How to prevent embarrassing, misfired e-mails. – By Michael Agger – Slate Magazine.

This one's for Joebags.

In the past few days I've had some issues with the iphone battery, which led me to the natural response of – among many other things – defaulting to a state of letting it completely discharge and recharge fully before using it. The thing is that I know that doesn't make any difference, but I'm as superstitious and so I responded accordingly. Well it turns out that the battery issues was a software glitch, and I sorted it out; kept on doing the battery thing though. This article was helpful for getting some proper perspective on different kinds of batteries and the way they respond to charge. Sometimes you just have to make a leap of faith. And so I charged my phone today even though it was already about 45% charged. If you've ever experienced a bit of battery superstition of your own (who hasn't) then I imagine this will be helpful.

side note most of the batteries that you use in your little electronic devices are the NiMh kind.

DK

That's right, the Suburban Refugee is back, but now he's the World Wide Refugee or something. Just like Randy Johnson at the bottom of the 8th, right when I was about to space out and stop blogging forever, SBR is back to finish the day. Whohoo. But I guess all that R.I.P. stuff and the enless tears and the shrieking and the counselling were a waste of time. Dude sure knows how to play with a guy's emotions.

Anyway, Now you don't have to be bored anymore. I'll throw up a feed for the right column as soon as I have time.

So we've eliminated the event-planning (redundant to sites like facebook/evite), the link feature (you can read them on digg or send them via email), and the file sending (for this you can really use email) of the new Pownce social networking site. That only leaves the section where people can leave notes. So what's the point?

Here's how it works. Basically you get to post a note. You have the option to post it privately to a single person, privately to all you friends, or post it to the entire public. Most people opt for the public option. When you post it to the public, it shows up on your pownce feed, as well as the pownce feed of all your friends. This is like Myspace comments on crack. In addition, anybody who comes along has the option of replying to that post (also public). Anybody who comes to any of these feeds can read the posts and participate in the fun. To make things more interesting, if folks thing your little post is somewhat profound or interesting (e.g., "I just robbed a bank") they
So here we have a very advanced and beautifully designed commenting system that is completely divorced from any actual over-arching topic or theme. It's basically a social commentary on randomness.

Welcome to the micro-blog, welcome to the social.

The micro-blog, by the way, is over-against the blog proper (which your reading) or the "mini-blog", an example being my tumblr page (the feed of which you can now find in the right hand column).

The purpose of the blog is obvious, the mini is designed to post random tidbits – photos, links, and quotes, and the micro? Well, I suppose it's basically all about posting whatever is on your mind. It's the equivalent of a beefed up version of status part of facebook.

Let's take a look at the result, here are a few of the posts, stripped from Justine Ezarik's (semi-famous web hottie) feed. I've sliced them up into categories for you.

Random Apple Nonsense—This is true of any social blogging site, especially the micro-blogs. Mac owners love to talk… ...about macs, which they do, all day, over and over again.

Trying my new Apple keyboard for the first time! It takes some getting used to, but I like it so far.

Sigh…yesterday I went in for a MacBook Pro, but unfortunately they were all out. Gotta call and go in again today.

Looking around at hacking the iPhone. Anybody had good/bad results by adding apps to your phone?

Saving money to buy…new iPod, iPhone and macbook…but only with Leopard. Apple come on!

Mac fanboys drive me nuts.

Talking about Pownce—People on pownce talk a lot about pownce. This makes sense I guess.

The one thing that I believe would help folks "get" Pownce would be a link in the top bar to public notes. I forgot about this link but it would help users jump in and start building friends from the start. I think often folks poke around, don't get new friends like Twitter or Jaiku and then depart w/ a miss-conception of the site. Anyone else experience the same question?

too bad Pownce and Twitter don't alert you when someone stops following you…could be real fun!

Hangover-speak—I've seen this alot on pownce. For some reason after spending the night out drinking like they're irish, a common natural inclination the following morning seems to be 1. find a computer 2. write about how hungover they are. You can also find this on facebook

I'm so hungover.. I think it was the chicken skillet and pancakes at 2am at Village Inn that really messed me up.

Are you f!@#ing kidding me? A $300 tab at Fox and Hound?! What the f!@# happened last night…

This is especially fun when it's my co-worker leaving the message and he or she has called in sick.

Non-Human Interaction / Compulsive Status Updates—This is the big one on Pownce. Basically everyone just makes general statements about their state of mind, what they're doing, or in the case of the third guy, two completely unrelated topics. They talk to Pownce as if it was people and hope that somebody's listening.

Good morning world. Err, well fellow Powncers at least. =$

Shower, breakfast, and then heading to the conference.

Going to help a friend pick out a car today. And possibly pick out a suit for myself.

Gotta wash the cars. Better to it now before it gets too hot.

morning all. I'll tell you I am so grateful that Hurricane Dean looks like it will miss us here in South Florida. That looks like a real nasty storm. I feel bad for Jamaica though, looks like they may get a Cat 4 or 5.

@home

off to bed!!

If somebody was in the forest, and they told everybody on the internet, would anybody care?

Self Betterment—People like to write about how they are going to get it together.

I'm reloading this weekend. Time to get well and healthy, finally. That means more or less no social stuff (ie Pownce, Facebook etc) and a minimum computer time. Lovely.


Have a great weekend people!

Goal for this weekend…spend as little money as possible. Vacation, car repairs, life, etc. Very expensive indeed.

I guess this is good, but really, who's going to hold these people accountable? The internets?

Complaints about anything and everything—Obviously, one of my favorite uses

And so the weekend begins.Why do I have to work this morning?

Grr, I've been so busy that I haven't had time to update Pownce or Twitter…or for that matter, had the energy to do much more than work & sleep, and maybe eat.

I endorse all complaints made on this website.

"Anyone else?" posts—Random questions for everybody these get a fair amount of attention

Anyone else testing BlogRovR?

Meebo selling music?
Is anyone else getting this on their Meebo?

Hall or Oates?

anyone else watching flash gordon?

Um… NO, I don't know, I don't care, and no.

Stop. Please stop.

Profound Thoughts / Questions—lots of these, everybody's a philosopher.

What if you had 6 month's to determine what you will do with the rest of your life?

And finally, lots and lots of posts about Chocolate Rain—and every other youtube video in existence.

Chocolate Rain stuck in my gray matter. Over and over and over again.

So that's pownce. And yes, it's obviously wrought with gobs of unadulterated self-love. But to be honest, I kind of like it. The interface is slick, it works perfectly, and as you may have noticed, I've figured out how to get my pownce feed to show up in the sidebar of this blog. So now you, the reader, will know when I wake up, want a burrito, or have something important to say about chocolate rain.

You could do a sociology thesis on this phenomenon. Why are people so keen on spending their few free moments telling the entire world what they're thinking, doing, or looking at? I don't have the answer, but maybe somebody will post it somewhere on pownce.

side note: if you think this looks interesting, let me know, I'll send you an invitation.

Oh yeah, Steph: Thanks for the Soup. I'm feeling much better.

Anyway those who are extremely techy will be up on the tech scene, and will know of the recent creation—by the makers of "digg.com"http://www.digg.com—of the social networking website pownce.com. That link won't really help you much, so here is a link to Ted's public profile so you can get an idea of what's going on.

Not that I necessarily understand exactly what is going on with Pownce, as evidenced by the miniscule amount of posts on my pownce page.¹

p.(aside) by the way, pownce is pronounced POW – NCE, as in rhymes with kerPLOWnce. It's not "ponce", which is how a South African says "pants".

Everybody was really excited when pownce first debuted in beta mode (meaning the only way to sign up is to know somebody else who is signing up). People were primarily excited because of the creators, who are known for creating really interesting things.

I was one of these excited people. In fact, when Ted emailed me and asked if I wanted a pownce invite, I sent back something along the lines of:

YES! SEND PLEASE! SEND NOW! YOU RULE! YOU ARE THE MAN! TED THE MAN!

...all of which he agreed with and complied to.

But then I got over there, signed up my account, logged in, became Ted's "pownce friend", and started posting.

Within a few minutes I was asking myself, "what the hell is this thing?" It doesn't do anything. It's like myspace but only with the comments part of myspace. Which is absolutely, in my opinion, the worst part of myspace, if not the whole internet; the phrase, "thanks for the add" makes me cringe almost as much as the rare moments in my life when I've happened to come across clowns.

Admittedly, pownce seems to have an overt purpose: to share "notes", "files", "links", and "events".

The events part I could actually see being pretty cool, provided that your friends were on pownce. Of course it seems like the event planning throne is currently occupied by facebook and that monarch is ruling with an iron fist—probably not going anywhere soon.

Sharing links and files is ok I guess, but pretty well covered by email and blogs (although I think big fans of these new Web 2.0 style sites would suggest that email is slowly becoming obsolete and blogs are only a tiny fraction of a person's online presence).

So that only leaves notes. As far as I (and Ted) can tell, the primary purpose of notes on pownce seems to be along the lines of "look at me!!!" or just random twitter style ramblings.

Since you can't really get any information off of mine or Ted's pownce pages, here's some examples from the page of Justine Ezarik, one of the more prominent "hotties" in the world of tech. Everybody wants to be her friend, so her pownce page is pretty loaded. Keep in mind that these aren't Justine's entries, but those of her friends. Pownce streams the public entries of your friends through your own pownce page, resulting in a muddled stream of conciousness that is the "essence of pownce."

Actually, this post is out of control, so I'll make this 1 of 2 and post some actual pownce entries in a follow-up entry. Plus I liked that last sentence.

In the meantime, if you want your own Pownce account, email me² and I'll send you an oh-so-holy invite. I have like 10 left.

1. also, I have no idea whether pownce requires a proper name spelling (and a capital "P"), so you're just going to have to live with the fact that I keep switching it [ƒ]
2. dan at draynet dot com yada yada yada you know the drill no spam whatever [ƒ]

Check it out…

The more I read about the iphone the more I realize that apple has made a pretty weak product to be the flagship of the next generation of cell-phone products. It's very typically apple, heavy on style and wow, but lacking in key areas revolving around functionality (a la, a context sensitive right mouse click button). Not to say that Apple doesn't usually catch up with the curve – their macbooks are pretty awesome these days – they just take a while to get there sometimes. Even as much as I love my ipod I have to admit that it sure would be nice to be able to edit playlists and switch back and forth between podcasts and music without having to go through 19 menu screens.

That said, one of the major shortcomings of the ipone is it's functional lockdown – meaning its inability to add 3rd party apps, especially some form of skype or vonage or, well really any voice over ip system that would take advantage of the iphon's wi-fi capabilities. Not having the ability to make free or very cheap internet calls on a device that costs $700 is equivalent to a horse with three legs, or Matthew Fox without that scruffy 5 o'clock shadow (ask Wendy); it's just a device that is way underachieving.

Which brings us to the point of this blurb – T-Mobile's got a new thing going, and I think it could give the iphone some very serious competition.

Check it out