Pemaquid Crunch: Web Design notes from Portland, Maine » culture

I resent my Google overlords

Rob — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:01:39 +0000

Editor’s note: This post is a little off-topic for a blog about Web design, but I’ve been wanting to comment on this for some time.

If you go online in 2009, it won’t take long at all before you bump into Google. There’s the omnipresent search engine, of course. Google has roughly 76% of all search traffic.

But that’s just the beginning, of course.

Want to track traffic to your Web site? There’s Google Analytics.

How about an online advertising campaign? Google AdSense.

Upload a video? YouTube is a Google property.

RSS feed reader? Google Reader.

A Start page? iGoogle

Read a map? Yep, they’ve got Maps.

Hang on…we’re just getting warmed up…

Email? Gmail.

Events? Google Calendar.

Spreadsheets and other documents in the cloud? Google Docs.

A mini-intranet for your small business? Google Sites or Google Apps (the latter brings Sites together with Gmail, Calendar and Docs).

Need a heavy-duty offline search tool? Use the Google Search Appliance to crunch through your document library.

Chat? They’ve got it covered.

But wait! There’s more…(you’re seeing where I’m going w/this?)…

Want to manage your money? Try Google Finance.

Health information? You can use Google Health.

Online purchases can be run through Google Checkout.

Everywhere you look, it’s Google, Google, Google, Google, Google, Google, Google.

Most of these services are free. That’s great if you’re a consumer of information, though it takes the fun out of things if you’re a developer trying to convince a Client to pay you to build something for them.

And all you have to do to gain access to most of these free services is… sign up for an account. That same account can be used to access most if not all of these services.

And so, it’s not far-fetched at all to suppose that Google can glom all this data together to build a very detailed picture of your habits, indeed who you are. And that’s the Holy Grail for any advertising company.

Check out this excerpt from the TOS for Google Health:

I hereby authorize Google to share the health information contained in my Google Health profile(s) in its entirety…

Hmm. My Google Health profile?

Microsoft once had a primary role in our digital lives, but at least a copy of the software on our personal computers couldn’t report back to the mother ship. In 2009, more and more of our data resides “in the cloud” rather than our personal hard drive.

I use Google as much as the next guy – as I’ve shown here, it’s hard to avoid that. But every time I have a choice, I’m going to choose the service that ain’t Google.

The company credo “Don’t Be Evil” notwithstanding, civil libertarians ought to keep their eyes on benevolent Big Brother Google. There’s a lot of information sitting in one place.

Portland – the Way Web Should Be

Rob — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:01:48 +0000

Editor’s note: this was originally published on the Portland Press Herald’s NXT blog as a guest post.

To begin a story about Web design in Portland, Maine, I’ll start in the Atlanta airport.

That was where, while I was waiting to board the connecting flight that was to take me to the 2007 SXSW Interactive conference, that I found myself standing next to Andy Clarke. He isn’t exactly a household name, but in the world of Web, Clarke – an expert on CSS and a member of the Web Standards Project – is a rock star (he even actually looks like a rock star, a cross between someone from the British Invasion and Austin Powers. He’s got style).

Clarke was on his way to be a speaker at SXSW. We struck up a conversation, and he inevitably asked where I hailed from.

Portland, Maine, I told him, was where I ran my little Web design outfit, Pemaquid Communications.

Clarke was polite, but shot me a look of surprise that seemed to say ‘Portland, Maine? They build Web sites in Portland, Maine? I thought you guys were all lobstermen and lumberjacks.’

But really, why wouldn’t you want to build Web sites from Portland? You’ve got great geography (the sea, the mountains, the lakes, the woods) and great meterology (it’s a four-season town, you don’t bake in the summer and I don’t mind the snow in the winter, though your mileage may vary on that score!). It’s a great indoor-outdoor town. Oh, and there are plenty of great coffee shops with free wi-fi.

In short, the scene here is very conducive to creative thinking!

In the wonderful world of Web, it’s pretty easy to set up shop anywhere, and collaborate with Clients and team members hither and yon. There’s Basecamp for project management, Adium and Skype for real-time collaboration, Facebook, LinkedIn and a little thing called Twitter for networking (I found out Justin was looking for guest bloggers via his tweet on the subject).

A decent foundation has been laid in Portland for a vibrant Web community. Joe Michaud built MaineToday.com from scratch into a cutting-edge hotspot for online journalism, winning awards against much larger media companies. MaineToday alumni have gone on to make an impact. Justin Davis’ group at Portland Web Works manages VisitMaine.com, the site of the Maine Office of Tourism and one of the best tourism sites in the country. Frank McMahon is now a successful photographer and podcaster whose products include the popular Rumor Girls. (Full disclosure: I’m also one of those alumni).

There are also pockets of creativity at the University of Southern Maine, if you know where to look, and the Maine College of Art is cranking out great graphic designers who now have a keen sense of digital media and who are making an impact. That’s just the tip of the iceberg – apologies for all the things I’m leaving out.

So what do we need to make Portland a hub for Web creatives? We need community. To build community, I think we need to do two things:

Strengthen the skills of the people who are already here. Local Web heads should do what they can to support improvements in the digital media programs at USM, MECA and Southern Maine Community College. We should also develop “continuing education” programs – think regular meetups, BarCamps and labs.

Attract the techies who aren’t here. Right now that’s a big challenge for P-town. Sure, we’ve got loads of fresh air and our fair share of culture. Heck, they say we’ve got more restaurants per capita than anyplace outside of San Fran – that ought to count for something! Even so, though top flight Webslingers can work from anywhere, but there’s still a desire to get together with like-minded individuals in meatspace, and right now Portland is rightly seen as a little isolated in that regard. So we need to “connect the dots” in terms of the folks who are already here (see previous paragraph) so we’ll be able to more noticeably display visible signs of Web life to those viewing Portland from afar.

Can we connect the dots and build a world-class Web community? I think we can. I see subtle signs that the cells are coming together. What do you think?



Open Source World
Rob — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:16:51 +0000
Way back at the dawn of time – you know, 1998 – people gave lip service to something called the “New Economy”.  Middlemen, it was forecast, would soon be “disintermediated” out of financial transactions as “commerce” became “e-commerce”.  
Then the bubble popped, sock-puppet mascots became extinct, real estate companies continued to prosper, and everyone generally took their eyes off the business transformations underway.  Recently, however, I was taking stock, and things are definitely changing, though perhaps in slow-mo.  Let’s recap:
Encyclopedia salesmen?  Gone.  Wikipedia and Google rule.  ‘Nuf said.
Newspapers?  On life support.  Readership is down sharply as consumers gain more comprehensive and convenient access to information online.  Start writing the epitaph.
Record companies?  Current business model is dying.  When the cost of reproducing your product falls to zero, it’s hard to make money on album sales.
Real Estate agents?  Their days are numbered.  Their monopoly over home listings through the MLS Listing service, their key advantage – will end; it’s a matter of time (see Zillow).  
You could even say that employers have less control over their employees – especially those who are tech-savvy.  Workers who are wise in the ways of the Web can use their online connections to cobble together a decent living by utilizing their social network.
Last, but certainly not least, here’s the kicker I’ve been building up to:  software.  We’re all familiar with Open Source software these days.  The idea is that when you open up your source code to a vast online array of collaborators – when you loosen control –  you get better apps.  
It seems to me we’re moving towards an Open Source World.  As traditional business categories yield to the Information Age, it seems like people will get better information, more conveniently, and at a lower cost.  That seems like a good thing to me.
It also seems inevitable.

			

				

			
		




	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	





Twitter is the new blogging
Rob — Mon, 26 May 2008 02:07:11 +0000
I don’t know why it took me so long, but it finally hit me – Twitter is the new blogging.

I remember when blogging first came on the scene – it took me awhile to ‘get it’.  Why, I thought, would someone take the time to post their musings about the everyday, and who would care?  I couldn’t see the point of most of it initially, though now the Web is full of thoughtful, colorful and amazingly informative blogs on every topic, and you don’t have to look hard to find detailed information about something that’s of interest to you.
Now, we have Twitter and everyone, it seems, is tweeting.  For the most part, these tweets are pretty mundane (“…heading out for a bikeride…”, ” Trying to finish up several key deliverables so I can get out on the boat today  ” and even simply “Baseball”) are samples of the <140 character slices-of-life you'll find when you follow someone's twitterings. 
You could call all this 'micro-blogging'. 
I'm not sure how meaningful all of this is,  where it's all going or even what any of it means, but I do know one thing  - it's an exploding cultural phenomenon.  Just like blogging was a few years back.  
I've learned my lesson.  This time, I'm going to pay attention to the cultural changes wrought by the Web and work harder to understand what it all means.
Follow me on Twitter