Earlier this week, I wanted to send a Facebook message to my dancer friends in the Bay Area to invite them to a local event.  I ended up manually sifting through my entire friends list, since there’s no way to invite or message an intersection of friends.  Similarly, I wanted to post a twitter note to my Google buddies in a particular geographic region, but Twitter doesn’t support any sort of useful narrowcasting, either.

Basically, social service nowadays seem hellbent on having us share our lives and connect with more and more people.  I don’t want that, and I’m betting a lot of you feel the same way:  we want to deepen our relationships with our current friends, share details of our lives with the friends who are most likely interested in those particular details, and so on.

A lot of the brouhaha over FBs aggressive more-sharing push has been over privacy, but in the rush to protest “ZOMG, I don’t want my mom to know THAT!” the complementary concerns of narrowcasting have been largely ignored.  I’m personally a lot less worried about someone finding out something I don’t want them to know about, and far more concerned about burning out my friends with info they find irrelevant and uninteresting.

Is it not madness that I can’t post a note joking about a local politician just to my Mountain View friends?  This highlights one of a great many situations in which there are no privacy issues (I’m not trying to keep my bad sense of humor a secret from my friends in Europe), but rather that my friends outside MV aren’t likely to care about this topic.  And worse yet, these friends will likely stop reading my posts altogether unless I either post less overall (a bummer!) or magically somehow write entries that are appealing and relevant across my diverse group of friends (pretty impossible).

*  *  *

I love you (you, you, NOT you!), but I don’t always love how you try to contact me.

I have a few respectful requests:

• Use my contact page, please.  It’s super-easy to find (top page in Google for “Contact Adam Lasnik”), and I even list my e-mail address on there.  Every time you instead try to get my attention via Twitter or Facebook message or LinkedIn or Flickr, Goddess kills a doggy [hint: that’s bad.]
• Please use a descriptive subject line.  This precludes “HELP!” or “Hi!” or “Great Pharmacy!!1”
• Don’t unsolicitedly send me a detailed business plan.  Seriously, this one really pains me to write, but when I receive a heartfelt and amazingly-detailed-with-multiple-attachment business idea for an existing Google product, my cover-my-posterior-reaction is to delete the note without reading it.  Google already gets sued a ridiculous number of times a week, and I don’t want Google (or me!) to be sued for “stealing someone’s idea without credit.” :-(  On the other hand, bug reports, a clever feature request or observation… if you can’t find a way to share this info with the appropriate Google team (e.g., via an official forum or form), feel free to fill me in and I’ll do the best I can to get it seen by the right people . and, on a related note…
• Please forgive me.  I’m still behind on my personal e-mail (about 380 messages in my inbox, down from last year’s high of nearly 5,000), so it can take me a while to reply.

Thanks!

[I wrote this years ago, but had posted it on a site I no longer maintain; I thought it might be nice to share it with you now.]

As many of you may already know, I spent over a year total in Europe during and immediately after finishing grad school in ‘98. My experiences included an amazing mixture of triumphs, tragedies, laughter, adventure, confusion, and pretty much every other emotion one can have… but compressed in time and on foreign soil.

While I regret not keeping any semblance of a diary during my time in Europe, I still carry a wealth of knowledge and emotions in me… much of which bubbles to the surface at random times. For whatever reason, one event came to mind tonight, and it made me smile.

During my initial 3 month internship in Europe, I was dying to ‘taste’ as much of the continent as I could. My workplace was next to a train station, and nearly every other Friday I’d bring a small suitcase to work, and spin the virtual Europe-roulette-wheel (and consult the weather forecasts) to pick a travel destination for the upcoming weekend. I’d then leave straight from work, typically take an overnight train, spend Saturday and Sunday at my destination, and arrive back—sleepy eyed and exhausted—to work Monday morning.

Spontaneity and adventure sometimes gave way, however, to frustrating circumstances… including nasty weather, obnoxious hostel (and hostile) roommates, and in some cases, lack of an available nearby hostel at all. Such was the case when I arrived in Luxembourg one weekend… forcing me to scour surrounding smaller cities for lodging. When I finally discovered a hostel with vacancies in a far outlying town of the main city, I was none too thrilled to find myself alone at this hostel… except for a gaggle of giggling teenage German tourists from what turned out to be a church group outing. They ate at their reserved table for dinner within the hostel, and I ate, basically alone and lonely, by myself in another corner… understandably not wanting to butt in on a chaperoned group of young’uns.

To my annoyance, they’d occasionally look at me with eyes that seemed to mockingly ask, “What is that weird, tired looking guy doing at OUR hostel?” but aside from that, I ate in peace, and then—noting it was too early to retire for the night despite my fatigue—wandered out into the cobblestone streets to find something to do or see.

There wasn’t much. But lo and behold, before long, I heard a familiar gaggle of giggling a ways behind me, and, almost as if in a cartoon, that very same group of young kids shushed quickly when I peered back at them. Imagine my surprise then, when one of the girls broke from the pack and shyly approached me.

I decided to take a bit of this long weekend to prep for yet another overseas trip (this time to Sydney, which I really like!).

Digging into my Travel (real-space, not electronic) folder, I found a plethora of Australian bills and coins from my last trip, along with a ton of other bills and coins from nine other countries.  Eeep!  After sorting them all out, then I wondered:  how much is all of this worth?

$368.89 as it turns out.  Nice! (especially if I can find a local bank to actually change the money with little fees and decent rates, but that’s another issue).

Then I began thinking… hmm… if I prettied this spreadsheet I made and generalized it a bit, it might be useful to other folks, too!  So here it is:

Cranky Old Guy #1:  What did you do to your glasses?!
Cranky Old Guy #2:  I stepped on them.
Cranky Old Guy #1:  [a thinkify’ing pause] You’re not supposed to do that!

After having fallen hugely behind on browsing my Facebook newsfeed, Friendfeed, etc., I decided to see just how much time I had been spending during those “on top of it” days… and, by extension, how much time it’d take me to keep up each day.

Around 10pm last night, I “cleared out” my Reader, and picked a stopping point in Facebook and Friendfeed, so I could start fresh tonight (Monday) and see just how much would accumulate in 24 hours… and how long it’d take me to get through it.

So here are my numbers:

• Facebook:  Browsing (and commenting a bit) on a filtered newsfeed of one group of 270 friends:  20 minutes
• Friendfeed:  Browsing (and commenting/liking a bit) on a selected group comprised of about 80 friends:  8 minutes
• Twitter:  Browsed through unfiltered/ungrouped list via Brizzly (happy to offer invites to the first ten people who contact me):  12 minutes.
• Reader:  Browsing through my ??? feeds (and checking out a few original pages + adding a couple comments):  28 minutes (”???” because Reader never was able to load up anything when I clicked on “Manage my subscriptions.”  Bummer!  But I’m guessing I have over 200 feeds, of which probably 100 are updated at least weekly)

Just a bit over an hour.  Not that bad, right?  Except when you realize a few very important things:

• This is more than an hour every single day, including weekends, holidays, vacation times, etc.
• Worse yet (and more importantly), this does not include my personal e-mail, which I estimate would take me about an hour daily in and of itself to read and appropriately reply to messages.
• Nor does this include Wave.  Or Techmeme.  Or online News.  Or really anything else in the vast online world.
• It certainly doesn’t include the time I should be spending composing thoughtful e-mails to my Grandpa, to my friends near and far, and so on.  500 or so contacts in my addressbook… people that I care about.  If I e-mailed each one just once a month, that’s more than one substantive e-mail every day (in addition to the other replies).
• And it certainly doesn’t include corporate (work) mail and related stuff, but that’s well beyond the scope of this inquiry, in which I’m trying to pin down this...

How much of my free time do I spend (or would I have to spend each day) on “keeping up” with friends and news online?

*  *  *

Well, now you know, or at least have an idea about my time allocations. 
Where does your time go?
- How much time do you spend each day on Facebook, Twitter, etc.?  (Not sure?  Try what I did, and actually time it!)
- Is that more than you thought?  Less than you thought?  Does it make sense for you?

Curious to hear your numbers and your feelings on this…

[Edited at 1:18am October 13 to add: Twitter stats]

[Note:  Links below are affiliate links, so if you click and buy, I make money.]

I have bought hundreds of items from Amazon (yes, I’m an Amazon Prime member, surprise surprise )

Some of them I’m particularly fond of and want to either repurchase or recommend to a friend… but I can’t do easily because Amazon won’t help me.  You see, I’ve not been able to figure out any way to search through my purchases; it seems I can only browse by year (and paginatedly browse at that… ack!). 

I bought an amazing compressible travel pillow (below) a while back that I absolutely love, and I wanted to encourage my parents to get it for their upcoming trip to New Zealand:

[oops, pillow seems to no longer be listed on Amazon, and graphic was just showing a generic Amazon ad.  Blech!]

...but couldn’t find any sane way to look up the product. 
- I tried doing an Amazon search for “travel pillow” but there are hundreds if not thousands of travel pillows in their store.
- I then tried searching through my gmail (where I get my Amazon order receipts) for “travel pillow” but that didn’t turn it up.
- Somewhat randomly, I then searched Amazon for “orange travel pillow” and that did the trick.

Amazon, why do you make this so difficult for your active customers?  Why not a simple search box in the My Orders screen?

Edited on November 8, 2009 to add:
Looks like Amazon no longer sells this pillow.  Bummer!

One of my favorite newsweeklies, The Week, has a weekly competition where they solicit various entertaining submissions on goofy name ideas or lists.

A few weeks ago, highlighting the crazy case of some Australian kids Facebook-status’ing that they’d fallen into a well or something like that, they asked for some other ideas of truly stupid Facebook updates.

Well, I submitted a handful… but clearly the editor of this contest lacks good taste, ‘cause she didn’t pick any of mine :(.  So, for your edification, I’ve included them below

—-
1) “OMG, I can’t believe my stupid teacher is reading my Facebook feed!”
2) “Honey, I think I might be pregnant. Is it yours?!”
3) “Having sex. BRB in a minute.”
4) “Honey, could you please get the remote for me? I’m in the bedroom.”
5) “OMG, DID I JUST POST THAT? THOUGHT IT WAS SEARCH BOX! HELP!”
6)  “My darling Jennifer, will you marry me?”
7) “How do I post a status update?”
8) “Unsubscribe!”
9) “I am Mobutu Rumppole, a Nigerian Prince…”
10) “Just got spider bite. Fingers swelling pretty bad, hardto type, any ideas on what I sh”

When it took me seven seconds just to be able to answer a phone call, that’s when I realized I had finally had enough.  I’ve never used an iPhone and due to disapproval over Apple’s policies probably never well, so this is not a “G1 Sucks iPhone Rules!!!1” post.  Unfortunately, it’s still a rant against the G1.

First, let me offer some disclaimers:
1) I’m a power user.  I’ve downloaded lots of apps, and overall, they rock.  Google Maps on the G1 is awesome.  Pandora’s new Android app made me literally giggle with glee.  And the Android OS, while clearly still a bit rough, has great potential IMHO.  But perhaps because I’m a power user (installing many apps and pushing the phone to its limits), the phone has been more frustrating for me than it is (or would be) for more, heh, normal people.
2) And speaking of normal people… my sister—who is crazy-smart but hardly an early adopter geek—LOVES her G1.  She pretty much only uses it for phone calls and checking her e-mail, but the latter came in handy wonderfully when her desktop computer was down and also when the electricity was out where she lives.  She’s had no problems figuring out how to use the phone, and seemingly no problems getting it to do what she wants to do with it.  Though granted, when I last spoke with her, she hadn’t actually installed a single app.
3) I know people on the Android team and I hope they do not hate me after this post.  They’re genuinely good, smart, hardworking folks who IMHO made an admirable effort towards Android Phone v1.  When the phone works well (and let me note, it mostly does), it makes you appreciate the power and opportunities in an open mobile OS

Alas, though, for better or worse, working well most of the time isn’t sufficient for a phone. Phones should work reliably and consistently well, and the G1 does not.  It comes down to the hardware: Ouch.  Ouch.  Ouch.  Slow, as in, it often takes over five seconds for the home page to show up after you click the home button.  That, combined with the flakiness in making and receiving calls, makes it a pretty lousy phone for phone calls. And regardless of my preference for e-mail over voice calls most of the time, this is still absolutely, positively unacceptable in a phone.

*  *  *

Many of you may be surprised to hear me publicly railing against what some refer to as “the Google Phone.”  I note (with some pride) that my policy has pretty much always been to offer public praise on Google products when I feel they deserve it and private (within-Google) blunt-yet-constructive criticisms of Google products that (to me) fall short.

But…
1) This technically isn’t a “Google phone.”  We made the software, but someone else made the hardware.  I’m mentioning this as a technicality, admittedly, and not intending to just pass the buck.  Ultimately, it’s got our name on it and we should (and I believe do) take both responsibility and credit for Android phones that include what’s known as the “Google Experience.”
2) I can say with firm confidence that many of the phones coming down the pike this year (18-20 is the number publicly pre-announced!) simply ROCK.    And I want folks’ first experience with Android to be one that’s consistently AWESOME, not just “Hmm, pretty good most of the time.”

You should be asking Santa for an Android phone this Christmas, even if you’re an atheist.  Er, okay, if you’re a non-Christian, perhaps you should just go out and buy an Android phone yourself.  You’ll appreciate the better (much better) hardware, slicker UIs, and a lot more to make you smile.

Tonight I was tired.  Tired but—perhaps solely through repeated mental flagellations—ready to be brave.

Tonight at the weekly swing dance, I was going to ask Miss Q to dance.  Extremely talented, very attractive, and admirably most humble, too.  Miss Q, that is.  Darned ambiguous references, but indeed I digress.

Grammatical nits aside… for reasons I cannot quite narrow down for certain, it appears as though my bravery was either contagious or most coincidentally most ill-timed or a combination thereof. You see, that *other* fellow was determined to dance with Miss Q.  And the young man beside him.  And yes, that other chap dashing up beside the both of them.

Miss Q had a queue and a rather constant queue at that.  Oh, not the visible English-style straight version, but rather a discernible one nonetheless.  Ranging from skulking to brazen, star-struck and/or love-struck leads grabbed their opportunity, sometimes with frightening literalness, and Miss Q handled it all with the utmost in grace and good nature.  Was she delighted or annoyed or simply exhausted by all the attention?  I cannot say.  I was quietly and perhaps just a bit more than mildly seething at my ill fortune, and so in this circumstance I cannot fully trust my normally perceptive nature.

But I know this:  of the collective of Miss Qs here and elsewhere on the dancefloor—particularly in this arenas where the Misses outnumber the Misters—there by my estimation must be an aggregate tiredness and frustration on the shoulders of both sexes.  The Misses have nary a rest, much less a chance to do much choosing of their choosing.  They pair with those who are the quickest, the most cunning, the most persistent, the most unsubtlely lurking in the not-so-background, which may or—more likely—may not dovetail with those who are the most talented or otherwise desirable partners.

And, as you surely may have guessed, the disappointment lies not just within the fairer sex here, but rests upon the equally unlucky section of lads.  For we have two choices:  one-up the others in desperate aggressiveness or sit on the side passively ruing our lot and the escalation of hounding-stealing-hoarding that has led to this sorry condition.  Those compelled into the former may succeed on occasion but feel ashamed on the whole of what they’ve been driven to.  And those self-relegated into the latter behavior must simply feel, well, stamped writ-large with a neon ‘L’ upon their forehead.

*  *  *