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Happy 8th Birthday Twitter – will you please grow up?

Jeromey Balderrama

Twitter turned eight years old yesterday and offered folks the opportunity to go down memory lane and see their first Tweet.  Over 7 years later, mine is pretty terrible:

I first heard about Twitter through the Boagworld Web Design Podcast, where it was described to me as a networking tool that enables you to keep tabs on acquaintances, with the home page of Twitter asking “What are you doing?” I spent my first few months on Twitter answering that question every time.  Over time my usage of Twitter has changed from being a semi-anonymous brain dump of my rants and ravings (that is until my friends and family discovered the service), to now being a platform for anything I think is remotely clever.  Twitter has also become invaluable when it comes to gaging immediate reactions to any events, having conversations with mutual followers who share my same interests, as well as breaking news in things that I care about.

Out of all the social networks I use (and there’s been many of them over the years), Twitter has been the one that has been most integrated into my daily life.  Every day I have Twitter open in the background on my computer, and Twitter is 2nd on my list of apps that I go to when I have a few minutes to kill on my phone (Instagram is currently the first, but that’s another story).  When Lent came up, giving up Facebook was a realistic option, but it would be a real struggle for me to give up Twitter.  I have a lot of stake in Twitter and want to see it succeed.

That said, Twitter needs to grow the hell up and remember when it came from.

Two weeks ago, MetroTwit, my favorite Twitter client shut themselves down because they became too popular for Twitter.  Back in 2012, Twitter imposed a stupid 100,000 limit against other people’s clients.  Imagine discovering an awesome local band, but when they finally get some exposure and explode in popularity, you’re not allowed to listen to them anymore.  This is essentially what Twitter’s imposed on clients.  If you find an awesome client on your phone, tablet or computer, you better hope you discovered them early, otherwise you’re not going to get much usage.

Twitter is obviously doing this to discourage developers from releasing clients, and driving people to their own official app.  I can appreciate that, and realize that Twitter is a business that needs to make revenue.  The problem is that Twitter didn’t even have official apps when they started and built their popularity on the backs of the very developers that they’re not stabbing.

As I mentioned above, the way I consume Twitter has changed over the year, and it was through some of these apps that inspired this behavior.  Digsby taught me to read Twitter from top to bottom and taught me to read Twitter in a linear fashion, starting 100 posts back and catching up.  MetroTwit was one of the last desktop clients that had the “timeline stays in same position when refreshes”, allowing you to catch up.

This is even more evident in the mobile space, where the Twitter is even more limited. A few months back I moved away from Twicca (which is a great Android App) over to Tweetings , which is a very attractive client.  It’s only a matter of time that a client this awesome will become too popular for it’s own good, and Tweetings will need to raise their price to something outrageous to try to curb development.

Twitter’s definitely entitled to make money, but they’re going about this all wrong.  I’m sure if they imposed a modest fee to exceed the the 100,000 limit, clients can pass that over to their users.  They could require that these clients maintain Twitter’s ad stream. There are a ton of possibilities when it comes to playing together nicely, yet Twitter imposes these draconian policies that make no sense.

So happy birthday Twitter, here’s to maturing.

Friday Tech Roundup: Windows 8.1, Vine’s Crash & Burn, Creative Cloud Fail

Jeromey Balderrama

So Microsoft released a preview of Windows 8.1 on Wednesday, and of course my bleeding edge heart was quick to install it on two of my computers.  I made the mistake of and ignored the warning against installing it on my work computer. I learned the hard way that Enterprise Edition requires the CD to upgrade (as I think it takes you to Professional Edition), and I ended up having to reinstall all of my software, but at least it was a good opportunity to have a clean slate.  My regular edition of Windows 8 upgraded just fine, with everything in tact.

I don’t know how, but Microsoft managed to make the Start Screen worse. When they announced it was a button, I realized that they were not bringing the menu back, but it still seems like the interface was hacked together. at the last minute. When I set up my desktop, I like to put my taskbar on the top of the screen, yet there’s no way to configure the start menu to come in from anywhere but the bottom.  Now I have start buttons in two corners of the screen, basically eliminating the quick-switch on the upper left hand corner.  However, in re-sorting all of my programs, so that my desktop that was previously out of the left hand side, it’s all the way to the right.  It just seems pretty half-baked.  At least you can boot directly to the desktop now, and the people at StarDock have already released a beta version of Start8 that restores the functionality I’ve enjoyed.  Start8 was still the best $5 I’ve ever spent. I’m looking forward to playing with 8.1 some more to see what else they’ve (hopefully) improved.

 

I took my first Instagram video this evening, and the interface was awesome.  Pretty much the only feature that I’m missing from Vine is the ability to embed videos in other web pages (like my blog), but that should only be a matter of time.  You can tell Vine is in a panic mode, even before this story about Vine shares plummeting since InstaVine showed up last week.  They’re backed into a corner, and are swinging in every direction, pushing out 2 updates in the same week after not pushing out for three weeks they were released their Android version.  I’m not sure what Vine can do to save themselves at this point, except for making their app experience more compelling than Instagram.  Maybe they can be the first ones to introduce the novel concept of allowing people to mute videos on playback. I still believe that Vine’s demise is the result of a repressed desire to have a quality video app on Android.

 

Well that was quick, Adobe’s vaunted new Creative Cloud  has already been pirated. I thought one of the benefits of their rental-only model was that it would curb piracy, but it doesn’t appear to be the case.  I despise Creative Cloud, and it’s not because I support piracy or fear the future – but rather that it takes away Adobe’s incentive to improve their software, no longer compelling you to buy the next version.  Subscription services like Creative Cloud (and Office 365 similarly) are to software what “Green” is to company revenues: it’s about making money while trying to appear forward-thinking.  Software manufactures are enticed by the constant revenue streams these rental models provide. As they project revenue, they can count on your $50 per month regardless of whether they put out good releases that month or not.  They can talk all they want about how this enables them to continue to push out constant updates, but in reality it’ll allow them to grow complacent and justify replacing innovative updates with incremental bolt-tightening updates.  The worst part about is is that you can spend $600 over a year and should you decide to cancel your account, you have nothing to show for it.  At least when you bought the software, you have an (albeit outdated) version that you own.

The Superman we finally deserve

Jeromey Balderrama

They cracked the code, my friends. They finally have made a Superman movie that pays homage to the most classic of super heroes.  They finally made Superman right, making him a compelling character through an entertaining movie.

As a comics fan, Superman is a tough book to read (and I can only imagine writing him must be just as difficult).  Here you have a character from another time.  Many things don’t hold up well after 75 years, and at times Superman is hard.  Despite multiple reboots, modernizing of origins, various weaknesses introduced: most writers aren’t able to make Supes a compelling character in the 21st century.

I was too young to watch the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, so my first cinematic exposure to the Man of Steel was in Superman Returns in 2006: an awkward movie that seemed like it was paying homage to those 80’s movies rather than defining the next chapter. A reboot was all but necessary.

This movie accomplished what it needed to: make this invulnerable Boy Scout of a super hero relatable to use us mere mortals. They went ahead and leaned on two excellent angles: seeking purpose in your life, as most of us at one point or another have figuratively wandered around asking “why am I here?”. The second angle was the “father and son” angle, the sacrifices made by both his biological and adoptive father. A line that tugged at my heartstrings when Kevin Costner told young Clark Kent “You are my son”. I wasn’t adopted, but I can imagine the empathy that could have been felt during that conversation.

I realize that people were bothered by the gratuitous level of destruction, but given that you’re dealing with someone who is extremely powerful and invulnerable, the stakes of danger need to be pretty high. Even though I’m not a fan of destruction for destruction’s stake, I’ll give the writers a pass on this.

Overall, this movie has won over the casual comics fan, and perhaps even the casual fan into the DC movie universe, accomplishing something that Green Lantern wasn’t able to do. I do however remain skeptical that an Avengers-like Justice League movie will be able to happen. Even though it sort-of works in the comics, I don’t see Superman and Batman being able to exist in the same cinematic universe. Batman is my favorite super hero, but I don’t see him being able to stand up to this version of General Zod. I realize that a different version of Batman is going to exist in this Justice League version, but it’s going to have to be a pretty stark departure from Christopher Nolan’s interpretation.

A few other random thoughts:

  • Amy Adams was a great Lois Lane. Lois Lane is one of those characters that has a tough time holding up: from damsel in the wrong place at the wrong time, but rather someone who is capable who can help Superman out as well
  • I loved the depiction of the origin story, the jumping around during Clark’s first thirty years and giving relevant glimpses, rather than the standard chronological format that’s been done so many times before
  • I hate to sound insensitive, but I guess we’re officially far away from 9/11 that aircraft flying buildings (or buildings just collapsing) is now acceptable. It’s not just this movie, it happened in Star Trek as well. I’m not sure what the Man of Steel folks were thinking, but seeing Lawrence Fishburne running away from a collapsing was pretty chilling.

What did you think of the movie? Would you want to see a sequel? Are you bought into the DC Universe?

Star Trek: Into Cannon Darkness

Jeromey Balderrama

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

startrek

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big closet Star Trek fan, but with the baby on the way it took a little more than a week to get into theaters and fulfill my Trekie obligation of seeing Into Darkness.  I left the movie mostly satisfied, but came to a realization: this movie is really tied down by mythos and cannon, and it definitely got in the way of the story.

I’ll admit that I was pretty excited to think that they were going to do a “Khan” story. I have a soft spot in my heart for “alternate histories” (a la the Age of Apocalypse, the New 52, or even Yesterday’s Enterprise), and I thought it would be interesting to see how Khan would be developed in this post-Vulcan Trek universe.  However it became pretty apparent that in the writers room went something like this:

“Ok, we’re going to remake the Wrath of Khan.”

“Wait a minute, who said we were going to remake the movie? I thought that we were telling a new story!”

“No, we are, but people expect to see Wrath of Kahn, so I made this list of nostalgic things from the Wrath of Khan that we need to see in this movie.  Let’s put these things in the movie – this is where we want to end up. Now figure out how we get there.”

“…”

I’m sure the remake checklist had the following items in it:

  • Someone needs to scream “KHHAAAAAAN!”
  • Spock Kirk needs to die, let’s get in the “needs of the many” line
    • In fact, let’s make sure the death involves getting the mains back on line
    • Also let’s get Scotty there talking about radiation flooding
  • Lets get 2 Marcus’ in there: Carol and preferably the son, but if the son’s not available – then her dad.
  • Don’t forget Section 31, because they weren’t so secret after all.

They started there, then filled in the blanks to round out the story, counting how many times they can wink to the audience with mentions of Harry Mudd and Tribbles.

Look, I appreciate the callbacks.  The older (and more married) I get, the less opportunities I have to watch Star Trek, so I love opportunities to geek out. That said: you can talk about “a reboot” all you want, but Star Trek now has even more baggage than ever.  At least before they had to worry about the mythos and history of Trek, but now they need to figure out how they can recycle the same stories and keep the interest of all the Trekies.  You’re letting it get in the way of good story-telling, and before you know it you’ll accomplish the very thing you wanted to avoid with a reboot – alienating casual fans. Right now I’m dreading the “Genesis” references that the next movie will bring.

Trek writers & producers: please don’t worry about ruining my childhood. Through Netflix and my DVD collection, I can go relive those moments when I yearn for nostalgic Trek. Instead, just write a good story. Use some or even no past Trek characters, but if you’re looking for somewhere to begin: start with a compelling villain.

In Loving Memory

Jeromey Balderrama

rocky

Sad news was delivered to us on our last morning in Seattle when we got word that Rocky – Bethany’s beloved brother – had tragically died in a house fire while visiting a friend in Canada.

To say this was a complete shock would be an understatement, and we are definitely in grief over the loss a dear brother, father, son, uncle and friend.  Those who knew Rocky can attest to his kind soul and adventurous spirit.  Rocky definitely lived life to the fullest and lives a big void in all of our lives.

As I mentioned, we received word early in the morning, hours from setting sail for the last segment of our trip: our cruise to Alaska.  After much contemplation, discussion and consideration: we decided that given Rocky’s sense of adventure, he would have wanted us to continue on this cruise – so here we are, along with Bethany’s dad and step-mom.  This ship has definitely taken on some heavy hearts, but we are dedicating our adventures and discoveries to him this week, sharing many memories, raising some toasts and shedding some tears.  We feel Rocky’s presence with us, but also look forward to going home and joining our family and friends in the celebration of his life.

We are very touched to have received so many kind works through email, text, phone and Facebook.  We’re sorry that we cannot respond, as we have limited phone and internet reception, but please know that your words are received by needing hearts.

I’ll continue to blog about our adventures from this our trip.  We’re getting the opportunity to see and do a lot of incredible things, and we remember that Rocky was never one to pass up and adventure.  However, I’ll dedicate the rest of my posts on the trip to his spirit, and hope to continue to honor his memory in channeling his love for life.

God bless you Rocky. We love you and miss you greatly.