Say It Simply

“Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.”

Some in my audience may be old enough to remember the above. It is the “slogan” for McDonald’s Big Mac hamburger. Perhaps one of the most successful marketing campaigns in history. If you ask almost anyone who was of learning age or older in the mid-1970’s, they can likely rattle off this list of ingredients today without pause and on command. I have not had a Big Mac in over 20 years but I will be able to remember exactly what one is, the very components it is built with, for the rest of my life. Textbook advertising. Yet, it is just a list of ingredients. Nothing more.

I love words. One of the main reasons I write is because of my affection for words and the ability to play with their framework and structure. I find it not only fun, but self-challenging. Nothing thrills me more than clever prose. Seeing something written with such deft skill and imagery that it causes one to gasp in the seeming death defying awe of it all. Yet, while other writers may look at such a thing and half-grin with knowing approval, what the reader often remembers, and what often has the most lasting impact, are the things that are said simply.

Eating dog food, scratching itches, walking talks and all that jazz.

I have ordered a Macbook Air 11inch with a 64GB SSD to replace my 3.5 year old Black Macbook (Blackbook) that had been upgraded with a 320/7200 HDD. 

Once it arrives, I will use it fresh out of the box. I will not “migrate” any of my data until it is needed. Even then, the question before doing so that will always be asked is “Where does this belong?”. I will only install software methodically, deliberately and only when absolutely needed.  I really do think that, with proper data management, 64GB will be enough for me. In fact, I think I will find that the constraint of not having a lot of space will be freeing. Perhaps it will force me to make some honest admissions about what “need” really is.

My photos are a good example of this. I take most photos these days with my iPhone. I sync my iPhone to my iMac because that is where the bulk of my music and movies live. That said, my main photo collection lives on my Macbook. Why? Well, I’m not quite sure. For how long have I had my photos taken with my mobile and photos taken with my main camera in two separate locations? Years. Why? I don’t know. Well, this weekend, I changed that and now all photos live together on the iMac.

Then, if all of my Photos live on my iMac, do I really need to have iPhoto on my Macbook? What about iDVD on a machine that does not have a Superdrive? Do I need to have iLife at all? These are the sorts of questions I will be pondering.

I have done a lot of talking about doing such a thing on this site since the beginning. Now, I’m about to put that into practice and, I’m sure, will share about the experience here with you. Stay tuned…

Path — Introducing The Personal Network

Path — Introducing The Personal Network

No following, no friending…just sharing with the people who matter most.

Path is a new app for iPhone that sets of on a very different approach to social networking. It’s goal is to be a highly focused “personal network” that allows you to share and tag personal moments using photos with no more than your fifty closest friends. Why no more than fifty?:

We chose 50 based on the research of Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar, who has long suggested that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships that the human brain can sustain at any given time. Dunbar’s research also shows that personal relationships tend to expand in factors of roughly 3. So while we may have 5 people whom we consider to be our closest friends, and 20 whom we maintain regular contact with, 50 is roughly the outer boundary of our personal networks. These are the people we trust, whom we are building trust with, and whom we consider to be the most important and valued people in our lives.

There are many things I love about this app. Mainly, I love it’s sane, well thought out, and research based constraints. I love the fact that it calls these updates “moments”. I love that it does not allow you to choose existing photos or edit them before posting. It really does force one to share what is happening right then and there. Letting these moments speak for themselves with only enough details to provide context.

But most of all, I love that the people who I share with there are getting an honest peek into a story that I would only tell to those I trust most.