LIVEdigitally

God knows I’m not a big believer in all things 2.0, in fact, I’m not much of a believer in anything 2.0. However, amidst the muck and dreck there are some winners, and more importantly, underlying all the new rounded corners fanciness it’s become clear that the future of the Web is about open platforms and data sources all able to talk to each other. Flickr is better than Kodak Photo Gallery because they made it so easy for me to get to my photos through not only their site, but on my blog, Facebook, etc etc.

Before there was 2.0, in fact, before there was really dot-com, there was IMDB, the Internet-hosted paradise for film geeks.  I won’t see a movie without checking it’s IMDB score, and upon seeing one I’ll instantly dash off to read the trivia, and give it a rating myself.  At a dinner party if a movie gets mentioned and a debate about some actor starts, the laptop comes out, and off to IMDB we go (at a friends’ house I’ll usually just kwiry the movie instead, since they seem to find it rude if I go get their laptop just to prove them wrong).  It’s been that way for a decade or more, and unfortunately, nothing much has changed.

Amazon bought IMDB some years back, integrated shopping in a not-so-bad way too.  IMDB launched “pro” but it’s really for people in the movie business.  So rather than involve the community and become the de facto source for all movie data across all Web sites, IMDB sits on their closed, controlled, protected database, and sits on the sidelines as competitors emerge.

Want to build a movie app using their data?  No problem, you can license it here (and here’s their data format, mercifully updated from CSV into XML in the past few years).  There are discussion forums, but no RSS feeds to get the conversation elsewhere.  There is a “my movies” feature, but if you want it integrated into your blog, you have to use their widget (preview it here) which allows for zero customization.  There is an unbelievable wealth of data, a literal treasure trove of it, and it’s all locked away in their proprietary site.

Part of me thinks that after Amazon bought them they reduced the technical staff down to one or two people, who spend their time making sure the site works in new browsers (see? just like 1997!).  Part of me thinks there’s some crazy person in charge who believes keeping things status quo is the way to win.  I’d like to think there’s some big plan on opening up the platform (remember: open beats closed!), enabling richer applictions to emerge, and IMDB will escape its position as film nerd haven.

But most of me thinks the whole darn thing is locked in some server farm somewhere and nobody can figure out the captcha to get back in.

Been a while since I’ve blogged, I know, a little too much travel, not enough interesting new tech for me.  So I could weigh in on the mysterious undersea cable cutting conspiracy, but, just like all the other bloggers who’ve commented, I really have no clue about it.  Instead, I’ve got some simple tips to improve some web sites I use a lot.

1. Evite
   Somehow even with all the froobooloo.com, sqzzzr’s, and other Web 2.0 sites, nobody’s managed to beat up on Evite.  Which is stunning considering it’s really the same site it was back in 1999.  No Plaxo integration.  No custom template editing.  No useful host tools.  The only new features I’ve seen are about sending my evite to my mobile device.  So how about just giving the host the ability to review the guest list from within the site (the CSV export is ridiculous)?  Just showing me the email addresses of my invitees would make a world of difference.  My estimated difficulty to integrate (on a 1-10, where 10 is really hard): 1.5.
2. Google Calendar
   This one’s short and sweet: when an all-day event is booked, it should “block off” the whole day!  See Outlook 2003 calendering for reference.  JT’s Difficulty-o-Meter: 2.
3. IMDB
   Again, ANY new features would be nice.  But I’ll settle for some basic improvements in the “My Movies” features.  Don’t double entries just because I put them in multiple categories.  Also, let me export the list.  Also, let me share the list (in a “real” way, the current method is bogus).  Bottom line is I have no real use for this feature as it currently stands, so any features are better features.  JT’s Difficultizer: 3.
4. CNET (and many many others, but I care more about you!)
   Don’t require login to comment on blogs.  It’s only reducing the likelihood that people will converse, yet not increasing the quality of content.  JT’s Dffclty–mtr: 1.
5. Facebook
   Make groups useful already! Right now, the entire usefulness of a group is the process of adding it to your profile so your friends can see you added it.  They, in turn, may add it as well.  This cycle continues until you notice the group is either (a) spamming you, (b) entirely useless, or (c) overwhelmed with marketing pitches, at which point you leave the group.  Soon, your friends follow.  The JT challenge: 7
6. YouTube
   Copy (literally) the Flickr style of sharing private photos.  Allow me to mark a video private, then get a hidden URL I can email to people.  Like it or not, not everybody plans to become a YouTube user, and I’d rather not burden my parents with such a chore just to see my baby videos (which are, of course, the cutest videos on YouTube).  JTdiff: 4.
7. Xbox Live website
   Two features this time.  One, allow me to search for friends’ gamertags using their email addresses and other piece of info (or just do a Plaxo integration).  Second, and more interesting, is building in some “group game scheduling” feature where I can tell my friends I plan to play a certain game (say, COD4) at a certain time (say, this weekend, probably Saturday night or Sunday), and they can sign up to play.  Then we all get reminders from within the Xbox Dashboard.  Or on Facebook, whatever…  JT difficulterer: 6.5.
8. Flickr
   First, you have to go fix the really broken version of the Mac uploader, but that’s a bug, not an improvement.  How about allowing us to customize our pages?  I’d like to have more than the few meager options I have today for default layouts.  ytluciffid TJ: 3.
9. Ustream.tv and hockeybuzz.com and anyone else who automatically plays video when you come to their home page
   Stop it.  Now.
10. Amazon.com
    Integrate the wiki and community with the rest of the product pages.  It’s so completely disjointed and looks so out of place.  Also, give us more control over search filters, I hate the options you’ve preselected for me (hint: not everybody is comparing 40-49″ flatscreens, sometimes we look for 46-52″ displays…).  JT’s diff: 4.
11. Bonus: LIVEdigitally.com
    First, how the heck do you pronounce this site, and why is the “live” capitalized?  Also, get the content flowing a little more regularly.  10.

I’ve seen lots of Top 10 lists on the subject, and I’ve decided to try a different format for my own prognostications. Instead of by rank, I’ll do a list by industry.  Also, I have way more than 10 predictions to make.

TV Technology

• Every major cable company will increase it’s rates by more than 3%. Nobody will complain, and our government will (again) fail to protect us from them.
• A resolution above 1080p starts appearing in demos and labs, I’d predict a bump up into the 4000 vertical lines space.
• Bluray and HD-DVD continue to duke it out while consumers continue to not care.
• One of Hulu, Joost, etc get integrated into the Xbox 360 and/or PS3.
• Google launches “Android for Set-Top Boxes” but gains little traction in the foreseeable future.
• Anyone who is not a telephone company that tries to launch an IP-streaming set top device has a very rough year.
• Despite near-constant predictions of their demise, TiVo makes it through another year, possibly getting acquired (by DirecTV, Comcast, Netflix, Blockbuster, or someone out of the blue like Amazon or eBay).

Portable Devices That Are Not Cell Phones

• Zune 3.0 launches. It’s very very good. Further, iPod’s market share dips, although they still have an increase in overall unit sales (in other words: the pie gets bigger faster than their sales do). That said, a new iPod is even more betterer than all previous versions, making everyone who recently bought a prior generation a wee bit annoyed, but gosh that Steve Jobs is so charming they just don’t care. After all, that’s technology!
• At least two major camera vendors introduce integrated wifi cameras, but no more than one uses an open service, the rest have some proprietary, closed, annoying-to-use system. Ideally one of them buys Eye-fi.
• Digital picture frames continue to grow in market share, but still don’t “tip” into the mainstream.
• More companies introduce e-book readers despite general malaise in the category. Kindle II is launched with mild improvements.

Enterprise Services

• I have no clue, I don’t follow the space. Hello, this is a consumer tech blog!

Computers

• Apple’s new laptops will include an ultramobile, a tablet, and a “desktop replacement” OR a “gaming model” (they may combine the first two). Enhancements will include a card reader, 3G access as a built-in option, and new gestures. Market share continues to climb.
• Microsoft continues to spin about how amazing Vista is. Michael Gartenberg’s observations are probably the most poignant as to why it isn’t.
• Asus or Dell acquires or merges with one of HP, Acer, Toshiba, or other “meh” PC maker.
• Sony continues to make subpar Vaio laptops. And for the last time (I think) in 2007: don’t buy the Sony Vaio VGN-SZ4xx series laptops, they are just plain terrible. I’ve now had the chance to voice my discontent directly to the Vaio PR team (at Ruder Finn) who have yet to write me back on the topic.
• Nobody makes my awesome dual-screen laptop concept, thus leaving me the opportunity to make zillions one day.

Social Networking

• Facebook continues to get backlash from the media and tech community, meanwhile its user base continues to skyrocket. Further, they hire another 1000 people, yet only make modest improvements to the site itself. I’d add a 33% chance that they “pull a Netscape” and go after the desktop or the browser or some other place they really don’t belong.
• Randomly pick some names from the huge list of other social networking sites and some of them merge.
• Adults who didn’t grow up with social networking services experience burnout of being bitten by zombies after a few months, and many stop checking in four times per day. Those who went to school during the Facebook era continue to complain about all the old fogies (like me) polluting their sacred resting ground. They also continue to put radically inappropriate pictures of themselves online, blissfully unaware of the interviewing process.

Mobile Tech

• A few Android-powered phones ship, but not as many as the tech community would like to see. Again showing why the Razr can utterly dominate the market despite a closed architecture and terrible user interface.
• Apple launches the iPhone 3G, the iPhone nano, and the iPhonePro. Ok, I’m not 100% sure on the third, but I am betting on the first two. Also, one of these new phones comes unlocked OR on a carrier other than AT&T.
• Some major lawsuit occurs between a carrier and either a cable company or a broadcaster, all about mobile video rights. All parties involved appear as nothing but greedy to outsiders.
• Something new comes out in the phone space that’s more astounding than the iPhone. It’s possibly: uber-small, has a radically better battery life, does something funky like synchs with the Wii, or works with all US carriers.

Gaming

• With lots of stealth, a new console comes to market. It might only be a moderate shift from a prior model, or possibly be a whole new entrant.
• Rock Band 2 and 3, and Guitar Heros 4, 5, 6, and “Eddie Van Halen” editions come out, however nobody licenses the Harmonix engine to make “Jazz Trio”.
• Someone comes up with a really impressively new concept for the Wii. Good odds, however, that they wrap it inside a crappy game.
• More really amazing HD gaming occurs, continuing to drive HD adoption faster than the meager channels the cable companies try to placate us with, despite the fact that they raise prices again. Did I already say that?

Web Services/Misc

• A wide swath of “Web 2.0″ companies will go dark, primarily out of an inability to either figure out a business model for their product, or an inability to successfully market their service outside of the Bay Area.  They will quickly be forgotten and replaced by new ones with even goofier sounding names like Froobooloo.com.
• No major Wimax deployments occur.
• The digital transition date looms, starts creating a lot of media hype a la Year2000 mania.
• RFID continues to be a fun topic for the media, but all that happens is Walmart continues to make small vendors spend loads of money for the privelege of selling there.
• Bloggers fret about not being recognized as “press”, yet continue to spend too much time/energy gossiping about other bloggers, an activity the general public remains disinterested in and doesn’t give extra respect/credibility for.  This circular logic is baffling, I know.
• We lose even more rights to big media, because few Americans are willing to take even the tiniest steps to do anything about it.  PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG (start here)!
• I still don’t Twitter.

See you in 366 days to see how I scored!

Was just looking at some of my photos and watched them practically disappear before my eyes. After a mini panic attack, I found out I was not alone. I’m assuming it’s just a bug, and the photos themselves are a-okay.  But it did make me think a bit about my personal reliance on Flickr.  I use it as…

• a backup for all my photos
• a way to share with friends and family
• a host for photos for all of my blogses (4 of em)

Regarding losing the backup - not a big deal, since I have TRIPLE backups of my photos (portable HDD in my laptop bag, Drobo in my office, Maxtor NAS in my home).  There’s no question that multiple backups of digital photos are essential.  If you don’t have a backup solution that has some form of offsite redundancy, find one immediately - it’s much more important than debating opensocial and facebook.

Regarding losing the sharing - not a terribly big deal, since I can easily re-upload elsewhere.  I would be a bit annoyed at having to re-tag things that I’ve organized, but I’d assume the entire process would be less than a day’s work.
Regarding the hosting part - this is actually the biggest pain.  Sure I can reupload, but I’d then have to go back to literally every single blog post I’ve written and redirect the links.  This would be so time-consuming I can say right now - I ain’t doing it.

In the time it’s taken me to discover the problem and write the post, the Flickr guys have fixed the bug.  But in a way I’m glad it’s happened as it gives me a bit of perspective on how much I should rely on any single technology/platform/service.

I received an email (well, 6 emails to be precise) last night with the subject line “Malware notification regarding livedigitally.com.” My first assumption was that it was my old friend Samuel Eze up to his crazy hijinks, but alas, it was from Google.  The letter continues…

We recently discovered that some of your pages can cause users to be
infected with malicious software. We have begun showing a warning page
to users who visit these pages by clicking a search result on Google.com.
Below are some example URLs on your site which can cause users to be
infected (space inserted to prevent accidental clicking in case your
mail client auto-links URLs):

http://www.livedigitally .com/
http://www.livedigitally .com/category/gaming/
http://www.livedigitally .com/category/convergence/

Here is a link to a sample warning page:
http://www.google.com/interstitial?url=http%3A//www.livedigitally.com/

…

It proceeds to tell me how I can apply to get my site restored, via a site called StopBadware.org.   I’ve gone through all the HTML and links in the site, all looks pretty darn safe.  Here’s part of the automated response I got upon submission of the form:

Thank you for contacting StopBadware.org.  We are currently re-reviewing a number of websites via our request for review process, and we have added your site to that testing queue.

I must say, while it’s good there’s a way to apply to get out here, it’s pretty frustrating that I was not given more specific information as to the problem.  Feels very… witchhuntish.  Is that a word?   Considering I still believe Google is singlehandedly responsible for the growing amount of spam and fake Web sites, I hope this is a sign of good things to come.  Somehow, I doubt it, since most of the “bad” sites are contributing directly to Google’s soaring market cap.

I guess it comes down to whether or not they are “maybe just a teensy bit evil” or not…

In a move that’s being heavily questioned by folks like Mathew Ingram, Brad Feld, and Fred Wilson, Jason Calacanis went out on a limb (well, more like “walked kinda near the edge, but not too close”) and “defined” Web 3.0 last night:

Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.

I say:

Web 3.0 is a label that will never see the light of day. Caveat: except for people who attempt to define it.   My prediction for what comes next can be found by scrolling to the bottom of this post.

Now I’ll back it up a bit. Web 2.0 is a term used by few. I’d personally put the number between 500K and 2MM people.  I made that up, but base it on TechCrunch readership and a small multiplier effect, and I can’t see it much higher.  And yes, my Valley-based brethren, we really do live in a bit of an echo-chamber.  Even if I’m wrong by 100%, it’s still a few million people at best.

Part of the problem is the ongoing debate of what Web 2.0 means.  Per Brad’s comment, it’s one of those techie labels for things that don’t truly have a definition.  It seems to be “Web companies that were launched in 2004 or later, and heavily leverage open APIs, RSS, AJAX, or something to do with Google.”

Some people are using terms like “semantic Web” (I like Brian’s post on this, although I disagree with him too), which I also think will not get mainstream.  First, most people don’t know what the word “semantic” means (I think it has something to do with Yom Kippur and bagels, but I may be wrong).  Second, like Jason’s Web 3.0 definition, it’s just not BIG enough.

The Internets are used by lots of people, including the U.S. Americans, the South Africans, and the people who don’t have maps.  Most of these people are playing games, downloading music, lingering on MySpace, and doing other massively popular activities.  By comparison, Facebook doesn’t even cause a dimple in the stats of overall international Internet use.

So let’s get all these points together:

1. We have a nebulous term for the current state of the Web, and the “sequel” term is even more nebulous.
2. We have technology that is far above the awareness and comprehension of the typical Web user.
3. The Internet works good.  Seriously - things are pretty sweet.  They were sweet before Twitter, Yelp, and the current wave of lifecasting, social networking, and other “frills” showed up.

Relative to this, the so-called Web 3.0 or semantic Web movements will be minor, if they exist at all.  The catalysts for explosive growth aren’t there.  The Internet, dialup, and Web browsers fueled the dot-com explosion (forget the collapse right now).  Broadband Internet reaching over 50% of US households is fueling Web 2.0 growth (forget the impending bubble deflation right now).The next wave to bank on is Everywhere Internet.  Truly pervasive access will cause the next batch of entrepreneurs to create amazing new services.  I don’t know which technology platform will win, nor will I predict the timing, but I wouldn’t assume any “big waves” occurring without Everywhere Internet.

In the past couple of hours, a story that originated at the WSJ has gotten the entire TechMeme-fueled blogosphere in a tizzy. The story asserts Microsoft’s interest in acquiring a stake of Facebook, which would lock in some advertising dollars and send the valuation of FB to roughly $10(ish) billion dollars (which in a completely unrelated twist is the amount of money the US government claims illegal workers somehow “cost” California each year. I’m in a little bit of a funk about the immigration process these days, so sorry for the bizarre display of cynicism). Here’s a little snapshot of TechMeme:

Now for some quotes from the article:

could value Facebook at $10 billion or more, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google Inc. has also expressed strong interest in a possible Facebook investment, said people familiar with the matter.

a stake potentially valued at roughly $300 million to $500 million, the people familiar with those talks said.

The people familiar with the matter said that the discussions are still preliminary and Facebook could wind up not taking an investment from either Microsoft or Google.

A Facebook spokeswoman and spokesmen for Microsoft and Google declined to comment.

Uh… hmm. First, maybe we can get the article’s authors a thesaurus (I hear they’re online now!) and find at least one other phrase for “people familiar with…” Second, how do we know this is news? Don’t get me wrong, I believe it’s a possibility, but I’d certainly like to get some substantiation here. I’m a little surprised that this has so much attention at this stage (from Valleywag, Mathew Ingram, TechCrunch, Scoble, Om Malik, etc).

I’m also a little surprised that there was virtually no impact to Microsoft’s stock.

ps - don’t forget, the Sony SZ-VGN460N laptop is still one of the worst laptops on the market and even though that has nothing to do with my post, I’m still so unbelievably angry at Sony that I’m keeping the theme alive. Don’t buy it!

I started using Plaxo years ago as a mechanism to “safeguard” my contacts. In the marketing field, my network (”rolodex”) is one of my more important assets, so having an online service to help me migrate the database from computer to computer is wonderful. I think this is now my 5th or 6th laptop owned since originally signing up to Plaxo, and each migration has gone fairly smoothly. Even to my Sony Vaio SZ-VGN460N, the worst computer I have ever owned in my life.

Now there’s always been a little rivalry of sorts with LinkedIn, even though they both have distinct value propositions (Plaxo being slightly more useful in my eyes). But with rapid onslaught of Facebook in the post-collegiate world this year, it seems like everybody even tangentially related to the social networking space is either jumping on board with a Facebook App (shameless plug - rate Facebook applications here!!!) or trying to compete with a similar styled offering.

Unfortunately, from all outward appearances, Plaxo is taking the “slightly more evil” route of diong business. Plaxo seems to be going down the route of near-invasion of privacy combined with phishing-style email updates. Today I received an email entitled “What’s happening in your Pulse”:

As you can see from the screenshot, I have a few updates from some colleagues. Now first off, I never asked for said updates, which puts this into the spam category of email. Secondly, I am pretty sure nobody on the list has opted in to having Plaxo track and share this information with me, which is a privacy invasion (yes, I know that these are all publicly accessible things, but without the opt-in, it’s dubious).  Thirdly, it is absolutely ridiculous that these aren’t active links to the activity updates!  I’m supposed to go to Plaxo Pulse just to get the links I want.

In my eyes, this is a shameful betrayal of users on Plaxo’s part.  They have created a “service” designed without any consent on anyone’s behalf.  In doing so, they have most certainly lost me as an evangelist, and have opened the door for any competitor with a similar offering to rapidly snatch me up.  What a terrible business, product, and marketing decision they have made.  I wonder how many people it took to make it?

Saw Ryan’s two-part anti-IntelliTXT rant, and I have to say I’m in 100% agreement with him. Now I’m going to go one step further. I want a full-on end-user-configurable WidgetBlocker. Widgets are unquestionably slowing down page loading, so if how about putting the control in my hands? Here’s my note to my blogging friends:

I, for one, don’t much care who your recent readers were, or what you are listening to on Last.FM (don’t take it personally - it’s just not why I visit your blog). If I want to see your photos, I’ll go to Flickr. I don’t need to see the latest cartoon from GapingVoid (though they are hilarious - but I’ll go there when I want to see them). I don’t care how many feedburner subscribers you have. I don’t really mind your most recent microblog/tweet entry, but do you need it to be in a 250px tall box?

For those of you who need to make money of your blog, fine, show the ads, I understand. But if you are just doing it to get an extra $50 bucks a month, maybe you should think about decluttering a little. At the very least, how about just cleaning up the layout enough that you don’t show ads that look like regular content?

There is a reason for services like My.Yahoo, PageFlakes and NetVibes.  Maybe we can shift the widgetworld into letting people publish to each others’ pages, rather than slow down my ability to read your blog.  So, I’ve gone ahead and registered widgetblocker.com.  Anyone want to build the plugin with me?

I was writing a new blog post for Bug Labs this morning, and wanted to take a quick scan for any new links to the company.  The first page of results is basically a-ok, until I sorted by date.  On this page, here is a summary of the results I saw:

RSS Watch

Bug Labs fleshes out BUGbase, BUGmodule details

links for 2007-08-29

Bug Labs BUGbase & BUGmodules

Open Source: Bug Labs Website BUGbase and Module Hardware Details

Bug Labs fleshes out BUGbase, BUGmodule details

Bug Labs: Products

Bug Labs fleshes out BUGbase, BUGmodule details

MAKE: Blog: Bug labs - hardware, first look

Quite a Punch

Of the above list, only three are original sources of content (shown italicized). The three references to the “fleshes out..” article all stem from an Engadget post, which did not make the page.  The other repurposed story links either reference MAKE magazine or Gizmodo.

Google may have improved search and found a killer revenue model with AdSense.  But my hunch is they have singlehandedly enabled more spammers than any other company.  The part that bothers me the most is I have no doubt that they could kill off all the spam blogs from their search results (they are fairly smart people over there).  So why do they choose not to do it? My guess is it would affect their bottom line.

I guess I’m starting to feel like the Potter Stewart on this.  I don’t exactly know how to define evil, but I know it when I see it.

Last week I rolled up the sleeves, dusted off the old PHP memories, and got a little down and dirty to take a swing at a new site called AppRate.com. While watching people like Scoble, Mario Sundar, and Dave McClure add and remove about 40 applications per day (just kidding guys) on Facebook, I was getting curiouser and curiouser as to which were the “good” applications, versus the bad and the ugly. But Facebook’s “review” system is really just a meaningless comments board.

So I decided to build my own, and distribute the power back to the community. On our side, we add the applications to the site, throw in a screenshot, a little blurb, a link, and our rating. The rest is up to you. Voting is totally open with no registration needed - I’m hoping that empowering the community will overwhelm anyone’s urges to game the system. The site automatically calculates the top scoring and most voted-on items. In addition, anyone can easily add comments, although first-comments need moderation due to the power of the spambot world.

I’ve also taken a few extra moments to write a Facebook App that shows the Top 10 from AppRate. It’s not quite as versatile right now, I think it needs to link directly to the applications instead of the reviews, but that’s all I’ve figured out so far. Would love some feedback on this one, I’ve forgotten how much fun tinkering is.

At the time of writing, I have 85 friends on Facebook.  A good dozen or so are people I will likely never interact with again.  Another dozen are people I’ve met once, maybe twice, and unless they’re also in LinkedIn with me, I doubt I’d even have their contact information.  I’ve gotten friend requests from people I’ve truly never met, but we seem to have someone in common. So what exactly is it that makes us Friends?

A few weeks back, Dave Winer wrote a post that I very much agree with, complaining about the types of relationshps available when people befriend one another.  My complaint is at a much more basic level - I don’t really like using the term ‘friend’ so casually. 

In my world, a friend is someone I can call (or IM or text or Twitter), in times both good and bad, and know they’ll be there to lend an ear.  I mock Twitter above, and one of the reasons comes back down to my view of friendship - my friends know what I’m doing and don’t need to find out my updates from some Web site or service.  Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people I’m friendly with, but just because I’ve established a positive, non-stranger relationship doesn’t mean we are BFFs.

Clearly on the other side of the fence of this kind of topic is Robert Scoble, who is currently accepting friendships with anyone out there (for now).  Again, there’s nothing particularly wrong with this, but it does make me crave a new word to use for contacts, acquaintances, associates, and other people I “know”. 

I enjoy plenty of friendly relationships, and look forward to making many more in this journey called life.  I hope for everyone’s sake that twenty years from now people seek more from each other than writing on walls, tagging photos, and the occasional poke.  Well, that one’s not so bad now, is it?