Focus on where you’re going

but

don’t regret where you’ve been.

Every smile

and

Every scar

added to who you are.

 

(from @thesinglewoman)

My spouse and I were recently watching a series of movies, mainly streamed from Netflix.   After seeing Ironman 2 and Spy Hard, we thought, hey how about RED; we unanimously agreed and so went to stream it from Netflix.  Alas, it was only available by DVD.   No worries we thought, we’ll just slink on down to the Red Box Movie Kiosk and rent it there for about $1.

And so I did

And then I waited in line to get my movie.  That’s right, I waited outside of a brick-and-morter store, in line, to get a chance to use the Red Box Kiosk. And when I got my turn after 15 minutes Red Box did not have RED.

So, back home and back on the computer and that’s when I found out you can reserve movies at a specific Red Box.

Oh, wait, you don’t know about Red Box?  Well let me back up a minute.  Red Box is a kiosk that rents DVD’s to you for about $1.00   Its your old local VCR Movie rental store now moved from a store to a machine the size of a coke machine.   Fast Company ran an article on Red Box and in it they described how The Red Boxes work:

What’s surprising, though, is how much wizardry goes into making Redbox work. Each machine is connected to the Internet via DSL or a 3G cellular modem. This lets customers browse and reserve movies at their local Redbox through the Web, and return movies they rent from one Redbox to any other. Each machine packs a sophisticated inventory-management system that determines how many copies of different new titles to order based on past performance of similar movies at that location. The kiosks send their inventory orders up to the mother ship every week, and Redbox’s technicians fan out to each kiosk to stock it with new DVDs. “That’s the most interesting part — where technology meets old-fashioned field distribution,” Lowe says.

So back to my quest for the movie RED.    My spouse sat down at our computer and she began to fiddle with the Red Box web site, she:

1. Typed in RED in the Red Box Search box
2. Then, on the Red Box landing page for the movie RED, she noticed a big red button that said, “FIND” so she clicked it
3. Red Box, knowing our location based on our IP address, then pulled up a list of Red Box locations that had our movie
4. Then, my spouse clicked on a big red RENT button, next to the location she wanted me to head off to so I could rent the movie for us.

So I’m on Google Plus now and Facebook, what do I think?

I think that both Facebook and Google Plus get to the same endpoint:

• connecting us with each other over the net
• reducing interpersonal friction to make connecting easier (but please don’t leave etiquette and politeness at the door)
• helping in discovering new content and interesting information

But, I think Google has thought this out better and is listening to their users; Facebook feels tacked together, pieces don’t seem to work well and frankly I don’t think they care what their users think.

I had the “find interesting information” effect just today actually when a post on suicide cropped up in Facebook from Blogher.  I’m not sure I would have found this important piece had I not been on Facebook.  So, Facebook helped me find content I wouldn’t otherwise find and to share with others about that topic.  I’m sure Google Plus will too as the population fills out.   It may have already but I haven’t discovered the discovery piece yet (that would be Google Sparks I guess!)

Google Circles is way easier to use than Facebook’s friending.  In addition, Google Circles makes sorting very easy.   It’s clean, smooth and intuitive.  That being said, I think there is a learning curve to Google Plus (circles and the other components).  But, I’m looking forward to learning how to use it since I feel my on line life is alot safer there than on Facebook.

So my bottom line?  I’m on Facebook because my friends are there, but otherwise, that’s really it.   Otherwise, I think Google Plus may eventually be the default social network.

Oh and for now, Twitter absolutely is the hands down winner for new content discovery; for me anyway!

This is about the disrespect many women get in the business world and the behavior it breeds in men.  And we see it in high tech and I think it may be part of the reason there are fewer women in high tech.

Who would have thought all us nerds would be so hard to work with?

Here’s the article though, it’s a great one and well worth  your time, “Attacks on Women at Work are Failures in Communication“

Another Fourth of July, America’s Birthday, has passed.  Are we over the hill?   A zany professor (known as the Plaid Avenger) of world history and current events at a University in Virginia thinks not.  Among his reasons:

• With the wind down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a re-thinking of America as the policeman of the world, many of those dollars used to extend our defense of the world will flow BACK into our domestic needs (see this companion article at Today’s Insight News on how U.S. Mayors are lobbying for this exact action)
• While China is growing incredibly and graduating many engineers and scientists, it’s their controlling society which will hinder them from being equal with the U.S. in innovation (to have an innovative economy you must have freedom to think, see this article in the Guardian for how Chinese Universities screen their college students for being too independent)
• With the rise of costs in manufacturing overseas, there will be a growth in manufacturing in the U.S. and that means more jobs here, (check this article out at Reuters for a recent example)

There’s ALOT more to hear in this zany yet inspiring 30 minute video cast but it’s all good; its well worth your 30 minutes to listen in.

Happy 4th of July! USA rocks! from Plaid Avenger on Vimeo.