Desert island

I'm taking Music 100 to satisfy a Fine Arts core requirement. I wasn't expecting much. On the first day of the class, the professor asked everyone to name one album they would take with them if they were trapped on a desert island, and the answers were, well, embarrassing. I wrote down the names of the bands that were mentioned.

• Dave Matthews
• Linkin Park
• Rise Against
• "Death metal
• Pearl Jam
• "Musical soundtracks
• Maroon 5
• "Guitar Hero III"
• Lamb of God
• Jack Johnson
• The Eagles
• "A mix CD" (that's cheating)
• Prodigy
• Jack Johnson (again)
• Lil' Wayne
• Jack Johnson (again again)
• 'N Sync
• Spamalot soundtrack
• Across the Universe soundtrack
• Dave Matthews (again)
• Across the Universes soundtrack (again)

Seriously.

In the class's defense, there were a couple people who named Radiohead, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and a few other notables, including one kid who dropped Daft Punk's Alive 2007 and instantly became my new best friend. The professor chose The Beatles' "The White Album."

Shine a light

Making things green and sustainable is usually an expensive process, but in some cases, the price of technology is dropping so quickly that it’s actually more cost-effective. LEDs are a good example.

I was an intern at the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation a couple summers ago, and one of the projects they undertook was replacing the incandescent bulbs of their streetlights with LED bulbs. (For some reason, the state parks system owns streetlights in Boston.) Even with the cost of installation and new materials, the agency’s electricity bill was reduced so dramatically that it made a return on its investment within the year.

There are other advantages to LEDs. For one, they last longer, which cuts down on the manpower and time to replace burnt out bulbs. Also, LEDs burn out slowly rather than going out completely, which is much safer when used in traffic lights.

Why isn’t every city doing this?

Currently, New York is testing LEDs, and even considering a redesign of the pole. NYTimes.com's Bits blog has a good summary of the advantages:

Not only will the city reduce its power usage 25 to 30 percent, but the bulbs will last 50,000 to 70,000 hours. Today’s sodium lamps are rated at 24,000 hours, which means at that point half of them are dead. The L.E.D. life rating actually means that the bulb will drop below 70 percent of its original brightness after 50,000 hours or so.

Some critics complain that LEDs don’t have the warm glow of an incandescent bulb. Whatever. It still might be a few years until LEDs become inexpensive enough to light our homes, but in the meantime, there’s no reason they shouldn’t light our streets.

Blackberry vs. iPhone, in the office

Ars Technica, my favorite tech-related news source, ran a sharp piece by Don Reisinger titled "How RIM Can Stop the iPhone Onslaught." The headline is on the emphatic side, but the point is clear: will businesses swap their Blackberrys for iPhones?

People who know me recognize my affinity for Apple products, but it’s not an allegiance. I just think that in many areas Apple makes the best tech goods. But here, I think RIM is positioned to make the better smartphone for businesses.

Apple’s main, built-in audience is consumers of personal electronics. They’ve captured that market pretty handily (people are still trying to make "iPod killers"), and expansion into enterprise is a new but inevitable step. The recent introduction of enterprise-focused features on the iPhone, namely interfacing with Microsoft Exchange, shows that Steve Jobs is edging into RIM’s market.

But unlike the iPhone, the Blackberry isn’t designed to be fun. It’s designed to be serious.

I think RIM has potential to better satisfy enterprise needs, and not just because it uses a physical QWERTY keyboard (though that’s important too). Every model of the Blackberry is geared specifically for businesses, which allows the experience to remain (excuse the pun) strictly business.

If RIM keeps their products focused, it’ll force consumers to answer a single question when they go smartphone shopping: business or pleasure?

This will drive a hard wedge into Apple’s ability to penetrate the enterprise market.

What Reisinger understands is that while RIM has several key advantages – physical keyboard, battery life, carrier independence – future versions of the Blackberry will have to innovate to keep up with the iPhone. American companies often create a winning product and sit on it for years. Tech companies are notorious for letting their breadwinners go obsolete (cough, Palm Pilot).

Reisinger’s best suggestion is for RIM to open a competing App Store. It’ll be hard to beat Apple’s software user experience, especially with iTunes integration, but I don’t think it’s asking too much to offer a worthy rival.

Hopefully, RIM doesn’t innovate in the wrong direction either. Matching Apple’s "fun" features toe to toe, RIM doesn’t stand a chance and, even worse, will worsen the user experience in places where the Blackberry already succeeds. (Another common misstep: more features means better product.)

I think the Blackberry is still at a huge advantage in the workplace. It’s got a QWERTY keyboard (not as sexy as touchscreen typing, but far more efficient), a loyal base of customers (Crackberry addicts), and most importantly, an association with business itself. As popular as the iPhone is for the college-aged, I see as many students with new Blackberrys, usually in the hands of business majors and other kids "serious" about their career.

Admittedly, I’ve spent more time with the iPhone than the Blackberry, but really, that says more about me than the smartphones.

A fear of Spanish

In yesterday’s New York Times, Sam Roberts wrote a piece titled "In a Generation, Minorities May Be the U.S. Majority." Nothing grabs people’s attention like the threat of foreign invasion.

The Census Bureau projects that by 2050, there will be more non-whites in the U.S. than whites. The cause is not an increase in immigrants, but higher birth rates among immigrants.

For some reason, this drives people crazy. Personally, I don’t believe that the average American is too racist to deal with a non-white majority. (This could be true though; I’m just giving people the benefit of the doubt.) Instead, I think they’re just afraid that Spanish will become the official language of the United States.

And really, who wants to learn a foreign language?

Of course, I doubt the U.S. will ever be a Spanish-dominated country. Sure, you can push the number 2 on your touch-tone phone for a Spanish menu, but this is an accommodation, not a linguistic takeover. Everybody calm down.

This prediction by the Census Bureau supports my point. We’ll see an increase in immigrant births rather than aliens. Minorities born, raised, and educated in the United States learn English. They want to and, more importantly, have to. This should be compelling reason to naturalize immigrants and give them a fair place in our school system.

Somewhat ironically, the same folks who fear the immigrant population most are also the same people attempting to limit their upward mobility. Much of it has to do with the way articles like this are phrased, which I can’t stand. Even by these projections, whites will still make up 46% of the country, with the Hispanic population at 30%. I think it’s misleading to lump all minorities into a single category, because what that’s really saying is "non-whites will outnumber whites."

God forbid!

That, to me, is the most compelling evidence that people are still very uncomfortable with a little ethnic diversity.

I'm just saying there are similarities

Anyway, Sex Drive looks mediocre, but could be fun. Here's the trailer.

What Facebook teaches me about language

I learned the difference between the words "quote" and "quotation" last night. As it turns out, quote should be used solely as a verb, while quotation is a noun. So you couldn’t have a Kanye West quote, but you could quote him. More specifics here.

This is one of those common misusages that has now become accepted, similar to the way octopi is now an acceptable plural for octopus.

I noticed this only because Facebook changed the Favorite Quotes field in their user profiles to Favorite Quotations. This reveals that I either have an eye for detail or just spend too much time on Facebook.

Still, I think Facebook reveals some discussion-worthy issues with the English language.

Another problem the site has confronted is the grammatical person. The issue stems from users who don’t define their gender, which forces the Mini-Feed to report, "Sally Shapiro posted new photos in their album Drunk Party Photos Part 10." This is grammatically incorrect. Even though "they" is gender-neutral, usage is strictly for the plural third person, not singular. Wikipedia documents the trouble in full. The right way would be to say, "Sally Shapiro posted new photos in his/her album," but of course, this looks silly.

Recently, I had a long, nerdy conversation about the development of language and the need for a singular third-person pronoun, even if that meant inventing one. Some writers, most notably Steven Levitt of the Freakonomics blog, default to "she" rather than "he/she." It’s not a bad alternative, but I think we can come up with a better answer. We also have to consider the movement of people who don’t want to specify a gender.

Anyway, back to Facebook. The site has over 80 million users worldwide, and if Zuckerberg and Co. implemented a new singular third-person pronoun – and it really doesn’t matter what that word is – they could have a hand in the way the English language evolves. It's hard to deny that the internet won't have a major effect on how we write and speak in the future.

Hopefully it’s the influence of Facebook rather than this site.

Emails from the (somewhat) famous

I have, on occasion, sent email to moderately famous people. I know, it sounds a bit like writing letters to a movie star.

Last week, I sent an email to The New York Times personal tech columnist David Pogue detailing my experiences with Cuil. Pogue is a great writer known for his good-natured, dorky sense of humor. I figured that the story would amuse him. He replied:

weird!
---
David Pogue
Tech Columnist, The New York Times
www.davidpogue.com
www.missingmanuals.com

He’s probably the kind of guy who responds to all of his email.

Earlier this semester, my International Political Economy professor said that Robert Gilpin established the hegemonic stability theory and invented the Peanut M&M. This fact tickled me--maybe I couldn’t decide which achievement was greater--so I sent him an email for confirmation.

I understand that Raymond Vernon, associated until his death some years ago with Harvard University, was the originator. RGG

I didn’t have the heart to tell my prof that he was wrong.

In high school, I took an Intro to Psychology class that I loathed. My teacher mainly used a video lecture series by Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist best known for the Stanford Prison Experiment. His videos were pretty tacky, and since I was in high school, I thought it would be hilarious to send him an email. My sarcasm-drenched message “complimented” Zimbardo’s lectures and talked about the textbook we were using in class.

His response:

kevin
thanks for your supportive note
Makes me glad I did that series

Regards to your teacher

But your teacher should be using one of my textbooks which are both great
Psychology and Life, 17th ed, Allyn & Bacon Pub
or
Core Concepts in Psychology, 5th ed. Allyn & Bacon.
Ciao,
Phil Zimbardo

I bet Stanley Milgram would never be arrogant enough to recommend his own textbooks.

Cuil: Identity Crisis

There’s a lot of buzz about the launch of Cuil (pronounced "cool," ugh), a search engine by former Google folk. It’s attractive, but it does some strange things.

In a move of narcissistic predictability, I searched for my name in Cuil. I don’t know why I do that, because there are a number of people who share my name (which really has to do with the ubiquitous surname Nguyen). So, naturally, Cuil came up with hundreds of results, most of which were not me.

But what’s odd is the way it attributed the same photo to a handful of different Kevin Nguyens.

One of the first results is for a Kevin Nguyen who hosts a radio show on 90.1 FM The Sound. That’s definitely me, but that’s definitely not my photo.

I am way cuter.

On page two, there’s a Kevin Nguyen who swims at Cerritos College. Cuil uses the same picture, but when I click through to the site, it reveals an entirely different Kevin Nguyen.

The third page has a Vimeo user.

On the fourth page, the same photo links to a motorcycle enthusiasts group on Meetup.com (which cannot be found). This dude definitely cannot ride a motorcycle. Look at him again.

Page five features a doctor from Van Nuys, California. Six, a dude selling soybeans (broken). Seven, a poker player. Eight, spam. (My work on The Bygone Bureau doesn’t show up until page nine, but it’s the second result in Google.)

Aside from the fact that half the links I clicked through were broken, the photo of this one jerk has been prescribed to every single person on the internet with the name Kevin Nguyen. That's idiotic. There were also a disproprtionately high number of results from Meetup.com, Vimeo, and IMEEM.

I know hindsight is 20/20, but here’s the lesson to learn from Cuil: get your shit together before you launch. Or at least use my picture.

Way down in the Knol

On Wednesday, I linked to Knol on Bureaucracy:

It’s just like a Wikipedia, only with named author(s) for each article, meaning that you could probably cite it in a paper. Knol encourages authorship by sharing AdSense revenue with users. Also, you can insert cartoons from The New Yorker. That’s actually not a joke.

(That’s right, I’m quoting myself. Award me ten ego points.)

The central ideological difference between Wikipedia and Knol is that articles are penned by experts rather than relying on collective knowledge. Instinctually, it sounds like a more reliable system, but past studies have shown that Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.



Of course, this doesn’t stop us from digesting Wikipedia with cautious skepticism. I’ve heard of a handful of professors who’ve jumped on the wiki bandwagon and forced their class to create joint entries on course material. The idea is that each student can bring something new to the table and will collectively tweak the entry to perfection. What actually happens, though, is that the more capable students just end up re-writing everything. (When it’s for a grade, you can’t rely on anyone but yourself, right?)

So I welcome Knol as a competitor, even if Google claims it isn’t. As I said in my Bureaucracy blurb, I’m anxious for a Wikipedia-like resource that can be cited in academic writing. I use Wikipedia as a starting point for unfamiliar topics, but entries too frequently have missing citations, which can lead to a dead end in research. (Though I’ve always suspected that many teachers resent Wikipedia because it makes research too easy.)

There are many obstacles to Knol’s success. Wikipedia has millions of articles, and with the author verification process, Knol will never catch up. Wikipedia is also nonprofit, whereas Knol will be supported by Google AdSense. My biggest issue will be getting past the fact that Knol is short for "knowledge." Also, people forget that even Google is capable of producing a flop.

Google Video, anyone?

Knol also has a ways to go. For example, the site design, though slick, lacks organization. Try finding anything in the directory. Also, from what I've seen, articles lack the linkable footnotes of Wikipedia.

I think the most important development of Knol is Google’s shift from aggregating content to being a provider of content. Knol may or may not succeed, but it’s a sign of the direction Google is moving. That’s a little scary -- the same company controls what you read and how you find it.

Please, don’t be evil.

---

Some other related errata

• According to Ars Technica, Mahalo and Citizendium are similar concepts.
• Best comment on Bits’s write-up of Knol: "Knol has no information on Optimus Prime."
• The Wikipedia entry on Wikipedia. How postmodern!

Muphry's Law

Here's a great concept, not to be confused with Murphy's Law.

1. if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written;
2. if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
3. the stronger the sentiment expressed in (1) and (2), the greater the fault;
4. any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.

This is bound to bite me in the ass one day. When I'm not criticizing bad typography, I'm usually criticizing someone's writing. Then again, I've never been wrong about anything, ever.

And to hat-tip, I discovered this on neat blog called Language Log, which I immediately bookmarked. Don't miss the Muphry's Law Wikipedia entry.

Getting drafted

The new post revisions feature in Wordpress 2.6 allows users to compare previous versions of saved drafts. It's fantastic.

I do wish you could it would attribute changes by the user editing rather than the post author, but that's just a small gripe. Hopefully Wordpress keeps developing in a direction toward multi-author blogs. You still can't assign more than one author to a post, though.

Idea: Let's make useful iPhone apps

There are a bunch of nice tweaks in iPhone 2.0, and there’s a plethora of fun, free downloads on the new App Store. But other than maybe NetNewsWire, an RSS reader, there’s not much that’s useful yet. Here are some apps I would like to see:

Voicemail
One of the iPhone’s best features is visual voicemail, which allows you to see who called you and listen to messages in whatever order you please. You also don’t have to listen to an automated intro to each one. ("You. Have. Six. Teen. Messages.") It’s not complicated technology, and really, I think every cellphone should’ve had this feature five years ago.

For some reason, voicemail is still accessed by satellite rather than downloaded straight to the phone. Why? This means you can’t access voicemail when you’re out of service area, and as with all carriers, your messages get deleted after a certain period of time. Instead, voicemail stored on the device.

While I wait for that, I hope someone writes an app that allows you to save voicemail. I’m a strong proponent of never deleting anything, especially communications like email (Gmail users--hit archive, not delete!), so I’d like the ability to save voicemail messages on my computer. You may need them again someday.

Also, syncing voicemail with your computer would grant the ability to access messages from other places. Say you forgot your phone at home, and you were waiting for an important call. At least you could check your voicemail remotely.

Outpost
Nick and I manage The Bygone Bureau through Basecamp, which is an online project management service that I’ve complimented in the past. Without it, I don’t think we’d have had the same success or consistency with the Bureau.

That’s a long-winded way of saying that I’m excited about Outpost, which is an app with a Basecamp interface tailored for the iPhone. It’s not slated for release until August, but I’d rather have a polished copy than one rushed for the App Store launch. Being able to manage article edits and set deadlines when I’m not at a computer would be invaluable, rather than reminding writers via text message.

Outpost will also justify my owning an iPhone for reasons other than wanting to look pretentious.

Of course, Outpost’s usefulness, at least for me, is contingent on its ability to open Word documents. (I’m not sure how that’s handled on the iPhone, whether Mail and MobileSafari have exclusive system-level permissions to open them or if all apps can access that feature.) I emailed David Kaneda, one of the app's developers, who promptly and politely responded that they have not dealt with message attachments other than images yet. He also said that pricing is still to be determined, but will be under $20. If Outpost can open documents, that, to me, would be very fair price.

As for other Bureau-related tools, there’s a Wordpress app coming out soon, which, if well done, will be extraordinarily useful. I’d also like to see one for stats tracker Mint.

Games
I do wish I was able to play more videogames (it’s secretly killing me that I can’t play Metal Gear Solid 4 yet), but I’m not willing to drop $9.99 for Super Monkey Ball on the iPhone. All I really want is a good puzzle or word game, something more exciting than Bejeweled. The available offerings aren’t so bad. I considered a Sudoku game, and I could see myself buying EA’s Scrabble title if it didn’t have one fatal bug.

Even better than those would be an app with access to daily The New York Times crossword.

According to Ars Technica, the iPhone has roughly the same power has a Sega Dreamcast. I’m holding out for Metal Gear Solid on the iPhone. What? It could happen. Maybe not...

Fair airfare

I’m interning at an airline this summer, which has been called by some the "cushiest sounding job evah." I admit, it’s a pretty cool gig. Today, I learned about pricing airfare, which, especially now, is a very tricky topic.

It’s widely understood that airfare is under priced, given the rising fuel prices. The obvious answer is that airlines should adjust their fares accordingly.

It’s not that simple though.

What’s surprising is that raising fares doesn’t yield equal returns in revenue. Price increases have been modest to keep people buying, but it has encouraged flyers to redeem their earned miles, go after discounted fares, etc. Higher prices does increase revenue, just not at the magnitude airlines would expect.

The more predictable barrier is competition. Low-cost carriers are still fighting each other for territory. For many airlines, the game plan is to run their competition out of business, no matter the short-term losses. You don’t have to outrun the bear; you just have to outrun the other hiker. (Plus it’s a bear market... this pun is too good.)

Online travel services have also kept prices low. Many travelers don’t care when they fly out or what carrier they’re on and, understandably, go for the absolute cheapest fare. I know I do.

Sites like Expedia have made the pricing more transparent, which is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it encourages competition, and for the consumer, there’s nothing better; given the economic landscape, it’s forcing airlines to price aggressively when they should all be raising fares.

The end result? If airlines keep selling tickets that don’t cover their costs for long enough, we’ll see more of them go out of business. I’m predicting an industry-wide meltdown within the next year or two, and unless the government can support airlines with substantial subsidies (I’m not sure how possible that is), then we’re going to see major shrinkage in the flight.

And with fewer carriers and fewer routes, that’s going to mean a huge hike in prices—far greater than we’ve seen in decades. If we don’t start paying more now, we may not be able to fly as frequently in the future.

Foals at SP20

Seeing Foals at the second day of Sub Pop’s 20th Anniversary concert reiterated the lessons I’d learned from the first time I saw them live.

1. Twitching is an interesting alternative to dancing.


2. Jack Bevan is a kick ass drummer.


3. Foals is seriously dysfunctional.

SP20 had an efficient setup with acts alternating between two stages. When one band finished, the next began immediately after, and I don’t think a single set started more than five minutes after it was scheduled. Good for the audience, not so good for the bands, though. Since the stages were side-by-side, sound checks couldn’t be performed, causing almost every act was plagued with volume level issues.



During Foals’ opening number, "The French Open," the song’s most dramatic breakdown was made rather undramatic by a soft lead guitar. I don’t think anyone in the audience noticed except for me, but it bothered lead singer Yannis Philippakis enough to ram his guitar through an amplifier.

While stagehands assessed the damage, the band broke into an instrumental jam, which just goes to show how effortlessly the band can put together mathy dance-punk. Philippakis joked somewhat begrudgingly about how they had bad luck in Seattle, and even though he was moody, the crowd was rather receptive to his between-song banter. Maybe it was his British accent.

A song or two later, Jack Bevan (unintentionally) broke his snare drum beyond repair, and halfway through the set, guitarist Jimmy Smith (unintentionally) puked all over the stage.

But despite all the technical and behavioral difficulties, the performance was one of SP20’s best. In 40 minutes, they played most of Antidotes, the highlight being a ferocious new version of "Heavy Water" with an extended instrumental middle-section.

I saw Foals about a month ago at Neumos in Seattle when Philippakis broke two guitars and another amp. It’s sad to think that these guys probably won’t be together long enough to make a second album.

The headlining act was Wolf Parade, who were only supposed to play for 40 minutes but, luckily, were able to push it to an hour and a half. Most of the material was off their new album, At Mount Zoomer, rather than crowd favorites. I was pleasantly surprised they played "Kissing the Beehive," the awesome eleven-minute-long closer of Zoomer.

On blogging

I’ve decided to “refresh” my blog format in terms of both content and platform. My penchant for posting eccentric links has been satiated by the introduction of Bureaucracy, The Bygone Bureau’s new microblog.

Also, I’ve switched back to Blogger, which I haven’t used since early high school.

I have a long-term relationship with Wordpress (from way back when it was called b2/cafelog), mainly because the Bureau runs on it. In the past, I even had a fling with Movable Type before it became a sell-out. Blogger, though, is like first love—not perfect, but the one you never really get over.

Shortly after we parted, Blogger saddled up with Google. My account was still active, so I got an exclusive invite to the Gmail beta test, which, at the time, was a big deal. (Hotmail was the leading email provider, offering a pathetic two megabytes to Gmail’s gigabyte.) Invites were so precious that beta testers could even sell the three they received through an online bartering system (the name of which I now forget).

For my invites, I got a $50 gift certificate to Amazon and three CDs (The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free, the Walkmen’s Bows + Arrows, and a Von Bondies album I threw away).

But I owe a lot to Blogger. Though I never really wrote anything of worth in those days (most of it fortunately lost), having a well-designed outlet proved to be invaluable practice and an introduction to how the internet would revolutionize communication. I’ve been complimented on how efficiently I can write, but it’s not really a talent. I’ve just been writing consistently for years.

And of course, I got a head start on Gmail, the first truly powerful web-based email service. The one lesson that keeps getting reinforced in my life is that time management and quick, clear communication are the most important skills you can have.

On a similar note, Bows + Arrows is one of the few albums from high school that I still listen to.