Today is Droid X Day, meaning that while it’s not as big a deal as a new iPhone or anything, the Droid X launches today on Verizon Wireless.

As much as Verizon Wireless has gotten a great deal of publication, love, and overall approval from smartphone lovers and geeks alike for the release of the Droid by Motorola and the subsequent releases of other powerful exclusive Android phones like the Droid Eris and Droid Incredible by HTC, prior to their releases, leaks, and announcements, Verizon Wireless was the carrier that people begrudgingly signed on to because the voice and data networks were robust and covered the majority of the country – business signed on so they could get their employees cheap BlackBerry phones, and if you wanted a smartphone your options were BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, all on horrible horrible devices – the rest of us either had to jump ship for another carrier that had good handsets and smartphones, or we had to deal with feature phones or simple handsets because we couldn’t give up the network.

I’m in that boat – I was ready to jump ship to AT&T at the end of my contract last year just because I wanted a smartphone and Verizon Wireleess’ selection was awful; and then something glorious happened. The Droid by Motorola was released, and to this day I consider it one of the best technology purchases I’ve ever made, and I haven’t considered leaving for AT&T, iPhone or no, since then. The combination of a solid Android phone that’s not loaded up with Verizon Wireless’ standard suite of bloatware that you find on their feature phones and their amazing network, and even though I still think the iPhone is a slightly better device than the Droid, the combination of the Droid and Verizon’s network simply overwhelm the combination of the iPhone and AT&T’s network.

The odd thing is that I don’t know that I’m not the only one here. So how did this happen? Google and Verizon Wireless are closer now than they’ve ever been, and both are dedicated and determined to working together on Android phones. So did Google ride to Verizon Wireless’ rescue and save their image from cementing as the stodgy, old carrier with cheap voice handsets but good call quality, bargain basement smartphones for individual users, and the only way to get any attention from them is to have a BlackBerry and be on a business plan? Here’s a hint: I think so, and let’s dive into why after the jump.

The first step to understanding what the world was like before there was a Droid on the market. There was a time when Verizon Wireless’ strongest smartphones were made by AudioVox, and if you wanted a smartphone your best bet for apps and features was to either get a BlackBerry and put your hopes in the hands of RIM (who, mind you, is still the number one smartphone manufacturer in the United States) or suffer through the experience of owning a Windows Mobile 6 device. Now, with RIM planning yet another major upgrade to the BlackBerry operating system (since the BlackBerry Storm and Storm 2 on Verizon Wireless were less than stellar successes although they’re both semi-solid devices) and Microsoft planning to get Windows Phone 7 onto the market at the end of the year, Verizon Wireless is poised to have a number of amazing devices on its network.

Still, back before the days of the Droid, people looking for smartphones had the choice of either springing for Blackberry or Windows Mobile, deciding to settle for a higher-end feature phone that would also play music like the LG Chocolate 2 or LG Envy. The only time Verizon Wireless was mentioned in the same breath as high-end, feature-rich smartphones was when people wished, hoped, and prayed for a CDMA-compatible iPhone to make its way to Verizon Wireless’ network (something that still persists to this day.)

Verizon Wireless was the carrier that everyone loved because of its network, not its technology, and technology writers and mobile phone fans alike hated on Verizon Wireless regularly for loading its devices up with bloatware, charging extra for services that are available on the Web for free like VZCast, and putting exorbitant prices on their music downloads — none of which I think has changed, honestly, but with the introduction of stronger handsets and a more hands-off approach, Verizon has managed to take the heat off of their higher-end users and the only folks who feel that burn anymore are VZW’s feature phone owners – primarily aimed at teens and pre-teens who either know better and will be upgrading soon or don’t know better and run up their parents’ phone bills.

The introduction of the iPhone and its exclusivity to AT&T changed everything though – we started to hear rumors that Verizon actually turned Apple away because they didn’t want to make the necessary changes to their network to support the iPhone and that AT&T was willing. Other, smaller carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile were agile enough to start releasing Android phones and Windows Mobile phones that could compete with the iPhone to some degree, even though none of them were remarkably successful in any way until the T-Mobile G1 running Android 1.6 was released. Verizon Wireless was stuck in the proverbial smartphone dark ages, unless you wanted a BlackBerry or you were in an enterprise that relied on BlackBerry devices. But even then, it was clear: the iPhone, the G1, and the Palm Pre’s respective successes, even as metered as they were, proved that we all wanted better phones.

Then we heard that the veneer of Verizon’s extremely lengthy and slow technology approval process was cracking, and Verizon Wireless was committing themselves to bringing new technology to their store shelves faster. Then we heard about a new touch-screen BlackBerry phone that would take on the iPhone: the BlackBerry Storm. Before it was released, people were calling it an “iPhone Killer,” and even after it was launched, the BlackBerry faithful called it as much, and defended its many flaws, claiming it could do everything an iPhone did and then some – the problem was that even though there were serious hardware flaws that you could overlook in a best case scanario, Apple had a leg up on what was most important with most smartphone users: apps and the ability to customize, tweak, and download tools to help you really make your phone your own and do with it what you chose. Between the lack of apps (still a problem with BlackBerry phones) and the hardware issues the Storm suffered from, it never got traction. Sadly, the Storm 2 – more recently released, suffered largely the same fate, but this time not because of hardware (the Storm 2 is actually a very strong handset) but because RIM simply hasn’t brought the apps to the table.

So here we were in 2008 and 2009, with one half-hearted attempt at taking on the iPhone and bringing a strong smartphone to Verizon Wireless. If you wanted a decent smartphone on Verizon Wireless, the Storm was your best bet, and it wasn’t a great bet at all if you wanted the same kind of experience you could get on a G1 over at T-Mobile, an HTC Hero over on Spring, or an iPhone on AT&T. Then Palm released the Palm Pre: a new phone with a new operating system from a company known for porting its devices to as many carriers as would take them. The Pre started on Sprint, but it wasn’t too long before everyone knew it was coming to Verizon Wireless.

Before that could happen though, Motorola and Google rode in to Verizon Wireless’ rescue with the announcement of the Droid by Motorola (and very quickly after, HTC rode in with the Droid Eris) and completely stole Palm’s thunder. Motorola hit the market first with the Droid, HTC hit the week afterward, and Palm’s release a month or so later fell flat. While sad for Palm (and eventually ended up with its $1.2 billion acquisition by HP) the waves that the launch of the Droid family of Android phones on Verizon Wireless was a huge deal for the carrier, and breathed a lot of new life into the smartphone section of its stores — life that it’s still feeling.

Considering Verizon Wireless’ history of lackluster smartphones and locked-down devices that never empowered its customers and users, and the almost 180-degree turn brought about by the release of the Android-powered Droid series of devices, you could very well say that Google’s Android and manufacturing partners like HTC and Motorola very well saved Verizon Wireless’ image, at the very least in the eyes of smartphone users, power users, the technocrati, and people looking for phones that did a bit more than just make calls.

Still, all of those people combined don’t make up the majority of the cell phone market, so while I don’t think it’s legitimate to say that Google or even the Google/Motorola/HTC triad actually out-and-out “saved” Verizon Wireless, it’s more than legitimate to say they certainly saved Verizon Wireless’s perception and image as a leading-edge and highly technological wireless carrier.

I had all but written off Gawker/Gizmodo’s exclusive This is Apple’s Next iPhone as an item that everyone and their mother has covered at least once – and while I admit that I was as intrigued as anyone else at the story and found it incredible and unbelievable as anyone else, I have to say that it probably is the biggest scoop pulled on Apple to date, and the biggest gaping hole in their veil of secrecy anyone’s ever found.

The poor guy who was field testing the next iPhone is likely out of work at the very least (although I hope Apple realizes he just made a mistake) and probably would like to find another job quickly at the very best (I wouldn’t want that rep to live down at work every day). Still, it was a pretty rookie mistake, but it’s not one that hasn’t been made by people at all levels of an organization in any company in the past.

This is why I was particularly interested when Anil Dash, a man for whom I have nothing but the utmost respect as a member of the technocrati, said this at Twitter earlier this week:

A simple case of human error shouldn’t be a big story. A company that treats such things as a firing offense is what’s worthy of criticism.

Now on the surface, I completely agree with Anil – he’s absolutely right. Every time someone in a company makes a mistake, it shouldn’t be some of the biggest news on the Net for the next several days, or if it keeps up like this, weeks. Additionally, I’d hate to be in his shoes, and hate to risk being fired or laid off because of a simple mistake – having a few too many beers at a bar and forgetting to pick up my phone.

Still, something about the statement nags at me a bit, and I wonder if Anil is being a little harsh because it’s clear we’re talking about Apple and the next iPhone here. Would he be as forgiving if, for example, a Microsoft engineer lost the next Zune HD prototype in a cab somewhere, and someone was smart enough to know what it was and sold it to Gawker for $5000? (the amount that Gawker paid – omitted from most of the articles about it – to get their hands on the prototype iPhone from their anonymous source)

Honestly, a Zune HD prototype found in the wild likely wouldn’t stir up quite so much media attention, but is that fact a good or bad thing? The reason why everyone’s busy covering this story – including mainstream media outlets like CNN – is because the iPhone is ridiculously popular in America and Apple has a long-held reputation for secrecy. Microsoft, for example, doesn’t have the popular product and doesn’t have the cone of silence over its labs. But when a 64GB version of the Zune HD was leaked on a couple of Web sites a few weeks back, tech blogs still covered it. Is that a bad thing, according to Anil?

What about a corporate employee or CEO who leaves a laptop on a plane or in a cab; a laptop that contains proprietary information about the company, or Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about their customers? Sure – it’s orders of magnitude of difference, but we’ve seen heavier media scrutiny when a government contractor leaves a hard drive in a cab than this kid leaving a prototype iPhone in a bar, and we summarily expect that contractor or CEO to be fired for their negligence.

Sure, sure – a laptop with personally identifiable data on it doesn’t just harm the company, it harms its customers and the people whose information has been compromised; the impact is much wider than a simple prototype cell phone, so the consequences have to be broader to match the transgression – but they’re both still simple cases of human error. If the government contractor or the bank that lost the personal data fires the employee who lost it, are they equally “worthy of scrutiny?”

I’m in the camp where I would sincerely hope that Apple doesn’t cut this poor kid loose – he’s obviously got talent and a history of trustworthiness or else he wouldn’t have gotten the prototype in the first place. Even so, I can’t deny that when a hard drive full of credit card numbers or social security numbers goes missing, we as the public expect someone to be held accountable – we’re not in quite the forgiving mood that Anil is in. It’s possible it’s just because one affects us directly and the other only affects people interested and even then in a tangential way.

Still – I have to wonder if Anil’s perspective is colored a bit. By what, I’m not certain. If he read this, he would probably take me to task for using the slippery slope argument too much, and acknowledge that 140 characters isn’t a lot of space to get into nuance, and I agree on both counts. Like I said at the beginning, I completely agree with him, I just wonder if we should be so forgiving in this case, or – more preferably – maybe we should be more forgiving in all such cases.

Last week’s launch of the Apple iPad was probably a bigger splash than I expected in any possible way. I mean, I expected the product to be successful – any Apple product generally is, and the first Apple product to pave the way into an entirely new market will do well because it’s the first; but as of today Apple’s passed the 500,000 mark when it comes to iPads sold, and they’ve only been available for over a week. If trends go strong, Apple could very well rack up over a million iPads sold in its first month.

A lot of people like the iPad, a lot of people hate it, and there are both valid and completely invalid reasons on both sides of that line (I’ve written about as much about irrational Apple hate lately as I have about irrational Apple love) but the one thing that’s caught my eye is the visible explosion of the app market with the launch of the iPad. Selling apps is nothing new – the App store is populated with free and paid apps available for your iPhone, Android phone, Blackberry, and more, and for as much as I disagree with the people who claim the iPad is just a glorified iPod Touch, they’ve been available for iPod Touch users as well.

What’s different though is that with the launch of the iPad, all of the apps launched have made use of the iPad as a platform – somewhere between buying software for a shiny new computer (as well as downloading freeware) and apps for a mobile phone. Clearly Apple’s model is closer to apps for a mobile phone than software for a computer, but with the announcement of iPhone OS 4.0, Apple’s portable devices and tablets are looking more and more like computers every day.

The point though is this: the app market has exploded and people are willing to do two things:

1. Buy apps by the bushel (but decline to pay for PC software)
2. Buy apps but demand Web content remain free (within reason)

Let’s dive into both of these below the jump.

First, let’s take a look at how willing people are to just buy apps, no matter what purpose they serve; whether they compliment free services or replace them, whether they’re worthwhile or not:

Buy apps by the bushel (but decline to pay for PC software)

The app market is doing really well, and part of the model is that people are more willing to pay for apps that they can take around with them on a mobile device than they are to buy software for a PC or laptop (unless they really need it or feel like they want it.) Part of it is portability, and part of it is affordability, since the ability to take a well made app with you on the go on your smartphone has value in and of itself, and most apps are relatively well priced and most popularly downloaded apps are around the $5 US mark or below.

The interesting phenomenon here is that the market for apps on mobile devices is pretty big, and even with the launch of the iPad the App Store saw thousands of downloads within the first weekend the iPad was on the market. The model has some issues; for example the iPad is a separate device from the iPod Touch or iPhone, so if you have a license for an app on one you can’t use it for the other – you’ll have to either download it again or download the version specifically for that device. Regardless, it’s amazing how willing people are to drop anywhere from $0.99 to $10 for an app to go on their iPad or their iPhone, but even a shareware license for a utility on their desktop or laptop for about $7 is too much.

I understand that part of this has to do with intrinsic value – if you believe the Scrabble app for the iPad has more value to you than your favorite FTP app for your PC, then that’s an easy choice. It’s still remarkable though that people are willing to shovel money at apps that don’t appear to have intrinsic value – like the iPhone fart app, for example. People are willing to pay for that, but some have difficulty paying for mp3 downloads from iTunes or Amazon.

This is an important fact, and while I can’t entirely explain it, it leads into the second point.

Buy apps but demand Web content remain free (within reason)

This part of the equation came from a not that Gary Vaynerchuk posted on Twitter; we’ve already made it clear that people are willing to drop money on apps more than they are on traditional software, but people are not only willing to spend money on apps that optimize and bring in Web content to their mobile device or their iPad but they don’t want to pay for that content.

For example, the New York Times has an iPad app that’s remarkably successful. People are willing to download and pay for it and get their news through it for a price. At the same time, the notion of moving to a more Wall Street Journal model where even the Web site requires a paid subscription is an idea that most people, even those who are willing to pay for the app, resist fiercely. The moral of the story is that most people still resist the idea that Web content should be anything but free, but when it comes to optimizing it and streaming it to my portable device or my specialized device, most people are willing to either pay for the optimization or the special features that come with something like an app for their device.

This is important as well – people have a sense of ownership when they pay for an app; they feel like they’re actually getting something tangible, something they feel that they really really own. That sense of tangible ownership is all the difference. When you feel like you’ve purchased something that’s designed to help you customize and personalize the content you absorb, that’s a good feeling. When you feel like you’re paying for a key to a wall that you really don’t think you should have to deal with because there’s nothing special about it (just another news site, for example) then people shy away and are more eager to investigate other options.

This is the reason why the New York Times is having trouble with the idea of making its main news site subscription-based, but has no qualms–or problems–making it’s iPad app and iPhone app subscription-based.

This leads us to the final point:

Can the iPad Save Content Production on the Web?

The short answer is “possibly, with enough help.” The trick is that the iPad itself won’t save content producers from themsevles; neither will Android mobile phones, or the iPhone, or any other smartphone. Neither will subscription models that drive customers away instead of bringing them into the content that a producer creates. What will save content producers is the ability to quickly and creatively provide paid content optimization and added features, not paid content itself.

People will be willing to pay $0.99 for your iPhone app if you give them a way to easily search, save, and watch all of the videos you’ve posted to your site, or if you give them a feature unavailable on your Web site, like tabs for categories of article, the ability to connect with other members of your site community directly, or something similar. The point is that buyers and people interested in your content need to feel as though your apps really offer something unique and special over the Web or mobile Web experience. In order for someone to spend money, they’ll need to feel like your app doesn’t just optimize your content for their device, but they’ll want to feel as though you’ve done something to improve their experience.

If more content producers could do that in more than just one way (I’ll bet different audiences would like different apps, as long as you don’t flood them with options and clones) or even offer the gateway to their content for free and then premium content for additional fees, the revenue from people looking to take their content and communities on the go with them could very well help pay for the operations required to investigate, produce, and build that content. Will it get the publishing industry and video or music providers back to where they were in their single-stream, owner-to-consumer heyday? Likely not, but it may be able to provide enough revenue to make some of those operations worthwhile, and get us back to things like investigative journalism and dedicated reporting.

It’s a hard road, and an uphill battle, but the sheer popularity of the iTunes App Store proves that it’s possible. There may be a light – however dim – at the end of the tunnel for content producers, and they can simultaneously give their consumers and customers what they want without being forced to restrict access to information in order to make money.

Earlier this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft took the stage and finally announced a product that people in the mobile space have been waiting for for a long time: Windows Mobile 7, or more appropriately (since Microsoft re-dubbed the product a couple of months ago “Windows Phone,”) Windows Phone 7 Series. Windows Phone 7 will be Microsoft’s new mobile operating system, replacing the aging and unattractive Windows Mobile 6.5 that’s the mainstay of a number of enterprise-class and tech-savvy smartphones currently on the market.

Faced with stiff competition in the smartphone space from companies like Apple and Google, Microsoft was forced to come to the table with something strong or risk falling even father behind in the smartphone space – a slip that likely would have met with their downfall in the mobile marketplace. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has never been a particularly strong OS, and the bulk of its functionality came from the fact that because it’s a Microsoft product and Exchange is also a Microsoft product, the only competition for it on the corporate side has been RIM’s BlackBerry, which unseated Windows Mobile in a huge way. Now, Windows Mobile looks dated, aged, and reminds us of an era when it’s major competition was the old Palm OS (not to be confused with Palm’s WebOS, which is on its new smartphones.)

Windows Phone 7 on the other hand, looks incredible. It’s been updated, it looks modern, it looks sleek, it’s got integration with your social networks and services, it’s got a stunning touch-screen interface, and it brings in two of Microsoft’s most successful properties to the mobile space: Zune and XBox Live. That’s right – your music and your Windows Phone 7 Series device will sync with Zune marketplace and you can snag your music from there, and your mobile gaming experience will be integrated with XBox Live. This alone proves that Microsoft means business and is rolling up its sleeves in the mobile space again.

But it’ll take more than rolled up sleeves and determination to make people abandon their iPhones and G1s for a Windows Phone 7 device.

Before we dive into why, here’s a hands-on video with Windows Phone 7 by my friend Sascha Segan at PC Magazine, who was out at the Mobile World Congress and got to see a live demo of the new operating system:

Windows Phone 7 Series looks great, I have no doubt in my mind, and I’m very excited about it, but there are a number of things I can’t help but think, having watched the technology industry as long as I have.

Apps, Apps, Apps!

Pre-installed apps don’t sell mobile phones anymore. Apps do. The iPhone’s “There’s an app for that” campaign isn’t successful for nothing – it’s because people like having the ability to do just about anything they can think of doing with a mobile phone with their device. They like the idea that if there’s something they want, not only do they have full access to the internet, but there’s probably an app that will make the process easier, whether it’s finding someplace to eat tonight, buying movie tickets, chatting with their friends, or letting their buddies know where they are so they can meet up for a drink. There are apps on the iPhone and in Google’s Android mobile OS for all of those purposes. The question stands: will Microsoft be as open with Windows Phone Series 7 as they have been in the past?

The Windows Mobile story has been a good one for software developers – people have always had access to development tools and kits for Windows Mobile. Windows Phone 7 on the other hand represents a fresh start for Microsoft, and they have the choice to either go as open as possible with the platform as a development stage or clamp down in the Apple model and build a walled garden where they have control over the user experience.

There may have been a time where it would be insane to build in so much control over the user experience, but Apple’s made it work, so it must be at least tempting. At the same time, Google has had tremendous success with Android as a strong challenger to the iPhone and the iPhone OS. It’s likely Microsoft will try to take a middle-path with Windows Phone 7 development, opening the door slowly and trying to control the flow of apps in some fashion.

However, even as that’s likely, the number of available apps for the Zune HD (literally, less than 10) isn’t much encouragement that Microsoft will open the floodgates all at once, and it’s not a positive sign. Again, Microsoft could take the very attractive page from Apple’s book – they’ve managed to make the walled garden approach work, even to the grumbling of their own partners and developers, so anything is possible.

Even so, I still think Microsoft will open the doors. It won’t be completely wide open like Android, but it may be too close to the Apple model for some people. I doubt Microsoft really wants individual developers redefining the Windows Phone experience…just yet.

Agility

Microsoft doesn’t exactly have a reputation these days of being a very agile company. Some of their product lines have seen tremendous success because of their agility and ability to adapt to a changing marketplace, namely their entertainment arm: the Zune, Zune Marketplace, XBox and XBox 360, XBox Live, and Games for Windows. Even so, Microsoft is like a massive ship – steering it takes strategic thinking and the ability to look ahead a long way, and immediately starting to turn that massive ship to move in the direction of the market.

While I wouldn’t say Windows Phone 7 Series is too late, a few more years and it could have been. Also, Microsoft has been telling analysts and reporters for years that they needed to make this shift, and that they were planning to, but it’s taken them that long to respond to these changes in the marketplace.

What remains to be seen is whether or not Microsoft can be fast to market with Windows Phone 7, and whether or not they can be quick to adapt to the market when their competition capitalizes on their weaknesses and re-engineers their strengths. You can bet some of the beauty of Microsoft’s sliding display and actively updating widgets off-screen will be in future iterations of the iPhone OS and Android. Whether or not they’ll get there before or after Microsoft is in the market with Windows Phone 7 is a different matter.

Additionally, when the playing field is level again and everyone adopts (assuming it’s successful) home-screens full of widgets and utilities and blocks that provide you real-time updates from your social services and e-mail instead of flat, static icons you press to open apps, what will Microsoft do then to up their game? I ask because I guarantee that more historically agile companies like Apple and Google will be thinking about it, and especially companies that partner with Google to build on top of Android – like HTC and Motorola – will be thinking about how they can innovate their interfaces as well.

WrapUp

None of this means that I don’t think Windows Phone 7 will be anything but a huge success. I’m almost certain, looking at it and it’s built-in ability to integrate with your social networks, your gaming platforms, and all of your media, that it will be. Out of the box it’s an incredibly strong competitor to the iPhone OS, and it has more built-in seamlessly than Google Android does (which relies heavily on its openness and other apps to provide) but Microsoft will have to bring it fast and bring it strong in order to be real competition for both of those companies.

Additionally, the user experience will have to be as good as we see in the demo, and people will have to be able to get the tools they need to do the things they want with their mobile phones. Otherwise all of the glitter and glamor will be for nothing.

Windows Phone 7 looks like it’ll be a winner and I can’t wait for Microsoft to begin making it available to its hardware partners – I’m cautiously optimistic, and I hope they do it right. I take a bit more of a skeptical and rational approach than some other bloggers I’ve read (I’m looking at you, Gizmodo) but I should stress I’m more optimistic than cautious.

VIdeo game console manufacturers, set-top box makers, and even television manufacturers are all clawing to get their hands on a partnership with Netflix or Blockbuster Online so buyers can do what they obviously want to do; stream audio and video straight to their HDTVs.

The rationale is simple – streaming Netflix and Blockbuster Online over broadband to the home has become a huge part of both companies’ business models, and clearly video on demand is the future of rented movies and material. Even Netflix’s CEO said that they expect their physical disc-mailing business to decline over the next several years as their streaming business soars.

So clearly the general public is happier with paying for temporary access to video content, whether they pay Netflix or Blockbuster Online to send them DVD or Blu-Ray discs straight to their homes, where they watch them and then return them in a mailer or they get the content streamed directly to their XBox 360 or their Boxee Box or their HTPC. We’re all comfortable with the concept that we pay a monthly fee to watch as many movies as we can stand or the mail can deliver to us, and when we’re finished watching or we send it back, the movie’s gone forever unless we want to watch it again. When we cancel our accounts with Netflix or Blockbuster Online, our access to that content is gone forever.

So, then, why isn’t the same for subscription music services? The Zune Marketplace, Rhapsody, Napster, all of those services operate using exactly the same business model, if not more generous than the video services’ are. The Zune Marketplace, for example, gives you a number of credits you can spend monthly to download and permanently own the songs you really like, instead of losing access to them if you ever terminate your account. Netflix doesn’t say every month “you’ve been such a great customer, why don’t you keep these movies from your queue, go ahead, take them,” but in order for a service like the Zune Marketplace to survive, they have to.

Why are we so okay with essentially leasing our movies from Netflix and Blockbuster Online, but we’re not okay with leasing our music from Zune Marketplace and Rhapsody in the exact same way? I have a couple of ideas, but it mostly has to do with history and perception – not functionality. Let’s dive in.

This isn’t entirely a defense of subscription music services, although I admit that I have a hard time discounting them as much as I used to now that I realize how hypocritical it can be to love subscription video services for one reason and then hating subscription music services for the same reason. It’s difficult to maintain that the iTunes model, for example, that lets you own your own music once you’ve purchased it, is so much leaps and bounds ahead of its major competitor, the Zune Marketplace, when you realize that Netflix doesn’t let you “own” your own movies any more than the Zune Marketplace lets you own your music – in fact, the Zune Marketplace is much more lenient, and gives you the ability to download songs to keep yourself forever even if you cancel your Zune Marketplace subscription.

So what’s the major difference? Why does the thought of “rented music,” a la subscription music services, raise people’s hackles and bring to mind the rabid “information wants to be free” rhetoric where services like Netflix, which makes its money renting you movies, doesn’t? Do we fundamentally view video and audio as qualitatively different?

The answer is no, not really, but there are some things that make us more protective of our music than we traditionally have been about our movies:

The Spectre of DRM

Subscription music services still reek of DRM, and this is probably the biggest thing that’s turned people off about them. There are naturally built-in protections to make sure that the music you have on your computer or your mobile device by virtue of your subscription to the service can only be played as long as your subscription is valid – that part isn’t really under dispute. What does become a problem is the historical precedent that subscription services saddle you with only a handful of supported players, and usually not very good ones that people actually want to buy.

This rings like the iTunes/iPod circular relationship, which also chafes a number of people (but given the massive popularity of the iPod as a music device Apple has been able to get away with it) but the combination of not really being able to play your music on any device AND the stigma that came with not totally “owning” your music was too much for a lot of people to bear. Assuming that using Napster required that you use a pretty poorly rated Samsung mp3 player and on top of that you could only play or share your music the way you were told was just a huge turnoff for a lot of people.

This is where one of the parallels between subscription services for audio and video break down. The parallel to this would be if in order to use Netflix you HAD to use a certain device to play the video on your HDTV – one sanctioned by Netflix, and if you tried to use something else it just wouldn’t work, including with your mailed discs. You could see how this would be a problem for people.

Thankfully, with the launch of Amazon MP3 and the change of heart that Amazon and Apple took towards DRM, the fall of DRM opened the door to a much more trusting relationship between subscription service providers and their customers. For example, with the Zune Marketplace, the songs you get to keep are in mp3 format, and the songs you “rent” are in protected WMA, which means any player that can play WMA can play the files – it’s just that when your subscription is cancelled, they’re removed from your computer.

The spectre of DRM is largely gone from subscription music services, and only remains as a way to validate that you’re an active subscriber. The demons of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure debacle and Sony BMG’s rootkit fiasco all still ring in music consumer’s minds as a reason to stay away from any service that doesn’t affordably allow you to download and completely own, free and clear, the music that you purchase.

It’s understandable, but subscription services have adapted and grown since those days, and they’re worth another look. A number of them allow you to subscribe and stream music just like music discovery services like Last.fm or Pandora, and spin the subscription as a way to get customized radio of music you would like based on songs you already own or songs you rate highly. Then you have the ability to buy stand-alone downloads that belong to you in DRM-free mp3 format. The Zune Marketplace is a good example of a service which started out pretty poorly and came a long long way – it’s music discovery engine surpasses Apple’s Genius in a number of ways, and can generate playlists based on songs you own or songs you find in the catalog using songs you own or songs in the catalog that you can rent or buy.

The flip side to this is video on demand services like Netflix and Blockbuster Online, which ship you discs that you can keep as long as you want as long as you’re a subscriber. If you ever cancel your subscription, you have to send the discs back or pay to own them. Video streamed over the Web to your HDTV or console is only available to you for a short time, cached on your device. When it’s gone, it’s gone forever – you have no option to own it, and neither service currently allows you to even pay to download the movies you stream permanently. (although it’s likely coming.)

In some ways, subscription video is less flexible in this regard than subscription audio – it’s just that the spectre of DRM isn’t necessarily applied: there’s no “you kinda own it while you pay us” aside from having a physical DVD. In this case, it’s probably more history, media, and the echo chamber that makes us more afraid to keep protected WMA on our computers to listen to whenever we want for the life of our Rhapsody subscription than we are unhappy that the instant we turn off our XBox 360, we lose the Netflix movie we were watching back to the ether, never to become part of our collection.

Collector’s Mentality

While I think DRM and the horrible history of the music industry treating its consumers like criminals is the real reason why people want complete and utter control over their music (and subsequently, the MPAA being somewhat careful about demonizing itself to its customers and trying to learn from the mistakes of the RIAA – even though they’ve only been partially successful, seriously the “You wouldn’t download a car” campaign is laughable) and willing to be a bit more lenient about the degree to which they own their movies.

At the same time, I think people have a different perception of what it means to have a music collection and what it means to have a movie collection. Movie collections and owning movies digitally simply haven’t gotten to the point where the majority of people are comfortable with their movies on a hard drive or a computer or another device hooked up to their television. When the average American wants to watch a movie, they expect to look at a shelf and pick something they’d like to watch, and physically put a disc in a player.

Granted, all of this is changing with streaming video to your set-top via game console, widget-powered TVs, and Blu-Ray players with network connectivity, but it’s just not at critical mass yet. Just like with the compact disc, the tide has only now begun to shift in the direction of people understanding that owning their media in some digital format on a box that’s near the TV is okay – and in some ways preferable to – having lots of boxes and disc cases on a shelf next to or under the TV. I also get the feeling that people will be more clingy to physical video media for longer than they were for the CD, especially with the advent of Blu-Ray. (which give your more features and greater video quality than you can get by streaming the same video via broadband – although that’s changing too)

The tide is changing in people’s perceptions of what it means to have a “movie collection,” and it’s shifting to set-top boxes and HTPCs the same way as people understand now that having a “music collection” doesn’t necessarily mean bookshelves of CDs and can instead mean a couple of external hard drives or a single iPod on a desk. The trick is that it’s just not there yet.

Wrapup

In the end, don’t really mean to claim that there’s a definitive or correct reason why people trust rented video, both on demand and physical, when they don’t trust rented audio in the same shape and fashion – even from companies whose business models line up very very closely. There are likely more reasons than these to explain the phenomenon, but unfortunately, some really grreat subscription music services have gone under the radar partially because of this negative stigma applied to them and partially because there are just so many great music discovery and download services that let you buy music free and clear.

Add to this the “us versus them” stigma that’s applied to just about every product or company, and you have people who won’t look twice at Zune Marketplace because they hate Microsoft, for example, or people who won’t touch Rhapsody because it’s from Real Networks, or worse, people who won’t consider them because they already use iTunes or Amazon MP3 and dare not use more than one service for their music, as if it’s “cheating” somehow.

Being an music lover, I can see the benefit of a subscription service that lets you snag and listen to as much music as you can possibly stand for as long as you can stand to pay the monthly fee while also direct downloading the tunes you know you’ll love forever or have some special meaning to you. (or want to use to complete you collection or an artist’s discography!) I feel the same way about movies as well – I’m a very happy Netflix subscriber and think that streaming video direct to my HDTV is a fantastic thing, but I wouldn’t sacrifice my shelf of DVDs for the world, and I’ll definitely buy Blu-Ray videos in additon to using Netflix for other videos I’m comfortable renting.

Explore multiple options, and try different services. You might surprise yourself.

So Facebook has announced a number of changes to its privacy policy – turns out the whole “networks” thing, which most people used as their high school, middle school, city or town, or workplace, were ambiguous ways that people were allowing others they may not have intended to have access to their profiles to get access to those profiles. It’s not so much closing a loophole as it is the advancement of a privacy policy that Facebook has been working on for a long long time.

In a blog post at Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg noted that these are only part of the changes – privacy settings will be simplified so you only allow access to one of three groups: friends, friends and their friends, or everyone. While everyone is talking about how this change will streamline privacy settings and change the way you allow people to access your profile and the information on it, and how it’s removing the concept of “networks” as an outmoded way of creating an artificial sphere of influence (Zuckerberg correctly points out it’s clearly a holdover from when Facebook was organized by participating schools), there’s a couple of things – namely how the new privacy settings will allow you to choose who sees what as you post it – that I think are worth talking about.

Let’s dive in behind the jump.

When I wrote a while back that social networking, for all of its potential to bring people closer together and expand your circle of friends to include people you haven’t met but likely share interests with, really just serves to depress many of us and cause of to be more restrictive and closed off about our lives, I was thinking specifically of Facebook. As it is today, it clearly encourages us to reconnect with people we’ve fallen out of touch with but simultaneously doesn’t give us the privacy and capability to control the message we send – even at its most restrictive, either everyone who’s your “friend” sees it, or you just don’t post it.

Now there’s a flip side to that argument – if you’re going to engage in social networking, why would you “befriend” people you don’t want to share your life with? There are a number of arguments on both sides there that I hit in that previous column; I don’t want to rehash them here – but what I see from Facebook’s new privacy rules is that they’re working to give us that flexibility in their new updates.

That means that I can add all of my old high school friends to my friends list because they found me and they want to stay in touch with me, or alternatively because they found me and want to see what I amounted to in life, but when I post about the times I’m happy, sad, or have a major life event that I don’t really think is the business of someone I haven’t spoken to in 10 years, I can control which of my friends sees it. That is, if you already organize your friends list in groups – you can have a group for close personal friends, and limit those kinds of updates to them alone. Similarly, you can expand your groups to include a number of other people who you’re comfortable getting other updates about your life, like a new band you discovered or a concert you’re planning to go to.

Similarly, you can segregate groups so they only see certain things. You can create a “coworkers” group where all of your office friends can see that you’re planning to go to the company holiday party, and then see the pictures from the event the next Monday – but you can hide all of that from your friends who already know you hate your job.

This kind of flexibility is the kind of thing that will encourage people who have different messages for different groups of friends – like most of us – to use the service even more as a lifestreaming tool. This way you don’t have to make the choice of a: you don’t care and you don’t mind everyone seeing all of your updates regardless of their content or b: you’re very selective about the velvet rope around your “friends” list or c: you just don’t post anything you’re not comfortable with every last one of them seeing.

Taking that difficult choice away from Facebook users will encourage a number of people who are already using the service, myself included, to really dig in and use it more and share more of their lives – and it’ll probably allow more people who already have made the choice (choice a, of course) to be more selective about who sees what – even as they choose to post more frequently because they have the freedom to.

I think this is a discussion that we’re missing as the announcements come out, and whether this kind of selective privacy feature emerges immediately out of the new privacy settings that Zuckerberg is talking about on his blog remains to be seen, but I hope they do.

I’ve been mulling over this column for a long long time, and it’s pretty difficult to write, but some recent developments have really thrust the topic forward. Let me give you the breakdown first: there’s a problem with Linux: it’s just not ready for prime time. As much as Ubuntu users will cry the opposite, and while admittedly they have the most robust and close to prime time version of Linux for the desktop available, it’s just not there yet – it’s not an OS that anyone would seriously install on a system for the average user. The fact is that virtually every distribution of Linux is still too bulky, too difficult to administer and manage, too quirky, and too poorly supported.

This isn’t news in and of itself; the Linux community has been struggling under its own weight for years now, with half of it complaining that if you can’t figure out how to manage and administer Linux distros on your own then you have no right using it (the elitists), and the other half begging and pleading with the rest of the community to build a version of Linux for the desktop that can actually get some traction with everyday people and some support from software developers other than ones who want to port Windows apps to it (the populists). This schism is at the heart of the problem, and it always has been.

But lately, there’s been a dramatic shift in the Linux landscape, and it hasn’t had to do with this schism – it’s been in the way that other companies have gotten behind customized distributions of Linux for selected platforms and really put their weight behind advancing them, each in their own specific way. The big news? They’re (almost) skipping entirely over desktop Linux in favor of mobile platforms.

Let’s dive into this a bit more behind the jump.

(image snagged from Casing Out Nines, specifically this post)

So the two big companies I’m thinking of here are clearly Apple and Google – both companies are embracing their own flavors of Linux in their own way, and taking them clearly in two different directions. Both companies have or are planning installations of their own custom flavor of desktop Linux that meet their needs. Apple’s iPhone OS is essentially a tweaked and heavily trimmed down version of Mac OS, which is in itself a heavily customized and mostly rewritten relative of BSD. Google on the other hand has Android for mobile phones, which draws heavily on Linux, and is working on Chrome OS, which many people are projecting to be a Google customized version of Linux – more than just a skinned distro, but not so much more that it’s not imminently portable and customizable.

Apple and Google are taking their respective versions of their mobile OSes in completely different directions, with Apple building a massive sandbox around their iPhone and iPhone OS and retaining complete control over the applications you can install, the applications that are made available to the public, and to a large extent how the user interfaces with and experiences their product. Google on the other hand is taking a more open and unhindered approach, allowing wide open development, availability, and access of applications and services for their mobile OS, and leaving a great deal of the user experience up to the user.

Does Power = Better?

There’s a side question here though: does a more powerful user experience equal a better user experience? For as much as the geek crowd (of which I’m shamelessly a member) is happily in favor of a more open environment and decries Apple for its closed sandbox, is that what the average user wants? Is the smartphone still enough of a geek tool that we have enough sway to demand openness?

Let’s look at the iPhone OS and Android 2.0 as opposite examples. Android 2.0, for the time being only on the Droid by Motorola (on Verizon Wireless), is what many reviewers have dubbed “a geeky experience,” meaning the phone is all but wide open, allowing incredible customization and configuration by the user. If you leave it alone, it’s pretty bare and kind of boring – the OS is very much a blank slate ripe with possibilities. The iPhone OS on the other hand comes in a pre-configured state that many users won’t really deviate from. The interface is what it will be for the life of the device, and the only thing most users will do is install a few apps here and there and perhaps change the wallpaper.

That’s not to say there isn’t room for both, and that the mobile OS arena may be trending down the same path that the desktop OS arena trended down for years, with Apple in one corner offering the “easy, simple, it just works because we control most of it” option, and Google in the other corner offering the more Microsoft Windows-esque “we give you complete control, which also comes with all of the pitfalls that may have” option.

In fact, I wrote about this possibility just over a year ago, and a year later it still looks as true as it did then. In fact, when looking back to find this post, I thought I had written it a few months ago, not a full year ago.

In the end, I can’t say I have an answer to the question of whether more power in the user’s hands necessarily make up a healthier and richer user experience, or whether the echo chamber of the geek community just rings incredibly loud when calling on Apple to open up its application approval process and stand down the guards at the gate around the iPhone and it’s OS. Alternatively, the question remains whether the solution to those cries will wind up being called Android, and fans of open development and computing will trend there and eventually leave the iPhone development arena entirely, which brings up another question – does either platform NEED the geek community to stay alive?

Apple and Google: Fixing the Linux “Problem”

Granted, the elitists will tell you there’s no problem here at all, and that Linux is essentially the operating system by geeks for geeks – if you can’t penetrate it yourself, then you shouldn’t use it, and you should use something more suited to your tastes, like Windows or MacOS. This discounts the army of people who find Linux useful in applicable circumstances (eg, it runs my home server, replaced the firmware on my router, is the OS on my firewall, etc) but admit that it simply doesn’t work on the desktop for any advanced or niche tasks.

Personally? I’ve installed probably a half-dozen flavors of Linux on various desktops in the past couple of years and every time I’ve always come back around to it and said “now what?” I can browse the Web, I can check my e-mail, but if you’re looking for do any gaming, you’ll have to find emulators, tweaks, and hacks – and even then you can only play some things; if you want interoperability with your Windows-using colleagues you have to pick the right apps, and if something breaks well – if you’re like me it’s not too bad, but if you’re not a huge fan of learning by stuff breaking, then you’re out of luck. None of this is new, and none of these complaints are anything that hasn’t been said a million times about Linux – especially on the desktop. (the enterprise is a different, much prettier story, I think Linux really thrives in the datacenter, even if it’s floundered on the desktop)

If you include MacOS in with other Linux distros, it’s probably a singular success story among them. The only other distribution of Linux that’s managed to earn as positive a reputation for ease-of-use, ease-of-configuration, and ease-of-support is Ubuntu, and it’s relatively new to the game. There are even distros that look like Windows and MacOS, just to make people feel more comfortable with them, but that misses the point. Linux on the desktop is incredibly powerful, and in some senses it’s too powerful for the average user, depending on the distro you choose. At the same time, that’s the beauty of Linux – there can be flavors that are sandboxed and tightened up and easy to use and troubleshoot like MacOS and Ubuntu to a certain degree, and there are other distros that are not for the feint-of-heart.

Google is about to enter this fray with Chrome OS, an operating system that everyone expects to be built on some flavor of Linux, although we haven’t seen it yet and Google hasn’t told us much about it – we don’t know who it’s really targeted at, where it’ll fall in this spectrum of power versus simplicity, and what sacrifices Google will make to make their OS accessible while still making it powerful and customizable. Right now Apple and the devs behind Ubuntu are out front; with a company like Google in the mix, they likely won’t be far behind. Even so, I think Apple’s the only company that’s really hit the sweet spot – and to do it they essentially made their Linux so much NOT like Linux that it’s difficult to even relate it to Linux anymore.

Connecting the Dots

All of that being said, it’s clear that the next big place where Linux has a chance to shine, in whatever form it may emerge, is in the mobile space. Linux on the desktop, without major and sweeping changes, will forever be doomed to wander aimlessly among the elitists and the populists, both arguing at and past one another and missing the point. They’ll both continue to hate on Apple for MacOS, and they’ll probably deride the makers of Ubuntu for their strides in the usability direction, even though they’ve done a remarkable job of striking the power/simplicity balance.

The next volley in that battle will come from Google when we see Chrome OS, but the next battle to pay attention to will be between the iPhone OS and Android. Both have serious potential, both have the possibility to succeed and become sweepingly popular, and both have several legs up on their major competition, Windows Mobile and the Blackberry OS – the former of which is rotting on the vine and the latter of which is only popular because it was the only game in town.

Will Apple’s closed-garden approach with the iPhone – clearly preferring simplicity, ease-of-use, and control over customization and user empowerment be the preferred option going forward? Will Google’s open-sandbox approach with Android – clearly preferring user empowerment and open development even at the cost of simplicity, easy troubleshooting, and user serviceability (without the need for the user to be an expert) prevail? And what factor will really make the difference: Usability and reliability? Development and accessibility to software? Or will it be cost to the user or cost to the developer? Only time will tell, but right now it’s anyone’s game.

I’ve often wondered what steampunk would look like if it (and we, as I’m more than a fan of steampunk, I wholeheartedly embrace it as a subculture) had more opporutnities for perspective outside of victorian-era Europe. Of course the euro-centricity of steampunk is natural; the idea stemmed from the wonder of what the past, present, and possibly future would look like if the industrial revolution had been built on steam and steam-powered technologies instead of the dominance of coal-fired and gas-powered technologies that we adopted instead. If steam still powered our cars and massive airships still roamed the skies, for example. The very idea comes from the technologies prevalent in Europe during the Edwardian and Victorian eras.

That being said, it’s not like Europe was the only part of the world to play with steam-powered technologies, and if that rose to prominence in Europe, I’d be curious to see what some of the other prevailing regional technologies could have arisen in other parts of the world without the same influence of Europeans at the same time periods. In other words, what would a steampunk-style Asia look like? Or Africa? Maybe South America? What would a steampunk Incan or Aztec city look like? How about a steampunk (or equivalent technology) Masai tribe? What about a steampunk Japan (we got a brief glimpse in a skit in the collection of Anime shorts called Robot Carnival where a steam-powered, wooden giant “robot” built for a Japanese festival faces off against a western steam-powered invading robot come to crash the ceremonies.

Videos and more thoughts behind the jump:

A Tale of Two Robots: Part I:

A Tale of Two Robots: Part II:

Thankfully, I’m not the first person to think these things, and writing for Tor.com, blogger Jaymee Goh has run down this idea in a number of different columns, but most notably the first one I read, titled In An Alternate World, I Could be “Cosmic Goddess”. She says:

Overweening arrogance aside (I won’t lie, writing that title made me giggle out loud, it was late, and I proceeded to practise the evilest laugh I could muster, only to fail miserably), I have come to the conclusion that the alternate history aspect of steampunk is one of the most delicious lures, ever.

This may appear to be a follow-up to GD Falksen’s lovely post on the possibilities of steampunk beyond Europe, but it’s not. I’ve talked about this issue before, and I want to talk about why this is important to visible minorities, particularly those engaged in predominantly-white spaces like North America and the UK.

In the first place, it is not easy to find people who look like us in science fiction to start with. The overwhelming majority of writers are white, as are an overwhelming majority of characters. Maybe the overwhelming majority of readers are also white, but considering that science fiction is read world-wide, I really doubt this is a case of writers writing for an audience like themselves. So it is in steampunk—most early Victorian science fiction feature white characters. Captain Nemo is a notable exception, being an Indian prince fighting against English imperialists. However, Captain Nemo was originally meant to be a white character (due to politics, his nationality was changed).

For those of us living in majority-white spaces, it can be isolating, not to mention disheartening, to notice we are the only visible minorities in the room. It can drive some away, too. Not only that, but because we steampunks of colour (henceforth referred to as SoC) are not a monolith, just as PoC vary in thought and personality, merely finding another SoC is simply not good enough. We’re not going to be bosom buddies just because we have different skin colours from the norm in the room.

Often, we find ourselves assimilating into the larger host culture, wearing clothes that may not reflect what we feel inside, in order to fit in. But I’ll make it clear, corsets may make me look good, but they can never make me forget that I am, in face shape, skin colour, appearance, and upbringing, an Asian (specifically, Malaysian-Chinese).

I strongly suggest taking a look at that linked post in there too, which I think cuts to the core of multi-ethnic steampunk possibilities, at least in my mind. Goh explains that this isn’t a mandate or a crusade against some kind of subtle racism, it’s just a curiosity of what the rest of the world would look like if the lens of steampunk subculture were lifted back a bit to see more parts of the world than its current –and natural– focus on Europe. She explains her ethnic descent, personally I’m African American and would love to see what the alternative history lottery may have in store for a never-colonized Africa, middle-east, or Central and South America. What if the Aztec and the Mayan people were still thriving, even today? What if the Zulu Empire never fell at the hands of the British? What if Chaka Zulu had been triumphant to the bitter end?

The alternate history lens is very frequently used as more than a tool for historical analysis and crystal-ball curiosities: it’s too often abused as a way for an author to project what they’d prefer society look like today as a result of something specific that they wish were different (most notably referenced in the writings of people who espouse what America would be like if the South could have ever possibly won the Civil War, or if Nazi Germany or Japan had prevailed in World War II – usually as a way to sugarcoat and write out their own fantasies) and I suppose there’s an element of that here as well, but my desire is more the “what if” both socially and technologicially than the projection of a utopia that meets my personal world-view.

I’ll let Yoh conclude and then hand you off to her post, because I think she does it fabulously:

So some of us, we imagine alternate worlds where we are not the colonized and our heritages are intact. We imagine worlds where the East discovers the West, and worlds where racism isn’t built into the institutions that run our world. For those of us less optimistic about that possibility, we imagine worlds where the clash of cultures is more minutely observed, where issues of race are acknowledged as relevant, where simple colourblindness is not a solution. We imagine strategies where we tackle racism head-on and are invigorated rather than worn out, where we challenge marginalization.

In an alternate world, when I walk into a room of steampunks, I find steampunks who are drawing inspiration from all walks of life and all corners of the world, not just Victoriana. In an alternate world, I do not have to deal with crap from Neo-Victorians who insist that steampunk originates from the Victorian era and if it’s not Victorian, it’s not steampunk. (Hard to believe, but it’s true: these people do exist, and they’re annoying.)

That is part of the beauty of steampunk: in alternate worlds, we could revel in multi-culturalism and fight about how it really looks like, and our politics would be different and not Euro-centric, and the Western hegemony wouldn’t exist because Africa and Asia would have had steam power on par with the British invaders/visitors/traders/tourists, and we are not cultural curiousities.

That is part of the beauty of the steampunk aesthetic—our cogs and gears and clockwork and other such hard technology which we can touch and mold and manipulate and shape belong anywhere and everywhere.

This is also part of the beauty of the steampunk community—Neo-Victorian pedants aside, most steampunks really are not interested in limiting steampunk. It just so happens, though, that no one really pays attention to the issue of race in steampunk.

Ours is the world where we walk next to our white peers without feeling effaced, and participate on our own terms. Ours is the world where our voices are heard and taken seriously, instead of being told that we’re “looking for racism where it doesn’t exist.” If you’re anything like me, being from another continent and all, ours is the world where fiction is not limited to being from over the ocean about people who do not look like us in cities that are not like ours doing things we would never have done because in our cultures we do things differently.

Alternate history is a huge part of steampunk. It is where our present knowledge is applied to the ignorant past in order to dream a better, more enlightened future.

Or at least, more varied worlds than what we currently see. We can do that, right?

David Pogue took some heat on last week’s This Week in Tech (TWiT) with Leo Laporte and John C. Dvorak (the generally out-of-touch-but-entertaining-anyway crankmaster himself) over being actually bubbly and happy about some of the good products he’s reviewed. When he finds a good product, he’ll laud it with praise, and when he finds a bad one he actually offers constructive criticism about the product. Pogue makes no secret of the fact that he has a fondness for Apple products, but sees flaws in them like anyone else would, and lives a cross-platform life – much like yours truly, on all of those counts.

Maybe that’s why I can relate to him to a certain extent. I also do product write-ups and reviews for a number of online publications and pride myself on being as impartial as I can be and honest about my opinions about a product. If Apple releases a stinker, I like to think that I’m able to call them out for doing so instead of sweeping it under the rug, for example. Similarly, if I’m reviewing a new gadget or product and it’s just horrible to configure and use, I’ll call that out in my review. By the same token, if I get my hands on something and it’s absolutely fabulous and I love it, I’m going to be bubbly and happy about it and suggest that other people try it as well.

I don’t have nearly the clout that David Pogue does, but after the crankiness and general jadedness I heard from some of the other panelists on that episode of TWiT, I had to stop and say to myself: what’s wrong with being happy when you find a good product? What’s wrong with championing good services as well as calling out the bad ones? Have we as an industry of technology writers and geeks and people passionate about tech become so incredibly jaded that we can’t even enjoy the good products and services when they’re available to us?

Let’s dive into that a little bit more after the jump.

(comic snagged from today’s The Joy of Tech!)

Today’s Joy of Tech is spot-on with this one. To be fair, it’s not like the other TWiTs haven’t themselves gushed about an Apple product before, especially good ones, on their own show or over on another podcast on the TWiT network, MacBreak Weekly, but I think it was the combination of panelists this time around (or maybe just the inclusion of Dvorak) that kind of indicated to me why I’m slowly losing my faith in a number of the TWiTs. They’re still timely and knowledgeable, but the more I listen to podcasts on the TWiT network the more it seems like a number of the more prominent voices are just jaded about technology and simply hate everything.

Dvorak is clearly the leader of this jaded pack, making a personal brand almost of his crankiness (I can’t remember the last time he was actually happy with a product – he hated Macs for so long and then finally got around to using one and wound up loving it) when he’s not flubbing stories (the whole US CIO flap still doesn’t sit well with me – Dvorak made a very elementary mistake and made some serious accusations based on bad data) and this seems to lead other people who sit with him to judge technology to get equally cranky and jaded about everything, almost to a fault – where the cheeriest someone can be is just by comparison to Dvorak.

Now I’m intensely disappointed in Dvorak himself, his poor judgement, and his incredible “I’ve been around so long I get to shake my cane and tell kids to get off my lawn when the kids are a half mile away” attitude, but this isn’t entirely about him. Bloggers of several stripes have taken a turn for the jaded, and it makes me wonder whether we’re just not seeing the quality of products we expect, we’re all just mad that we don’t have our flying cars yet, or we’re just collectively depressed at the state of the technology industry.

Some of this likely is a coincidence that the economic downturn is partially to blame. Some of it I think is, put simply, that snark sells. Snark can deadly when unchecked, and when unchecked leads you to prejudices without evidence, assumptions without proof, and conclusions without testing, and when you rely on snark for the body of your content and voice you wind up making more of a name for yourself because of your attitude than your aptitude.

That’s not to say snark is entirely bad when you’re reviewing a product or service – there are enough horrible products and services released on a regular basis that would make anyone raise and eyebrow and say “who the hell thought of this?” – and some healthy skepticism and saracasm means that snark can be a powerful weapon in the arsenal of anyone who’s passionate about GOOD technology and willing to slam the stupid things. But it’s all about moderation, and that’s what I fear we’re seeing less and less of.

I’m guilty – I admit, some of my published reviews have been incredibly sarcastic and snarky, to the point where I’m sure the product creators didn’t care for it – but at least I took the time to review the product, do the research and testing, and make an effort to be critical about my findings, as opposed to, for example, writing a product off entirely because it’s name is missing too many vowels or sounds silly when spoken. Those are fun things to pick at in an introduction or a conclusion of a review, not in the body.

I’m hoping that as the economy recovers and more people get back into their technology purchases we’ll see more critical and intelligent eyes being turned to technology products, releases, and events. If it doesn’t, the people who turn to those of us who are passionate about technology for accurate and clear information with intelligent analysis or commentary (and yes, some laughs in the process) will turn up a more tech-savvy voices that sound like Perez Hilton (or John C Dvorak) than they’ll find tech-savvy voices that sound like Peter Rojas (or heck, even David Pogue) who are both knowledgeable and entertaining.

I make no qualms about how much I love Twitter (you can follow me at @halophoenix), even love Plurk (I’m halophoenix there also), but hate Facebook with a passion. Why? It’s all about the way you use your social networks – or the way your social networks use you.

This is also the answer to a question a friend of mine (a friend in more ways than social networking, which is worthwhile to point out) put to her Livejournal followers a few weeks back. She asked, in a nutshell, whether the proliferation of social networks and ways to connect and communicate with people like Facebook and Twitter and even long-form blogging and community blogging like Livejournal is a way for people to share their lives with people, connect with friends and loved ones that they truly want to stay in touch with, or whether it’s little more than a new, technologically-based way for people to stroke their own egos and put on a “my life is better than yours” show for their so-called friends to see.

The answer really is that it’s both, and which one you experience depends highly on you and the type of community you decide to keep on all of those services. While I can’t claim that it’s entirely dependent on you and that you have complete control over what your social networks look like, you do have control over who you let into your social circles and who you exclude: who gets in behind the velvet rope and who doesn’t.

Full disclosure (and some personal examples) behind the jump.

choose and build healthy communities

It’s for this very reason that if at all possible, I channel my coworkers away from my Facebook account and over to my LinkedIn profile. For example, I’m highly selective about who I allow to be my “friend” at Plurk – as in, who I follow back and who’s allowed to see my private plurks, but at Twitter I’m much more lenient about who I follow and who I allow to follow me, mostly because I use the two networks very differently.

Plurk, for me, is home to a relatively tightly knit group of friends who know me very personally – if you’re not in that group or haven’t shown yourself willing to interact with me personally, I’m not likely to let you in that circle. On Twitter on the other hand, I post with some personal posts but also use the service as a self-promotional tool to showcase my posts (like this one), the blogs I write for, and build connections and networks with other people who have similar interests as I do (like World of Warcraft, for example – I know a ton of WoW players on Twitter).

The difference? My Plurk friends have seen me at my saddest, and most upset, hidden behind friends-only plurks. Those are things I would never say at Twitter, even if I had the option to restrict their view only to people who follow me and I follow in return.

is it “reconnecting” or is it “keeping up with the Joneses?”

Facebook is another great example – Facebook is an example of a social network that personally I’ve let run kind of rampant: a number of people I used to know in high school have found me and added me as friends, which is completely fine, but none of them have shown any indication that they plan to interact with me in any meaningful way. Now I don’t think they’re bolstering their friends list just to show off their beautiful lives and beautiful children (because some of them certainly aren’t), but I think that there’s a subconscious element of that along with a real desire to feel connected to people, even if you used to be connected to them and you aren’t any longer.

Everyone who’s out of high-school is familiar with the whole “glory days” mentality, where people look nostalgically back on their high-school days as the best days of their lives, never to be topped – where they were their most innocent, most beautiful, and most well-liked. Part of that connection is a desire to reconnect with people who liked them at that time, and part of it is so see how much better or worse you are after all that time.

This mentality has been around since the first high-school reunion, and the ego-stroking “my life is better, I drive a better care, have a bigger house, or married a prettier person” is as old as the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.” None of it is particularly new, and it’s remarkably difficult to avoid falling into the trap of trying to keep up with people you haven’t spoken to in easily 10 years.

so what is “social networking” for, anyway?

So in the end, yes – social networks are about ego-stroking. Yes, they’re also about reconnecting with people you may have lost touch with and want to be closer to again. Yes, they’re also depressing – because just as easily as you can build up a network of people, you can easily find yourself spending hours comparing your life against those of your peer group and, for example, finding yourself angry if you’ve been trying to have kids and all you see are high-school classmates with babies, or depressed when you see all of your former crushes are married and you’re single, or saddened when you’ve just been laid off and everyone’s talking about their high-paying jobs, or jealous when one of your classmates turned out to be en executive at a multi-million dollar company.

The difference, and the crux, comes in when you analyze those friends to determine whether they’re really friends, or just acquaintances looking to add numbers to a friends list. Then ask yourself whether you’re adding someone because you truly care about them, want to reconnect with them, or you’re just looking to beef up your friends list. The question I try to go by is: “I already wouldn’t mind this person seeing when I’m happy…but would I want this person to see me when I’m sad, lonely, or depressed?”

Additionally, making that decision – especially if your network is already set up and you’re looking to prune it, requires courage – the courage to say no to people who want to add you to their friends lists, the courage to remove people from your existing friends lists, and the courage to face whatever drama may come out of those decisions. You have to be ready to hold your ground, or even set up dummy profiles or dummy networks where you direct those people.

take control: the rewards are worth it

The question of whether your social networks become farms where you just add more and more random people that you pepper with shallow updates about your life and what you drive or what you’ve eaten for dinner – or whether they become close knit circles of true friends you feel comfortable sharing the ups and downs of your life with is largely up to you.

If you care for those people, they’ll likely respond in kind, and they’ll interact with you. If they’re the type to blather on about their meals and their travel plans, you’ll either drop them out of boredom and due to the fact that they don’t interact with you or you’ll leave them on because you care for them so much. In the end, you’ll wind up with digital communities that defy the notion that you “can’t have real friends on the internet,” full of people who care for you as much as you care for them – people who will respond when you post, miss you when you don’t, and read what you write.