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METAFORIX MAIL Volume 1, Issue 41 May 17, 2001 Sites and insights for the Information Age Listen to
my conversation with Thomas J. Leonard, coach and entrepreneur extraordinaire,
about your business and the Internet. It's at www.RealInterviews.com.
Thanks for reading! CONTENTS AT A GLANCE: ON
MY MIND: Continuing the Conversation ON MY MIND [From the Editor] More Thoughts from Ilise Benun Several weeks ago, my friend Ilise Benun and I had a conversation about cell phones that somehow turned itself into a column. Ilise is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author (click on the title to read a chapter from Ilise's new book, Self Promotion Online.) Her view of technology is different enough from mine to make for some interesting exchanges.In our initial conversation, Ilise and I talked about imagination (visualizing the setting on the caller's side of the connection), trust (deciding whether you can believe the caller if she actually tells you where she's located), and privacy (considering how wireless conversations compromise the privacy of the caller, the recipient, and anyone within earshot in a public space). Since then, Ilise has added another component: boundaries. We're both inclined to continue the conversation online (a venue that I think presents similar electronic and philosophical challeges) and just see where it leads us. Here are Ilise's most recent musings on the subject: A client recently confessed to me that she sometimes returns a call on a sidewalk or leaves a couple of messages while driving to visit a customer and that she feels embarrassed about it, though she couldn't really articulate why. That got me thinking about boundaries. The cell phone doesn't raise privacy issues for me, as much as a boundary issues. I can deal with people invading my cyberspace with spam, or even finding out my credit rating. I'm resigned to the fact that I don't have much control over that. But what I do have control over is what boundaries I put up -- not defenses to keep people out, but boundaries appropriate to the situation. So the idea of talking on a cell phone in public, without the implied privacy provided even by a public phone cubicle, makes me cringe. Doing business on a sidewalk makes no sense to me for one other reason. There is an impulsiveness associated with talking on a cell phone. We are usually talking on the phone while doing something else -- conducting a simple transaction, like buying a sandwich or getting on a bus. Someone calls with an urgent request, something that needs to be done right away, which requires an instantaneous decision. Maybe we're asked to change a plan that was probably made in a clearer moment with more perspective on the big picture. This type of communication doesn't encourage clear, cool-headed thinking or careful consideration of all the options. That's the kind of thinking that we're not doing much of anymore, and that can be very dangerous. Hmmm. Lots of new food for thought. Look for my response in the next week or two. I'll be posting both sides of this ongoing conversation on the Metaforix.com site, and Ilise will be doing the same at www.artofselfpromotion.com. Both of us welcome your comments.
Cordially, Lois C.
Ambash, Editor
MEDIA A New Toy from the Kids Ever since the advent of cable TV, I've eagerly awaited the day when I could access any movie, any time just by pushing a button. That day is not quite here yet, but I can reliably tell you that it's just around the corner.My husband and I recently marked our 15th anniversary of second-time-around wedded bliss. (Maybe not always bliss, exactly, but absolutely as good as it gets. And getting better all the time.) To celebrate, we gathered our six kids-and-significant-others for a family weekend at Amelia Island, Florida. At dinner on Saturday night, the kids presented us with a strangely-shaped package, which turned out to be the remote control for a digital video recorder. When we returned home, it was waiting for us, complete with a lifetime subscription for the service required to make it work. The new contraption saves TV programs on a hard drive, instead of on tape. It's much easier to program than a VCR -- a skill I confess I've never mastered. If the phone rings in the middle of your favorite show, you can pause the program and restart it after you've chatted with your neighbor or hung up on the telemarketer. Each day, the DVR automatically downloads the current listings for your cable or satellite service. You can set it to record a single program or every episode of Law and Order, even if the show is suddenly rescheduled to air at a different time. All the honchos in the consumer electronics industry agree that this cool new machine will revolutionize TV broadcasting. For starters, the ease of skipping over ads will change commercials as we know them. New subscription services will spring up, as will strategic alliances between cable operators and DVR manufacturers. Investors in the DVR technologies include NBC, Disney, AOL Time Warner, and Microsoft, to pick some big names out of a hat. So, if DVR is so revolutionary and appealing, why have so few people gone out and bought a TiVo or ReplayTV device? Yes, they're expensive compared to a VCR. But here's the real stumbling block: It's very hard to give a succinct explanation of what DVR is and how it works. You kind of have to be there. As Brodie Keast, TiVo's VP of marketing and sales, has said, "We're trying to change human behavior. There's nothing more ingrained than how people watch TV." I guess you know you're getting old when your kids buy new toys for you, instead of the other way around. It's some consolation that despite our age, we're still a marketer's dream. We're early adopters.
Access previous issues of Metaforix Mail by date by visiting our archives. Or use the search box on any page of the Metaforix site (www.metaforix.com) to search by keywords. INFORMATICON "How Could
Somebody Leave Behind Something That Valuable?" - 15,000 items are deposited in the Lost and Found each year - Last year, 56% per cent of the items were returned to their original owners. That's shy of the 60% target, but the blame goes to keys, gloves, and other "stuff that no one comes looking for." - The Lost and Found has one or more tubs filled with each of the following kinds of unclaimed treasures: books, cell phones, pagers, eyeglasses, gloves, and umbrellas. - Expensive items logged in to the collection include fur coats, laptop computers, Tiffany gifts, and large amounts of cash. - Some of the weirdest items are "things you would think passengers couldn't forget:" prosthetic limbs, glass eyeballs, toupees, an urn containing a spouse's ashes, and the two eyebrows and an earlobe left behind by a plastic surgeon. There may no longer be eight million stories in the Naked City. But we know there are at least 15,000.
CYBERSPEAK Keeping Up with the Language Explosion The English language is a living thing, constantly evolving as it borrows, invents, contorts, and reimagines text and sound. Information Age technologies have hastened the speed of linguistic evolution. No only are there more new things and processes to name, but new words are widely shared at the click of the "send" button.We usually reserve this space for discussions of particular technology-related terms. But today's purpose is to help you keep up with the burgeoning infotech vocabulary on your own. A number of excellent glossaries of computer and technology terms exist online, written for users whose levels of technological sophistication range from newbie to supergeek. A good place to begin exploring these resources is LibrarySpot.com, where you'll find links to several useful sites. I suggest you choose a single computer term and look it up in three or four different places. Compare how easy it is to navigate the site and to understand the definition. That should give you some cues for the future. If all of the definitions sound like gibberish, don't despair. Next week I'll tell you about some tutorial sites for computer novices.
"The Word-Lover's Web Site" Paul McFedries loves (philia) words (logo). Just glance at the home page of Logophilia.com and you'll see what I mean.Whether you're a crossword buff, an anagram fan, a word game addict, or someone who collects new words just for the fun of it, Logophilia.com will fill the bill. You can also subscribe to Paul's newsletter, The Word Spy, for a daily dose of "lexpionage" -- Paul's term for "the sleuthing of new words and of old words used in new ways." Some of those new words are computer words, by the way. See Cyberspeak, above.
Guest Columnists and Interviewees Wanted! Metaforix
Mail seeks your opinions on how information technologies are (or are not)
changing your world of work.
Please note that the links contained in Metaforix Mail are current as of the time of publication. Some of them may no longer be operative at the time you access past issues.
To
Volume 1, Issue 40 May 10, 2001
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