My new MacBook arrived two weeks ago, and I felt that I had spent enough time with it to actually make some useful comments on the good, the bad, and the headbangingly frustrating.

The Finder

Dear Apple: Shoot the Finder development team. Thanks.

I have switched to Path Finder as a Finder replacement. Truly the finder is one of the most debilitating pieces of software I have ever used. Nautilus on Gnome is a far superior file management system.

Software, in general

On the whole, I have found replacements for most of the Windows tools I use on a regular basis. But, as I am not made of money, I am using GIMP for Mac, and that is just clunky in the X11 environment.

Living in the browser makes my life much more tolerable than those who require the Windows environment. I haven’t got the money to buy Parallels or VMWare Fusion right now, so I am using RDC to connect to my Windows box. Slap Windows in Space #3 Fullscreen, and no one would know the difference.

Haven’t found a good Mind Map tool. And BBEdit is also muchos dineros. So Smultron is the text editor.

Usability

I rate this very high. Other than adjusting to the lack of certain keys (DEL, Pg up/dn, etc), the transition has been seamless. The trackpad is a dream and I miss being able to throw stuff around on my Dell laptops’ trackpads like I can using the one on the MacBook. I do find I leave apps hanging, as I am still adjusting to CMD-q closing the app.

Dashboard. What can I say? It’s what I need – high-level data at a glance, including the Prem Tables!

Overall

After four years waiting for a MacBook, I can say that it has been worth the wait. Solid, dependable, and slowly becoming my primary computer.

The only concern that I have is the aluminum case. I have an aluminum sensitivity, and if my hands start to peel and otherwise be in bad shape, I will have to determine a solution to that issue.

There is clear dissatisfaction with the current state of marketing among the social media mavens.

• Fred Wilson and Union Square Ventures are looking for companies to invest in to take advantage of this.
• BuzzLogic releases their conversational ad service.
• The Inquisitr moves from AdSense to Technorati Media, indicating a potential shift at b5 Media.
• Lookery is providing demographic information that is relevant to social media providers and shaping ad presentation that way
• A completely off-the-radar person such as myself realizes that there is gold in what holds the attention, and that’s not always the latest and greatest

So what can be done? Jeff Jarvis points out that the problem lies with measurement. I agree, as there is only value in a system where all of the people involved agree on what the metric of record will be, and how it can be validly captured.

Currently CPM is the agreed upon metric. In a feed based online world, how does a CPM model work? And, most importantly, why would I continue to place your ads on my site if all your doing is advertising to people based on the words on the page, rather than who is looking at the page and how often that page is looked at.

In effect, advertisers should be the ones thrying to figure out how to get into the community, get into the conversation. As an advertiser, don’t you want to be where the action is? But how do you find an engaged audience in an online world that makes a sand castle on the beach in a hurricane look stable?

The challenge for advertisers is to be able to find the active communities and conversations effectively. The challenge for content creators and communities is to understand the value of their conversations, the interactions that people who visit the site have with the content.

In effect, a social media advertising model turns the current model on its head. Site owners and community creators gain the benefit of being attractive to advertisers because of the community, not because of the content. And site owners who understand who visits their site, what content most engages them, how they interact with the system will be able to reap the greatest rewards by selling their community as a marketable entity.

And Steven Hodson rounds out the week’s think on communities by throwing out the subversive idea that communities are not always free (as in ‘beer’, not as in ‘land of’). If a community has paid for the privilege of coming together to participate in communal events and discussions, then can’t that become an area for site owners to further control the cost of advertising on their site?

While the benefit of reduced or no marketing content is the benefit of many for-pay communities, this benefit can be used by site owners by saying that an advertiser can have access to the for-pay community at the cost of higher ad rates and smaller ads. The free community is a completely different set of rules, but there are also areas in the free community that are of higher value than others.

In summary, the current model is broken. But there is no way to measure the value of a Twitter stream, a FriendFeed conversation, a Disqus thread, or a Digg rampage. And until there is, we are stuck with an ad model that based on the words on the page, and not the community that created the words.

The post says it all

Burmese Refugee Children Love Macs from Joyce Kim on Vimeo.

Look ma: Macy’s is already too busy.

Yeah. Let the fun begin.

Technorati: GrabPERF “Black Friday” “Web Performance” “Macy’s”

A colleague of mine suggested that the Tour de France give up all pretense of being drug free, and embrace the performance-enhancing image it has developed so carefully over the last quarter century.

His idea was to have the racing teams sponsored by the major pharmaceutical firms, pitting one performance-enhancing approach against another, in a competition to demonstrate not the strength of the human spirit, but the power to manipulate the human body.

Samantha further suggested that they then abandon all of the rules that make the race civilized, and turn it into a free-for-all, a Tour de France, EXTREME EDITION!

That would get the le tour on Spike.

This morning, after months of increasing performance issues, and connectivity issues, I have retired the Boston Verizon measurement location. This location hosted 2 measurement agents.

The machines, hosted in my basement, are connected using Verizon FiOS, which has become increasingly flaky over the last couple of months. As well, the machines are 7 year old Pentium IIs, and require a substantial amount of spoon-feeding that I don’t have time for at the moment.

I have re-enabled the Technorati #1 Agent to fill the gap, but this leaves only 4 measurement locations running. I again put out my plea for more volunteers to host GrabPERF measurement locations. I have had one volunteer contact me about this (thanks Henrik!), and this location should be up in about 3 weeks.

If you have a spare linux box and a static IP, have I got a project for you!

PS: The contact page is fixed. It was set to auto-refresh and overwrite your e-mails. Ooooops.

Tags: GrabPERF, Agent, Verizon, Web Performance, measurement, performance measurement

MacYawn

Now, shut up and go back to the interesting stuff.

Thank you.

Apparently there’s quite the blizzard pounding Colorado. [here and here]

And your point is…?

Remember:

1. You live at 3,000 ft and above
2. Those big rocky and pointy things in your backyard? They might have some effect on the weather
3. It’s Winter…well, officially tomorrow

I gew up in the Rocky Mountain Trench. After November 1st, it’s not if, it’s when the snow will come. And you can expect to be smacked hard at least once.

Get firewood. Get candles. Get books. Get pens and paper.

And be glad you don’t live in the Pacific Northwest.

As a teenager growing up in a very small logging town in the BC interior, I had what could be politely termed unusual musical tastes, especially for the mainstream, heavy-metal, hair-banging kids I hung around with.

But when I was alone with my walkman, I listened to the real geniuses of 80s rock: REM, Kate Bush, Talking Heads, and…Lindsey Buckingham.

Lindsey Buckingham?? That guy from Fleetwood Mac?

Want a little aural treat? Listen to Go Insane. I literally wore the oxide off my version of the cassette. Crosses so many different boundaries…and realize that you are pretty much hearing Lindsey Buckingham only. Mick Fleetwood makes a couple appearances, but other than that, it is a one-man show.

Do it. I dare you.

Citizens Bank Outage

Originally uploaded by spierzchala.

Some days, your bank needs to get smacked around.

This is one of those times.

What is going on?