Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton
Archives
Atom Feed
Associated Blogs
Edge City
Numbering Peano
Praxis101
Prof. von Clueless
in the Blunder Dome
Recent Items
Oh Oh, They Got Me! Google SMS
Government: When Does Community Support Become Partisan?
Space-Age Meter Reader
Hugging the Monorail: Counting Noses
Seattle: Hugging the Monorail
Education: What Does Student-Centric Look Like?
Seattle: Through New Eyes
What did you do in the electoral wars of 2004, Daddy?
Dave's Welcome to Rain City
Urban Zoology: Will Work for Cherries
|
Oh Oh, They Got Me! Google SMS
Google Blog: Get the 411 with 46645. I took the bait. SMS is standard GSM service and I was confident I could reach the new Google offering without any special arrangement between my odd old phone and my GSM cellular service. I checked out the new Google service by sending a help message and receiving a two-message instructive response. It worked quickly and looks like fun. I failed to find Robert Scoble's phone number, so I requested a search for my own phone number and it was found in Residential Whitepages. Google has a little winner!
I really must use the SMS more. When the phone was still a novelty for me, I would send love notes to Vicki's phone in the middle of the day, or just let her know about my movements. Something to put back in existence. [Did that. It has been so long that she forgot how to retrieve a voice message on her little cellular phone. All better now.]
I am a dismal failure as an early adopter, innovator type. I prefer to run one generation behind, at least and I'm proud to have 170,000 miles on our 1989 Ford Probe. Despite that, I became the proud owner of an unactivated US-version GSM telephone sometime in Spring 1999 when I convinced Nokia to sell a 9100il directly to me as a potential developer. When we moved to Seattle later that year, I activated the phone with Voicestream (now part of T-Mobile) at our first stop before reaching the house we were moving into. This Nokia is pretty clunky looking as a cell-phone, but I have it for the LCD display, QWRTY keyboard, Internet, Fax, and SMS (among other things) under the hinged cover that has the cell-phone face on one side. I don't travel locally with it much. The phone is heavy and bulky enough that the velcro belt strap on the case keeps wearing out. I'm on my second case now. And the phone unit doesn't work as a plain handset for some reason. I have to open it up and use the speaker-phone feature to converse with anyone.
I've not taken serious advantage of the phone's PIM functions, though I bought it for the purpose of seeing what it would be like to put better software on it (using the GeoWorks kit that was once available for it). I do receive an SMS local weather report from MSN most mornings.
You can send e-mail to my phone if you remember to keep the message short and use the address given on my contact page. Aw, crap. I just noticed that my cellular phone number has been listed incorrectly there since I made that page in June, 2004. I hope it was a non-functioning number. [Fixed.]
I know this technology is no longer hot stuff, and the phone is finally starting to fail, but is has been great to have GSM functionality even when VoiceStream and the U.S. cellular industry took a different direction for supporting internet access: I can't use the built-in web browser to get through their gateway, which requires something my phone doesn't have. I also own an Italian 9100 (smaller, stylish, and sexier of course) too, and that was a lot of fun as a fax-modem via infrared from my laptop in 2000. The on-board Internet access worked too, but the Spazio Omnitel ISP service was way too slow and I always used the modem functionality to call London and access MSN from my laptop instead. The SIM still has 20,400 Lira left on it, useless since the full cutover to the Euro. I carried it to Italy in January 2004, confirmed that the SIM was no good, and then didn't bother to acquire and activate a new SIM.
It is a little tricky to have the phone keyboard open near my base computer. Sometimes I am typing on the computer keyboard and having an extended baffle moment as nothing happens on the phone display where I am expecting to see my results. It's a good thing the phone doesn't have a mouse for me to be confused over too. Another score for the clueless gentleman.
Oh, yes, the other point to this post is to drive out an update to the template onto my default Blogger page. Here 'tis.
posted by orcmid
at 10/8/2004 01:03:54 AM
Government: When Does Community Support Become Partisan?
As part of digging around for more light to offer around the Seattle Monorail Project, I also keep an eye on various advocacy statements that come up. I have been following the commentary by Stefan Sharkansky on the Sound Politics site because it was his remarks that woke me up to the need for something more grounded in measurable facts.
Today, Stefen makes some observations about a city department that is involved in civic activities including providing broadcasts on the city's public cable channel: Sound Politics: The Seattle Channel: A Taxpayer-funded Democrat campaign resource. I don't know if the programming that is offered is that blatantly partisan, but I took the opportunity to explore the web site. I didn't like it very much. I think I understand the problem, and I think, for the web site, the public mission appears to be compromised in a number of ways.
I don't know about "balance," although I do consider it very appropriate that Sharkansky hold them to account on objectivity and fairness.
I made use of the "talkback" process of the web site, and that was unsatisfying too. I felt managed, and I think it is a collision of the open experience that I enjoy as a web logger versus the kind of maybe-paternalistic, or some kind of -nalistic, quality of my experience on the Seattle Channel site. Your experience may be quite different. I'd like to know about that. Meanwhile, here is what I said in my talkback e-mail:
To: talkback@seattle.gov
Subject: Disappointed with the Seattle Channel
This note has been slightly edited to clean up some minor blemishes. I can't help myself. [;<).
I saw Stefen Sharkansky's article about the Seattle Channel and I visited it for the first time at <http://www.seattlechannel.org/>.
I don't share Sharkansky's view about equal time. Just the same, I am a bit appalled by what I see on the Seattle Channel web page. It strikes me as more public relations than content, especially when it involves press releases from our elected public officials. Somehow, these releases need to be written with less advocacy or something, but it is clear that there is a point-of-view being expressed, and that makes the Seattle Channel a pulpit. I don't like that. What I would like is accountability and straightforward factual material.
I am not sure how to characterize the bad taste this leaves me with. I think it is about persuasion. If you can provide something that isn't trying to persuade anybody about anything, but equip them to have information and, where it is relevant, formulate their own analysis, that would be great. I am tired of the relentless effort to persuade me of things (which is why I don't even have a television and I don't subscribe to newspapers). I will willingly look at informative and accountable reports, preferably on the Internet. Maybe that can be found on the Seattle Channel, but the wrappings would suggest otherwise.
With regard to information about public and civic events, I guess my question would be how notices are chosen and who chooses them. Somehow, I think KUOW and other outlets already do that job, and it would be interesting to see who is the most even-handed.
I think it would be great to have a city government and services portal (and I thought we had one of those). What does the Seattle Channel do that can't be handled that way? It is also valuable to know about all of the issues that are being advocated by various groups and individuals and how to follow-up on them. That could be handled by a guide or directory, with clear, as-neutral-as-we-can-make-them rules for being listed. I think subtle and not-so-subtle advocacy should not be embedded in the content of the Seattle Channel itself.
I think part of it is the difficulty for elected officials being clear about the role they are playing in conducting their work and then telling us about it. Maybe it would be best just to televise the meetings and cut out the PR?
I also think that the Talkback mechanism itself is symptomatic of the conflicted purposes of the Seattle Channel web site. It is one thing to moderate a feedback mechanism for appropriateness (with some clear latitude on the cookie-cutter for appropriateness in the case of a civic site) but seeing someone selected, quoted and perhaps edited is weird. I am so accustomed to being able to comment directly on web material these days, that seeing the "talkback" (rather than "discuss" by the way) approach was startling for me. The experience is simply weird. If I wanted to write a letter-to-the editor and go through that selection process, I know how to do that. That model seems inappropriate for the Seattle Channel site.
One plus: The talkback button is for a mailto-address that has my own e-mail client compose this message. That way I have a copy of what I said. That's much better than forms-based web pages for feedback, where my own expression vanishes into the cyber-ether, possibly to never be seen again. Thanks. I think I'll post my copy on one of my places of civic expression.
posted by orcmid
at 10/5/2004 01:30:06 PM
|
