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Stephen Pickering

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  • Facebook’s FriendFeed Acquisition Could Be the Best Thing to Happen For Both Services and It’s “Sharecroppers”

    This a contrarian view, and if I were betting on it I would put my chips in Dave Winer’s corner. That Facebook just bought FriendFeed for its genius, ex-Google Engineers, namely Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor, and that the site will eventually die. Also he feels the users, and that’s an appropriate word, especially guys like Robert Scoble and Louis Gray who evangelized and put so much time and energy into the service, who really made the service, were used to build the audience and then sold down the river for 50 million, leaving many months of energy and data wasted. I get that. I would probably bet that’s what will in fact, take place.

    But let’s pause for a moment. I’ve been noticing in the past couple of days after the acquisition that more people have suddenly started following me on FriendFeed. Now that may be anecdotal, but I was thinking that maybe we got this thing wrong. The facts are, as great of a service FriendFeed is, and I believe that it is the best Social Media experience on the web, they simply weren’t getting traction. They weren’t growing. Now I would argue that they should have just given it more time, but I’m not as smart as Paul Bucheit or Michael Arrington, and as I believe was mentioned in the ClueTrain Manifesto, the “build it and they will come” philosophy simply doesn’t work anymore. It takes many more dimensions now a days, especially that of timing. Perhaps if FriendFeed would have been build two years ago, it would have been the “Twitter” of now. Look at Bing. It’s supposed to be as good of a mouse trap as Google, but it’s too late. So now Microsoft has done a Yahoo deal to get more exposure.

    The FriendFeed team are engineers, perhaps some of the best software engineers in the World, but perhaps they don’t have the skills of how to build a big, network effect audience. But now they’ve married the people who knew how to build the biggest audience in the world. Also, besides Gmail, Paul innovated and built some of Google’s advertising products. So he may also be an expert in search monetization, and perhaps the most qualified person in the world to figure out how to monetize Real Time Search. That’s just what Facebook is struggling with. They have the audience, and now they need a genius to figure out how to monetize it. This could be a perfect marriage, and the result could be not only a fantastically successful Facebook, but a better product and so better for the “users.”

    Will FriendFeed continue as a stand alone site? Probably not. But there are strong paradigms in its favor. First, it is the best Social Media product in the market. It doesn’t have an audience or at least a big enough one. But now it’s getting exposure to 300 million other users. It doesn’t take a big percentage of those folks signing up for the service to make it viable in its own right. Also, as mentioned in the book “Free” by Chris Anderson, the costs of running such a website is halving each year. You combine those two synergistic principles and you may have a site that not only continues to run, but actually still be innovative and perhaps as much of a household name as Twitter is becoming.

  • The Lovely Couple

    Honey, let’s grow our own branch.
    Let’s give the white tiger of our hearts a second chance.
    Let’s look into the woods and be still.
    Lose all we learned, and do it by feel.

    All right you’re wrong. Wanna’ to know why?
    All night long you hold courtship with the phantom sky.
    You brace the breach and clutch the straw
    And wonder why everything comes out wrong.

    You’re a thespian with your speech.
    It’s something I can’t hold out and reach.
    I’ve tried with my song
    But sadly it just lopes and lopes along.

    OK, be a ruler with your king.
    I won’t hold back a thing.
    I’ll teach you to draw and do studious things.
    I’ll teach you to whisper to the mountain and the breeze.

    Finally, at last, in the darkness we’ve reached our peak.
    A little boy in the drawer raises his head out to see.
    His face is covered in lashes.
    His cheeks are blanch, spotted with rashes.

    My kingdom for a good eye!
    The riders mount with their fellows to the sky.
    They know how it is down and out.
    In Paris and London and all about.

    I’d like to take you outside and shout.
    But I dare not let darkness out.
    He’s a snake whispering to his lover the dark.
    A small minded man willing to ransom my only spark.

    Oh, how I wish you wouldn’t see
    The little man who’s running inside of me.
    He’s a traitor I tell you. Don’t believe a thing!
    If you do, I swear, I’m gonna take back that corn blue sapphire ring!

    Cutlet sized blazers and ribbon shaped hills.
    They keep us haunting this house recklessly in chills.
    I’d sign you out, but you wouldn’t last
    You’d thrash around hysterically screaming about the past.

    You’re a duckly little darling aren’t you?
    Heart shaped whisper, streaming lake colored eyes.
    Who wouldn’t imagine an ocean looking at that radiant blue?
    Will it do any good if I throw away all of the signs?

    I want to thank you for being here this evening.
    It’s a drama we couldn’t have done without you.
    Little birds take your seats and be still
    We promise what we say will be real.

    Longers, long for your garden covered roses then.
    We’ll be back if there’s room at the inn.
    Make it cozy, fresh coffee and bread
    And all the things King Solomon had by his bed.

    Beads and roses of rubies and stone
    Don’t bother us too early. We want to be alone.
    Stop crying in your castle when we’re not to blame.
    Each year we come back and its always the same.

    Oh lovely, I touch your soft place.
    It’s a bed of roses, your other face.
    Be humble and proud and laugh out loud.
    Once their done with us, we’ll just be another face in the crowd.

    We stand upside down on the surface of the sky.
    I can already see them waving their hands goodbye.
    “They’re like Angels,” they scream, “Hold them to their words.”
    But its too late. We escape their providence and fly away like birds.

  • The Proposal

    Can I hold your hand in Spring?
    It would be a most beautiful thing.
    I can take you ’round Haskel’s for lunch
    On Saturday so we don’t have to rush

    If its dry I’ll hold your clutch.
    Otherwise you’ll beat me to the punch.
    I love living in your bowl,
    And do you know on Saturday they offer free rolls!

    Gratis, no kidding,
    But before winter you must bring them some knitting
    Do it up in style
    So they can be proud and look at us smile.

    I’ll be your bookkeeper too.
    God knows you’ve earned your due.
    I’ll wish you all the best
    When the pumpkin headed monsters put you to the test.

    Awake in my dream
    Oh, it’s a marvelous thing
    To think you’ll be my wife
    And pour my coffee the rest of my life.

    You are all pumpkiny when you blush
    It’s a smile I’ve seen for miles when I’m free.
    I wish you would hold me up in your tree
    Feathered and silent, tasted of your touch.

    You are Grandma’s dream
    Coming alive at the seam.
    A wish maker’s dance
    Held still by a trance.

    You are diamonds and hides
    The King maker’s bride.
    Can we saddle up and ride
    Until we reach the other side?

    I’ll take you in hand
    And be ball rich grand.
    Let’s stake us out some land
    Just to show Daddy that we can.

    We’ll build rich farms
    That grow honeysuckle charms
    And dream of monkeys and apes
    Who eat our wine maker’s grapes.

    They sing winter songs.
    We work hard all week long.
    They lay in the carafe,
    Soaking in their warm bath.

    Shower me with hope.
    I know you think I’m poor.
    Poor with words and can’t cope.
    So if it doesn’t work we’ll open a store!

    At Christmas I’ll cut you a ham.
    We’ll stream icicles across his limb.
    We’ll build forests for sleep
    And burly ranches for our lazy sheep.

    I’m a sheep rancher’s wife.
    A coat maker’s bride.
    God, it’s good to be alive
    With only you by my side.

    Honey, can you slide the ruler of life?
    Can you be quiet for a while.
    I want to sit and gaze at the beef
    And dream of what its like to be a tree.

    I want to take the chariot for a spin
    And this time not for pretend.
    I want to ride rope and spring
    Like on a grasshopper’s dream.

    I like grinding it out for while.
    It doesn’t all have to be trophy’s and style.
    We can be lazy for a day,
    Or run outside and play.

    The frisbee catcher has a dog
    The Honeybee keeper acts like a stupid, wet frog.
    A kiss from you will make him smile,
    But don’t be gone for a while.

    Let’s sing and watch the Sun.
    After all, it’s how we begun.
    We’ll like dancing in the trees
    And after its over back down to the sea.

    A clown maker’s wife.
    A bee boppers life.
    Oh, what marvelous pets we’ll be
    Sold in a store, unlocked from our cage, for free.

  • It Looks Like Love

    Looks Like Love

    Field recording cover of a Josh Rouse song, It Looks Like Love, off his album Subtitulo.
    Oh wow, now that I listen to it, its pretty rough. I think I used a webcam mic. Maybe I shouldn’t have posted it (vanity!), but what the hey, it’s quaint.

  • Why Privacy is So Important to Social Harmony

    parallel shadowsAll of us, even the best, have what is known as a “shadow” part of our personality. The Shadow is our “dark” side, the one that wants to cuss and do what society deems as “bad things” and which in some manifestations really are bad things. Normally we are not even conscious of it, our Ego isn’t conscious of it, and when those times the shadow asserts itself to the point that it breaks through the Ego guardian, perhaps even the Super Ego guardian, i.e. “Society,” we become unconscious and don’t even acknowledge it.

    But the trick to making your life happier is to acknowledge it.

    If one can learn to acknowledge, release, pay homage to the shadow in a ceremonial, private way, it won’t come out in a public embarrassing way.

    In fact respecting the shadow in private ceremonially is the key to releasing the enormous amount of positive, creative energy that’s stored inside all of us in public. In other words to be successful and happy. Manners are the oil on which societal interactions run. Forced manners are painful and take up a lot of energy. In a person who has released his shadow energy, manners flow naturally and exuberantly.

    How can one deal with their shadow personality privately? Well, since the shadow is a part of the subconscious, it responds very well the ceremony and ritual. Subconscious energies believe, for example, that something said or written in private is the same as saying, writing, or doing it in public. If you are angry at someone who is close to you, for example, you may write your shadow feelings in a diary or scream and cuss at them when you are alone and no one can hear you.

    This may seem absurd to some people or even “weird,” but what it does is prevent you from sending a nasty note or getting into a real argument that could have lasting scaring effects.

    It’s important to understand that dealing with your shadow in private doesn’t mean that you won’t deal with conflicts that really do need to be dealt with in public or at least between two people. It’s just the opposite. Releasing your shadow in private, enables you to deal and resolve conflict more effectively and in a socially acceptable way. This is because the shadow, your dark side is also about shame and fear. You know what causes avoidance behavior? It’s not for lack of “thrashing out.” It’s from repressing your shadow, so that your shame and guilt control your consciousness, blocking out your objectivity.

    This is why privacy is so important. One must have the private space to express every ounce of shadow energy, privately. Bad or “dirty” thoughts and feelings are not something to feel guilty about. But acting these “bad” or “dirty” thoughts in public is something that will cause society and yourself much harm. Still they’re going to get out one way or another, so the best way of dealing with them effectively is to pay them respect, privately, ceremonially, in a socially acceptable way.

    The best book I have ever read on this subject is one called Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche by Robert A. Johnson. It’s a slim, simple book to read whose deep ideas are expressed in such easily understood language, you’ll go “Wow, this really makes total sense.” He really gets to the heart of the matter without all the extra literary “fluff.” It’s highly interesting and engaging, and something that you can put to work right away. Definitely not some University textbook tome that tries to dissect the life out of life. I highly recommend it.

    Dealing with your shadow is actually a lot of fun and will enable you to release hidden, positive parts of your personality that you never knew you had before.


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  • Customize Your WordPress Page Tab Links


    How to customize where your page tab links to in wordpress? It’s easy. There’s a plug in called “Page Link To” you can download directly from your “add new plug-ins” panel inside of wordpress (just go to plugins in your dashboard and “Add New” and search for ‘Page Links To’) or visit their page here: http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/page-links-to/ and download it there. Does this trick in seconds. This is incredibly useful because one could link to a flickr account for example instead of creating your own photo gallery, or if you link to a category it helps bring those posts back to life instead of kind of being buried there in the sidebar. It also helps re-invigorate interest in your own blog by bringing that older material back to the forefront, so that you can curate, iterate some more and by restoring a sense of continuum and wholeness to the themes and ideas of your blog, which will energize your creativity as you move forward.

    pagelinksto

    Special thanks goes out to the editorial staff at WPBeginner.com for finding this solution for me. I wanted to create a page called “Poems,” and then I thought, “Why can’t it just link the page tab to the category search result for poems, and provide an instant list of all the posts that I had categorized as such, instead of me having to reprint the poems or creating a new list and links manually?” They responded to my inquery very quickly and found this solution for me. This is a staff that cares, is interested in their business. It’s one of the best sites for learning and finding answers about WordPress. They are very engaging. One of their staff even posted a comment on this post, giving me a tip before I had finished iterating it myself.