jr conlin's ink stained banana

i have mixed feelings about phones in general. i fought against having one up until i pretty much didn't have a choice in the matter, and signed up for my first sometime in 1998. i've had the same number since then (which kinda speaks volumes about my general inertia when it comes to cell devices).

i suppose the biggest problem i tend to have with these things is the fact that you get a very expensive device, and are immediately goat-roped into a two year contract where you're pretty much stuck with it. That and the fact that most devices really weren't that good. There were a few reasonable starts (e.g. the Treo), but even those were plagued with weird issues that made them less useful than you'd prefer.

The last phone i had was pretty much a placeholder, a Helio Ocean. Bought with the clear knowledge that Helio was not long for this world, but figured i could use them to park my number for a while. Sure enough, it worked.

The modern world awaits me
So, in this world of modern devices, i had a choice. Apple, Windows or Android. Apple was out because my iPod Touch told me that their devices can be more than a little flakey and far more locked down than i'd prefer. Windows devices were out as well, mostly because they seem to be kind of stuck at the moment. Blackberry was definitely out because of my experiences with a work issued 8830.

That left Android, which meant either going with T-Mobile and getting the official Google Phone or someone else. As fate would have it, HTC released their latest Android just at the time i needed to move off of Helio Virgin Mobile Sprint. Thus the new toy.

Droiding Up
Having not really messed about much with Android before, i have to admit that it's pretty darn useful. The interface is fairly clean with only a few minor nits (e.g. i'd love to be able to "wake" the phone by pressing the optical mouse button rather than the top "power" button, and the practically sucks oils out of your fingers, but otherwise, it's a darn spiffy phone. i won't go into details about function and performance, since there are enough online reviews. No, this is about basically me using the thing.

First off, let me note that i have absolutely no problem with Verizon wireless customer support. They have been pretty top notch, including calling me on a Sunday to make sure that there wasn't a problem on their end transferring the numbers. On the opposite side of that is helio virgin wireless Sprint, which apparently not only things to be perfect, but also require you to swing the chicken at precisely 5° off access at 58.871 RPM, clockwise, so no, i still can't get calls with this phone. (i can make 'em just fine.)

The other important thing to note is that it's a really good idea not to have a slew of widgets running. Those seem to do really bad things to your battery (which is no real surprise when you think about it).

As for things running on the phone, they're all damn slick. Far slicker than i expected them to be, frankly. The browser renders damn fast and fairly accurately, and most of other programs also don't always look like they were roughly hewn from freshly forged java. The HTC music client is crap since it doesn't recognize all MP3s, but it's easy to replace that with other players. Heck, even spending money in the Market is painless, provided you've got a card registered with Google Wallet.

Plus there's fun little toy apps like Google Sky, Goggles, and the Barcode scanner, which let me do things like this. As a portable network device, i'd have to say that for me the Android wins.

Of course, i'm still going to use the iPod for podcasts for now, mostly because apple makes pretty good music devices. i'm probably not going to use it as a pocket net device as much, though. i'm also going to consider carrying around the Nikon for when i want to take high quality photos, but as for the phone of choice, i'm going to see if work will cover the data plan difference so i can ditch the work phone.

When one is running away, one must be mindful of the differences in "flee!". In order to aid in determining the proper form of panicky outcry, keep the following guidelines in mind:

Flee as in "BEAR!"
Oh God! A bear? In Here!? Is it rabid! i think it's rabid! Oh Hell, it's got Johnson! Run away while it's mouth is full! Wait, is that? Oh God! More Bears!

Flee as in "BREACH!"
What!? The dam has broken!? We're all going to die! Head to the hills! Run, for your lives! WHAT!? The reactor core shield has failed!? This can't be happening! See if you can lure the zombies that just broke through the barriers toward there to absorb some of the radiation! Save the women and children before the hull loses integrity!

We hope that this assists you in determining the proper distinction in apocalyptic outcries of anguish and in understanding it's role in everyday conversation.

i'm not terribly deep into OpenGraph, so there may be bits i'm missing. Still, things seem… oddly familiar.

So, if i understand the whole concept of OpenGraph is to add meta data onto a given web page. So you can take j-random page and add things like, title, site_name, type, url, and description. For example:
<meta property="fb:admins" content="12345678" />
<meta property="og:title" content="My Web Page" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Yet Another Blog" />
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://example.org/" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Random thoughts and observations" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.org/sample.jpg" />

Of, course, there's no reason you have to provide "accurate" information. You can use pretty much any value you want.
<meta property="fb:admins" content="117415311618936" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Happy Super Fun Rainbow Land" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Evilon Astick" />
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://evilonastick.com/" />
<meta property="og:description" content="A wonderful place full of happy kittens and overseas pharmacutecals" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://evilonastick.com/fb/eos_kitten.jpg" />


In fact, should you decide to visit Evilon Astick and look at the source, you'll see just that.

Should you decide to click on the "Like" button at the bottom, and add a "comment", you'll get the following on your Facebook page:

Honestly, this all seems… familiar.

In fact, if you go back and look at that page again, you'll see:
<meta name="keywords" content="sample,evil,sandbox,sock monkeys" />
<meta name="description" content="A playground full of evil things" />
<meta name="DC.title" content="Evil! On a Stick!" />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://evilonastick.com" />


Mind you, most of these ("canonical" is a pretty recent addition). Of course, there's also a reason that these are kind of ignored by most search engines, Spammers have used them to boost they're Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ratings by filling them with all sorts of junk. i honestly can't see where this will be any different. About the only difference is that posts only show up in folks Facebook news streams if they comment, but i don't see that as being a huge hurdle, or really that much more of an incentive. Again, i hope that facebook took precautions against clickjacking. Since they're running the "Like" button inside an embedded iframe, however, i'd be interested in seeing how they might dynamically check the parent opacity.

It's also nice that Facebook is planning on providing some additional information for all the new pages that decide to adopt this new structure, but i can't help think that with 10+ years of, well, existence, there's an awful lot of the web and various "Social Objects" that will never be part of this. i don't know if the current set of search engines and spiders will ever add OpenGraph to the content they're already parsing (one wonders that with the duplicate records, could a site with different data be penalized in some manner if those records differ in some form? Will high traffic sites really want to increase their bandwidth allocations to add the new content?

i'll probably add this for my personal sites, but mostly as a joke. Facebook is still very much a black hole as far as i'm concerned. i get little traffic from it and therefore little benefit. (Since i don't run ads, i consider discussion to be the most valuable element, and there still is no way for me to pull those elements of discussion back out of facebook easily, any discussion held there is lost to anyone without a Facebook account or who is not actively tracking those discussions.)

Wonder how long before OpenGraph becomes just as polluted as HTML Meta tags became?

i want you to do a few quick things. First, listen to the following (at least, the first four minutes, preferably, the first ten or so).

Feel free to listen to the rest of the RadioLab show if you want later. i'll wait 'til you come back.

Ah, good, there you are. Now, feel free to look over the following articles.

Much like how technology hasn't quite seeped into our chimp brain, i don't think that concepts like "Freedom" and "Privacy" really have sunk in for most folks yet either. Make no mistake, you'd notice in an instant if it was gone, right?

i'm not quite so sure about that either.

Right now, people are exchanging elements of their private information for gain. We're all aware of the threat of "Identity theft" and probably even know someone who's had their identity stolen in some way or another, but that still doesn't stop folks from handing it over to companies for no real reason. (Yes, i'm sure that Blippy will take steps in the future to solve the problem, but honestly, that's like saying "Well, the next cat won't get out of the bag as easily.")

Same with freedom. The internet works because it was built from the ground up not to rely on a single point. Spend any amount of time with any protocol and you'll see that same pattern over and over again. Even with DNS, the directory computers use to figure out who you want to talk to, things are designed so that nobody has complete control. What it does mean is that it takes a bit more work to get things working, but you really can't argue with the result. While your internet may be down, the actual internet has never fallen over.

So when i read things like what Facebook is proposing for centralizing identity on the web, i can't help but think that it's the complete opposite of how the web is supposed to work, and the problems that it presents.

See, Freedom generally isn't free. It involves effort. In an ideal world, we would each control our own identity, friends, activity streams, and content. Perhaps via an online presence we could buy like a domain. Yeah, it might require more effort than logging in to one site and growing virtual carrots, but then again, you got to do more to your car than just top off the tank every week too. (i'll add that some of the solutions i noted earlier aren't perfect either since they still rely on a single point of failure. Better solutions would establish a web of peers that could interchange information.)

i'm taking baby steps with some of this now. My "networking" page does a few of these, and i'm adding to them as i get time. (Heck, a fairly simple php script works as a personal "mini-fier" as well as a friendly bouncer to get you info about me.

Sadly, i have a feeling that i'm increasingly abnormal in these sorts of things.

Those of you for whom solid food was an option back in the 80's may remember when TCBY was "a big thing". The original idea was that it had "Less Fat and Great Taste! Plus free toppings!" Those free toppings included things like fresh berries and sliced almonds, but the big sellers were the hot fudge and busted up Butterfingers folks dumped on for "free".

About six years later, folks figured out that dumping that crap on top of the somewhat sour but still overly sweetened frozen desert wasn't really any better than getting a simple scoop of Double Dutch Fudge from Baskin & Robbins. The number of shops offering "healthy" frozen yogurt diminished to the handful you find in mostly abandoned shopping malls that still think it's the 80's. Ah, but everything old becomes new again, and once again the lands are blossoming with more freaking fro-yo shops than you could shake a ladle at.

This time, things seem to be strongly Asian influenced. You've got seriously Asian shops like Red Mango, which feature Green Tea, Mango and other flavors never imagined at i Can't Believe It's Yogurt. They also have the smallest "toppings" selections which leans more toward the fruit than Willy Wonka's floor sweepings. Then TuttiMelon, Green Cup, Yumi-yogurt and dozens of little startup/knock off places.

Then you have the power-hitters, Yogurt-land and Pinkberry. Yogurt land seems to be designed perfectly for people with kids and bad math skills. They have one size cup, which is closer to bucket than you'd probably prefer. You then fill it with which ever of too many flavors of yogurt which you pay for by ounce. They also have a wide range of "free" toppings. Why the quotes? Because they weigh the cup after you add the toppings. Yeah, no so much with the "free" in that regard. Pinkberry targets a higher end and takes a slightly better approach. Wade through the hipsters fashionistas and you order a size and can choose toppings which are added for you. There, you get a lot more yogurt in your cup than other crap, but it's not cheap.

In fact, none of these really are. What's more, it's still frozen yogurt, which if you're not a fan of the unfrozen variety, isn't really going to win you over when covered in Lucky Charms and chocolate chips. That's not stopping these things from popping up like the bastard children of 7-11 and Starbucks, however. i know of five within a five mile radius of my home, with at least two more under construction.

Thing is, i like yogurt. i like frozen yogurt. i like flavors like pomegranate with blackberries and raspberries added, or plain yogurt with honey and lemon. That's not what the other folks in line are generally ordering. What they're getting looks like what happens if you toss a frag grenade into the Keebler tree and use yogurt as a bonding agent (minus the bloody elf bits, which may or may not cost extra). It just seems gross. i can't imagine any way that Green Tea could ever make chocolate syrup covered pineapple with Nerds taste all that appealing.

Which means that i'll wait 'til the battlefield empties a touch before i venture back. Until then, i'll be over at the Gelato joint enjoying a mix of raspberry sorbet with just a touch of the agave sweetened dark chocolate.