Medium Is The User

When I was just walking in the corridors of my school earlier today i noticed something that drove my attention - a huge LCD screen with nothing but an oldschool clock all over it. Actually there are two of these, one in each building. It was probably bought so students don't get late that often for classes.

As technologies get cheaper every day we use them for various, often strange reasons. This one is strange but useful. But who knows, maybe one day they will buy a huge screen just to display 'hello'.

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You don't see many pictures like this in the streets of Warsaw.

Actually today it was the first time in my life I saw a man reading from a dedicated ebook reader device in a regular city situation just to kill some time. What is also interesting it wasn't an Amazon Kindle but a Polish reader called eClicto.

I also am pretty into not wasting time while I'm on the move, especially to and back from work. When travelling in a crowded subway it is best for me to listen to podcasts (there is a lot of quality content on iTunes for geeks like you and me). There is also a lot of iPhone apps that serve fresh content from publishers like Times, NYC or blogs like Mashable. You can even use aggregator like Regator (my favourite one) that have it all.

But is it the best thing to do? Don't we read those news on laptops when in the office or at home anyway? I don't know what's your experience, but I read books or ebooks only when I'm offline or on a mobile device. It's just a psychological issue. I can focus better and have more patience for them.

One may say you have to own an iPad or Kindle to read ebooks. Actually you don't. IPhone or iPod Touch are just enough. With the 1 USD GoodReader app you can easily read ebooks in any kind of format like the popular PDFs you have on your computer.

You might think that iPhone has such a small screen that it might be a problem to read all those fancy formatted ebooks. I don't want to sound like a salesman but GoodReader is great in displaying pure text in its form providing you with a great experience that you can even enhance to your own needs.

We live in the era of blogs, tweets, Facebook livestreams. And don't get me wrong I love them all, but they have this trait they outdate so fast. Books are different. They don't expire so soon. And I like the fact that if is so easy to read ebooks nowadays. You just need to want it.

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Phones used to be all about texting and talking with other people. Years ago I remember my friends looking at me with disapproval, asking me why would I expected my phone to take pictures or play music? Didn't I have a camera and a discman for that? Things changed. Phones became smartphones. We got smarter with them as well.

I loved all my phones I used to have, even the one running on Windows Mobile 5. It was a whole different thing than the new Windows Phone 7, that inspired me to writing this post. It was very slow, I had to disable unnecessary application running in the background on the daily basics simply using something like "alt+ctrl+del" in order to save on battery and boost speed. But I had plenty of fun with that thing. Maybe only my pants didn't, because HP hw6915 was big and it deformed the shape of them in the area of my right pocket;).

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The reason I'm running on two separate iTunes accounts is that I want to have access to a broad market of free apps that are not available at the Polish App Store. It is not convenient to log in and log out each time, but it works out for me. I can browse the American App Store in the pursuit of free apps and whenever I find something that I want to buy, I just log in to the Polish account and buy it. For obvious reasons my American account has fake payment details, so I'm simply not able to buy anything using that one.

   

Click here to download:

Sick_and_tired_of_the_lack_of_.zip (49 KB)

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I don't know what policy Facebook follows in regards to the new layout upgrades. You could read every day more and more people were reporting they already had the "new Facebook". Now it's my turn. I have always been in this small group of users who never said they hated changes in Facebook. Anyway, I haven't seen any protests on Facebook recently against changes. No people screaming "we want the old Facebook back!". Did I miss something?

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Do you remember those times when you had this one place at home or at the office and these places were the only ones where you could access the thing we call World Wide Web? It seems that we forgot about those limitations and think of the Internet as something we can experience very easily.

It's no longer a question of WHERE to connect with others. It's a WHEN question.

I'm on the train from Katowice to Warsaw. Sitting with five other people. You can see the picture. To clear things out, it's not a fancy bussiness class. I bought a cheap 37 worth PLN (11 USD) ticket for a low-budget connection.

If a person from late 90's had the chance to travel in time and watch us in 2010, one would definitely say it's a strange world. And I totally agree. We live in a whole different world. Better connected one. But I wish we always knew that these railway trips we take are to meet people in person and still it is far more important than sending an email.

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New technologies, like Facebook, accelerate and intensify changes that had already been taking place since the implementation of the alphabet. There is no doubt that Facebook has changed the way people talk to each other, remember about each other, keep in touch. For instance, I haven't seen my good friend Robert Zembrzycki for a longer while, but I have the feeling I know a lot about him, what's going on in his life. Why Facebook, not any other Social Networking Sites in the history has such a great impact on our relations? Because it is simple and put a lot of effort in its design and functionality in order to encourage us to interact with each other.

But what happens if we browse Facebook in a different way? You can use the lighter version of Facebook via lite.facebook.com or you can just download a client like TweetDeck to stay updated with your Newsfeed. However a new client has been delivered called Microsoft Silverlight 4 beta. It is very advanced in comparison to TweetDeck and it tries to provide users with a better experience than the standard Facebook.com website. A user can access groups, inbox, friends / pages lists, and even upload and manage photo galleries. A great importance has been put to event section, which I feel is underestimated by Facebook in terms of providing easy access to this functionality. It is a great alternative for those who like great design and hate Facebook ads.

This post is titled "Facebook through Microsoft Silverlight 4 beta users eyes". I asked my friend, Robert Zembrzycki about his experience:

First thing you notice about Silverlight, is how awesome it looks compared to plain facebook page. Thanks to dark background, the photos pop out, look more crispy and colorfull. The viewing pleasure is great, with this app, thanks to lovely typography, nice transition effects and overall smoothness. But enough about the visuals, how does it actually work? Well, it's a bit different then using regular facebook.com - you've got the same stuff but organized in a better way. You can access your friends profiles faster, and you've got more stuff displayed at once, without cluttering the screen - everything is easily accessibble, and just makes you want to click it! I suggest checking it out for virtually everyone interested in geek apps ;D

 

 

But there are a few bugs there - it does not support mouse scrolling (at least on a mac), and it does not notify you, if your friends have ansawered you - there's mp refresh button which should be there....

 

All in all - check it out to see what the hype is about, but wait for final version to fully endulge yourself in what shapes up to be the best way to book your face :D

Thank you Robert for sharing your opinion with us. This was Facebook Silverlight through our eyes.

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Nine years ago Manuell Castells made a reference in his book: 'The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society' to the Marshall McLuhan's 'Gutenberg Galaxy' from 1962. 'Gutenberg Galaxy' was the idea about the world changed by mass media, especially printed press. It was about mass communication that allowed the entire world to be like one global village. Castells went one step further to describe the concept of the world that we live in as 'The Internet Galaxy'. Castells praises internet as a communication medium. It allows, for the first time, the communication of many to many, on a global scale. Indeed the evolution of the Internet has a great impact on our society, economics, politics and culture. On the global scale we are being structured by the Internet and its networks. Not being a part of it is the most damaging form of exclusion in many form of activities. 

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Hi, I just wanted to let you know I'm in the process of writing why I
believe we live in a Social Media Galaxy and why "medium is the user"
rather than "the message". Follow me on Facebook or Twitter and you
will stay updated when the new post is ready! Thanks for patience.

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