In the Parlance of Our Times

Tom's been having a terrible time getting a UPS package delivered to him. He's never home when the UPS guy comes. So last week he was at school, a good 20 minute walk from his apartment, when he decided to rent a Zipcar to drive out to UPS and pickup the package. He needed to be back at school at 6, but had a couple of hours free.

Now, if he had his own car he'd have to walk the 20 minutes to get home, pick up the car, do the errand, walk 20 minutes back to school. But with Zipcar, he could get online and find a car near school to use, potentially saving 40 minutes.

He could do that. But he didn't. He didn't walk back to get a car near his apartment, either. Instead, he looked for the coolest car within a reasonable walk of school and drove out to UPS in a BMW.

Anyway you look at it, renting a Zipcar is a whole lot more fun than driving the same car all the time.

Some technologies just fit so well into our lives and lifestyles that eventually we don't even remember how we used to do things before they came along. I'm reminded of this each time I watch an old episode of Magnum, P.I.

There's always a scene in the end where Magnum figures out who the bad guy is, and said bad guy is usually across the island at that very moment with Higgins (or Rick, or T.C, or the woman Magnum's been flirting with the whole episode). This leads to the scene where Magnum races the red Ferrari around the island and, just in the nick of time, saves his friend. When I watch that scene now, I want to shout "You'll never make it in time, Thomas! Just call his cell phone!"

We often don't even realize how ingrained a technology has become until we're faced with a situation, like in the old Magnum episode, where that technology doesn't exist. Here are some other technologies that have become so much a part of my life that I expect them to be there:

DVR I've written about why I love DVR before. But it's only when I'm away - maybe in a hotel - and watching TV that I realize that DVR and digital cable are no longer extras for me, they're the norm. During each hotel stay there is at least one time when I pick up the hotel remote expecting to get a 15 second replay or program information or on-screen TV Guide before I remember that not everyone has DVR and digital cable. Yet. I wonder how long before we start seeing this as a standard feature in hotel rooms?

Google Maps Sometimes I find it hard to believe that in 1993 our family drove across the country, stopping off at various campgrounds, attractions and public parks, without the aid of Google Maps or the internet. Or a cell phone, for that matter. We had the whole trip planned out ahead of time, knew where we wanted to go, where we were staying, etc. How did we do it? I can't even remember. But I'm pretty sure I prefer trip planning via Google Maps and other internet resources over whatever it was we did back then.

Digital Cameras I was watching Father of the Bride II the other day. The family is moving out of the house they've lived in for years and the daughter asks if the mother took a picture of the tree in the backyard. "Just a roll", the mother replies. A roll? What's that? The days when we counted how many pictures we took, tried to squeeze 37 or 38 pictures out of a 36 picture roll, or stopped taking pictures because we only had a few left and wanted to save film in case something really special came up seem very, very distant. Not to mention having to wait days to see how the pictures turned out.

I'm sure there are more, but I won't know what they are until I'm in a situation where I miss them.

Next week the reference librarians and instructional technologists at Allegheny are kicking off the Learning Web 2.0 by Diving In project. We're looking forward to this project, based on one in North Carolina last year, and are hoping to get lots of participation from our colleagues at Allegheny.

If anyone else is interested in joining in, feel free to do so. If you've been wondering what this Web 2.0 thing is, there's no better time than now to learn!

Just about a month ago I gave my well loved 12" Powerbook to Louise as an early birthday present. I'd been planning to get a new laptop when Apple released a new operating system and updated the Macbook Pro hardware, but handed over the powerbook before that happened because we were visiting Louise in New York last month.

Back then I thought it would be about a month before everything was in place and I could make my purchase, but I'm still here without a new laptop. We now know it will be October before the new operating system is released. OK, I can live with that. October is far enough away that I don't mind buying a laptop now and then updating the OS later. But I'm still waiting for new hardware.

So Apple, please hurry up and release new versions of the Macbook Pro. I've been living in a Windows and Linux only household for a month now and it's not a pretty picture.

I was watching YouTube today. It was work related. Really. Actually, my work takes me to YouTube quite often. Usually I watch whatever video I went there to see and then go back to work. But today, my mind and eye wandered over the the list of related videos and I started to explore.

What a trip! Starting from an educational technology related video I went through a series of clips that eventually led me to "Michael Jackson" dancing to Mr. Roboto to videos arguing that Michael Jackson's looks have or haven't changed over the years and then back again to an educational technology related video of a really cool design application.

If you have some free time - make that lots of free time - hop over to YouTube and enjoy the ride. Or just watch this video demonstrating an application that will translate what is drawn on a Smart board into a design in motion.

The Boston Globe had an article today about a new service from one of the founders of ZipCar. This new service, GoLoco, combines car-pooling and social networking. I'm a huge ZipCar fan, so I was interested in learning more.

You know that little bell that goes off in your head when something doesn't seem quite right? It sounds like a 4-alarm fire in my head right now. There are so many things wrong here I could write for the rest of the year about it.

At first, as I read the Globe article, I was only a little uneasy. I grew up in the time when hitchhiking went out of fashion because it was proving so dangerous. The idea of arranging a ride share with a stranger definitely goes against the grain. But carpooling is a good thing, so I took a look at the GoLoco website to see if my fears could be eased.

They were, somewhat. The site describes all sorts of attractive rideshare opportunities that sound safe and pleasant - going to a ball game with like-minded fans, or using the site to arrange a night out with friends, for instance. So now I'm starting to feel better about this and move on to their terms of service. I was looking to find out more about how the fees work. Like Ebay, the site wants a piece of every shared ride you arrange through it. The total cost of the ride is calculated, divided evenly between driver and passengers. Passenger's pay their share to the driver and everyone pays 10% to GoLoco. That seems a bit steep to me, though on a short trip 10% may just be about 25 cents per passenger.

As I read through the Terms of Service the touchy-feely let's all ride to the park together feeling from the home page was replaced with those alarm bells. Not surprisingly, the tone of the TOS is more along the lines of "it's a big bad world out there and if anything goes wrong it's not our fault". The TOS touches on insurance issues (it's up to you, not them, to be sure the driver has adequate insurance), identity issues (they explicity state they do not verify identity), and privacy issues (you grant them full rights to your data which they can use any way they please, as long as they state how they will use it in their privacy policy - which can be changed whenever they like).

By the time I got down to the 13th item in the TOS I already knew this wasn't a service I wanted to use. So all I could do was laugh when I read it. It says this:

"13. Carbon Credits
You agree to assign the rights to any Carbon Credits resulting from any trips arranged using our service to GoLoco."

This whole notion of Carbon Credits - driving your SUV and then paying someone to plant a tree so now you're "carbon neutral" - is loony. But some people are buying into it and others are making money off it, and it looks to me like that's what GoLoco has in mind. You car pool and then GoLoco owns the Carbon Credits, which they could decide to sell to that guy in the SUV.

I expect this will all be a non-issue, as I don't see GoLoco really taking off. I don't think there's a big enough user base willing to pay a 10% fee to arrange a ride share. GoLoco is no ZipCar.