July 2008 Archives

A new week, a newly redesigned, widely-used and enjoyed site has confused and generally done a poor job communicating its intentions to its users. Last time, LastFM; this time, Facebook. The reaction hasn't been as visceral as the response to the LastFM changes, but just 5% of FB users have been exposed to the new layout. I predict the volume will increase.

The new profile page is set up as in a three-column format with one column reserved for ads. Get ready, more poorly targeted ad messaging to come! The search box and links to your applications have moved from the left-nav to a primary navigation bar at the very top of the page. A new subnav has tabs for Wall, Info, Photos and "Boxes" that at least one person has already commented should be renamed Apps given what you find on that tab. Since the most popular and widely used applications developed for Facebook are the Walls (Fun, Super, etc.) and photo uploads/sharing, creating quick link tabs for them makes sense. The Info tab collects personal information (professional and education history, city, groups relationship status, etc) into one area. Also, smart and intuitive. And, for the time being, Facebook does have a link for users to revert to the previous profile layout, but that link will be disabled over the next few weeks. 

The Wall is the default tab and it's your old mini-feed on steroids. I haven't figured out how to limit the number of stories shown and my attempts at changing the default settings for the length of feed items themselves haven't been saved. What's the point of letting you know I have activity on FriendFeed if the précis doesn't display? This middle column of the layout would also be the place to have my favorites applications displayed, but that does not seem to be an option. Instead, five applications get relegated to the non ad-laden tab and it's unclear how to add or change what appears there. (The order dragging feature is still in place for these five.) Where did the rest of your apps disappear? To the Boxes tab which takes you to a page of random ordering application displays. You can drag and drop them around as on the old layout within this tab and even create individual tabs for applications, but it's a buzzkill.

The ridiculous fun of Facebook is the string of charms that you add to your profile. It's a mash-up of the inside of your junior high locker, the posters up in your room, and doodles drawn on your social studies notebook. What am I listening to? What am I reading? See what a shitty Scrabble - I mean Scrabulous - player I am. Let me brag about my cat. Adding and removing apps to my profile, moving apps around my page as I grew more or less enamored of them, changing settings app by app was all easy. Now it feels more like scavenger hunt and I'm not yet convinced the prize is worth the effort.

In a previous life, I used to write a column called "Sites and Sounds" for a long-defunct web zine. The zine died before the newer generation of music sites like Pandora and LastFM came online. I like them both, though being an extremely opinionated music geek, I am constantly groaning at a recommendation one service or the other serves up to me. I'm probably breaking the Pandora algorithm somewhere along the line. And, in case you hadn't noticed, I clogged up a clean blog template with the album quilt widget from LastFM.

And speaking of clean templates, the original LastFM interface was just that. Until today. The new skin and layout of LastFM has been introduced to widespread hue and cry. On the LastFM blog and forums, it was mostly in English. On Summize/TwitterSearch, it was in many languages. So much for embracing change.

Let's all calm down people. This isn't the "ribbon" in Microsoft Office 2007 which must have single-handedly lowered productivity for Excel users by almost as large a factor as NCAA March Madness. I don't love it either on first perusal, LastFM, but I haven't figured it all out yet. Giving the option for users to default to the old layout would have been a nice touch. Charles Schwab still has the old layout for a user's account position page one click away.

A 100% reversal would obviously be too much of a knee-jerk reaction, but how should beloved brands (household names or otherwise) react to consumer rejection of the new?

Just about five hours on the clock from steeping grains to finished with clean-up. Using malt extract is certainly one time-saver during a brew day. I've brewed up my first attempt at a Belgian Wit beer today. And, as is oftentimes the case moments after I've sealed the top on the primary fermenter, I'm not sure what I'm going to get on the back side. So, I'm embracing the homebrewer's mantra, coined by über-guru Charlie Papazian: relax, don't worry about it, have a homebrew.

Wit beers are characterized by coriander and orange flavors which I added at the end of the boil (steep). Also added at various times are hops (I used domestic Goldings), dried jasmine flowers, and caraway. The last two are my experiments with this batch. Caraway is one of my favorite flavors (rye bread toast anyone?) and dried jasmine flowers are added to my favorite IPA so I thought a small amount would be a nice complement to the orange. Sounds good in theory, right?

My biggest concern at the moment is the color. The color profile for wit beers is very light golden and into the fermenter my beer was anything but light or golden. I think the malt extract may be a contributing factor. It was darker than I expected wheat malt extract to be. I wonder if the homebrew store where I purchased my ingredients filled my malt bucket with pale or even light amber malt extract rather than wheat malt extract. If they did, it's certainly too late now. So, we'll see. It's not always all about the style guidelines, but for my first attempt, it would be nice to be in the right zip code.

Grain bill:

• Crystal 10L
• Wheat malt
• Torrefied wheat

Wheat malt extract

Additions:

• Cracked coriander
• Cracked caraway
• Orange zest
• Dried jasmine flowers

Yeast: Wyeast 3944 Belgian Witbier

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I also moved my porter experiment into secondary fermentation this weekend. My 7 quarts have now been put into one one-gallon growler, and about half-full on two half-gallon growlers. The smaller vessels will wind up yielding 2 22-oz. bottles when all is said and done, so let's hope something in this experiment is darn tasty. Into the one-gallon fermenter I also tossed some oak chips from a Jack Daniels barrel so an oaky bourbon porter will be the end result. Paired with some apple pie a la mode. Mmm, who's hungry?

It's surprising that I should even think to ask the question, given the service boasts more than 20 million profiles and is arguably (fire away) the first online professional network many people join. But one tweet yesterday and the first response sparked a modest volume of email, further musings here, and perhaps soon elsewhere. As @mrgingold noted, 140 characters truly only takes you so far.

The initial thought, from @abfdc, is that LinkedIn is two years passed its effectiveness date. It's a big database, but there's no genuine engagement. People seem to be connection hogs or want to link to you to get to someone in your network. All you can see is a digital résumé, but there is no depth to the profiles. With Twitter, by contrast, you can get a more well-rounded view of someone through her posts and links. A glorified online address book another called LinkedIn. Since its primary communication tool is email, there's no immediacy, thus no community or social networking characteristics. In sum, a decent recruiting tool and missed opportunity.

I don't disagree with most of the above, but I do disagree with the notion that LinkedIn has already jumped the digital shark. I have benefited professionally from my network on LinkedIn. Even prior to that though, I found myself going further out of my way than I ever did when I receive LinkedIn requests for an introduction or help filling an open position. Maybe, subconsciously, I thought it was a pay-it-forward type of situation. Or that through its interface, it is very easy to make an on-the-spot electronic introduction or jot down some notes for a recommendation. I scan my LinkedIn home page daily to see who has been active, if old friends or colleagues have emerged from the fog, and know that newly posted recommendations are usually indications that someone is looking for a change of scenery. Tip-offs my address book doesn't give me.

Can LinkedIn become a bona fide social networking application with the depth and immediacy offered by the other big category gorillas, Twitter and Facebook? Perhaps. The immediacy part of the equation still is nebulous until an instant messaging app is overlaid, but I don't think that's essential. I would submit that's not LinkedIn's niche anyway. None of my fellow social media deconstructors know what to make of LinkedIn groups. What is their purpose today? Are you a member of any? Do you participate in it in any fashion?

There is plenty of opportunity for better engagement among those with common threads be it an industry or a former employer. If I was an employer or especially in an HR capacity, I'd set up a group and encourage alumni to join it. It would be a readymade network of institutional knowledge, referral bank, and a means to keep in contact with those who might want to return to the fold. There are similar collaboration opportunities to pull subject matter experts and attendees for barcamps and similar rather than the existing Q&A widget that seems forced. And perhaps imitation, or enhancement, is the sincerest form of flattery as at least one company is deploying company-specific alumni portals.

I don't think LinkedIn is two years past its sell-by date. It's very of the moment and, given its database, ripe for new extensions of the concept.

The more I learn about beer making, the more I learn I don't know. I first homebrewed about 8 or so years ago when I was living in San Francisco and probably made 6 or 8 batches total, all using malt extracts, before moving to Seattle. The Northwest is, arguably, craft and homebrewing nirvana and since moving here in 2005, I've joined the American Homebrewers Association, graduated to the more complex brewing method, all-grain, for some of my batches, and averaged brewing up 4-5 batches a year. Extract brewing uses pre-constituted liquid malt made from a combination of malted barleys. The brew day is shortened significantly by not needing to extract the sugars from the grain. There is a mostly friendly debate among the homebrew community about which method produces the better finished product. I'll leave that one to the more knowledgeable folks for now.

And so the learning has begun in earnest. One of the most important facets of brewing that I've learned is the value of keeping a log of what you've done so you can replicate, tweak, or if necessary trash a given recipe or procedure. I hope to use this space for some of the record keeping as well as to solicit info, advice, and suggestions from those more in the homebrew know-how than me.

My latest batch is my first in a scaled down quantity -- 2 gallons, rather than the standard 5-gallon homebrew batch. I did this so I can test some secondary fermentation additions without (potentially) screwing up a big batch. Plus, my brew day wound up being a bit shorter since my wort came to a boil and later cooled down fairly rapidly as I was working with 40% of the usual volume. So far, so good.

The basic ingredients for beer are four: malted barley, water, yeast, and hops. The photo above is what's known as the mash stage. Hot water has been added to crushed grain to release the sugars, add color and some flavor. After an hour of steeping the grain is rinsed and the liquid collected, called the wort, is boiled to break down the proteins. During the boil, hops are added for aroma, bitterness, and flavor. Once the boil is completed, the wort is cooled to a temperature that will be hospitable to the yeast. The yeast eats the collected sugars converting them to alcohol. Voilà, beer. Below is a shot of my fermenting wort; pretty dark as there was plenty of brown and chocolate malts in the grain bill.

In late May, it was international news that Twitter helped a photographer get out of jail. Yesterday, it was cops and robbers -- literally -- outside the office of my former employer, where the endgame of a bank heist/cop chase played out. Two old coworkers were tweeting the action and posting photos to Brightkite (read from the bottom up as feeds are stacked chronologically, latest entry on top).

The latest outlet for the Project (RED) AIDS-in-Africa support organization has been announced: a music-driven monthly subscription. The details were widely reported yesterday: for $5 per month, a weekly "newsletter" will be distributed including two DRM-free MP3s and a third piece of "surprise" content. Half of the monthly subscription revenue will be donated to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. But the $64,000 (or, as Project (RED) hopes, much, much more) question is, will it work?

It seems to me the two biggest obstacles will be the availability of quality content and the portability of that content. Can I get the same songs offered from (RED) elsewhere? And do I have to be chained to computer to hear my music, or can I burn to a CD or transfer it to a portable music player. When mentioned at all, music subscription services are faintly praised, and at that only when people aren't busy downloading music illegally or purchasing individual tracks or entire albums perfectly legitimately. The primary complaint is that music purchased honorably isn't always compatible with the purchaser's portable music player of choice. In other words, iPod owners have to go through hoops to play some purchased music on their white-headphoned toys, if they can get the music to play at all. WMA files - until yesterday the format of choice Rhapsody and Napster -- won't play on iPods.

The category leader in the music subscriptions solar system is likely Real Networks' Rhapsody program that has in the neighborhood of 1.8 million subscribers. (The company's Q1 2008 Consolidated Statement of Earnings claims 1.875 million "consumer music subscribers" that includes the company's Rhapsody, Rhapsody-to-Go, premium radio and music-on-demand offerings.) I couldn't tell you how many (RED) t-shirts the Gap has sold to date, but undoubtedly (RED) Music would turn cartwheels to obtain anything in the vicinity of 2 million subscribers.

Rhapsody monthly subscription prices are $12.99 for the non-portable (listen on your computer only) offering or $14.99 for Rhapsody-to-Go. These prices entitle you to a library of 4 million tracks. And just yesterday, Real Networks announced that DRM-free MP3s will be available, so going forward you will be able to use Rhapsody purchases on your iPod. Project (RED)'s new initiative won't be burdened by this stumbling block as they are starting out by delivering DRM-free content. A desktop application will deliver the selected (RED) tunes.

And therein may lie the rub. The bigger hurdle for RED will be selection quality and, arguably at some point, quantity. To paraphrase a dot-com slogan from my previous life, portable, player-agnostic content will be king. (RED) Music, or whatever the program will be called -- (RED) Works was bandied around at one point -- will need to insure the weekly newsletters are something special and not what can be found in iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster for pay...or Soulseek, Limewire or another peer-to-peer vehicle for free.

Initially, Don MacKinnon, President of (RED) Content will serve as your virtual DJ. MacKinnon is a long-time music entrepreneur, founder of the Hear Music shops that Starbucks bought to become part of the Starbucks Entertainment offerings. He's responsible for such blockbusters as the Ray Charles' "Genius Loves Company" and the popular "Artist's Choice" compilations where musicians like Sheryl Crow and the Rolling Stones put together mix CDs of favorites and influences. Music is an extremely personal pursuit for many of us and we like to be our own editor. It feels that at some point, no matter how inspired MacKinnon's choices are or how many recalcitrant musicians Bono can arm-bar into contribution, some sort of MP3 vault will need to be developed for separate purchase.

Top-flight names including Emmylou Harris, Death Cab for Cutie, Elvis Costello and (RED) co-founder Bono's side project, U2, have promised to devote new material to the service. But Ben Gibbard will be riding in a water taxi on the Styx long before the (RED) library reaches the 4 million song threshold of Rhapsody.

Admittedly, it's too early to judge. There's no indication yet whether or how (RED) Music non-charter subscribers will be able to get past newsletter offerings, or if there is any sort of song library in the works. From a purely mercenary perspective, a minimum of 8 songs per month for $5 is one of the best for-pay MP3 deals going, nearly half as much as the standard $0.99 per song on most major MP3 sites. Throw in the soft benefit of feeling like you're doing good without lifting a finger (well, just to click on the each new weekly newsletter) and (RED) Music seems to be in good stead. And, really, would you bet against Bono?