I have nothing against people who GChat. If that’s how you like to communicate, keep doing it. I’m not here to convince you otherwise.

But I feel like I get asked to switch to GChat more than I’m asked to switch from any other form of conversation. Never am I talking with someone in person and they say, “Hey, let’s switch over to e-mail.” I guess it kind of happens the other way around, but it’s a natural progression (especially when dating)–you e-mail a few times and then meet in person.

Here’s the thing: E-mail is my preferred method of communication, surpassed only by talking in person, and not all the time. E-mail lets me respond to someone at my own pace, when I want to, and with the time to gather my thoughts. Even if I reply to e-mail fairly quickly, which I often do, I can do other things in between writing e-mails. And I like the option to leave the e-mails behind for any reason at any time and not feel like I’m walking away from a live conversation, which GChat is.

With GChat, however, there’s an immediacy to it. It demands your immediate attention…and yet it’s not quite as fast as a real conversation. Honestly, it simply doesn’t seem like the best use of time. It’s more of a distraction than anything else. If you really need to talk to me about something, call me and we’ll work it out in 2 minutes, not 15 minutes of smiley faces and overlapping statements.

It’s for this same reason that I don’t like having conversations by text. I don’t want to be a part of any text conversation that lasts longer than 3 texts each unless it’s naughty. And even then, it’s too hard to type, and it creates the bad kind of multitasking scenario. The kind when you’re not really focused on anything despite dead air.

So you tell me: The next time someone says to me, “Can we just GChat?”, is there any compelling reason or scenario when I should say yes? Do you GChat?

Hunger Games

I love dystopian fiction because it takes a familiar world, turns it on its head, and gives me the chance to explore one potential future and the reasons it became that way.

However, dystopian fiction is inherently sad. You’re basically reading about the end of the world as we know it, about how bad things can get. It’s a little discouraging.

Thus it was refreshing to read this over at David Anthony Durham’s blog about a month ago:

[A related post about positive futures in sci fi writing] leaves me hankering for a big, hopeful, bold novel of a future that we can aspire to. I like dystopian fiction as much as anyone, but… it might be nice to find a way to feel positive about a possible future – and challenged to achieve it.

YES. Why is the future so terrible in fiction? If a writer creates a hopeful future, something we can aspire to, doesn’t that mean that we might actually make it happen instead of devolving into Hunger Games savages?

So when I sat down to start writing my novel 25 days ago (I’m at 35,000 words now, so I’m on schedule), I kept Durham’s words close at hand. I knew I wanted my story to take place in the not-so-distant future, and I didn’t want the world to look all that different from present-day. And most importantly, I wanted the future to look better than 2012, and I wanted there to be specific reasons for why it gets better. Not that 2012 is so bad–in fact, for the most part it’s quite good–but the key is that things get better instead of getting really bad.

My novel isn’t utopian, and it definitely isn’t dystopian…perhaps anti-dystopian is the best classification. Either way, I’m not done yet, so who knows what the world will look like by the end of the novel?

What significant improvements do you foresee happening in the next 80 years? What will be completely different in 2092? And I’m not just talking about technology; I’m talking about government and the environment and relationships and pets and entertainment, all of it. What are your predictions? I’ve actually incorporated one idea that a reader brought up in the comments section a few weeks ago, so if one of your ideas hits home with me, it might end up in the novel, and I’ll be sure to credit you.

Why is Iron Man on this poster twice?

A little over a year ago, I wrote a post about how excited I was to start Liking everything I possibly could via Facebook. I wanted to live in a world where I could Like anything and everything, from moments in time to tangible objects. I was smitten.

Today, I’m here to tell you…that I’m still smitten.

Except now I’ve realized a key aspect to Liking things on Facebook that I wasn’t fully aware of before: the social aspect.

It all started with an epiphany I had a few months ago. I was really excited about a movie, and I invited a few friends who generally like the kinds of movies I like. However, my excitement far exceeded theirs, so as I was watching the movie (which turned out to be good but not great), I was somewhat distracted by my concern that I had dragged them into something that they weren’t enjoying.

After that, I vowed to only go see movies with people who are just as excited to see the movie with me. That way we can all start at the same level and share the highs and lows together. If there’s no one as excited as I am, I’m fine with going alone (that was a liberating discovery).

So a few weeks ago, I was really excited about a movie called John Carter. (It turned out to be terrible, but that’s beside the point). I was faced with a quandary: How do I know if any of my friends are excited about John Carter?

Then I realized: John Carter has a Facebook page. On Facebook pages, you can see if your friends Like the same stuff you do. (Consequently, none of my friends wanted to see John Carter, but again, that’s beside the point).

It was a moment of clarity, and I used that moment to Like every movie coming up in 2012 that I’m really excited about. I’ve mostly found myself unsubscribing the resulting feeds, because I don’t need 10 reminders every day that Cabin in the Woods is coming out soon. But my Likes are out there, waiting to be found, waiting for friends to join them.

I only know a small percentage of the people who read this blog. If you fall into the “random awesome stranger who takes the time to read my writing every day,” it would be awesome if you Liked my blog on Facebook. Who knows–maybe you have a friend who also reads this blog.

For the rest of you, we’re probably already friends on Facebook, so take a few seconds to Like the movies that you’re looking forward to. You never know when you’ll need some company for that weird French film about dinosaurs and nipples coming out in fall ’12.

To make it easy for you, here’s a list of the upcoming 2012 movies that I’m really excited about and have Liked on Facebook (they’re even in chronological order!). I linked to their Facebook page to make it super, super easy for you to Like them…but only if you’re genuinely excited about them too. I’ll know if you’re faking it. I always do.

Wrath of the Titans - March 30

American Reunion – April 6

The Cabin in the Woods – April 13

The Avengers – May 4

Battleship – May 18

Prometheus – June 8

Brave – June 22

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – June 22

The Amazing Spider-Man – July 3

The Dark Knight Rises – July 20

Total Recall – August

The Hobbit – December 14

(Not shown are Sound of My Voice, Looper, Moonrise Kingdom, Dog Fight, The Master, Skyfall, and The Great Gatsby, none of which seem to have Facebook pages.)

Note that you can use this feature for more than just finding people who Like the movies you like. Restaurants, TV shows, bands, books, and many other forms of culture and entertainment work as well. Do you use the Like function in any social ways?

• a sporting event
• a season finale
• the news

I’m probably missing one or two items for that list, but in general, in a world of DVRs and TiVo and Hulu and Netflix, we no longer have a need for live TV.

That, in itself, is awesome. We have the freedom to choose when we want to be entertained. Can you imagine a time when, if you wanted to watch your favorite show, your only option was a 30-minute period once a week? That constraint is unimaginable in 2012.

However, while it’s awesome for us, the viewers, it’s not awesome for TV. Not that we owe TV anything. But if we want TV to survive as a medium, it needs a way to make money off of us if we continue to skip past the ads.

One way is to sell individual shows–you pay $0.99 and you get a single show, or you pay $5 for a season pass for a show. That money goes to pay the expenses for the actors, production, sets, costumes, distribution, etc. You give the show money, and the show continues to air.

There’s a certain level of democracy to that–after all, when you pay a cable company $100/month, you’re paying for thousands of shows that you’ll never watch. That’s ridiculous.

The other way is to merchandise shows with scarcity, urgency, and affordability. I think this is a win-win-win situation for viewers, TV shows, and advertisers. It’s a combination of Groupon, the Home Shopping Network, and Fashion Star. You know about the first two, but let me briefly explain how Fashion Star works.

Fashion Star is a competitive reality show in which contestants design clothes. Each week there are a few winning designs, and people can purchase those outfits the next day online and in stores. The first episode aired last night, and all three winning outfits sold out within a few hours. You’re incentivized to watch the show–or at least be aware of the results–so that you can have the must-own outfit while you still have the chance. If the show waited a few months to release the outfits, no one would care. It’s also key that the outfits are affordable–they’re $20, $89, and $350 (okay, the last one isn’t affordable, but somehow it sold out too).

Scarcity, urgency, affordability. These are the keys to live TV. Here’s how I see it working:

1. You’re watching an episode of The Office. You see Jim wearing an awesome skinny tie. You want it.
2. You log onto your Fashion TV account on your iPad or smart phone, select The Office, and scroll through all the outfits people are wearing on that week’s episode until you find the tie.
3. The first 500 ties sold are priced at $29. After that, you can still buy the tie, but it’s marked back up to retail of $49.
4. Fortunately, you’re watching The Office live, so there are still 320 ties left at the discounted price. You purchase one with a single click and continue watching the show.

See how easy that is? And the best part for live TV–for producers and advertisers–is that there’s a huge incentive for people to watch the episode live. You want to be able to buy the awesome skinny tie. Or the dress that the Bachelorette wore. Or the microwave on Modern Family. Or the gift card to Ben & Jerry’s from the joke on The Daily Show. Or the Land Rover from The Walking Dead.

What do you think? Would this get you to watch live TV more often?

“Steve Jobs knew what we wanted before we knew we wanted it.”  How many times have you read that in the months since his passing?  It’s a stock phrase, inserted into any number of glowing eulogies about the man who brought us the iWorld of products.   It’s used to emphasize the unusual insight he had into the mind of the consumer, and it’s right on so many levels.

Except one.

Like everyone else, I have an iPod.  It hooks up to my iMac so I can download songs from iTunes and store them in my iCloud and listen to them on  my iPhone.  So far, so good.  Steve knew exactly how I wanted to listen to my music.  Where Steve went horribly, horribly wrong was in trying to guess what I wanted to listen to.  I speak, of course, about Genius.

Oh, Genius.  Genius, Genius, Genius.  You could not be more wrong.  Yes, I bought “Yesterday” by the Beatles.  No, that does not mean I want to hear the cast of Glee sing “I Want to Hold Your Hand”.  Without even accepting your generous offer of a preview, I can confidently assert that I do not want to hear anything by a band named The Hooters.  I struggle to see how anyone with a brain, let alone a self-proclaimed Genius could equate a masterpiece like “Beat It” with anything by Chicago, let alone “Hard Habit to Break”.

I really doubt you’ve ever heard Mariah Carey sing “All I want for Christmas is You”.  If you had (even the travesty that is the Bieber duet), you would never compare it to John Mellencamp attempting to cover “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”.  Speaking of John, you should know – being a Genius – that he is the same person as John Cougar and John Cougar Mellencamp.  None of them, however, can light up a Christmas tree like Mariah Carey.  Nor do any of them have anything to do with The Hooters.  (Again?  Really?)

Genius, I know you’re trying.  It had to take a lot of work to link Bon Jovi to Chicago.  It couldn’t have been easy finding a connection between Gloria Estefan (I’ll let everyone guess) and Jewel.  I’m sure Joe Diffie would give a king’s ransom to figure out how you put him together with Faith Hill.  But you failed.  You don’t know me at all.  If you did, you’d stop telling me to listen to Chicago.

Maybe if they played something by The Hooters…

What’s your experience with recommendation engines like Genius, Pandora, Netflix, Amazon, or others?

When Apple released the original iPad, I thought it would fail. It seemed like a device that didn’t fill a need–it was just a bigger iPhone that you couldn’t use as an everyday phone. I read a statistic after about a year that said that about the primary use of the iPad was emailing, even though it’s an inferior emailing device to laptops.

However, the iPad didn’t fail, at least in terms of sales. I think it failed as a platform for a while, but then I started hearing about apps that took full advantage of the bigger screen–apps that wouldn’t work on an iPhone.

My creative juices started flowing. I started to see an iPad as a new way to tell a story or create a conversation or play a game, or even a way to save precious time.

Just the other day I experienced a prime example of this. I was out at lunch with two members of my church community, one who had purchased a week in an Italian villa at our annual auction, and the other an Italian woman who had donated it.

The Italian woman was describing must-see coastal towns, sites, and restaurants near the villa, and the auction winner was taking notes on her iPad in an e-mail to herself. As she talked, the Italian woman positioned salt and pepper shakers on the table to spatially represent the areas she was describing.

A few minutes passed before it dawned on me that this whole process would be so much smoother on the iPad’s Google Map app. So we loaded the app, searched for Italy, zoomed in on the boot, and viola! Suddenly we had a much better image tool to use than email. We even pinned the map based on the Italian woman’s recommendations.

It was a light bulb moment to see this unfold in front of me. We went from arranging salt shakers on the table to tagging the exact map that the auction winner would use when she’s driving around Italy. In just a few minutes, the iPad went from a flashy toy to an extremely useful toy.

I’m excited to see if Apple adds anything to the iPad 3 beyond a better screen, faster processor, more memory, and Siri. Hopefully there will be at least one unknown gadget that makes us feel like we’re in the future. I can’t wait to get one.

Do you have an iPad? What’s the most brilliant thing you’ve ever seen an iPad or tablet used for?

Pinterest is a public online scrapbook for images you find on the internet. It’s 100% visual. The entire site consists of images that are displayed in an infinite scroll–no matter how far down on the page you scroll, there are always more images to see. You can view everyone’s pins or only the pins of people you’re following (who can be friends or complete strangers).

It’s one of the best time wasters on the internet, not just because of the fascinating images you can find on Pinterest, but also because you’re building something while you skim the images. You’re not creating the images, but you’re compiling pinboards of related images that interest you. Every time you pin or repin an image, you’re adding it to your virtual memory, a memory that you share with the world.

That’s pretty cool.

As of this second, Pinterest is the 113th most-visited website on the web. Lots of people are using it. You probably should too, even if it’s just for an occasional visit. Here are a few tips to get the most out of the site:

1. Pin vs. Repin vs. Like:  When you find an image on the internet that you want to share on Pinterest, you “pin” it through one of a variety of ways (the best one is below in #2). If you’re skimming Pinterest and see an image that you want to add to your boards and share with people, you “repin” it. And if you want to remember an image but don’t want to add it to the infinite scroll, you can “like” it. For me, if I really love an image, I Repin it. If I just like it, I Like it.
2. Right Click to Pin: Without what I’m about to tell you, pinning an image can be a little annoying. There are several ways to do this, but the best way is to get the Google Chrome Pinterest Right Click extension. If you don’t have Chrome, check your browser’s extension or plug-in list to find a similar tool. Once you add this extension, you can simply right-click on any image or video and select “Pin This Image.” It’s awesome.
3. Hover to Enlarge: One of Pinterest’s few failings is that sometimes you can’t see an image well enough on the infinite scroll, so you have to click on it to see it better. I know, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but the beauty of Pinterest is the ease with which you can skim through images. So do yourself a favor and get the Pinzy extension too. If you hover over an image on Pinterest for a second, it’ll enlargen to full size.
4. Don’t “Follow All” of Someone’s Boards: I learned this lesson the hard way. For over a year, whenever I followed someone new on Pinterest, I followed all of their boards instead of selecting individual boards to follow. A few weeks ago I found that I was hardly ever visiting Pinterest because the infinite scroll was clogged with images of wedding dresses, artsy furniture, makeup, shoes, and kid’s toys (well over 60% of Pinterest’s users are female. I love females, but I have absolutely no interest in the specific types of pins I mention above). So I’ve had to go through and unfollow individual boards while continuing to follow the stuff I’m interested in. Save yourself some time and do that up front instead of “following all.”
5. Don’t “Follow All” Friends on Pinterest: This is both for the reason above and for another key reason. Once you become a Pinterest member, if you hover over your name in the upper right and select “Find Friends,” Pinterest will present a list of your Facebook friends who are on Pinterest. There will be tons of people in this list. Don’t touch it. At least, don’t follow all people (which Pinterest makes very easy). The reason is that you are probably “friends” with people on Facebook whose images you are not at all interested in. These are the people that you’ve deleted from your Facebook feed. Pick and choose the ones you’re actually interested in following.
6. Don’t Auto-Share to Facebook: This is just annoying. At first I thought it was clever, but I’ve found that it just doesn’t work well, and it’s annoying to see the lists of people’s pins in my Facebook feed. If you want to share a specific image on Facebook, just do it manually.
7. Don’t Pin Too Much at a Time: This is a weird one that you have to experience to truly understand. Basically, sometimes you’ll go to Pinterest and you’ll see a ton of cool images on the page. You might want to Repin or Like several of them. But then you realize that they’re all from the same person, and if you Repin or Like too many of them, they’re going to see that and might think it’s weird. Plus, the beauty of Pinterest is that it’s a hodgepodge of pins from all sorts of people. If you Pin or Repin a ton of images in a short amount of time, you’re monopolizing your friends’ feeds.
8. Don’t Pin Off-Theme: I see this all the time now that I’m in the process of removing uninteresting boards from my feed. I’ll click through an image of high heels to unfollow a board labeled “Design,” and then I’ll see that there are actually some really fascinating examples of web design and architecture on that board. The high heels are off theme–they don’t belong on the Design board. Help your followers out by properly categorizing your pins.

I was going to recommend a few boards to follow, but the fun of Pinterest is discovering the boards that you connect with. Don’t be afraid to “follow” the boards of someone you don’t know. They’ll take it as a compliment that you appreciate their taste. And if you’re into cute animals and people, funny things, cool houses, beautiful locales, and impressive infographics, follow me on Pinterest.

Oh, and congrats to Charlotte for winning the Tournament of Cuteness Battle Royale 2012!

When I say they “work,” I mean that I don’t fast forward by them. I mean that I actually watch some commercials. Because they’re entertaining. Because they move me. Because they make me feel something–pride, joy, nostalgia. Something.

Do they make me want to buy products? Hardly ever. Although I suspect that their intent isn’t always to sell (or at least sell right away), but moreso to brand themselves into your mind so someday when you’re ready to buy, you buy from them. The key is that you actually remember what the commercial is selling.

Here are a few of my favorites from the past year or two. Lots of car ads. I won’t go into why they work, but maybe I’ll discuss that in the comments. What are some commercials that you enjoy watching? (Oh, and if you’re interested in this sort of thing, subscribe to this blog.)

• Savored: Pay $10 for a reservation at a nice restaurant through the site, and then get 30% off your meal at that restaurant. No coupons or printouts–you register your credit card so you can be a smooth operator when the bill comes.
• Groupon Rewards: Instead of trying to find new customers, this program helps you keep the ones you have coming back again and again. The more they spend (with their credit card–no coupons or printouts needed. That seems to be the trend), the more deals they unlock.
• Munch on Me: Weekly deals on specific dishes at restaurants. That way restaurants have complete control over the inventory, and they can “teach” customers to try (and fall for) dishes that maybe they usually wouldn’t try.

But the most interesting twist on the daily deal site is Sneak Peeq. I’m not sure it’s the best, as I’m having a hard time understanding the concept, but there’s definitely something interesting going on here.

Take a look at the screenshot from Sneak Peeq at the end of this entry. We’re looking at a large box of chocolates–a single box, mind you. Not everyone who participates gets a box of chocolate.

You know the street value of the chocolate ($67), but you don’t know what the current price is. That’s hidden. You see, every time someone sneaks a peek at the price, the price goes down. [Update 11/8: Apparently Sneak Peeq underwent a redesign the day after I wrote this entry. The concept is similar, but not exactly the same.]

There’s no catch to this–you get 10 peeks a day to use anywhere on the site. You sneak, it tells you how much you personally made the price go down, and then you have 15 seconds to commit to buying it. So every time anyone sneaks a peek (peeq?), the price goes down for everyone…but only one person can buy the item. Once someone buys it, the price for the item jumps back up to retail, and only more peeks will start to lower it again.

You don’t know when the item has been purchased, so you might hold off on your last peek in the hopes that the price will be really low, and then when you finally peek, you see that someone else already bought the item and you’re stuck with a much higher price.

Very cool, right? I agree. There’s some gamification here, and you have the potential of getting a really great price. There’s also an incentive to share with your friends, since they’ll help the price go down. And sure, you might “lose” out on a great deal, but you’re only losing a minute or so of your time.

Where I’m stuck is: What does the company selling the product through Sneak Peeq get out of the deal? At the end of the day, maybe this chocolate seller sells 20 boxes of chocolate for roughly $25 each. So they’re losing money on each product. And sure, they’ve gotten some exposure from the site, but after using my peeks trying to get the price lower, I’m not any more likely to buy that chocolate at full price elsewhere. I’m just more likely to return to the site tomorrow to use my peeks for a possibly low price. What does the merchant gain?

Solve that puzzle with a satisfactory answer and get 20 Jamey Points.

“Most people view themselves as complete strangers, which makes them reluctant to put away money for a later date. But Bailenson and his team discovered that if people view a virtual version of themselves digitally aged by several decades, that hesitation disappears instantly. In one study, contributions to hypothetical retirement accounts went up by 30 percent.”

This is me in 50 years.

So basically, if you logged into your retirement account and saw that the profile photo staring back at you wasn’t your current cheery, young, optimistic face, but rather your old, saggy, tired face, you’re significantly more likely to put more money into your retirement savings.

This is big. 30 percent is very significant.

So let’s imagine what else you can do with this facial aging and manipulation software:

• There could be a goal-oriented fitness website that tracks your progress as you try to get in shape. Before you start doing anything on the site, it shows you a photo of how chubby you’ll look in 6 months if you don’t work out at all and continue your current eating habits and don’t work out. Every time you work out, the future photo looks better and better.
• There could be an “age her!” feature on Match.com that lets you see what a woman (or man, for you ladies) will look like in 10-20 years. Perhaps it could show your aged photo next to theirs so you could decide if you could see yourself growing old with her.
• Use the software to discourage kids from taking hard-core drugs like crystal meth. Show them photos of what they’ll look like in a year if they get hooked disfiguring drugs like that.
• Similar to the 401k, what if you could use a variation of the photo system for long-term planning for things like travel, cars, houses, etc. If you’re saving for a trip to Italy, when you log into your savings account, you’d see a photo of “yourself” in a gondola in Italy. Same with the car or the house.