All I asked for was a couple of logo changes and minor layout tweaked, but the very talented Darius Wey instead created a new corporate home page for Thoughts Media Inc. It looks awesome! Thanks Darius!
Author: Jason Dunn
Video Calling: Why Hasn’t It Gotten Popular?
There’s a discussion going on today on a private mailing list I’m a part of, and the topic is video calling, and why it hasn’t gotten more popular. There are certainly a lot of people using Webcams out there to communicate, but it’s certainly the least-used form of communication when compared to email, IM, voice calls, etc. My response to this question is below.
The single biggest reason for the lack of video calling taking off isn’t technological – there are powerful psychological barriers that are in the way of video calling ever being popular. Video calling brings with it an
intimacy of communication that not everyone is prepared for, or interested in. I’ve done video calls over Skype with my wife, but virtually no one else. I don’t even have a webcam on my computer.
There are practical communication issues as well – to do a phone conference call, I only have to be awake. To do a video conference call, I have to actually prepare myself as if I were going out to meet someone. Who wants to do that? I work from home for a reason. 😉 As others have mentioned, when video calling, it’s immediately obvious when someone isn’t looking into the camera and is doing something else – like many people, I tend to multi-task, especially if it’s on a conference call where I’m one of many people on the line. One on one, I usually give the phone call my complete attention. And we can’t discount the fact that, in North American culture at least, a lot of people have trouble looking others in the eyes in person…and that carriers over into the video calling world to an even greater degree.
People who do regular video conference calls at work likely have a different point of view on this subject – I’d be really interested to know if those types of people have a higher rate of using Webcams at home, doing video calls on their personal time, etc. I’d suspect not, but it would be interesting to know!
Calgary Winter Driving: Hellish (In a Frozen Way)
So here I am, driving home from church this morning, thinking about how incredibly poor the driving conditions are – it took me about twice as long to get to church as normal this morning because I had to slow down so much in order to be safe. For the past month or so, I’ve also been thinking about trying winter tires this year. I’ve never owned winter tires before, but as I thought about what it’s like to drive our two cars on snow and ice – essentially controlled skidding – I thought it might be time to give winter tires a shot. On my way back from church as I was nearing my home, I was marvelling at how the heavy slush made control so difficult – and about one second later I completely lost control of my car (I was driving the Mazda Protege 5). I was heading down a very slight incline, only 30 seconds away from my house, and doing about 25 kmph, and I started sliding to my right. I immediately realized I couldn’t regain control, so I went into damage control mode, aiming my car for a gap between a parked car (on the left), and a fence (on the right). I managed to pull it off, sliding up onto the sidewalk and into a green space area that is also the start of a walking path. Unfortunately there was a large metal pole at the start of the walking path, and I smashed into it.
In the above photo, if you look at the set of tire tracks on the left, the inside tire track is from my left wheel when I was sliding in – I missed the parked car by about four feet. You can see the pole in the middle of the green space area – it was under my car and near the back…so I slid quite far.
This is what I hit – I tried to put it back in, but it didn’t quite want to fit. I’m grateful that the City of Calgary made it a break-away pole…if it was held in place by concrete, I would have caused much more damage to my car (and myself).
And here’s the damage done – it doesn’t look like much, but “not much” in auto terms usually means $1000 to $2000, easily. Since it’s essentially one piece, the whole front bumper will likely need to be replaced.
I’m kicking myself for losing control of the car – the last thing I need right now (OK, ever) is $2000 in car repairs – but I keep telling myself that it could have been much worse if I’d slid into the parked car…then I’d be dealing with not only repairing my own car, but another car as well. I’d have to chose between paying out-of-pocket, or going through insurance and having them hike my rates. Speaking of insurance, I’m reminded once again of how much disdain I have for insurance companies; we’re insured by ING Direct, and like all insurance companies, they consider losing control on icy roads to be an “at fault” accident. Yes, it was my fault because I was driving, but it baffles me that I pay a large monthly fee for insurance against accidents, and when I have an accident, I can’t get it covered. Insurance companies suck – and evidently, so so does my driving skill on snow and nice…
CSI Miami: You Are Dead to Me
I’ve been a fan of CSI, in all its forms, since the very beginning. I’ve enjoyed each show as they’ve spun off from the original, but I’ve watched CSI Miami go downhill for so long now that I just can’t take it anymore. It’s a combination of things I just couldn’t take any longer: Horatio Cane’s penchant for standing sideways, appearing out of thin air, wearing his sunglasses indoors, and spouting idiotic one-liners. And poor writing that made CSI Miami into more of a wannabe cop action drama than something that relied on forensics and science.
And speaking of science and technology, all the CSI shows have gone overboard when it comes to one-upping each other with who can have the coolest animations for Codis DNA lookups. But CSI Miami somehow traveled a decade into the future and gained access to 9th generation Microsoft Surface computing workstations – you know, the ones with 120 inch wide-screen displays, the ability to place any phone on the surface and immediately pull data off of it, and 3D projection displays. It’s like each member of the special effects department working on CSI Miami takes a hit of acid before they work on an episode and they come up with increasingly crazier technologies that don’t yet exist. Every year the show gets more and more unrealistic, likely to compensate for the increasingly poor writing.
CSI Miami, you are dead to me. There are better things to watch on TV, like The Mentalist.
Those Hard-Working Spammers…
Less than 12 hours after Barack Obama wins the presidency of the United States of America, spammers are already hard at work trying to trick people into clicking. I hate spam, but talk about a work ethic!
The Shameless Gee-Whiz-Wow Nature of Modern News
I’m watching CNN’s coverage of the US presidential election, and I had to laugh at what they came up with: WILL.I.AM being broadcast as…a hologram. A hologram? Puuuuhlease. A hologram is a projection of light. What CNN did, as near as I can tell based on Anderson Cooper looking at a monitor to figure out where should look, is just a green screen trick where they projected WILL.I.AM like a weather map. It’s a nice trick, sure, but don’t insult science by using a term that’s completely inaccurate.
Oh yeah, and Obama is the next president according to CNN – and by a huge electoral margin. I tend to skew pretty strongly towards right-wing, conservative political thought, but after the past eight years of watching “W” doing his thing, let’s just say I was rooting for Obama. This is a historic day in a lot of ways, and I think Obama is going to do some good things in this world.
And being the pragmatist that I am, I’m going to compare the current USD to CAD exchange rate of 1.13 to whatever it is tomorrow morning. 😉
A Beautiful Calgary October Sunset
On her way home from work, Ashley’s usually able to see the sunset peeking over the horizon line near our house, and it’s not uncommon for her to mention a beautiful sunset happening shortly after she steps into our house. On October the 22nd, the sunset was absolutely stunning – the deep orange hues, including a strong burnt umber colour, was just breathtaking.
I Definitely Have Days Like This Sometimes…
[I may have taken this blog to an all-time low by posting a LOLcats image,
but hey, I could really relate to the image] 😉 Source
Apple Thoughts Now Live
I figured I’d just re-publish my welcome message, so here it is:
“I’m thrilled to announce the launch of the fifth Thoughts Media site: Apple Thoughts. It’s been almost two years since we launched our last site (Zune Thoughts), and I’m really excited to be expanding our network with another great site. Why an Apple site? For the past three years or so, I’ve been watching the “Apple tide” rising. By that, I mean the overall impact that Apple has in the market – and I mean real impact, not the mainstream media fawning and hype that accompanies every new product Apple releases. The number of people I know that have switched to Macs is staggering – the painful launch of Vista certainly didn’t help things, but Apple is making tremendous gains in the market. Earlier this year, 40% of all notebooks sold at retail over $1000 USD were Macbooks, and who can forget this picture? The iPhone? Game-changing. Not the right phone everyone, and definitely over-hyped, but it changed the whole landscape of smartphones and what people expect from them. The Apple tide is rising, and as someone who makes a living online, it would be a poor decision for me to ignore that fact.
Now I know what some of you may be thinking: an Apple enthusiast site? From the guy who really doesn’t seem to like Apple very much, and has been known to be quite critical of Apple, iPods, and Steve Jobs in particular? Well, here’s the second announcement: Apple Thoughts is the first Thoughts Media franchise site. By that I mean that I will not be in charge of running it: Thoughts Media Inc. provides the server, back-end infrastructure, and monetization support, while the franchisee provides 100% of the editorial content and community management. I’ve tapped a very talented, opinionated, passionate, Apple-lovin’ guy to be the Executive Editor of Apple Thoughts. His name some of you will doubtless recognize: Vincent Ferrari. Vincent has been a member of the Thoughts Media community for a number of years, and was on the Digital Home Thoughts review team for a time. He’s got the right kind of personality to be a fantastic Executive Editor, and if I ever need an AOL account cancelled, I know exactly who to call.
Here’s a special request to everyone reading this: if you use a Mac, an iPhone, or any product made by Apple, please make a commitment to this new community. Starting a community is tough work – it’s a classic chicken-and-egg scenario where, when someone comes to a Web site with sparse comments and empty forums, they think “Oh, I won’t make this community my home, there’s no one here”. So I’m asking all of you Mac-usin’, iPhone-totin’ types to read, comment, contribute, share, help, and above all grow the Apple Thoughts community. My hope is that by this time next year, Apple Thoughts will have a vibrant, passionate, helpful community of Apple fans. We need you.
Please join me in welcoming Apple Thoughts!”
Oh, and I’ll add this from a forum post I made since some people seem to be freaking out that I launched an Apple-focus site, even if I’m not the one running it:
“I don’t own an iPhone, I don’t own a Mac, and I don’t own any Apple product now that my wife’s iPod Shuffle broke (which didn’t surprise me, but let’s not get into that ). But I’m not going to be writing here on Apple Thoughts other than perhaps commenting in the forums like everyone else – I’m not even a member of the Apple Thoughts editorial team! I won’t be writing reviews or news posts. So from an editorial perspective, I remain completely focused on Windows Mobile, Windows Vista, the Zune, and overall Windows ecosystem. I’m still a Windows fan, and you can expect the editorial coverage on the other sites to remain the same. I’m super excited about Windows Mobile 7, Windows 7 (just got my beta invite!), and I remain firmly committed to the Windows world.”
How Old Are Your Tires? Better Check…
I’m pretty cautious about buying into Internet-hyped stories that I recieve from others over email, but this one looks quite legitimate: this 20/20 video explains the dangers of old tires. Like most people, I assumed the only danger in old tires was one of tread – as in, if your tires are so old they’re losing their tread, you shold replace them. This story explains how tires lose the elasticity in the rubber, and that can lead to some catastrophic results. I wasn’t able to find if Canada is any better than the US in terms of laws protecting consumers from buying old tires – though I did discover that Quebec has made it law that car owners put winter tires on their cars this year. The reason for this law? 38% of cars involved in winter accidents in Quebec have all-season tires on. Logic says then that if tires are the contributing factor in these accidents – and I think that’s a pretty big leap in logic – having better tires will reduce the number of accidents. I’ll be interested to see if that’s really the case. I’m in support of anything that saves lives and makes the road safer, but I’m not convinced winter tires are a magic bullet to reducing accidents in the winter months. The biggest problem I’ve seen with winter driving is simply driver idiocy: people who try to go the same 10 kmph over the speed limit regardless of the weather, and they tend to be people who drive trucks or SUVs, thinking that the heavier weight of their vehicle somehow makes them immune to the weather. Staying safe in the winter while driving is 80% driver IQ and 20% vehicle.