EchoDitto

It’s been three months since I started at EchoDitto—hard to believe, right? I wanted to share a few trends in my life since I’ve been here.

1. Personal content. In the world of non-profits, the personal voice is not the preferred voice. In fact, the preferred voice is generally one that uses words like “community building” “stronger, healthier families” and “together, we can make a difference.” It got so that every time I went to write something, those words miraculously came out, without my even trying. Now, nearly everything I read is written by a real person, and you can tell. Unsurprisingly, I trust the content so much more.

Vermonters have long resisted their membership in the United States, and some rebel separatists are still calling for an independent Green Mountain Republic. Furthermore, the international focus of my alma mater, Middlebury College, certainly adds to the international image. But Apple, and their iPhone partner AT&T, have abused Vermont's desire for independence: iPhones, which are only available in the United States, cannot be purchased or used by Vermonters. In fact, iPhone users who make more than forty percent of their calls in Vermont will be booted from their contracts. The real reason is that Vermont is the only state without AT&T cell service, so the company is forced to cover roaming charges, but the situation smacks of discrimination.

While this may upset Vermont's Apple fanatics, the state, which has been rapidly losing its young, can certainly use this discrimination to their advantage. By courting AT&T users who want out of their contracts, everybody wins. The winters may be cold, but the Verizon reception is excellent.

It's been a bit over a month now, and I have to say that I love my iPhone. It's small--thinner than a Motorola Q, which I think used to be the thinnest smartphone on the market--and lightweight. It works a lot better than my Treo 650, even though the virtual keyboard took a little getting used to. I find that I'm using my mobile email a lot more often than on my Treo, probably because of my iPhone's ability to work well with IMAP folders. The iPod and phone features all work very well.

Yesterday afternoon, EchoDitto's D.C. headquarters had a FIRE ALARM. Mysteriously, our building's parking-lot turned out to have wireless internet access. And so we were able to continue working, even in the face of impending immolation.

(I took this with my cheap Verizon cameraphone. More on Flickr.)

Fortunately, it was a false alarm, so don't worry, no actual immolation occurred.

Moof! Apple has released Tiger and all is right with the Mac-loving world. Yeah, I still have to upgrade most of EchoDitto's computers, but at least some of us are living the future. New features abound, from Spotlight desktop searching to Automator to help you do repetitive tasks (as the literature says, "it's like your own personal robot inside of your computer!" -- could we please get a little more meta?).

Just as the Dock was the showroom floor demo to get customers oohing and aahing when Mac OS X came out a few years ago, this time around the Dashboard is where the eye candy is at. With the flick of a keystroke or mouse, a dashboard of widgets swoops into view and gives you instant access to whatever information your heart desires (or developers create). The nice thing about widgets is that they are about as simple to create as web pages, so the bar is lowered for techie-minded folks to get in on the action and start making applications.

It's been all over the internets that the President has an iPod. That, in and of itself, isn't really news. Neither is what's on it (a paltry 250 songs on a player that can hold 10,000).

What is news, particularly in light of the case currently under consideration by the Supreme Court, is just how those songs got on the Prez's iPod. According the article, the songs on the presidential iPod are "downloaded from others."

I've spent the much of the last two years working in and around blogs, and during that time I've seen an impressive evolution. I remember while working on the Dean campaign having to explain patiently to journalist after journalist what a "web log" was. Now most journalists I talk with can easily rattle off the top 10 or so blogs that write about their beats. I remember last summer going into meetings with Nicco and trumpeting how Technorati now tracked over 3 million blogs, and there were 15,000 new blogs being created a day. Now Technorati tracks somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 million blogs and new estimates say that more than 30,000 blogs are created daily.

Perhaps nowhere has the radical evolution of blogging been more clear than in journalism and reporting.

This is good for a laugh. The popularity of iPods is no secret. (I see them everywhere, now that I have one.) But get this, iPods are so popular on the Microsoft corporate campus that company executives have started writing memos about them.

Microsoft's leafy corporate campus in Redmond, Washington, is beginning to look like the streets of New York, London and just about everywhere else: Wherever you go, white headphones dangle from peoples' ears.

To the growing frustration and annoyance of Microsoft's management, Apple Computer's iPod is wildly popular among Microsoft's workers.

"About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod," said one source, a high-level manager who asked to remain anonymous. "It's pretty staggering."

The source estimated 80 percent of Microsoft employees have a music player -- that translates to 16,000 iPod users among the 25,000 who work at or near Microsoft's corporate campus. "This irks the management team no end," said the source.

So popular is the iPod, executives are increasingly sending out memos frowning on its use.

Kinda funny. It looks like no one has tipped off Microsoft employees that it's considered tres gauche to use the earphones that come with the iPod. I must admit, however, that I've been guilty of that very thing, since my favorite earbuds died on me and I haven't had time to shop for a replacement.

OK. I did just get an iPod, and at the moment I'm writing this entry on the iBook that I use for work. Still, I don't really classify myself as a "Mac Person" as my primary computer at home is still a PC. The main reason I've stuck to a PC is because I like computer games, even though I've had much less time to play them since becoming a parent.

Granted, I've been happy with the Mac products I've been using for the last several months. They work well and are aesthetically pleasing. When I was in the Mac store getting the iPod, I did notice several games for the Mac, though I also noted most of them weren't terribly new titles. (Though there were a few).

Still, the thought has crept into the back of my mind that somewhere down the road I could consider switching to a Mac for everything but gaming. The PC is well equipped enought to handle all of the games I'd want to play. That thought gets a bit stronger when I hear news like that I just read on John's blog.