The city of Boston recently placed a ban on “texting while driving”. As of Jan 1, more than a dozen states also have bans on sending texts while driving. What about reading texts or emails, surfing the web, typing a URL, do I need to continue. According to reports, provisions allow for entering a name or phone number. This type of reaction is short-sighted and, given the difficulty to enforce, absolutely useless. Legislators are simply following suit of earlier efforts to restrict GPS operation to placate their constituents without really fixing the problem.
Prevention vs Restriction
How fast can you run? If you are average like me, your top speed is between 13 and 20 miles per hour. Mind you, for very short distances. As a point of reference, multiple world record holder Usain Bolt’s speed over 200m is roughly 23+ MPH. He is said to top out at 27+ MPH.
Have you ever tried to type, dial or use your phone while sprinting? Probably not since you’d undoubtedly take a header before you pressed send. Rightly so, I might add. So, considering the proliferation of cell phones with GPS, features of the technology can be disabled if the phone is traveling faster than, say, Usain Bolt’s average speed. In fact, software applications exist that disable texting if the phone is traveling over 10 miles per hour.
The prudent thing to do here is to require that cell phone (and GPS) manufacturers disable certain features of the phone if it can be detected that the phone is traveling at a rate of speed faster than the average human can travel.
In-dash GPS, as well as future In-car WIFI, restrict usage while driving, so why not cell phones?
Over the summer, I read Seth Godin’s latest book Tribes. Tribes makes the case that it has never been easier to create and lead a tribe around a product, a cause, or in the case that I would like to make here, music. In it, Mr Godin references Kevin Kelly’s blog post on The Technium, 1,000 True Fans, where Mr Kelly argues that an individual artist only needs 1,000 fans to make a living as a full time musician. He cites strategies musicians like Jill Sobule employ to “underwrite” their music production. This is analogous to technology startups conducting market research before spending millions creating a product that nobody wants.
But, what if you’re name is not Jill Sobule and you haven’t invested years (with the aid of the old establishment) building your brand? This begs more to Mr Godin’s premise that with social media this becomes a much easier task than ever before. However true this is, every musician would need to employ the same, or largely similar, tactics. And then convert casual admirers into “true fans” that will presumably plunk down $100 a year for whatever they produce. Let’s hope that they are prolific creators because a $100 is not exactly milk money. And, an effective social media (self-promotion) strategy demands a considerable time investment leaving little time for the plethora of content that I’ll expect for my $100.
This model is very difficult to sustain and to scale for an individual artist.
Over the last several years, I have presented Kayanta’s Social Advisor to more than 50 small groups and individuals. Every meeting would start the same way. Start up my MacBook, connect to the projector, start up Firefox for the demo, start up Keynote, test my IR remote and away I’d go. Invariably, when it was time to advance a slide, I’d hit the wrong button on the remote or I’d point it in the wrong direction and I’d end up defaulting to use the keyboard. The advent of Pico Projectors and Pranav Mistry’s research on SixthSense Technology (video after jump) gave me an idea.
It’s a simple philosophy, really. The problem is that finding, deciding, and planning things to do is still a pain in the ass.
How many times have you heard of a really cool event after it happened or too late to attend? Not any more! Kayanta is your Personal Social Advisor. Check it out and please let me know what you think.
And isn’t it time that we actually socialized with our “social network”. The Facebook application is launching very soon. Stay tuned. Here’s a quick (old) a video demonstration.
No, I don’t mean Gnome as in the little Travelocity guy or the traveling lawn ornament in Amélie. I mean your Genome, but not as in your DNA. Your Social (media) Genome. We all have one whether we are aware of it or not.
When the DirecTV guy installed my first TiVo box, he gave me a quick demonstration after it was installed. He scanned a few channels, started the recorder and demoed the thumbs up feature. Very cool I thought as he went on his way. A week later I realized that my TiVo thought that I was a Spanish child. I couldn’t record the Celtics game because the disk was full with Spanish episodes of Dora the Explorer.
Flash forward to today and consider the volume of information that we freely produce through social media. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Delicio.us, Flickr, YouTube, WordPress, and on and on. What others learn about us through our online behavior and affiliations is truly impressive (and alarming). Marketers can use this information to personalize advertising but we have no way of using it for our own benefit.
Here’s the Big Idea: The Personal Media Gnome (I guess I did mean the Amélie Gnome)
What if we each had our own little Gnome that, given all of the information that we’ve produced and that can readily be found about us on the web (see pipl.com), constructed our “Social Genome”. The concepts and facts that he gleaned could then be used as a filter to ensure that we always received what information was most important to us (local, health, economic, educational, social, political…) and where we needed it most (email, calendar, mobile…). Just think of what you could accomplish if you had your very own personal advocate looking out for your best interests.
Admittedly, I was initially hesitant to get TiVo. I thought that I’d end up watching endless amounts of television and never leave the house. But actually, I watch less television as a whole, just more of what truly interests me.
Think of your Gnome as TiVo for your life. Anyone up for designing the icon?
ShareOver the past several years, I have become increasingly sensitive to time (midlife crisis perhaps?). The amount of time spent waiting (in line at Starbucks, in traffic, for those who think a 9am meeting starts at 9:30) or suffering web services that just plain suck is less bearable than it was yesterday. My self-importance is [...]
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ShareI arrived late to the dance when it came to my appreciation for Twitter. I just didn’t understand what would possess someone to broadcast the minutiae of everyday life. But then very smart people, whose writings I absorb, embraced the platform to the extent of a minute’s downtime would call for the creators’ heads. These [...]
ShareAt dinner at one of my local eateries, I happened to overhear an all too familiar refrain between a waitress and a patron.
Patron: “How is this?”, he asks while pointing to an item on the longer than necessary menu.
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ShareDo you exist? I do. And you know that you do too. We fight for attention from birth and work our whole lives to make a name for ourselves. Heck, I’m writing this blog to compete for your limited attention. I can admit that. So why, pray tell, must we troll the internet anonymously?
OK, maybe [...]
No, I don’t mean Gnome as in the little 
