Jason Toney

The One Where I Did More With Less (Information)

"Here's a pencil pad. I'm gonna spread some information." - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Inspiration Information (a Shuggie Otis cover, obvs)

Much like a diet for weight loss, limiting the intake of information I receive every day is harder than you might think. One week into taking the Information Diet challenge and rescue time is telling me that I spend more time on social networks than 87% of other people using the service.

And an amazing amount of that time is on Facebook! Ugh. But not the most. Friendfeed is my most common distraction which is both surprising and not. Even though I have been trying out Faveous as a way to aggregate social activity I want to remember and, perhaps, go back to -- friendfeed still does this better than everything else that's out there that I've tried. I regularly go back to the site to see what I favorited but didn't read or tweeted that I want to revisit. Plus, even with other services (most notably Google+) that do a lot of the same things, friendfeed is still where my friends go to talk to each other more privately.

So, it's a process. One of the things I did learn this week is how much notifications where guiding my activity. Turning off push notifications on my iPad and phone as well as disabling most desktop notifications on my work laptop has been a great boon to focusing my attention. Now, when I begin a task (which I'm also being more deliberate about tracking now that I'm back to using Astrid), I have to make a deliberate choice to step away from it rather than being pulled away easily by a nudge in the corner of my screen or a flashing light on my iPad.

I now calendar both work and distractions in my daily schedule. I also think a lot more about what my primary activity is and whether or not that means I should close my laptop or iPad and focus on that when I'm at home. The television has been off a lot more in the house this week. I was much more productive at work (and on this blog) than I normally am. I'm also not spending my nights worrying about what didn't get accomplished and I'm finding more time for things like reading and more engaging conversations with Tiffany.

So, you're not likely to see me respond immediately to Words and Hanging with Friends plays these days. Or talk about my obsession with Tiny Tower. This is for the better. You will, however, see me answer personal emails faster as sanebox is making my gmail management a dream.

This coming week I'll be removing facebook from my bookmarks bar. It's, by far, my least satisfying distraction.

Soundtrack to this post: Soul Time! by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings which I'm enjoying way more than their last full-length.

A Week with the Kindle Fire

Just some quick notes about my Kindle Fire experience.

• It's become my bedroom device. Because I use my iPad constantly during the day, the Fire has become my go-to device bedside so that the iPad can charge at night. This is where it's size becomes incredibly convenient and it's effectiveness for book and video consumption (including just about all web video) wins. I spent over two hours in bed this morning consuming...
• Android devices need the android market. I've gotten over some challenges, like wanting the official Twitter app, Feedly, GetGlue and Hanging With Friends on the Fire, by side-loading them on and they, for the most part, work great. But nothing from Google works, even by using this trick, and that's lame. Android is so much better with Google integration. Also, there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to run HBO Go on this device but I can't. Also, having to side load updates to those apps is going to be a pain in the butt.
• The headphone jack is in the wrong place. After those two hours of consuming, I had a nice indententation on my belly from where the headphone cable was pushing in to me. (although I guess that's just a mental block for me. I could flip it over so that the power button and jack are up top.)
• The touch screen is both too sensitive and not sensitive enough. Swiping often results in a click. Clicking around the edges often results in no response.

Overall, though, I like it. For 200 bucks, it's cheaper than my phone but feels more useful. It's no iPad but I don't think it wants to be.

Two Notes on The Social Network

"I cashed my check. I'm ready to go." - Janet Jackson, Escapade

First, the applause. At the end of the film during the updates about the people featured, the crowd clapped in appreciation. I was surprised because, to me, this isn't portrayed as a story of triumph but Steve Woolf tumbled something that makes sense to me:

Many older people will watch the movie, which was No. 1 at the box office last weekend, and see a cautionary tale about a callous young man who betrays friends, partners and principles as he hacks his way to lucre and fame. But many in the generation who grew up in a world that Mr. Zuckerberg helped invent will applaud someone who saw his chance and seized it with both hands, mostly by placing them on the keyboard and coding something that no one else had.

I'm not sure if it's generational but I do think that the crowd gets something about Zuckerberg and Parker in spite of the movie not because of it—they simply refuse to work and play by your rules.

This leads me to my second note, how geeks work. The movie crackles with energy but, for me, the most exciting scenes were the moments that showcased how work came together. That scene early on when Eisenberg's Zuck puts together facesmash by hacking house websites; how he hires his Summer interns (clue: it involves a drinking game and an audience); our first glimpses of Facebook's open space offices.

If there's anything that's real in this dramatization about privilege and access and friendship and business, it's this—we work differently today. We're not really interested in doing things the way previous generations have done it.

I was reminded of how infectious and exciting the idea of working differently is when I got home from the movie and saw a tweet about facebook's analog lab*

Digital Natives aren't just different in the digital realm. They're breaking your analog conventions, too.

*I love #newtwitter, don't you?

Revisiting #BrownBirds and #BlackTwitter

The dulcet tones of John Dankworth and His Orchestra, Return From the Ashes

When I've complained about the short-sighted writing about black folks and twitter (whether satirically or earnestly), what I've really been looking for is for someone to go deep with what we know about the different ways people are interacting in the digital space broadly. Basically, take findings like this from the Pew Research Center and go all in.

In the case of Twitter, I suspect this is really important

Minority Americans are also relatively likely to use digital technologies to keep up with what’s happening in their neighborhoods. This is especially true of folks who don’t know many of their neighbors by name—tools such as blogs, social networking sites and neighborhood listservs can serve as valuable tools for keeping up with local issues.

This requires more research but this suggests some completely different views of services like Twitter, not just because of some racial factor, but because of how a broad range of social elements impact how we interact in both the digital and physical worlds. It also suggests some different views on community and it's importance to individuals that feel increasingly disconnected from their neighbors in a way that's distinctly different from generations prior.

That's powerful. Forget the hashtag nonsense, let's talk about this. And, then, let's showcase what, based on that same research, seems to be a gap in the marketplace:

Minority attitudes towards social media also diverge notably from those of whites. For example, minority Americans were very active using social technologies to share information during the 2008 election campaign. And when we asked about government outreach using social media, minority respondents were significantly more likely than whites to say that this type of outreach “helps people be more informed about what government is doing” and “makes government more accessible”. They are also much more likely than whites to say it is “very important” for government agencies to post information and alerts on social networking sites.

That's a giant hole that, at this point, seems woefully under-fulfilled. Who is serving this need? And, if you are, are you doing it in ways that resonate with these communities? Are you on myspace and facebook? Do you have mobile apps? Is your app going Android first?

What's your strategy for reaching an audience that leans heavily on mobile devices (non-Apple mobile devices) and is thirsty for deep and meaningful interaction via social media? If you think you can do it the same way you're doing it for your larger customer base, you're wrong.

Standing in The Way of Control

"You fake 'em and you take 'em" - The Aggrolites, Jimmy Jack

I asked a question to twitter yesterday:

okay, I'm going to try Remember the Milk for task management again. What are you using for your To-Do lists?

I was surprised that, at least amongst those who responded on twitter, old fashioned pen and paper was the most common way people were tracking tasks. On Friendfeed, RTM and some integration with Android was the overwhelming answer (proving FF is really nerdy). There were other services/softwares mentioned—OmniFocus, Things, and Google Tasks—but no one expressed overwhelming love for any of them (except for the Android app, Astrid). I don't know if that suggests that there's still an opportunity out there for a great task management service or if there just isn't a one size fits all way for dealing with this.

What I realized, though, is I think Getting Things Done has totally screwed me up. GTD creates all these processes around task management and when I was in the training and reading the books a few years ago, I thought, this is awesome. I'll be in control! Nothing will fall through the cracks!! I'll take over the world!!!

Yeah, no. GTD turns task management into a task in and of itself. I don't want that. There are two things I want to do: remind myself to take care of the mundane tasks that I always avoid/block and remind myself that I need to be working towards the big goals, milestones, concepts, ideas. I don't need sub-tasks. I don't need projects and mini-projects and processes to manage processes. I need BIG IDEA post-its that follow me everywhere and a nag. And I don't need making To-Do lists to be a chore.

So, I'm hoping RTM can help me do that. This is my second or third go 'round with the service. The last time, I used it actively for a few months before getting distracted by some new thing to try (probably gTasks) and then quickly gave up on that, too. I like that it's everywhere. The Chrome Milk extension, the gMail and Google Calendar extensions, and the iOS and Android Apps help with the everything-ness of it (although, now that I know Astrid syncs with RTM, I'm going to switch back to that I think) and I will take some advice from the pen + paper set and review and potentially rewrite my TO-DOs for the day/week every morning.

Maybe that'll work to help me lose this lack of control I've been feeling.

You see, that's the real problem and maybe this is better suited for another post but what all this task/to-do list nonsense is really all about is about me trying to exercise some control. I'm usually really good at adapting and reacting to change but there's just a ton in flux right now and unlike most of the time when I get to help others through change or champion it or whatever, I'm in the middle of it. Things are directly affecting me and I have very little way to impact them whether personally or professionally.

I get moments where I can nudge things in the right direction but most of this is wait and see. Others have to do the heavy lifting and, gah, that's frustrating. Especially when the changes take longer than I'm used to.

I like to just rip off the band-aid.

But I'm not the actor. So, instead I sit here with a bit of stress and anxiety. I feel undisciplined. I am spending a little too much time in my head. And eating the wrong things. And not focusing on the tasks at hand.

I woke up this morning, though, tired of waiting for the cheese to move.

It's time to Remember the Milk.

Nobody else is going to.

Black (Twitter) Power

"Perfect verbal architecture sparking lectures." - Jurassic 5, The Influence

Black Web 2.0 posted two conversation spurring lists over the last week or so —one each for black men and women with "power" on twitter. The lists are pretty much terrible and here's why: neither actually measures power. Power suggests some level of influence that actually matters and these two lists are overly weighted to consider follower counts more than other qualitative measures. Anil Dash already debunked the relevancy/accuracy of follower lists earlier this year. I don't mean to suggest that the celebrities that dominate these lists don't wield power, of course they do. What I am suggesting, however, is that in an online social experience like twitter, the impact one has on organic meaningful relationships is more important. Also, influence is constantly changing. I'm not one to usually care about these things but I'd find much more value in a power grid like Mediaite has which takes into account of myriad of factors in establishing their lists relevancy and also is focused, man. To just pull together a list of "Black" people (and I put black in quotes here because the actual blackness of some of these people—see Kat Stacks who self-describes as Venezuelan and Trinidadian—is questionable) doesn't provide any context for why anyone would want to follow these people or care where they rank.

But, this gives me an opportunity to dig through my own lists and suggest the Black folks that influence me. I'll try to keep my friends out of this mostly and focus on two areas: people who consistently post thought provoking tweets (from my brainiacs list) and smart/interesting people that I lovingly call music-headz. Also, just because I'm obnoxious like that, I'm going to kill the gendering. Why can't men and women hang out together in the same arbitrary lists? Hint: They can.

Brainiacs

• Colson Whitehead - just another down on his luck carny with a pocketful of broken dreams
• Ta-Nehisi Coates - Strength: 13 Intelligence: 14 Wisdom: 16 Dexterity: 3 Constitution: 15 Charisma: 13 Spells: Light, Silence, Otto's Irresistible Dance
• Farai Chideya - Multi-media journalist; reporter on race, generational identity, and politics; and author of four books including novel Kiss the Sky.
• Lynne d Johnson - The SVP Social Media for the Advertising Research Foundation @The_ARF. I tweet about music, motorcycles, pop culture, kicks, Android, and social media.
• Baratunde Thurston - Comedian | Vigilante Pundit | Co-Founder @JJPolitics | Web Editor @TheOnion | TV Host @FutureOf
• Elon James - I Spits game like my name is Hasbro! #FallBackSon #YesIDidHashtagMyBio #TisHowIdo #YesIdidUseTheWordTis...
• Rebecca Walker - Award-winning author. Multiplatform catalyst. Eye of the storm.
• Ludovic - Dad, drapetomaniac, activist, music snob, world traveler, cuisine-lover, snarker, and a whole lot more.

Bonus link, just because: negrophile

Music Headz

• Garth Trinidad - fighting the war against musical mediocrity and cultural ignorance
• Talib Kweli - MCEO
• Amir ?uestlove Thompson - your favorite twitterer's favorite music snob.
• Jay Smooth - I do web video at illdoctrine.com, and hip-hop radio at WBAI 99.5 FM in NY.
• Harry Allen - Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.
• Rob Fields - Black rock evangelist | Music entrepreneur
• Erykah Badu - i will not pop 4u or break 4u or hate for u or even hate u

Bonus link, just because: Wax Poetics Mag

In light of Slate's recent tone deafness on this subject, I would have hoped that Black Web 2.0 would put together lists showing the broad diversity of "blackness" online.

#FAIL

Why Are Your Peoples An 'Em On Twitter?

"When you hear a caged bird sing, sing along." - Brother Ali on Zion I's, Caged Bird Part 1

As far as I can tell, your peoples an 'em have been acting a fool on Twitter. Right now even the hashtag #theresnoneedforyou is running rampant. Twitter user _iTALiANQUEEN posted: #theresnoneedforyou if your juss a moocher. dont try to feed off my lifee #GTFOH. It doesn't matter that she's reppin' Italy, on Twitter, if you play this game, you're blacker than your average. You just know your cousins are going to take it all downhill from there.

I asked a Respectable Negro what she thought about her peoples on twitter. She responded with what I can only describe as a "Child Please" face and called me a derogatory term under her breath before walking away. I moved on. I asked Tiffany B Brown--who is so colored, she has it in her name--about her cousins and social media. She would neither admit to knowing what I was talking about nor claim what are obviously her folks. In fact, she suggested that they were related to me instead.

How dare she?

Then we realized we weren't a monolith of thought and action nor an "other" even though, despite what Farhod Manjoo's closing paragraph attempts to say (after 12 paragraphs that seek to offer an abundance of 'evidence' of the opposite), that is how Slate's How Black People Use Twitter title and graphic suggests they think of us.

Then we looked at each other, held hands and skipped like pickaninnies to the local wing shack.

 #OMGWTFBBQNEGROESONTWITTER

On Slowing Down

"Move in slow motion for me." - Juvenile, Slow Motion (feat. Soulja Slim)

The phrase “slow reading” goes back at least as far as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who in 1887 described himself as a “teacher of slow reading.” The way he phrased it, you know he thought he was bucking the tide. That makes sense, because the modern world, i.e., a world built upon the concept that fast is good and faster is better, was just getting up a full head of steam. In the century and a quarter since he wrote, we have seen the world fall in love with speed in all its guises, including reading—part of President John F. Kennedy’s legend was his ability to speed read through four or five newspapers every morning. And this was all long before computers became household gadgets and our BFFs.

Now and then the Nietzsches of the world have fought back. Exponents of New Criticism captured the flag in the halls of academe around the middle of the last century and made “close reading” all the rage. Then came Slow Food, then Slow Travel, then Slow Money. And now there is Slow Reading. In all these initiatives, people have fought against the velocity of modern life by doing … less and doing it slower. - Malcom Jones on the slow reading movement via Newsweek's Tumblr

Which leads to...

The Slow Web would be more like a book, retaining many of the elements of the Popular Web, but unhurried, re-considered, additive. Research would no longer be restricted to rapid responders. Conclusions would be intentionally postponed until sufficiently noodled-with. Writers could budget sufficient dream-time before setting pixel to page. Fresh thinking would no longer have to happen in real time. - Rebecca Blood on The Slow Web as quoted by Ms. Jen Hanen

Ms. Jen's blog post was the first of these two things I saw this week and it provided some clarity to this nagging feeling I've had of late that I couldn't put my finger on. It may be the intensity of work these last few months but I don't think that's all of it. In general, I want to make better use of my time. I want to allow for the space with which to think about things. I want to not feel the constant pressure to be faster.

I want to slow down.

That this is a common occurrence at times when technology is moving faster than humans can process and adapt to that change provides some comfort. One of the unintended consequences of mobile devices, and in particular the iPad for me, is that I'm never without a screen. I'm always dialed in. I'm rarely not consuming.

Where does that leave time to create even if that creation is just a unique thought? I've started taking more time to write blog posts. I don't feel the need to be timely like I once did. As I mentioned in Ms. Jen's comments, "There are sooo many voices that being "first" or being part of the initial conversation (blog conversations happen much much more rarely these days) isn't as important."

What is important is feeling like I actually have something meaningful to say. What is important is that I have the time to put together words in ways I'm proud of. I don't write just because. I write because I like the craft. It's one of my primary outlets for creativity.

I'm also taking Jen's advice on managing the pressure I feel from the burden of staying current. I've broken my feeds down by days and outside of my "every day" bucket, I'll only read groupings of material by day. Two days in and there's a nice freedom this brings. Coupled with that, though, have been odd pangs of longing.

Addicted to feeds? Oy.

Let's press pause.

#Phishbook

"Retail stores want you to join in." - Cold War Kids, Against Privacy

Everyone and their mother has talked about Facebook and it's privacy/trust issues this week (and better than I could). See danah for that good stuff. See MoveOn, the NY Times, and others for the awesome infographics.

This is my problem -- I'm thisclose to quitting but the reason 400 million people are on Facebook is because it's useful. I am connected with my family via the service. I socialize with co-workers and college friends. It's one of the most effective ways to have people see what I write or find interesting (it remains the most likely way to get click-thru's to this space and to my tumblr). I also work in this online world. Facebook is as significant a part of what I do as a new browser, device, or coding language is. I shouldn't want an escape hatch. And yet...

I don't trust the site anymore. I don't feel in control of my experience or information. I spent two days this week refining my privacy controls and I have little confidence that it actually helped protect me. Pulling data out of the site limits the value of the place and my ability to connect with people I know or have known. How can we find each other if we're hiding from those who wish to profit from our unwillingly public information?

There's been collateral damage from Facebook's attack on my trust, too. I dumped Foursquare. Foursquare hasn't really done me wrong but I'm feeling too exposed online and, so, I exerted control where I could.

I feel tricked. I never made meaningful connections on other major social networking services like myspace and friendster so they were easy to quit. Facebook, however—I talk to my mom and cousins and sister on that site. I hear about friends who are going into the hospital or having babies or getting married. It's a life line.

Shame on Facebook for taking advantage in a duplicitous way our most basic desire to be connected to the people in our lives near and far.

Dumb f*cks.

The iPad Review I Didn't Plan on Writing

"You hurt me." - Burial, U Hurt Me

http://www.flickr.com/photos/korosirego/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

I'm not typing this on my iPad. In fact, I didn't plan to type this at all. There are hundreds of iPad reviews out there in the world and I didn't think my opinion would matter much at this point. But, I've found myself being a booster for the device in spite of myself and a couple friends asked for a more formal review so here we are.

That explains why I decided to write this but it doesn't explain why I'm not doing it via this device I like so much. And this is what most people are struggling to wrap their heads around: this $500 to $800 thing is not a creation tool. You can do that, sure, but that's not the primary function. It's primary purpose, for me, has been about moving my media consumption from being a very active, multi-tasking experience to a more passive, singularly focused, engaging and relaxing one.

It's a game boy for grown-ups. 

The activity I do most with the iPad? Read. I read blog posts either via google reader or instapaper. I read books. Right now, I have my first purchase from iBooks —Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza—and my first paid book purchase from Amazon Kindle—Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith—that I dig into when I'm winding down from the work day on my couch (by the way, iBooks is a much more enjoyable experience than Amazon Kindle). I read (and listen) to stories via the NPR app. I read from BBC News. I read comics from Marvel. I read game recaps from NBA GameTime.

I also play games. I have Heavy Rain in my PS3 but I haven't played in over a week because Plants vs. Zombies HD, Pinball HD, and a host of games that I enjoyed on my iPod Touch but am enjoying immensely more on the iPad have stolen my attention.

And, yes, I also work on my iPad. I've stopped carrying wirebound notebooks and pens to meetings and use evernote for my notetaking (I also use it to prep talking points or materials for a meeting which made setting up for a presentation all the quicker). I store presentation files on dropbox and use GoodReader to cut down on paper and to always be able to reference materials a click away. I use Adobe Ideas to white board ideas when I'm away from my computer. These little productivity conveniences have proven incredibly useful. Sure, I could do the same thing with a laptop but a laptop generally requires a laptop bag, a charger, and a bunch of other accoutrement that I don't have to carry when I walk around with the iPad.

Lastly, I consume video. ABC's Player is excellent and the growing number of websites that are supporting video players that don't require flash is growing. Youtube and Vimeo are where I consume the most video and I haven't run into problems viewing. On youtube, I lose some controls I like when I'm viewing video via the web rather than the app (like favoriting) but because the iPad is a more passive experience naturally, I've found I don't mind much. I can save the favoriting for when I'm back at a workstation.

Here's what I don't do on my iPad:

1. Create — I don't make documents. I don't blog. I don't edit other documents. I don't manipulate photos or slides or crunch numbers. I also don't find myself really wanting to.

2. Listen to music — I still find my iPod better for this. I can and want to take my iPod (and my music) everywhere. I don't find myself needing to take my iPad with me wherever i go.

That's about it.

I bought the iPad on a lark. I got a larger than I expected tax return and after having a few weeks of iPad envy at work, I thought it was worth it to try out. I immediately found myself preferring this mode of consumption to my usual. When I sit at my PC or laptop to do all the things I've highlighted above, it feels like work. When I read blogs on my PC, I have a tendency to want to immediately tumble them or blog it, twitter, friendfeed, facebook it. When I browse the web or play games on my PC or laptop, I'm also checking email, IMing, twittering, and whatever else my mind has conditioned itself to do in this type of computing model. It doesn't allow me to relax. It doesn't allow my thoughts to settle down. It doesn't relieve stress.

When I recline somewhere with my iPad, the world quiets down. I read blogs and just...read. I make simple choices like, "Oh, this is long, I should save this and read later" or "Oh, this will make a great blog post later and star something" or "Oh, I don't care...skip it." The point is that it's always about that single activity: reading online content. The same when I play a game or watch a video. I don't get distracted by everything else I could be doing at the same time. I really don't have that option. And I appreciate the constraint.

So, this is why I recommend the iPad -- it is a throwback in an incredibly elegant way to consuming stories and being entertained. It turns the activities that I enjoy most in our digital age away from feeling like a job to get through and back into a distinctly different and pleasurable experience.

It simplifies my life. It relaxes me. And, it's super fun. 

If you have the opportunity, get one. You won't be sorry.