Is is Better to Be Hated or Popular?

Luckily, Facebook doesn't have to choose. It's both. This is on the heels of a report that their customer satisfaction ranking is below that of the IRS. They can take some small solace in the fact that they beat out MySpace by a point.

But, one has to wonder, what the future of social networks are if folks are that are so unsatisfied by their membership in a free club? Perhaps most Facebook users have arrived at the crossroad of Hype and Reality and find Reality to be the better road to take. I was not much convinced about the value of Facebook in my life and only grudgingly joined. 

My profile is as locked down as I can make it, and only a handful of friends have made it into my network. The UI, which was already chaotic to begin with, has only grown increasingly cluttered and overly busy - perhaps designed for a target demographic other than me... but nonetheless it lacks friendly customization features that can attract and hold members across all demographics. But most importantly, I find the causal dismissal of the importance of someone else's privacy to be somewhere between appalling and unnerving. Or maybe both.

It's time for Facebook to wake up, look in the mirror and decide if it wants to grow up. If so, it needs to take itself more seriously if it wants to continue to expand. It is only possible to do that if you hang onto the folks you have. Facebook is going to need to focus on servicing all of it's members all the way from 13 to 83.

Facebook, you don't know best - your customers do. So start asking them what they need and want and get them involved in your development process - before you don't have them anymore.

Curing Cancer, One Computer at a Time

I know a lot of people who leave their computers on for most of the day, or sometimes around the clock. They like the convenience of being able to walk up to it and instantly be productive. Or, perhaps they use their desktop computer at a media server, etc. That typically is just a waste of power most of the time. So, if you are one of those people, how about you take a look at the World Community Grid project. 

The software program called BOINC allows your computer to participate in distributed computing - break up a very large problem or problems into pieces and have thousands or millions of computers work on it in sections. Normally, this would be a problem that you might give to a super computer. That can be very expensive and difficult to schedule.

Instead, projects such as Clean Energy, Curing Muscular Dystrophy and Curing Cancer can get resources from groups of folks or individual volunteers all over the world. All you are giving up is a little CPU time on your side. The client itself is easy to install and configure. The sign-up process - well, just make sure you are a little bit patient and feel rather inquisitive when you make the choice to move forward. It's a multi-part process that sometimes can make you feel lost. However, if you persevere, the installation itself is easy as pie.

Once you've been running, you also can see your statistics on-line and how you are contributing to the effort. For example, I've been running this since late June and have returned 510 results. That's good enough to rank me at 109,000th. Ok, so it's not that great in context, but I feel like it is helping - and what's wrong with that? :-)

The Week in Apple

It seems like I saw an article about Apple every day this week on a different topic. On Monday, Information Week called Apple out on being the worst in security.  On Tuesday, Apple was still battling Psystar who attempted to create lower cost Mac computer. Wednesday showed some good news with Millenial Media reporting Apple at a 56% share of the smartphone marketplace based on ad views. Thursday Apple released iOS 4.01 for the iPhone 4 plus iPad OS 3.2.1.

Finally, we come to Friday and the mea culpa that wasn't. It probably wasn't the apology that everyone was hoping for, though according to the reports, Jobs did apologize a few times in there. But to those who are having an issue now, there's no immediate fix - nor any promise of a case free future. There has also been a lot of skepticism about the videos they showed with other smart phones doing the same thing. I was skeptical as well.

Distributed Teams Need Face Time

I've been managing a project/software development team for about six months now. While software development can be tricky in the easiest of times, we have certain challenges with our team which include having team members who are spread out across the country.

Beyond the normal time zone challenges that obviously occur, it is difficult to make sure that information flows and that folks can and do work together appropriately. We have struggled with these challenges since project inception and so I thought that it was time to take the time and invest in the expense to bring everyone together. 

iPhone 4.0 Camera Goes Big

In cameras, megapixels matter. But, there is a lot more to the story than that. There focal depth, pixel size and so on make a tremendous difference. One of the iPhone 4 cameras is a 5 megapixel device. And it is pretty amazing. I'm no photographer, but I have wanted to be able to take photos on my phone that I'm not ashamed of. I now can.

The above photo was taken in a small cafe - it was the centerpiece on the table. The color range is fantastic and the detail is quite good too. This image is completely un-retouched.

Flash Equipped
Another huge improvement is the fact that there is now an LED flash built in. It can be set to On, Off or Auto. This means that you can still take photos in all sorts of lighting that you wouldn't be able to in the past. At the right is a photo taken in very low light, but yet the flash provided great fill light.

In addition, you can also run the flash a light during video recording sessions. Did I mention video?

Video Goes HD
The iPhone 4 can now record high-definition video at 720p. The quality is fantastic for such a small, portable device. I'm not actually going to link to video here, but I will say that being able to shoot video, edit it with iMovie on the iPhone and post it directly to YouTube is likely going to usher in a massive influx of video from a lot of people, at a lot of places.


Screen-tastic
What ties all of this media together is the fact that the image quality on the screen has increased dramatically. The Retina display provides an immensely gratifying experience when you are taking video, shooting still photos or just using the device. 

I tip my hat to Apply on this one.

Here at Last! The iPhone 4 is Here at Last!

With all of the problems on Apple and AT&T's sites on June 15th, I missed my chance to make the first cut of orders. By the time I was finally able to get my order in, the ship date was already pushed back to July 2nd rather than the launch date of June 24th. Much to my surprise, my phone shipped on June 24th with an arrival date of June 29th. 

It indeed appeared on June 29th, but it took quite a circuitous route to get here - it had to travel 9,914 miles to get to me. Inexplicably, once it hit the U.S. and cleared customs it was routed through Indianapolis. I'd have to think that, living in the L.A. area, there was a more efficient route. But as it arrived on schedule I can't complain.

And what are my thoughts? It seems to me that the device has gone significantly upmarket in the materials and construction. This is a very good thing! While the device is 4 grams heavier than my iPhone 3G, it is still slimmer and feels much more solid. 

The speed is tremendously improved over the 3G. It feels like a tiny little iPad in terms of speed and capability, rather than just a tiny phone. I already had iOS 4 for a few days on my 3G so I was already familiar with that. However, the coolest thing about this device is that I was able to shoot a quick video, edit it with iMovie for the iPhone and upload it to YouTube. This is a shocking amount of power, flexibility and functionality in a hand-held device. 

I'm sure there are going to be quite a few more things I'll find and want to write about, but for now, I have some serious playing to do.