If you're wondering why the iPhone is so popular, considering that Apple has only been in the "cell phone market" for two years, it's because Apple is the only "design" company making phones. They are interface experts, and that carries into the experience using a phone. While other carriers try to pack in as many features as possible, and make the hardware look as "shiny" and impressive as an iPhone, then tack on "design" and "experience" as an after-thought, Apple puts design and experience at the forefront. Other carriers are missing the point entirely. It's not about how it looks - it's how it works. Only Apple seems to understand that, and make that their main priority.

The attention to detail on an iPhone is astounding. You just have to look closely.

Things like the anti-smudge touch screen, smooth and natural finger gestures, and how it feels in your hand. Even Apple's own iPhone accessories are well-designed - the included headphones/speaker are wonderful, with intelligent design elements such as:

• Headphone ear plugs that are specifically contoured for the left and right ear canals.
• Anti-tangle clip which connects both the left and right wires and let's you slide it upward to keep the wires from wrapping around each other in a spiral fashion.
• The control buttons and speaker on the right-side wire itself: controls many aspects of the iPhone OS, including iPod volume and track navigation, and acts as a phone speaker with excellent wind block.

Instead of cramming in features with poorly designed user interfaces, Apple focuses on design, aesthetics, attention to detail, and simplicity.

Apple has flipped the mobile phone industry on it's backs by simply focusing on user experience. People complain about lack of MMS, or argue that the iPhone "should support this," or "should support that." Apple doesn't care what you think a phone should feature. They only care about providing the best overall experience when using their device. Sure, they listen to customers, and eventually start supporting things people are demanding, but they only do it when they're good and ready. This means they have to be absolutely, 100% positive that a new feature does not take away from the overall excellent experience. This takes much time and testing.

I don't mean to suggest that Apple is perfect, and their products flawless. Trust me, they're far from it. But at least they're facing the right direction. And unless they deviate from that direction, I will be a customer for life.

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Shaun Inman's latest gem is called Fever, a self-install RSS reader with some interesting features.

Fever scans your lower priority feeds (ones that update frequently and aren't necessarily life-or-death for you to read), in combination with your high priority feeds (must-reads), and pools together "hot" items.

This allows you to avoid having to scan through multitudes of low-priority feed items, with little-to-no ROI. Your high-priority feeds dictate which low-priority feeds require your attention. This acts as a filter for important and relevant feeds.

Just a regular feed reader

Fever is, by itself, a regular feed reader, which requires your own server to install and interact with. So, even without the "catch features," it could still function as your main feed reader if you wanted.

Fever requires a MySQL database and server that supports PHP, and is licensed per domain.

Advantages to having your feed reader in a local database could be many:

• Perform backups of all of your subscriptions (and subscription items) anytime.
• Write your own code to interact with your Fever data, without relying on confusing API's and third-party servers to distribute the data.

Fever in-depth

Rather than depleting your number of RSS subscriptions in order to make things easier to keep up with, Fever suggests you subscribe to more feeds - the more the merrier! The idea is to subscribe to a lot of low signal-to-noise feeds - feeds that aren't all that important to keep up with on a daily or weekly basis. However, their value still lies in the opinions of the collective mass. Similar to Digg, Fever acts as a ranking system for items that reference the same URL or resource, providing you an overview of popular stories.

So, the more feeds you subscribe to, the more relevant your "hot" items become.

Other subtleties

Fever supports authenticated feeds, which is, by itself, a great feature to have with any feed reader.

I've also noticed the process of "refreshing" the Hot section takes some time, the more feeds you are subscribed to. It must have to scan each feed's items and perform reporting tasks, like grouping together items that are similar. A nice feature, which I believe is available, is to set up a cron job and have Fever scan for "hot" items when you're not even viewing the application! So, each time you check, it should always be relevant - refreshed within the last hour or so.

Ideas on how to use Fever

One idea I had for using Fever effectively was to supply Fever my Twitter timeline RSS feed. This would be the feed for every status update from people I follow. Then, when Fever scans that feed, it should find all tweets that are linking to the same resource, providing an overview of the "hot" items people are talking about!

I could even supply the main RSS feed for all public Twitter users (if that still exists), expanding my use case, and providing more accurate results!

I am not sure if this is working the way I hoped, but it still might be possible with Fever.

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Sometimes I'll get responses from tech support that are clearly over-exaggerated anecdotes of long-winded procedures or events that took place to fix my problem.

Here is a recent tech support response from Dreamhost, my web host, in regards to one of my sites being inaccessible:

Hello! I apologize for the trouble you were having! From the looks of it, it looks like the host machine was having some issues much earlier this morning which required our admin team to drive out to the server location to ensure everything gets rebooted properly and comes up without issue. They are currently keeping an eye out for any other issues but other than that, things look to be working without issue as I was able to load the sites in question without any trouble. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you!

Emphasis on: "drive out to the server location...", and "They are currently keeping an eye out for any other issues ..."

Wow, you did all that just for me!? (blushes)

I am picturing them on top of some large mountain or hill they had to climb - all the way up to the "server location," carrying heavy backpacks filled with tools. They did this in 100 degree heat as well. Then, once at the peak, they fixed things, and are now standing around for the rest of the day/night to ensure things remain "fixed." This means one man must stay on the watch, while the others take turns sleeping.

And they did all of this for my single tech support issue. I imagine they also probably had my support issue printed out with them, so they know exactly what the problem is.

I feel like such a bubbly and fortunate customer now, hee. I just want to throw money at them. "Here, take it - you are more worthy of it than I!"

In reality

In reality, the guy that responded to me probably just had to flip a switch somewhere, which was inadvertently turned off. The switch is probably just a regular light-switch with tape over the top that has written in permanent marker: "DO NOT TURN OFF."

Oops.

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Most people don't realize it, but the web was not created, nor is it maintained by Facebook, Internet Explorer, AOL, Google, Yahoo, or any one corporation or service. The web is simply a means to connect. Yet how we connect has always made it seem like such corporations or services control it. Turns out those companies or services simply help facilitate our interaction with centralized servers - the act of browsing the web, uploading and downloading files - all made possible by software or applications that present the web to us in their own way.

But who are they to say the web should look like this, or act like that? Why must we adapt to their way of doing things, when the web is an open platform - a connection can be made by any client computer, and received likewise? Along the way, our content is filtered through web hosts, corporate services, with their own rules and regulations on how our content and ideas are stored, displayed, and shared.

This filtering limits the true meaning of the web - and that is to connect, freely, to anyone, anywhere.

Opera Unite aims to push the web in this direction, by returning the power to the user, and not the large software/internet company.

Real vs. virtual friends

In recent years, it's become clear the web is an excellent source for meeting new people and establishing life-long relationships. Who would've thought sitting in front of a computer could open up our world so much?

Yet, the internet is almost too vast to comprehend. Our social network friend counts are off the charts - how many of those friends do we actually keep in touch with regularly? How many are a real part of our lives - an influential source?

What used to be friends in the physical world are now just another digit higher on our friend counts. We "accept" friendships on social networks with people, then fail to explore who each person really is. Friendships on social networks rarely progress - instead, many friends shift to the background of our immediate, day-to-day lives, and rarely re-surface in some form to help us regain the connection that brought us together in the first place.

Why is this? It's because the rate of entry to new friends on social networks far surpasses our ability to establish and maintain those friendships. It's easy to request and accept friendships on social networks - all you have to do is click a button.

But real friendships and connections take work, compromise, and sacrafice. Many social network users are casual "friends" with a lot of people, but only true friends with a few.

Shrinking the web to those around us

We need to focus more on our real, practical world of friends, and not our virtual, superficial friends. Who is around us daily and weekly that we'd like to know more? Who is in our neighborhoods, workplaces, commutes, that we can harnass for knowledge, comfort, and inspiration?

These are the people we need to be social networking with - the ones we can meet online and offline - on a regular basis, so the connection grows and progresses.

The web has illustrated how easy it is to reach far, but what it hasn't taught us is how to leverage that distance with a capability to truly grow, adapt, and learn from others.

Example: Facebook without Facebook

How many real, physical neighbors do you know? If you use social networks a lot, I bet you're more familiar with a person across the globe than you are with your neighbor five houses down.

What if you could get to know the people around you physically, a lot better, and still use the web as your primary means to communicate and interact? What if, instead of Facebook for the entire world, you had Facebook for your neighborhood? Only your neighborhood sees what you post, and shares in various activities. You'd still have the ability to expand your neighborhood, but your content is seen by those physically around you, and friendships can be enhanced in person whenever possible.

Your world has just become smaller, sure, but it's more refined, focused, and real.

Most importantly, you have the ability to choose how you connect to your neighborhood, how your content is displayed and accessed, and many other facets that are otherwise controlled by web services and internet companies.

In other words, it'd be "Facebook without Facebook."

There's no longer a "middle man," controlling your content and forcing rules and regulations down your throat. These are your neighbors, after all! Why should one service claim to know or understand how you want to interact with your neighbors?

For example, let's say you're walking your dog down the street, and you neighbor is out washing their car. If you want to say hello, and start a conversation, does some third-party person come crashing in between you and your neighbor, spewing out how you didn't say "hello" properly, or that you didn't do this or that? You'd probably say, "Excuse me. I was trying to have a conversation with this person, and you come in spitting out protocols."

Openness

The idea is openness with your content - the freedom to choose how you want to connect with those in the world around you. The freedom to access and store your data how you wish. No more waiting for API's to be available that let you get at your own data. No more being at the mercy of someone else.

Applications for Opera Unite would be written by independent developers, instead of just one company.

The ideas are endless on how we want to connect with one another.

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When I praised Google Voicemail transcriptions, I didn't know how humorous they'd turn out to be.

For the record, the transcriptions are always very accurate - enough so I get the gist of the message. But it often misses words that end up looking very silly amongst the rest of the sentence.

I think the only way to illustrate my point is by providing some recent examples.

Here is a customer service woman at a nearby park district, informing me that the deadline has passed for returning teams for their recreation basketball league:

"hi matt this is rosemary from the martin grove park district i'm calling to inform you that deadline is pass to returning team stockholders spots in the summer basketball lease if your team is interested in participating in this year's late please contact seven eight eight four seven nine six five twelve hundred as soon as possible as spot survey labonte first come first serve basis thanks and have a good day"

• "martin grove park district" (Should be "morton")
• "deadline is pass to returning team stockholders spots" (stockholders?)
• "in the summer basketball lease" (lease?)
• "please contact seven eight eight four seven nine six five twelve hundred" (Let's write that phone number out: 78847965-1200. Kind of a long phone number, no?)
• "as spot survey labonte first come first serve basis" (OH, "spot survey labonte" - I love those.)

Here is a voicemail from my close friend Pat, informing me he will be at Buffalo Wild Wings shortly, and to see if he can get a table for the game. Perhaps I can show up.

"hey doctor it's me just calling let you know i'm going to buffalo wild wings with printers i'm on my way there and hopefully we can get some of the same let me know let me know if you guys get done maybe come by if not i'll talk to you later bye"

• "hey doctor it's me" (Kind of an odd thing to call someone if they're not a doctor, no?)
• "i'm going to buffalo wild wings with printers" (Hmm... just leave the office at home, will ya? Can't get away from your work at all. Sheesh.)
• "hopefully we can get some of the same" (Some of that "same stuff," eh? What... exactly is that same stuff, again?)

This is the pizza place calling me to tell me they had a problem with my order:

"hi this is john from search feed the calling we had the problem with making the pizza we had to get in touch with the pizza so if you could just give me a call back"

• "this is john from search feed" (Hmm, it's Google calling?)
• "we had to get in touch with the pizza" (Hey... if you need to get in touch with your inner pizza, you go right on and do that. No need to share with me.)

Good for a laugh, I think.

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It wasn't long ago that people considered dating sites like Match.com to be a joke - something that only truly desperate people would use to establish a relationship. Such sites, and the entire concept of meeting somebody through a computer screen was simply not taken seriously.

Well, times have changed. With the popularity of services like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn - the web is finally an acceptable avenue to establish relationships.

Those that are fully utilizing such services are truly getting more from life. They're constantly networking, meeting new friends, and learning to communicate effectively. The rate of meeting new people for online users must surely surpass those who choose to remain offline.

Choosing to involve yourself in social networks has both personal and career benefits. It is also the easiest and most convenient place to share thoughts, promote your brand or product, or stay in touch with family and friends.

Those that choose to remain offline are only doing themselves a disservice. They're making themselves harder to reach; less marketable; and less likely to know what's going on with the people in their world. Staying offline is inconvenient for others, as it makes connecting with you more difficult, and learning about you (for jobs, or connecting with like-minded friends) next to impossible. By staying offline, you're only distancing yourself from the world.

For these reasons, offline is becoming unacceptable.

There are those that poke fun at sites like Twitter - and they're of the same mindset as those who picked on Match.com years ago. Ironically, these are also the same people who end up benefiting from a relationship formed on Match.com, or a random tweet that "saved the day." Their jokes are short-sighted, until the service actually proves useful to them.

Eventually, "newer" networking services like Twitter will become just as acceptable as a site like Match.com has.

And maybe even further down the line, new social networks won't have to experience the brief period of not being taken seriously, like Twitter is experiencing now. Pretty soon, hopefully, the world will understand that social networks are the only networks.

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Amazon has recently introduced a feature that lets Kindle users access their book notes and highlighted passages through the web.

This is a really nice perk of electronic book reading - the ability to make notes and highlight passages of text, and immediately access them through a web browser, so you can share, or copy/paste the text somewhere else, etc.

However, there may still be some confusion over this concept.

First off, I received the email notifying me of this feature:

From the looks of the subject text, without opening the email, I assumed it was talking about an overview of Kindle features. The subject is, "Kindle Highlights and Notes." The wording is poor because although it means physical notes and highlighting, it could also be perceived as: "Here are some highlights and notes about the Kindle product." This is how it first struck me when I read it.

In any event, that's a topic for another day - Amazon's poor branding and advertising of the Kindle. Amazon's strong suit is definitely not advertisements and promotions.

Besides the misleading email subject, it's also not clear if this new feature applies to users of the Kindle iPhone app. I, for one, bookmark a lot of pages when reading through my iPhone, so I'd love a way to immediately access those bookmarked pages through a web browser. (Note: the Kindle iPhone app does not currently allow for notes and highlighting; just bookmarking specific sections.)

I've browsed my Kindle store through Amazon.com, and tried to find a spot that "syncs" my bookmarked pages to my account, but I have had no luck yet.

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A while ago, I registered a few extra Twitter account usernames with the hopes of someday using them. These usernames are either variations of my own name, or catchy word combinations that I feel make great attention-grabbing Twitter usernames. Perhaps I'll use them for a creative endeavor down the road. Some of them I've already started using.

Since I haven't found a use yet for most of my inactive Twitter accounts, they are sitting dormant - IE: no updates, and no profile image.

Well, according to Twitter, you can't do this:

Mass account creation is a spam violation and is against the Twitter Rules. Accounts created in a serial fashion will be suspended, and user names will no longer be available.

More specifically, the following factors may be perceived as "name squatting" by Twitter:

• the number of accounts created
• creating accounts for the purpose of preventing others from using those account names
• creating accounts for the purpose of selling those accounts
• using feeds of third-party content to update and maintain accounts under the names of those third parties

In my case, I am creating accounts that I feel I will use some day for a creative endeavor. Does this constitute name squatting?

My intentions are not malicious - I am registering Twitter usernames that I do intend to use - I'm just not using them yet.

Twitter goes on to further say:

Accounts that are inactive for more than 6 months may be removed without further notice.

Perhaps I could provide minimal updates along with a profile image to ensure my accounts remain out of Twitter's spam filters.

But my question remains... If I am name squatting for creative endeavors, and do not have malicious intent, is this against the rules?

Argument for name squatting

One side of me says: "There's no way I'm in the wrong." If I came up with the creative Twitter username, I should be able to "own" it - at least for a period of time. I compare it to coming up with a creative domain name. If I register a domain name, and leave the site empty (for now), is that considered "domain squatting?" Sure, but it's not illegal unless you have malicious intent - IE: you plan to turn around and sell it for an inflated price.

The way I see it - if I think of it, I should be able to own it. I came up with the catchy word combination or pattern. So isn't that considered my "intellectual property?"

(Of course, you have to pay for domain registration, but you catch my drift.)

Argument against name squatting

Another side of my thinks I am in the wrong, simply because I am blocking other people from registering my inactive accounts. Since I have no valid use for these accounts yet, someone looking to use one of my inactive accounts could truthfully have an argument against me.

Of course, I could always say, "Oh, but I do have a valid use... It'll just be a short while now before I make it public... Any day now!" I could claim I'm still considering the best use for the account, even though I may not have any idea of what to do with it.

So as you can see, the line is kind of blurred on what constitutes a valid account.

Being confronted

I was recently confronted by someone who wanted one of my "reserved" Twitter accounts. They asked nicely and respectfully, rather than accusing me of name squatting, and reporting me to Twitter. They basically said:

"Hey, I noticed you're not using this account. Would you be willing to release it so I can register for it?"

I politely replied "no," because I believe my arguments for name squatting (for creative purposes) are valid. Since I will be using it for a creative purpose, and not malicious or for sale - I see no harm in hanging onto it for a while. Until Twitter starts cracking down on registering extra accounts for creative purposes, or better clarifies their help post on this scenario, I will continue to do it.

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Where is that Twitter?

• The one that nobody knew about.
• The one that felt amazing to connect with new people, each and every day.
• The one where I was excited to get a new follower, knowing it was a legitimate person looking to connect.
• The one where I could act utterly stupid and wouldn't feel intrusive because no one was reading it anyway.
• The one where celebrities did not exist - awash in their one-dimensional updates with no interest in connecting with anyone.
• The one that only local tech geeks used, looking for the best deal on electronics.
• The one where spammers were non-existent, and every account had an actual person behind it.
• The one where A-list bloggers were the "cream of the crop."
• The one where critics were absent (there's nothing to criticize when something is so minute and unimportant).
• The one that felt like a community, and not just a hoard of empty accounts, and default avatars.
• The one where everyone knew your name, and you knew everyone else's name.
• The one where auto-posting from Brightkite felt natural, and people actually looked at it.
• The one where updating and receiving updates via Instant-Message worked.
• The one where I had 2,000 updates and that felt like a lot.

I would like that Twitter back, please.

- Inspired slightly by @MaggieConv's post.

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I haven't really been into the Cubs this season. I knew going into it, I would have very little passion for the team that exited the playoffs the last two seasons without so much as lifting a finger of confidence or effort. My own confidence in them has therefore been drained, and the only thing that will bring it back is some better post-season performances. I mean, give us something to hold onto. Something to say, "hey, well least they went down fighting." Cubs fans can't even say that.

The Chicago Bulls - at midseason, you wouldn't have even thought they'd make the playoffs this past season, let alone give the defending champions a run for their money. Turns out the Bulls lost in the first round of the playoffs, but that's OK - because they put on a heck of a show. They played like they wanted to be there - and won some games, and made it worthwhile. The point is, they gave the fans something to hold onto.

Now, I love baseball, and will watch it whenever I can find the time - the subtleties of the game are enjoyable to watch and learn.

However, the Cubs just don't deserve such a loyal fan base, after their complete dissolution the past two seasons, while having (arguably) one of the best teams in baseball.

I am not abandoning the Cubs, by any means. I'll always be a Cubs fan. I just would like to see some progression in the playoffs - something to build off of.

Following the Reds instead

Honestly, instead of watching the Cubs, this season I'm having more fun following the Reds and Adam Rosales - the player from my hometown who attended the same high school as me, and crossed paths playing little league as well.

Now this is exciting. Just seeing him out there playing for a major league team... I still can't get over it. It's just amazing. I remember that face from when I was a young boy on the baseball diamonds of my hometown of Park Ridge, IL.

To see him all grown up and playing for a big league team is inspirational and great fun.

I plan on following him all season long, with the hopes that he remains in a Reds uniform as long as possible (there's a chance he could be sent down to the minors again).

Until then, though - we'll enjoy watching his first two homeruns as a big league player, over and over:

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