Endless Knots

How many times a day do you reach for your phone? #thiswackyworld

Before I go any further, guess. Ever since I heard the statistic given by Kleiner Perkins' Mary Meeker, who, along with Liang Wu, gathers an impressive array of statistics for her annual Internet Trends report, I want you to guess. [link UPDATED for 2016]. Please make note of your answer before reading on so you can post it as a reply.

Photo from Zazzle -- it's actually a phone case

The answer. No, not 40, as I person guessed. Not 25, as another suspected. And not 200 or 199 as two others speculated.

But those last two were closer than the first two.

One hundred fifty.

150.

I wonder what other bodily function happens 54,750 times per year.

Uploading to Youtube - it's a snap (ha!)

Here's the situation.

I have an iPhone. Its software is updated, current.

I took a video with my iPhone. I have a youtube account for uploads. I've done this before.

But when I attempted (multiple times) to upload a very cute video (hopefully you'll see it soon), I met with this message: "Failed (invalid file format)."

So I posted to Facebook, asking for help from my 1300 closest friends. Some had to have done this, I figured, for sure. Linda responded immediately. She found this fix. You only need to see the length of the fix to understand why I am in the fist-through-the-screen mode.

iPhone. Youtube. We're not talking about knock-off phone picked up on the street in Bangkok or thirteenyearoldsvideouploadchannel.com.

Here goes:

Audio/Video sync issues with .MOV and .MP4 videos

How to ensure proper Audio/Video sync through a QuickTime conversion

MOV/MP4 files exported from programs such as iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and QuickTime Pro have certain elements that are not handled well by YouTube transcoding. In order to ensure optimal upload quality--and specifically that the Audio and Video of the file remain in sync--use the encoding settings outlined below.

Export your video using QuickTime

 

• In iMovie, select Share > Export Using QuickTime
• In Finalcut Pro, select File > Export > Using Quicktime Conversion > Options
• In QuickTime Pro, select File > Export > Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie > Options

Alter your video encoding

1. Enter a name for your file, and select Movie to QuickTime Movie from the Export dropdown.



2. Click Options and make the following changes to Video settings:
   • Compression Type: H.264
   • Frame Rate: 30 is preferred. 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97 are also acceptable.
   • Data Rate: Automatic
   • Key Frames: Automatic
   • Frame Reordering: Unchecked
   
   
3. Make the following changes to Audio or Sound settings:
   • Format: AAC
   • Click Show advanced settings and choose Constant Bit Rate as encoding strategy.
4. Select Size and choose the original size of the video.
5. The section Prepare for Internet Streaming must be set to Fast Start.



6. Save your video, and then upload the resulting file to YouTube

If you continue to experience Audio/Video issues with your upload, contact us and we may be able to help.

 

Will the OLW Brookline driver in the red SUV...

... please get off the blasted phone? You almost caused a horrible accident.

What happened:

I was running a few minutes late for a doctor's appointment. Actually, I wasn't sure whether I was late or not because I couldn't remember if the appointment was at 8:10 or 8:20. But, even if I was late, I said to myself, it was no reason to be a discourteous driver, i.e. I was in line waiting for the light to change on Brookline's busy Beacon Street and a car to my right was trying to turn the corner into my lane. So...

I signalled for her to go ahead of me - and then I noticed that she was on the phone! We are all too familiar with my previous invectives about this dastardly behavior. Holding the phone to her ear. In Brookline. Which is extremely traffic-y.

OK. Without acknowledging my allowing her in, she floors it and cuts across into the left-hand lane. Rude, I think, and stupid (phone, ear, grumble) yet I proceeded on my way...whereupon SHE SPEEDS UP AGAIN AND CUTS RIGHT BACK IN FRONT OF ME. The only way to avoid rear-ending her was to veer sharply to the right, screech to a halt, and end up within an inch of jumping the curb.

Whereupon I jumped out of my car and confronted her (not that smart, in retrospect). What ensued: I shared my thinking (rather audibly) about driving and phoning to which she said, apologetically, "But I just saw my child and had to pick him up."

No reason to cause an accident, I said, and, I think, just possibly, that I mentioned her being on the phone three or four more times.

"Are you alright?" she asked. (My English teacher mother would correct that, by the way, as all right.)

No, actually, I'm not alright with people being so much in their Own Little Worlds that they put other people's lives in danger. In my family, we call this OLW.

PS: I wasn't late. The doctor was.

 

 

Phone alone 2

I don't know who took this photo (thanks, Wired) but they must have been in my kitchen in the past week. Same phone. Same plastic container. Same rice. Same reason.

For the second time in my two decades of cellphone use, the terrible thing happened. Phone ends up in water. In this most recent case--and in a ridiculous fit of faux efficiency--I was using the phone as a wedge between the cover of my computer and its keyboard. I didn't want to take the time to shut down--or apparently the difficulty of placing the phone in my pocket.

Oh well. I was carrying too many things from room to room and watched as the phone slipped out from its well-chosen perch (ha!) and, in what seemed like slow motion and without even grazing the rim, into the glass of water in my other hand.

Others might have reached into the glass and removed the phone, then rushed to put it into rice, the very sophisticated method by which people, of which there are many googling reveals, dry out their phones. My advice to do the same came from an offspring whose phone suffered the same fate last year.

I, brilliantly, took a different path. After shaking the phone violently in the effort to get rid of any "loose" water, I then, stupidly, decided to plug my phone in  "to make sure it was still working." Dumb, dumber, and dumbest. I saw the phone, which was still on, go to off - and then I rushed to the kitchen to give it the deep rice treatment.

Well, two days went by and then I tried turning it on again. Having read up in the meantime, I was pretty pessimistic. (Plugging it in while wet, as I'd originally done, is the anti-treatment, sure to fry the phone.) It didn't start. But it appeared to be dry so I attempted to plug it in again. It wouldn't take the plug. So I figured that in my having plugged it in when still wet, I somehow caused the connection to swell - or something...who knows? I'm not very technical.

I waited a mournful week, lamenting how much this little act of efficiency was going to cost. And then I went to the Apple store. "Oh, just take it to the Genius Bar," John, the store manager said, "and they'll swap it out for you for $200." A lot better than the $600 I was expecting...but still a hefty bit for a phone that merely took a swim.

But, before I could even get to the Genius Bar, an itinerant Genius, named Ben, who was wandering the store helping forelorn customers like myself, said, "Let me have that for a second." He tried plugging it but was unable to. He turned the phone up to inspect the connection, and said, "Well, look at that. There's a piece of rice in there!"

Which he promptly removed. And the phone turned right on. Then when he tried putting the SIM card back in, guess what? Another piece of rice. Which he also kindly removed. And I was back among the hyper-connected.

My advice now to people whose iPhones have chosen to go swimming? USE VERY LARGE GRAINS OF RICE. Arborio, one Apple employee observing this drama, proposed.

And to friends whom I'd emailed immediately saying what had happened -- particularly to those who text frequently -- I'm back. Or my phone is back. And to my hubby, who was kind enough to let me use his phone in my hour, I mean, days, I mean week of need, thank you so very much.

Last point: I used the phone to which I'd forwarded my calls much much much less than my own phone. I texted only once or twice in genuine moments of "the person really needs to know this." I stopped carrying the phone around with me, even leaving it behind when I left the house on a number of occasions.

Hmmmmm...this indispensible device, indeed.

 

Take that, Gladwell: Vinegar, onions, social networks, and soccer nuts a revolution do make

For anyone who still doubts (Malcolm Gladwell) the role of informal communication, aka social media, in bringing about monumental change before the whole world's very eyes in Egypt, see today's lead story (headlined in print version) of NY Times, "A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History."

Excellent, detailed, and insightful reporting lays out the sequence by which, the online subhead reads*: "Two-year collaboration of dissidents gave birth to a new force — a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it."

I've been pondering this post for nearly two hours, trying to figure out a way to summarize the low-tech/high-tech amalgam that so fundamentally reshapes the chemistry of the future. I can't do better than to quote the first few paragraphs, though the whole thing is definitely click-worthy. In fact, I just read a bundle of grafs from one of the jump pages (there are two) to a traveling family member. It's remarkable, friends, right down to the people in Cairo (perhaps elsewhere) protecting themselves with "body armor," if you can call it that, made of "cardboard or plastic bottles...worn under their clothes to protect against riot police bullets."

Here's the beginning of David Kirpatrick and David Sanger's remarkable journalism:

"CAIRO — As protesters in Tahrir Square faced off against pro-government forces, they drew a lesson from their counterparts in Tunisia: 'Advice to the youth of Egypt: Put vinegar or onion under your scarf for tear gas.'

"The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world — a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.

"They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons. Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade — but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley."

These are big claims for a lede article in the paper of record. The reporters go on to substantiate the assertions in the next section, headlined "Bloggers Lead the Way:"

"The Egyptian revolt was years in the making. Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-old civil engineer and a leading organizer of the April 6 Youth Movement, first became engaged in a political movement known as Kefaya, or Enough, in about 2005. Mr. Maher and others organized their own brigade, Youth for Change. But they could not muster enough followers; arrests decimated their leadership ranks, and many of those left became mired in the timid, legally recognized opposition parties. “What destroyed the movement was the old parties,” said Mr. Maher, who has since been arrested four times.

"By 2008, many of the young organizers had retreated to their computer keyboards and turned into bloggers, attempting to raise support for a wave of isolated labor strikes set off by government privatizations and runaway inflation.

"After a strike that March in the city of Malhalla, Egypt, Mr. Maher and his friends called for a nationwide general strike for April 6. To promote it, they set up a Facebook group that became the nexus of their movement, which they were determined to keep independent from any of the established political groups...

"Just a few months later, after a strike in the Tunisian city of Hawd el-Mongamy, a group of young online organizers followed the same model, setting up what became the Progressive Youth of Tunisia. The organizers in both countries began exchanging their experiences over Facebook. The Tunisians faced a more pervasive police state than the Egyptians, with less latitude for blogging or press freedom, but their trade unions were stronger and more independent. 'We shared our experience with strikes and blogging,' Mr. Maher recalled."

And on it goes. I could continue excerpting but it's better for you to read it yourself. It is more than evident that those responsible for this miraculous transformation in the geopolitical scene simply used the tools of their time, just as the Committees of Correspondence used a nascent postal service to refine their strategy and tactics among a million or so people in a troublesome land that became the US of A.

Which brings me back to the title of this post: The naysayers around the importance of new media also disparage those who have had the courage to keep at it. Again, it's people who made the difference here. Thank heavens they had such powerful tools with which to communicate.

Last thing: the Times article says the protestors have been strongly influenced by "an American political thinker, Gene Sharp." I've never heard of him. Start following the links from here, which include the Serbian youth movement, Optor!'s, which helped bring down Milosevic.

And when you lose faith again that dictators can be deposed and retreat to thinking that the future looks terribly bleak even in places where there are no dictators, only zealots, turn your attention to the next generation. Perhaps one day "they" could become ideologues too but the best part of this story is that there is no monolithic "they" this time. Just a loosely structured network of energized activists whose architecture of revolution--and tools--are barely understood.

Also, see Nicholas Kristof's "What Egypt Can Teach America" in yesterday's NY Times.

* I never realized before how different the print and online heads are in NYT articles - subtle but different.

2010!

As promised, back after a digital break. Those used to seeing me affixed to a screen have been asking what it was like to go offline for nearly two weeks. Quite pleasant. I liked being free of the burden; of sitting without wonder as to whether I'd received a response -- or of fidgeting with guilt because I hadn't responded to a request. In the interest of honesty, that dreaded cloak, I did log on twice to deal with financial matters. I did answer my phone and respond to texts but missed a number because I didn't keep my phone by my side. And, since I apparently cannot live without some modicum of guilt, I fretted that I hadn't informed some people that I would be taking a break. But all of us survived. Try it sometime.

They knew and didn't tell us? Outrageous

Thanks, again, to Matt Richtel for the excellent reporting on the dangers of driving while talking. Yesterday, the second-in-two-days Page One headline in The New York Times: "Driven to Distraction: US Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving."

I don't need to go into more detail than this: The US government has had the data proving that it's extremely dangerous--akin to being drunk--to yabber on the phone while driving since 2003. Hands free or not. Makes no difference.

Richtel has done a superb job of following the timeline, putting together the salient facts, and pointing fingers in the right direction.

We all have stories to tell about the risks; I've been posting mine as regular readers know. And I've come to the sorry conclusion that the person who sideswiped me in Brooklyn last week was likely on the phone.

Here are a few blood-boiling paragraphs from Richtel's fury-maker:

The former head of the highway safety agency said he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states.

Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.

“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety.

It took filing under the Freedom of Information Act, by the way, to force the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to release the report.

Now I'm asking readers to leave a comment if you've given up the deadly habit.

The prosecution rests

In today's New York Times, on the front page with a big picture, Matt Richter makes the closing argument--and draws the depressing conclusion in "Driven to Distraction: Drivers and Legislators Dismiss Cell Phone Risks." Seems like common sense is not working; nor are facts; nor is experience. No matter how much info we throw in front of the problem, people continue to get on their phones and drive over it.

I've been writing about this here and here and here and here and...

Once again, the facts, stated so clearly in Richter's piece:

Extensive research shows the dangers of distracted driving. Studies say that drivers using phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers, and the likelihood that they will crash is equal to that of someone with a .08 percent blood alcohol level, the point at which drivers are generally considered intoxicated. Research also shows that hands-free devices do not eliminate the risks, and may worsen them by suggesting that the behavior is safe.

New to me in the article this explanation for why we continue to put the lives of others--not to mention our own--at risk:

Scientists are grappling, too, with perhaps the broadest question hanging over the phenomenon of distracted driving: Why do people, knowing the risk, continue to talk while driving? The answer, they say, is partly the intense social pressures to stay in touch and always be available to friends and colleagues. And there also is the neurological response of multitaskers. They show signs of addiction — to their gadgets.

John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and a specialist on the science of attention, explained that when people use digital devices, they get a quick burst of adrenaline, “a dopamine squirt.” Without it, people grow bored with simpler activities like driving. Mr. Ratey said the modern brain is being rewired to crave stimulation, a condition he calls acquired attention deficit disorder.

“We need that constant pizzazz, the reward, the intensity,” he said. He largely dismisses the argument that people need the time in the car to be productive. “The justification for doing work is just that — a justification to be engaged,” he said.

In other words, it's all about the rush...acquired attention deficit disorder. Heaven help us. And please. If you're driving while reading this, turn off your phone and, "Keep your eyes on your driving and your hands on the wheel..."

1 in 4 text while driving!

This is horrifying. Vlingo survey of 5000 people.

You

know

how

I

feel

about this.

My love affair continues

I know I should stop shooting all my pictures with my iPhone (hint, Apple: higher resolution and a zoom, please) but I can't. I just can't.

This one, taken at the Apple store on Prince Street in New York, reminds me of my favorite picture book when I was little: a factory with the front wall removed, many stories high, with workers busily constructing things and strange contraptions transporting objects from floor to floor, complete with chutes, fright elevators, pulleys, and carts.

This shot of the two-story Apple store reminds me of that book. If you remember such a book and/or know its name, please comment. I've looked in many a used bookstore for that very volume.