the SMS thang, in his unofficial John Edwards weblog. Mind you, it’s one guy, but one guy can have a lot of leverage these days.
Looks like he’s using Upoc to do mass SMS messaging. I guess it’s a start, but he’s going to need to get email and AIM into the mix, too. The legendary Randomness observes, in response to my thoughts earlier today, that “there just isn’t the SMS culture in the States that there is in South Korea, Japan, or Europe.” Truth. But I think it’s gonna be email and AIM on mobile devices that makes it happen in the US.
We don’t have an SMS culture. We do have a serious instant messaging culture. We’re gonna see widespread AIM/email on cell phones before we see a lot of American kids using SMS. The free Nokia I got for signing up with T-Mobile (the 3390) came with AIM built in, so I think it’s hit the commodity point.
Anyhow, I signed up for his group, not so much because I’m an Edwards supporter but because I want to see how it gets used.
sweetcode is cool. I am sick. Thus, few words surround this pointer. I barely managed a half-clever title. Cool for sysadmins and programmers, that is; not sure anyone else would care.
If South Korean elections can be swung by smart mobs, what’s that say about US politics? Mind you, the voter turnout was a mere 70%, which is the lowest ever for a South Korean presidental election. Conventional wisdom says that Roh Moo-hyun benefited from text messaging because it helped him get out the vote, but the low turnout seems to contraindicate that. Possibly the turnout would have been slimmer if not for the smart mobs? Hard to say.
Anyhow, here’s the prescription for whichever US party wants to use cell phones effectively. First, don’t telemarket. That’s intrusive. You want to use the communication channels in non-intrusive ways. Second, collect contact info. When you run a get out the vote rally, find out if your voters like SMS, AIM, or email for mobile communication, and get the info you need to send messages via the preferred method. Third, don’t overuse it. Election day, you betcha, send a message asking if they’ve voted yet (and when they reply, mark down the answer; it’s all automatable). Do it again before the polls close, for those who didn’t say “yeah, I voted.” Maybe a few messages here and there in the week before to keep buzz going.
Use messaging more heavily for the activists. Definitely use it on election day. If your poll monitors don’t have some way to take a picture and transmit it back to HQ instantly, you’re missing a big bet — you want to be able to get the word out as quickly as possible if something happens.
Betcha none of this happens by 2004.
I’m standing at a bus stop in Harvard Square, realizing that I’m better off posting via Web than by email. Whoops; maybe not, since I can’t set categories this way. Oooops. Ah well.
The first day review of the Hiptop: pretty good, it’ got a very thoughtful design. For example, the @ sign is unshifted, which makes a ton of sense since it’s used so much. There’s decent autocapitalization. The keylock automatically tturns off if you flip the screen open, cause you’ll never do that unless you want to use it.
The core interface is good enough for now. There are some warts; you can’t do an address book lookup while writing an email message, for example, which is dumb since you can store email addresses in the address book. On the other hand, you can launch email from within the address book. The only really annoying quirk is that the email client loses track of attachments if you save a draft message. oh, and it sorely needs cut and paste, or at least a way to delete text from an email message so you don’t wind up quoting the whole damn message each time.
The unit is nicely integrated with the T-Mobile web site. You can import Outlook or Palm address lists via the Web. Nice stuff there.
The physical unit is barely big enough for me to type on, but not big enough to be clumsy on my belt. The case that comes with it kind of sucks; I’m on the lookout for a better one.
Let’s see. Oh, yeah, the camera. Check out Hiptop Nation for an idea of the quality. It’s bad, but the concept is exciting. Realtime pcitures from the mass event of your choice, good or bad? Heady stuff.
Overall I rather like it so far. And everyone in my office wanted to play with it, which has to say something.
[Edit: interesting lack of line breaks. My fault (I set up my bookmark wrong), not the hiptop’s.]
Gephardt’s in, which is somehow deeply unexciting news. Ah, bah; it’s good to have a traditionally Democratic candidate in the field. In theory, I’d like to see candidates in both sets of primaries from all over the political maps. I must try and be less cynical.
Course, that means I’d rather see Bernie Sanders than Howard Dean as the candidate from Vermont.
Eric Raymond’s just published another internal memo from Microsoft. (Hint: the fisking doesn’t improve your credibility, Eric.) I recommend skipping over the snide commentary, because it’s actually neither that clever or that interesting. Read it for what it says about Microsoft’s belief about where it stands vis a vis nation states, and perhaps reread this post of mine in which I discuss the role of NGOs in the new world order.
Josh Marshall has been writing a lot of good stuff on North Korea lately. I have some comments on this post. In it, he discusses the administration’s claim that North Korea is already a nuclear power, and thus it’s not a huge concern if they get more nukes.
One might well argue that the administration is correct in this. If North Korea has had nukes for several years and hasn’t used them, then maybe there isn’t so much urgency after all. The sense of urgency around North Korea’s nuclear program is predicated on the idea that if North Korea has nukes, something bad will happen. If North Korea has had nukes and nothing bad’s happened, what’s a few more?
Of course, if the administration uses such logic, it makes a hash of the Bush national security doctrine. I think that’s the real hole in what Powell had to say, but since Bush has already positioned Powell as the maverick who’s not always in line with him, it’s deniable.
I think in the long term, America’s going to have to learn how to survive in a world in which nuclear weapons have proliferated, so in some ways I’m heartened to see Bush treating this as a minor issue. Alas, I don’t really believe that’s a policy statement as much as it is the result of his focus being elsewhere.
I’ve been peering at this Scripting News post about cell phones all day, trying to figure out what struck me as weird about it. I finally figured it out. Check this quote:
“So why not make them just a teensy bit bigger and put a real qwerty keyboard on the darn thing and let me type into it like a human being.”
That seemed totally reasonable to me the first zillion times I read it. I just went out and got a Sidekick, cause I wanted a keyboard on my cell phone. But wait — “like a human being.” He wants a keyboard-based interface, cause he wants to use the cell phone for more than just the classic telephonic voice based interface. “Like a human being.”
Humans aren’t stuck with just talking. To be human is to have access to a keyboard!
So it’s weird, but he’s also right. We are the tool using ape. Keyboards are a very nice symbol that says “digital tool here.”