CrackWhat?

Since I myself am an owner of the newfangled "CrackBerry," and also a willing addict, I thought this was an amazing blog posted over at Powell's. I will share...

Stop Blaming Your CrackBerry
Posted by Vince Poscente, August 27th, 2008 1 Comment Filed under:: Contributors.

We love and hate our addictions at the very same time.We love and hate our addictions at the very same time.

Robert Palmer was addicted to love (Who isn't?). Paris Hilton is addicted to the spotlight. (Ah… the spotlight). There is the faint sound of cha-ching in the halls of tobacco companies every time a teenager lights up a cigarette in the spirit of looking cool.

Owners of PDAs are seemingly obsessed with their handheld devices.

What do we make of this particular kind of addiction?

A year ago, I chatted with Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry. I wanted to take the temperature of his reaction to the word "CrackBerry" (since our marketing line for The Age of Speed reads: "Is our 24/7, CrackBerry, more-faster-now world eating us alive or setting us free?").

It helps to know that Balsillie's co-CEO invented the term CrackBerry in a Wall Street report.

Balsillie thought it was derogatory. He said, "Do whatever you have to do." Earlier that day, Balsillie was called out on stage by a panelist at a YPO conference.

"My wife hates you, Jim," said the CEO from Dubai."My wife hates you, Jim," said the CEO from Dubai. "I am addicted to your product. My BlackBerry."

Balsillie was gracious on stage, but it was clear in our conversation that he had a serious issue with people blaming their addictions on his product.

People have the choice whether to use it and when to use it. Why are we blamed for a car accident when someone is doing emails while driving? It's a tool designed to save people time. To speed up the mundane.

In a recent survey, we polled people who owned or had considered owning PDAs like the BlackBerry:

• 29% of people are avoiding the purchase of a PDA, fearing its perceived addictive nature.
• 59% were avoiding a PDA purchase because they didn't want to always be "on call."

These fears are legitimate, because:
• 37% of PDA owners estimated that they check their email several times per hour.37% of PDA owners estimated that they check their email several times per hour.
• 35% of PDA owners confessed to regularly sneaking a peek at their PDA in social situations.

The love-hate relationship we have with our technology is simply not the technology's fault. It all comes down to a choice. Your choice. Stop blaming technology. Be more conscious of how to use speed as an ally, and eliminate the busyness that is eating you alive.

I was seduced by the BlackBerry's convenience. Starting my grad program, I sarcastically mentioned in class that it appeared in order to teach effectively, I would need a BB. Afterall, all my own education professors had one.

Now, it has turned on me. I check my email more than a addict sniffs, and I get frustrated when people don't email me back right away. I can, why can't you! PEON!

dis CONNECTED

All of this technology is great. So great, that I have no need for people in my life anymore. Apparently.

This isn't a pro/con list (although you know how I love lists!) of how technology affects our lives. There are plenty of those out there, and enough super-smart bloggers with more time and putting in more effort than I to do that here. Instead, A rant.

I've found over the last few months that it bothers me more and more when people tell me they read my blog. Not that I don't want them to, because in fact I have invited several people to read it, given them the address and so on. But the part about it that bothers me is the appearance of intimacy by simply READING about me. Few have offered to go out to coffee, have dinner, a ball game. And the ones that do, I anxiously await comments from, because I know that the conversation will be continued in person. This is another issue: commenting on a blog, or anywhere else on the internet, is not a valid form of friendship. Just as texting is not a conversation, a comment is usually finite. A conversation is fluid, and gives way to more than just words, but to meaning.

I'm struggling with this issue right now in particular because it seems that some of those who I thought were closest to me, have settled into a comfortable and convenient routine. Rather than spend time with me (regularly scheduled, weekly time that has been in place far longer than either of us) they think a text saying something entirely superficial will suffice. As if there is a communication quota, and the more innane words sent via cellular waves, the closer they are to meeting the quota.

I will not settle for meaninglessness. And if that is what my relationships have turned into, whether because of technology or by way of technology, something has to change. I don't know if that's leaving the technology behind, which at this point in our society would be pretty radical. Disconnecting entirely could have the opposite effect I'm longing for, and leave me even more disconnected than I am now. However, a weekly text of comment left on my blog will not suffice.

All of this to say that I want genuine connection. No cheap, digital, replacement.

Qualms

This over here is why I'm wary of starting a professional blog.

While I'm pretty sure I could remain anonymous, leaving out the specifics of time/place/persons, and choosing not to post-stamp every comment with a picture of my face, the possibility that someone, some savvy teacher or meddling old-timer, could find my blog out of the millions of blogs and just happen to recognize my slur of speech or some small detail makes me a little more than cautious.

In my personal quest for transparency, this all but negates all that I've done. Why blog if you take all of the personal out of it? I had a similar conversation yesterday; why use the internet at all for communication. A face to face conversation IS that personal connection your looking for, why substitute it in any way?

What considerations do we need to make when having online conversations, some that would take place in "real" life, others that might not?

3-5

I tagged myself from Mildly Melancholy's post

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

In 1998, I was an eighth grader at MMS. May of that year, my brother was about to graduate from LHS, which meant I was getting my own room. I spent the summer painting walls, and picking out a new bedspread. I loved lime green at the time, and my ceiling was lavished in the color.


2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

-Buy deodorant
-Make a non-dairy-infested pizza (so I don't get sick)
-Find some shoes
-check craigslist for new bike postings
-MARGARITAS (I hope. I will probably end up skipping that and working on my lesson plans instead. gross.)

3) Snacks I enjoy:
(I will preface this with a "right now," because I'm always changing my mind about food)
-nutella right out of the jar
-fruit, always
-almonds and raisins
-coffee
-coffee-shop pastries (a severe weakness)


4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Quit my job, pay off my debt and open a coffee shop in the middle of some small town. Pay for my sister and her husband to move to said small town so that she could manage the shop for me, and spend my days wearing long flowy skirts, driving around town or riding my hippie bike and drinking my coffee shop coffee.

I would also like to take a baking class, so I could contribute to the business with AWESOME pastries. YUM!

5) Three of my bad habits:
-squinting while working/listening so the effect is that I look upset
-being lazy
-interrupting conversation while excited (don't you want to know what I have to say? I do...listen...!)

6) 5 places I have lived:
I don't think I have lived in five places. Let's find out:
-Renton, WA
-Ellensburg, WA
-Meridian, ID
-Boise, ID
I might count Medford, OR, as I spent weeks and weeks of every summer there.


7) 5 jobs I have had:
The first five, as I've had many:
-Summer babysitter
-Target cashier
-Nanny
-Resident Assistant (RA)
-Reading Tutor


8) 6 peeps I wanna know more about:

Is this where I link and tag others?
Epiphany in Baltimore
Full of Bees!
Below the Surface
Least of These

Tag yourself too!

Days 12 & 18

I've been messing around with Wordpress a little bit. And while I like some of what it has to offer, I'm still not sure that I'm sold on it. It's a littler prettier, a lot harder to use, and takes a more time on my part in order for you to see what I want you to see. I'm sure it's a learning curve that once established wouldn't be so bad. But do I really want to put THAT much effort into something that I still think of so casually?
I'm not sure. So in the meantime...onwards!

Day 12--Introduce yourself to another Blogger
While I have made some surface-y connections with bloggers, leaving comments and such, getting comments back, I have yet to email another Blogger. Think about it. Email is so formal nowadays. Texting and posting have become the slang language of yesterday, and email the full on term paper lingo. I will make an effort. Here's who I intend to emaiL:
Full of Bees!
and
Ms. Frizzle

Day 18--Create a sneeze page
Propel you, my fearless readers, deeper into the depths of my min...er, blog. A sneeze page is basically just a list of links revolving around some similar topic. You follow the links therefore finding more content of interest.

And yes, I skipped a few or six days. They were boring, and I couldn't see them being useful as this is much more a personal pursuit than a professional one.

31 Days to a Better Blog

Day 10--Declutter your Sidebar
Seeing as how I have only more recently (since I started this process seemingly a million years ago) adding to my sidebar, I'm not sure I need to declutter. Yet. What do you think. I will be looking at changing the format, seeing as how the margins on this background doesn't allow for things to fit correctly. So...readers, what do you think? Should I clean up the side-ness?

Day 11--Dig into your blog's statistics
This is actually one of the most interesting things I have learned since blogging more consistently. I check the statistics on my sitemeter tracker every couple of days. Although, according to the stats, you're not sticking around to read a whole lot. Here's what I find out about you, you faceless readers you:
-The majority of readers visit at the beginning and end of the month, with steady visits remaining through the mid-month period.
-The number of page views and the length of stay (how long you guys stick around) increases toward the end of the month as well.
-The vast majority of page visits are directed to the main page (everydayjae.blogspot.com) rather than a specific post. From this I can derive that most of you are coming from a bookmark, or a recent history list, or a link on another social profile, rather than an RSS feed that would send you to the most recently subscribed post.
-The most popular out-click (a link that directs you away from the main page) is by far the comments link. YAY! for comments!
-I can also tell where you're reading from. Most readers are in the Mountain Standard Time Zone, with the next most readers coming from the Pacific Time Zone.

Creepy what a little free widget can tell you, huh?

Happy Reading!

Screen Free Week

It's already here!

I can't believe it. When I made the pact to turn off my computer/tv/etc. in favor of other things, I didn't think it would be coming so fast. And to be honest, I didn't think I would be in the middle of a huge paper and two lesson plans and...and...and...

So, I will not be posting this week. Not that I've been posting all that consistently. But when I get th itch, I need to scratch. I will have to find a new drug. For at least the next few days.

FYI

I really enjoyed, and related to this post over at The Thinking Stick. So much, that it made me really think. Don't read it yet...I'll tell you when...

Just a few weeks ago, I was making the calendar for work, a usual duty of mine, and I added TV-Turnoff week at the bottom, April 27th-May 3rd. Thinking it would encourage kids and their parents to turn off the tube and visit the library, I put it in big block letters, pointing out the days with arrows and highlighted the week with atrocious facts about how many hours children watch tv a year. I should have known how self-righteous my thinking was right then.

Ok now...

So...in an attempt both to humble myself and reconnect with others, I will be turning my own screen off for the last week of our new month. Keep reading until then, as I'm sure it will still hold a lot of misadventure and such.

Day 7&8

Mostly because nobody ever comments to me, and so I really can't send you a loving and encouraging email to continue reading my little project here, I've skipped day 6 and am working stead on 7 and 8.

Day 7-- Plan a week's worth of posts

I have been thinking about this on my own for the last few days, as so much of what I'm learning in class and doing in work are starting to mesh. I have more questions that I would like to pose, and topics to discover, and so I think I will begin to plan out my next few days of posts. I can tell you it probably won't be so orderly as Darren suggests, but rather, a hodge-podge of ideas, a conglomeration of lists and links that flesh themselves out and fill in as the week goes on. How that looks, literally, on the page, we'll have to see.

Day 8-- Comment on a new blog

This one I like. While I read a lot of blogs, I rarely comment on them. I have been making an effort to leave a link to track back to my blog, to link to others in hopes that they find me. But looking for new kindred spirits could be just the ticket I'm looking for!

Oh, the choices!

As I traverse farther and deeper into the internet, I am faced with so many decisions to make regarding applications I wish to use. Who knew it would be such a hardship?

I discovered this beautiful site called netvibes. I have been using google, and was relatively happy with it. However, the asthetics of the thing I look at for several hours a day are quite important to me. What features they have, whether I can import profiles with the use of widgets, and share information in a quick and easy way. After setting up my netvibes profile, linking to my MySpace profile and Facebook, importing all of the blogs I had RSS'ed, and generally spending some time personalizing it, I realized that for all of it's prettiness, it lacked some of the features that I loved about plain old google. I like to be able to "star" emails and blog posts for later reference, to be able to share those (though I usually don't) with others on my network. What I like about netvibes is that your digital life is all on one page. But it's still in the process of revision. And with it being largely user driven, will see a lot of changes in the near future. Until then, I will have another look at iGoogle. I will try to customize it some more, and see if I can't look past it's plainness.