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Tad’s Jan 2009 Digital Lifestyle Part 1

Since today is the first day of a new year, I figured it would be a good time to reflect on my current Digital Lifestyle.  6 months from now we can look back and see if anything major has changed.  A year from now I’m thinking I’ll be using some really different tools/sites/etc.

Stuff I Wear:

• T-Mobile G1 “Google Phone”
• Apple iPod Touch

These devices are on my body or within reach nearly 24 hours a day.  I sleep right next to my G1.  With them, I am in constant contact with the rest of the world.  I think I would rather have just an iPhone, but I loath AT&T and was already a T-Mobile customer.  I think, though that eventually Lindsay and I will develop some apps for our G1s - a process much more onerous on the iPhone.

Devices I Carry:

• Amazon Kindle
• Nintendo DS

When I head out to work, or where ever, I usually carry a messenger bag full of stuff I might need, like my DS.  I play Brain Age 2 every day and try to have at least one book on my Kindle worth reading at all times.  Since buying my Kindle, I have resolved not to buy any more meatspace books besides technical books.  This strategy has worked well.  I recently finished Anathem on my Kindle - much nicer than lugging around a 1200 page book!

First Websites I Look at in the AM:

• Drudge Report
• Huffington Post

I am a news addict.  One of the first things I wonder about when I wake up in the morning is, “What’s going on in the world.”  These two websites are great launching points for answering that question.  I’ve followed Drudge since 1998, and Huffington since not too long after they launched.

My Digital Entertainment Lifestyle:

• Apple TV
• iTunes

Since I bought my Apple TV I have tried really hard not to buy any DVDs.  I think that physical media ownership is very retro.  I noticed that I rarely ever watched any DVD that I bought more than once, so I prefer to rent movies.  Apple TV and iTunes make it boneheadedly easy to rent movies.  True, they don’t have 1080p movie rentals, but my relatively meager 37″ LCD only shows 720p - I don’t miss the higher resolution at all.

Unlike movies, we end up purchasing a lot of television shows.  Apple TV makes it too easy.  This is one habit, though, I’m probably going to put a hold on.  We end up buying shows that we missed watching on our Tivo.  That’s not too smart, and if I buy an external drive for the Tivo it won’t run out of room any time soon.  Though, if Apple continues to add retro shows, I’m sure we’ll keep buying.  Avynn has seen almost all of Babylon 5 thanks to iTunes.

I realize that I can watch a lot of shows on Hulu or CBS, etc for free, but I enjoy watching shows with Lindsay and Avynn and that’s a major drag on a little computer screen.

This is an area I see improving for us in 2009.

I’ve got a list of more stuff (FriendFeed, Twitter, Evernote, etc) that I’ll post soon.  My non-digital lifestyle is encroaching… I have to walk the dog. 

The Wrist is Wasted Real Estate

Nowadays most people I know don’t wear watches.  Nearly everyone has a mobile phone and those usually display the time in big huge numbers whenever you’re interested.

However, I really feel like we’re missing some opportunities by not taking full advantage of our wristerly regions.  I have two wrists that I want to adorn with something that’s stylish and useful.  But I don’t want a boring ole 20th century watch.  Yuck.

I do not want to look at my wrist to see what time it is.  To be honest, I usually don’t give a damn what time it is.

I don’t want to use a lame tiny stylus.

I don’t want a calculator watch,

or a tv watch

or a weird Japanese watch that just tells time.

No - I want something completely different on my wrist.  Here are some ideas:

Imagine something like a watch, but in place of a clock face is an opaque face that lightly glows and changes color according to the program it’s running.  It can guide you to a nearby destination via the “getting hot, getting cold” game.  It can slowly change from green through yellow to red to let you know of a pending time limit - “I’ll sit here at the bar until the face turns red.  I set that to be an hour from now.”

How about a musical instrument?  The stones on your bracelet can be used to play notes or beats or whatever.  Friends can get together and have mini-jam sessions.  Collect new bracelets for new sounds and rhythms.

Maybe in the right form factor we could wear our e-book readers on our wrists.  Instead of having to hold something like a kindle, it would be attached to your wrist.  You could use a finger on your free hand to navigate and scroll like you do on an iPhone.  I can imagine a future flexible OLED screen that would be light enough to do the trick nicely.  I guess this could be a decent platform for an always available web browser and media player.  I don’t think I’d want to put my wrist up to my ear to use it like a phone though!  iWrist maybe?

I like the idea of just plain attractive jewelry that also hides a lot of technology.  No need for any interface at all.  Your bracelet could house multiple micro-SD cards (or equivalent) wirelessly available to your phone or camera.  It could also house a radio transceiver that could be used to unlock your car and/or house and/or office.

Finally I think it would be the perfect host for a tag for augmented reality systems - it would allow AR systems to discover who you are (with links by to your Friend Feed or whatever accounts).

The FriendFeed Front Page Game

One of the emergent properties of FriendFeed is a new type of competitive content creation.  Only the most interesting content remains on the front page for any length of time.  All day long you can watch entries float on down the Rio del FriendFeed down, down into the tubez.  I think most people, like me, rarely look past the front page.

So, I like to play the FriendFeed Front Page Game.  It’s simply really.  Create threads or comment on threads that stay on the front page for as long as possible.  This not only helps you score imaginary points, it also helps keep the quality of front page material as high as possible.

I realize that everyone’s front page is different, but the threads that stay on your front page the longest also show up on most of your friends’ front page as well.  So, get your scorecards boys and girls.  2 points for each thread you start for each hour it remains on the front page and 1 point for each thread you comment on at least 3 times that for each hour that it stays on the front page.

So, play the FFFPG with me and help make Friend Feed the most interesting non-dump truck related site on the internets!