In the Parlance of Our Times

One of the things I like most doing online is video chatting with my family. Considering that I hate to put myself in front of a camera, this is somewhat surprising.

But I love video chatting because it's a much richer experience than talking on the phone. I can ignore the fact that I'm in front of the camera, because I so much enjoy being on the receiving end of video from my family. It's fun to be able to see the current state of Tom's facial hair, or to watch as the flowers on my parents' coffee table change each week.

In fact, video chatting feels much more like spending time together than like having a phone conversation. Louise often does a crossword with us while we video chat or sometimes we'll both look up a web site together. Michael might notice Louise drinking from an unusual beer bottle and ask about the brand. Last week, my father demonstrated the latest advice on how to hold the steering wheel of a car (forget 10 and 2 - it's 8 and 4 now). And often we have more than one person involved on one or both ends of the conversation. These are all interactions that are more commonly associated with in-person get togethers than with telephone conversations.

Does this mean video chatting is a substitute for in-person contact? Definitely not. But when getting together in person is out of the question, as it is for so many of us living far from family, it's a great way to stay connected.

If the rumor sites are to be trusted, my wait for a new Macbook Pro may soon be over!

Yesterday ThinkSecret posted sources as saying there will be a new 15.4" Macbook Pro with LED screen available in early June. Today I saw that many PC manufacturers have begun shipping models with the new "Santa Rosa" chipset. Putting two and two together, it seems likely the Macbook Pro with the LED screen will also have the new chipset.

Either one of those would have been enough for me to decide to go ahead with my purchase. Getting both upgrades at the same time will just be a bonus.

Now if Apple would only throw in a free iPhone with each new mac.......

Update: More rumor sites are posting what their sources say. They seem to agree the LED screen will show up soon. But few say there will be Santa Rosa machines, and some come right out and say there won't be any next month. Bummer.

I enjoyed reading Jason's post about Technorati and del.icio.us, partly because I have a lot of the same reactions to both of these services. I just find it all too much to keep up with and know that most pages I bookmark I'll probably never return to.

In addition to that, I'm still standing on the edge of the Web 2.0 ocean occasionally dipping my toes in to test the waters. I'm not ready to take the plunge for a variety of reasons, privacy not being the least of them. In the case of del.icio.us, the convenience of having my bookmarks available from everywhere doesn't quite outweigh my fear that I will lose access to them if they are stored on a third party site. I'd rather be without them sometimes than potentially be without them all the time.

But all that having been said, these sites are definitely useful. I think the biggest need Technorati serves is to make information about current events easily found, even as the event is still in progress. Google web search, because of the way the Google database is compiled, just can't keep up. (Note that there is a Google blog search, which works just like Technorati. I wonder how many people use that?)

In fact, in working through the exercises in the del.icio.us section of this project, I found a blog post that describes using Technorati to find interesting information about the recent explosion of posts containing the code to break HD-DVD encryption. I thought that was a timely example of how del.icio.us and Technorati can work together.

This week's topic in our Learning 2.0 project has been RSS. As we've learned, RSS is a geeky way to help us keep up with the web - not only with blogs, but most any site with frequent updates.

I've been using this technology for years, but haven't used Bloglines before. I did sign up for an account, but soon afterwards checked out Google Reader during our Social Software workshop last week. I'm not in love with either of them, but I've been using Google Reader this week and I don't hate it. It remains to be seen whether I'll continue using it or not. I wish that it didn't open a new browser window and go out to the web page when I click on a link. Bloglines handles this better, I think. And I still have "All Google, All the Time" issues.

At another workshop I attended last week we were shown the RSS in Plain English video, below. I think this does a great job of introducing the whole concept, and in under 4 minutes!