An Eclectic Mind

…and what you can do about it.

Do the forums on your favorite Web sites get your blood boiling? Or simply frustrate you beyond belief? Well, join the club. You’re not the only one who feels this way. But there is something you can do about it. Read on.

A Brief History of Today’s Forums, from My Seat

I’ve been participating in an online community since the late 1980s. And no, that isn’t a typo.

I ran a computer Bulletin Board System (BBS) with message boards connected to the Fidonet network back then. Fidonet was a cooperative effort to gather up and distribute groups of messages posted on BBSes all over the world. Each night, in the wee hours, my computer would use special software to exchange the messages posted by my system’s users with those posted by others. They would, in turn, exchange with others. Like any true network, the content was distributed quickly and efficiently. Because there were so many Fidonet BBSes back then, I seldom had to make a long distance call to get new content. The distribution was as wide as the popularity of a topic — WRITING, I recall, was quite popular and would typically collect 300 or more new messages a day. Other topics might dribble in 2 or 4.

It was kind of cool. You’d log onto my BBS, The Electronic Pen, in the tiny town of Harrington Park, NJ. Perhaps you lived nearby. Or maybe you liked the other people who frequented the place. I might get 20 to 50 callers a day, connecting via 9600 baud modem on my two phone lines. You’d post a message in a local message board — that’s one that wasn’t part of Fidonet and could only be read on my BBS. Or perhaps you’d check out one of the Fidonet message bases. It would be full of messages from people all over the country. You’d read and reply to them. At night, your message would travel in a package with other new messages to another computer. Depending on scheduling and the willingness of BBS System Operators (SysOps) to do multiple connections in a day, your message would reach all the other BBSes that subscribed to that message base, usually within a few days or, at most, a week. If someone responded directly to you, you’d get that response a few days or a week later. Yes, it was slow. Yes, it was primitive. But it worked and it was free.

Fidonet was similar, in many respects, with the much more widely distributed Usenet newsgroups. Usenet was on the Internet, though, which was still in its infancy in those days. Few people had Internet e-mail addresses; instead, we had accounts on America Online or CompuServe or Prodigy or eWorld. (I remember, in the early 90s, exchanging e-mail with someone on CompuServe from my AOL account — it was a huge deal. Not only was I able to connect with someone in another network, but the exchange of three messages took less than 5 minutes!) Each of those systems had its own conferences or message boards, too.

What all these things had in common — Fidonet message boards, Usenet newsgroups, CompuServe Conferences, etc. — is that they enabled a large group of people from all over the country or world to come together and discuss topics. They were the precursors of today’s Internet forums.

The Death of Courtesy

The one thing that could always be counted upon in Fidonet message boards and Usenet newsgroups was flame wars. A flame war erupted when someone posted a message that was unkind toward another participant. Sometimes it was a minor rudeness that could have been avoided by the inclusion of an emoticon (i.e., smiley) and the “injured party” blew things out of proportion and escalated the situation with a ruder response. Other times, it was intentionally rude or belittling, resulting in a response that was equally so. Other participants would take sides, and soon the entire board would be filled with nasty comments going one way or the other, with a few non-partipants trying in vain to retain order. It was ugly, to say the least.

I have vague memories of filtering software developed so local SysOps could prevent offensive posts from leaving their systems. I was fortunate that my BBS was so small that none of the offenders originated there.

Flame wars were much more prevalent on Usenet than Fidonet back then. And they were virtually unheard of on AOL or CompuServe. Why do you think that is? I think it’s because of anonymity. Usenet was part of the Internet and the people who participated there were quite removed from the responsibility of a SysOp or network administrator. They felt freer to say whatever was on their mind. All Fidonet users could be traced back to a specific BBS with a SysOp who could reduce privileges on the user’s account and spread the word that he was a problem user. It was even easier on the fledgling AOL, CompuServe, and other online services; they knew exactly who you were from billing information and could cancel your account at any time.

Fast-forward to Today

The Internet has spread to almost every corner of the globe. Millions, if not billions, of people use it daily to get information and communicate with one another. The small online services that couldn’t compete — such as eWorld and Prodigy — are gone. Even the larger services are now Internet based, accessible to more than just members.

The nationally or internationally distributed message boards became dinosaurs. Information was readily available on Web sites. Communication was through e-mail. The once centralized information exchange became decentralized once again.

But since communication among users is an excellent way to build content for free, many Web site administrators have created their own forums for discussion. Anyone who has been using computers since the 80s will easily recognize a forum as today’s incarnation of local message boards on BBSes.

In today’s anonymous Internet world, where the vast majority of users prefer to hide behind an alias or cryptic user ID, these forums are populated by people who simply don’t care about the feelings of fellow participants. Most of them are rude know-it-alls who get more satisfaction out of blasting a fine point in someone else’s post than actually contributing helpful information.

As a result, many of these forums, which are often relied upon by large companies to provide technical support to their customers, are a frustrating mix of information — which may or may not be correct — and personality clashes. Their value is questionable — I’d go so far as to say that most of them are a complete waste of time.

Clash of the Nerds

By far, the biggest problem on today’s forums is the irresponsible and rude voicing of opinions that may or may not be relevant to the conversation. While I’m not saying that people shouldn’t voice opinions where appropriate, it’s the way that this is done that makes it a problem.

For example, someone in a forum might say that he’s had a lot of good experience with Product A to solve a specific problem mentioned in a forum. A proponent of competing Product B might come forward and accuse the other person of being stupid for using Product A, or that Product A is for morons. He won’t provide any facts to back up his argument or, if he does, the facts will be, in reality, more opinions. His purpose is not to provide useful information to other participants or even to answer the original question. His purpose is to bash Product A and the person who suggested it as a solution.

It’s the rude accusations that make this so distasteful, not only to the victim of the flaming, but to the innocent bystanders who agree with him or the people who have just checked in to learn something of value. And while this seldom gets out of control on well-moderated forums — like those managed by employees of a large company depending on forums for support — it’s common among poorly moderated forums.

A few weeks ago, I was a victim on a helicopter-related forum hosted by a Canadian helicopter magazine. I’d decided to try the forums after reading, in a recent magazine issue, that they’d be better moderated. I posted a question about helicopter helmets in one topic of the forum, then posted about the availability of a co-pilot seat for ferry flights in another topic. Here in the U.S., it’s relatively common for helicopter operators to offer flight time, for a nominal fee, to other helicopter pilots interested in building time. I had some long ferry flights coming up and was hoping to fill that seat to cut my ferry costs. Well, you’d think that I’d asked these guys to cut off the head of their first child. A bunch of them came down on me like I was some kind of evil monster. One of them even had the nerve to use the contact form on my Web site to send me a nasty message. (Some people really do need to get a life.)

I quickly decided that I’d made a mistake — not just in posting the message in the forums there, but for joining the forum in the first place. It was pretty obvious that there was little or no moderation by the magazine’s staff, despite the assurances that there would be. It was also obvious that the guys on the forum had not progressed past a high school mentality. They were unable and unwilling to see more than their own points of view. Although a more mature person could have expressed an opinion calmly and reasonably, this was clearly beyond their capabilities. Instead, they simply lashed out rudely, bashing me for suggesting such a thing, and painting me as some kind of evil witch trying to suck money out of poor, unemployed pilots.

All because I offered flight time in my aircraft for less than the going rental rate.

I contacted the forum administrator and told him to delete my account and any message I’d posted. To his credit, he complied within 24 hours. I’ve learned my lesson and won’t be back. And I probably won’t be joining any other helicopter forums, either.

But how many other knowledgeable, mature, and responsible people have been so turned off by the behavior in that forum to avoid it? And what about other similarly run-amok forums?

Could it be that the majority of people who participate in forums are those nasty, opinionated jerks hiding behind their aliases so they can get a sick thrill out of bashing others with conflicting opinions?

Could that be why forums suck? I think it’s the main reason.

My mother taught me that if I don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Why can’t forum participants remember this “Silver Rule”? They’ve obviously forgotten the Golden Rule, too.

Where’s the Information?

Forums run by big companies to supplement (or replace) true technical support may be moderated to prevent flame wars, but that doesn’t mean they’re perfect. Most of them are designed in such a way that the information you need is virtually impossible to find. As a result, you’re forced to create a new topic to ask a question, then monitor that and hope it gets a response.

Is that good technical support? I don’t think so.

The forum flaws that make it tough to find information can be broken down as follows:

• Non-existent or poorly designed search feature. How frustrating is it to go to a forum and see a list of threads but no way to search them? Or a search feature that results in too many results? Or none at all? Or can’t narrow down results by date? Or product?
• Forum categories that are too broad. A well-designed forum is separated into categories or topics (both terms are used), each of which contains topics, subtopics, threads, or posts (again, a variety of terms are used). Imagine, if you will, a software support forum with just two categories: Windows Support and Mac Support. Now imagine that all the questions are posted as hundreds of individual threads in either one of those categories. How likely is it that you’ll find support for the Product A printing problem on your Mac? Won’t you, like many of those before you, simply start a new thread with your problem? And how long before it’s buried and you can’t find it?
• Threads that wander off topic. Imagine a forum thread with the subject line “Can’t Print with Product A on my Mac with HP LaserJet 2100TN.” Sounds pretty specific, no? You’d expect to find a discussion of that problem, wouldn’t you? But what you may find is (1) a Windows user claiming that Product A doesn’t work well on Macs, (2) a comparison of Canon and HP printers, (3) complaints about the same printer not working with Product Z from another manufacturer, (4) questions about Product A and PDFs, etc. In other words, anything remotely related to the topic. And once the discussion starts to stray, it can go anywhere. How useful is that for product support?

Personally, I have a problem with forum-based technical support. In most cases, the company is relying on its users to help each other. This is virtually cost-free support for the company — even cheaper than sending scripts and telephones to India or Pakistan. The quality of this “help” is not what I’m paying Adobe or Apple or Microsoft the big bucks for when I buy their software. When I have a question, I need an accurate answer quickly from someone or some resource that knows the answer. I don’t have time to screw around with support forums that may or may not answer the question for me.

Is the Information Accurate?

The scariest part of depending on forum information for support is the accuracy issue. Is the information on a forum accurate? Will it do more harm than good?

Perfect example: I visited a number of photographic forums to get information on how I could clean the CCD sensor on my Nikon D80 digital SLR camera. This isn’t a hugely expensive camera, but it did cost $1,000, which ain’t exactly cheap. Dust on the CCD is a common problem and there’s no local resource for me to get it cleaned. I wanted to see if there was a do-it-yourself solution, what equipment I needed to get it done, and how I could do it myself. What I found were dozens of different answers to this question, ranging from never clean the CCD yourself (!) to rub it with Solution A on a cotton swab. Some provided a detailed equipment list that varied from one person to another. Others provided step-by-step instructions that varied from one person to another.

With all this conflicting information, how was I to know which solution was correct? Obviously, I couldn’t know. So rather than put my relatively expensive equipment at risk of permanent damage, I decided to get it cleaned professionally, next time I’m in Tempe, 80 miles from my home.

(And in case you’re wondering, Nikon tells U.S. owners not to clean it themselves. But that’s just because Nikon is eager to avoid liability if it’s damaged during cleaning. In Japan, Nikon supposedly sells a cleaning kit with instructions. I’m not in Japan and I don’t read Japanese.)

Examples like this can be found on any forum. One guy says one thing, another guy says the opposite. Who’s right?

I personally believe part of the problem is a subset of the same sick jerks who start flame wars. In this case, they’re spreading their “expertise,” which is neither accurate nor reliable. They want to be seen as experts, so they spread their opinions as facts. Will you be foolish enough to take the advice of one of these people? I hope not.

Of course, the problem is even worse when incorrect advice is offered on a poorly-moderated product support forum.

What You Can Do

As a member of an online community, there’s a number of things you can do to make forums better:

• Ignore the trolls. If there’s a jerk in a forum who’s saying stupid, nasty things, ignore him. I know it’s difficult, but it is possible. And guess what? If everyone ignores him, he will go away. These people thrive on conflict. They’re safely hidden behind their online handles, so they’re not worried about repercussions. They’ll say whatever they want, whatever will get the most rise out of the rest of the community. They’re doing it for attention. Don’t give them any and they’ll go elsewhere to get it. (Possibly to a local school where they’ll shoot innocent kids; but that’s a social problem I’m not going to address here.)
• Rat out the trolls. If the forum is otherwise well moderated but there’s just one or two jerks trying to bring the discussion down to their level, contact the moderator privately, via e-mail or feedback form, and complain about the offending party. Use facts to support your complaint. If the forum moderator cares about the quality of the forum, he’ll do something about. If he doesn’t, then it’s likely you won’t want to be part of that forum anyway. Let it go.
• Don’t fan the flames. If you see a conflict brewing in a forum, don’t pick a side and join in. You’ll only make it worse. Instead, if you know any of the people on either side, you might want to contact them privately and urge them to drop it. Or see the first two points here for what’s likely to be better advice.
• Back opinions with facts. Got an opinion to share in a forum? Great! Lots of forum participants are looking for feedback from people with more experience or knowledge. But don’t state an opinion unless you can back it with facts. A statement like “Product A sucks.” is far more likely to get you in hot water and start a flame war than “I don’t like Product A because I’ve had a lot of trouble getting it to work with my printer and could not get any assistance from the developer to resolve the problem.”
• Search before you post. If you’re in any forum where you expect an answer to a question, search the existing topics and threads before you add a new one. Your question may have been answered elsewhere in the forum. If the forum’s search feature is well-designed and functional, you may get an answer within minutes of arriving on the forum — rather than the time it takes for you to write out your question and wait for a suitable response. This also makes it a lot easier for others to find answers.

If you’re a forum moderator, there’s a lot more you can do to make your forums the best they can be:

• Use the right software solution. A forum’s design depends, in part, on the software used to present the forum online. Choose software that gives you the options you need: search feature, categories/subcategories, threading, moderation, spam protection, etc. (Unfortunately, I don’t have any suggestions; I gave up running forums a while ago.)
• Design the forum with appropriate categories and subcategories. This will help make it easier for forum visitors to find the discussions they’re looking for.
• Make sure the search feature works. There’s nothing more frustrating than using a search feature that doesn’t find appropriate results. If your search feature doesn’t work right, you’ll get lots of repeat postings.
• Moderate. I cannot stress this enough. While the free speech argument is very compelling, are you operating your forum as the soapbox for the masses? Or do you want to maintain some kind of order? Ban the trolls, delete inappropriate messages. If someone’s post is not in line with the purpose of your forum, it should go. You have the power and I think you have the right. But don’t advertise your forum as a place for all opinions if you’re going to delete the opinions that don’t agree with yours. You’ll find yourself under fire very quickly. Instead, on an opinion-based forum, enforce courtesy among commenters to keep things civil. We can all learn from other people’s opinions, but not when those opinions are rudely shoved down our throats.

What about Blog Comments?

If you’re a blogger with an open comment feature on your blog, you may recognize a lot of these points. You don’t need to operate a formal forum to experience the nightmare of trolls and flame wars. You might already have them on your blog.

All of this advice applies to bloggers and blog commenters, too.

What Do You Think?

Use the Comments link or form for this post to share your views. Just remember to play nice…

It works, but barely.

One of the reasons I have a Treo and not an iPhone or other cool, trendy communication device is because it supports DUN — dial up networking. This is a feature that enables me to use the Treo’s Internet connectivity to connect my MacBook Pro to the Internet via Bluetooth.

So as long as I’m in a place where my Treo can connect to the Internet, I can connect my computer to the Internet. I’ve successfully used this in off-the-grid locations such as our vacation property on Howard Mesa, on a cruise ship off the coast of Alaska, and in various hotels, motels, and restaurants all over the country. In fact, I used DUN to post this blog entry from a B&B in Girdwood, Alaska.

If you’re wondering how to do this, read an article I wrote about it for Peachpit Press.

DUN works. And yes, it works better than regular modem dial-up. But not much better.

The connection speed is slow and inconsistent. It might work well for a short time, then get bogged down. And if you don’t actively use the connection, you’ll get disconnected. (I wrote “Ping to Keep Your connection Alive” on MariasGuides.com to explain my workaround for this problem.) You’re also likely to get disconnected after a certain amount of time even if your connection is kept active — I seem to get cut off after 30 minutes or so. Or if you get an incoming call. And it seems to me that it takes multiple connections to get any task done.

Doesn’t sound very good, does it?

Well it isn’t. But it is better than nothing.

I’ll get the hang of it — one of these days.

I’ve now had my new POV.1 video camera for just over a week. And I’m not too pleased with my ability to operate it yet.

Tests Runs Okay

I made a few test runs with the camera.

The first consisted of me walking around the downstairs of my house, holding the camera in my hand and narrating what I saw. This was mainly a test of the controls and sound capabilities. It produced some predictably boring yet perfectly fine quality video. So far, so good.

Next, I attached the camera to a hat and had it running when I went down to feed the horses one evening. More narration, but I was limited to where the camera pointed because it was attached to my hat and the monitor was in my pocket. I couldn’t see what the camera was really pointing at. It turned out, it wasn’t pointing at what it should have been for about 90% of the video. So while the sound test worked fine — you could certainly hear my heavy breathing as I walked back up the hill — the video was not a keeper.

Next, I decided to test the setup in the helicopter. Because running the helicopter is not what a budget-conscious individual would do unnecessarily, I wanted my test to test all systems: the camera mount, video quality, and sound. Sound was the tricky part. I couldn’t just let the mic pick up cockpit sound because that was mostly helicopter engine and rotor noise. Instead, I had to figure out a way to get just the sound I wanted — intercom and radio sounds — directly into the POV.1’s recorder.

The solution was to use a tiny powered lapel mic (similar to the one shown here) that I happened to have for a cassette recorder. The mic’s pickup was small enough to fit inside my headset ear cup, dangling right over my ear. I secured it in there with a clip. Any sound that got to my ear would get to the recorder. And the Bose Generation X headset’s active noise cancellation would filter out much of the sound of the helicopter running.

[A side note here: a more permanent solution would be to get an avionics guy to install an audio out jack. I already have an audio in jack, which is standard on Robinson helicopters, and allows me to listen to my iPod while I fly. An audio out would make it possible for me (or a passenger) to connect a video camera to the helicopter's intercom system.]

I mounted the camera on the bar between the two front seats, using a mount I’d bought a year or two ago for a regular digital video camera. (That experiment had not gone well; the camera couldn’t compensate for the helicopter’s vibrations.) Then I went flying with Ed, my mechanic. We took a 14-minute flight around Vulture Peak, down to Vulture Mine, and back to the airport. Ed held the recorder unit while I flew. I used Viddler to post an edited-down version of the video. It wasn’t bad at all.

In fact, I thought I was ready for “prime time.”

Real Life Trials

My next for-hire flight was the next day. I was taking a dad, his birthday-boy son, and his son’s friend on a 50-minute flight to see the ghost towns and mines in the Wickenburg area. I figured I’d video the flight, then put the video on a DVD for the dad and his son.

[Another note here: That day, as I waited for my passengers, I met a pilot from Oregon who typically flies with three cameras on his plane. He had his laptop with him and showed me some of the video, which he'd set to music. It wasn't very exciting stuff -- not for a fellow pilot, anyway -- but he said that his non-pilot friends love it. That wouldn't surprise me at all.]

I was all set up as I had been the day before. As the helicopter warmed up, I started the recorder and placed it back on the space between the two back seats so it would be out of the way. I then did the flight. When we returned and shut down, I was surprised to see that the recorder was turned off. I figured it had run out of space on the SD card. But when I brought it inside, I was embarrassed to see that it had only recorded 41 seconds of video. The power button must have been hit after I put it down.

Dang! No video for my clients.

Anxious to get some real video to send them, Mike and I went out again with Mike’s mom. This time, I turned the camera on and locked its controls to prevent an accidentally pushed button from shutting it off.

I managed to capture 80+ minutes of video and sound. The only problem was, Mike’s mom’s profile or hands or shoulders are in every shot. In attempting to capture what was out the window in front of her, I managed to capture a bit too much of her. And 80+ minutes of partially blocked views, much of which are of boring open desert, really isn’t very interesting to anyone. Here’s a tiny bit I extracted and set to music.

On Wednesday, I took another client “heli shopping” down in Scottsdale. She’s a much smaller woman and I adjusted the camera a bit to take in more of the panel and less of her. But I also made the fatal error of using the camera’s “loop” mode to avoid capturing lots of boring stuff. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand how loop mode really worked, so when I thought I was turning it on and tagging the video, I was really turning it off. I didn’t capture any video at all.

Sheesh. Am I a loser or what?

Today’s Plan

For today’s flight to Sky Harbor, I made some changes to the mounting setup. I’d ordered a special mounting clamp from the V.I.O. people and it arrived on Wednesday afternoon. It would give me more flexibility in where I could mount the camera.

There are two places I had in mind. The first was inside the cockpit bubble, at the front passenger’s feet. There’s a ridge there at the very bottom of the bubble and I’m pretty sure I can use the clamp and the 12-in. flexible mount I also bought to mount the camera inside, pointing out. The drawback of that location, of course, is glare. An additional drawback is the position of the recorder box and the difficulties I’d have attaching audio to it. (I can’t have any wires hanging loose around the critical areas near my flight controls.)

The second place I had in mind was where I actually attached it: on the vent opening for the pilot’s door. This mount, which is shown here in the photos I took with my Treo yesterday, has the camera head outside, pointing slightly to the right and slightly down. The rest of the unit is inside, fastened to the helicopter’s airframe. I have all wires securely attached to various things that’ll keep them away from my controls. And I wrapped the camera and mount with red electrical tape, which is somewhat elastic and easier to remove than duct tape. I showed the setup to Ed and he agreed that the camera was not likely to come loose during flight.

Today will be an important test. If I can get the camera to work well from this position and not screw up using the controls, I’ll have some really interesting video. And if the mount and tape hold properly, it might be a good location for future installations.

To Las Vegas on Sunday

We’ll be flying to Las Vegas on Sunday. My planned route will take us over some very boring desert to Lake Havasu City. From there, we’ll fly up the Colorado River, past Topock, Bullhead City and Laughlin, Lake Mohave, Black Canyon, the Boulder Dam, and Lake Mead before turning west and flying right down Tropicana Boulevard to McCarran Airport. It’s one of my favorite flights and I’m eager to get the “good parts” on video.

So cross your fingers for me. I need to get some good shots soon.

Why can’t they look at least a little like the person they represent?

Like so many techno-geeks these days, I’m involved in a bunch of social networking sites: Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, RedBubble, Flickr, MyBlogLog, etc. And all of these sites give each member the ability to include an avatar — an image to represent that user.

Maybe I’m not very creative, but my avatar is a photo of me. It was taken by photographer Jon Davison during one of our flights last September. It shows me in one of my favorite places: at the controls of my helicopter, flying over the Arizona desert. (I think I’m over the Little Colorado River Gorge in this shot.)

The way I see it, my avatar is supposed to represent me. What could represent me better than a photo of me doing something I like to do?

Evidently, not everyone has the same idea. While many of the avatars I see in Twitterrific are photos or drawings of the people they represent, quite a few are not. And in other social networking sites — MyBlogLog comes to mind — the majority of avatars don’t bear any resemblance to the people they’re supposed to represent.

I find this bothersome, especially among my Twitter friends. Why? Well, in most cases, an avatar is the only visual representation I have for a person. If the avatar features purple hair or a goofy cartoon face — you know who you are, folks! — that’s the image I have of that person. And it’s a lot tougher for me to take these unrealistic avatars seriously.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I find it easier to communicate with people I can take seriously.

A few more notes on avatars:

• Some people seem to like using their Second Life avatars as their social networking avatar. While I could write a dissertation covering my thoughts about Second Life — starting with, is your first life so bad that you need a second one? — I’ll just say that Second Life avatars are generally a highly stylized version of how people want to look. While few of us are supermodels, surely there’s a decent photo of these people somewhere that they can use online.
• Some people use glamour photos for avatars. I have a colleague who does this. When I met her in real life, I didn’t recognize her. Let’s face it, we only look like our glamour photos in our glamour photos — after they’ve done the photo shoot and brought our faces into Photoshop for some digital plastic surgery. Every time I see this avatar, I have to remind myself that she doesn’t really look like the photo.(Of course, it’s also made me want to get a glamour photo.)
• Some people use photos of their pets as avatars. Talk about going to the dogs! Do the dogs really look better? Or do they just identify with their dogs? Ditto for cats, birds, and miscellaneous wild animals.

Of course, none of this has to do with special-purpose avatars used to promote an idea or cause. An example is the Frozen Pea avatars that many of us wore on Twitter for a few Fridays to raise awareness and funds for Breast Cancer Research through the Frozen Pea Fund. I was a single pea for the day. My favorite avatar was one Twitter friend who created an image of his head sticking out of a pea car.

But I’d like to start a movement among serious social networkers. Be proud of your face and show it off as your avatar! It doesn’t have to be a full-face shot; it can be creative. (Some of the best avatars I’ve seen show only part of a person’s face.) But it should show you, as you really are.

I’d just like to see who I’m tweeting to.

Let a computer read it to you.

A few weeks ago, I quietly added a few feature to this blog, mostly as a test. Provided by AudioFeed Creator, it automatically creates audio files from the text in my blog entries. Visitors can then subscribe to the audio content as podcasts or listen to individual entries from their Web browser or Web-enabled mobile phone.

All of this is done automatically for me, based on my full-text RSS feed. And no, there isn’t a group of people locked up in a room and forced to read all these blog entries aloud into a microphone. AudioFeed Creator uses voice synthesis. The result is actually pretty darn good.

Best of all, it’s free.

At this point, I’m considering the experiment a success. The entries are being created on a timely basis and they’re easy to listen to and understand. There’s absolutely no effort on my part. It seems like a complete no-brainer to add this feature to the site permanently.

Who might listen to it, other than people who like my words of wisdom read to them by a computer? I can see only two other groups:

• People who like to follow this blog and have more time to listen (usually while on long drives) than read.
• People with visual problems who can’t read the blog at all.

This second point makes is pretty clear that the audio feed adds accessibility to this site. While I realize that accessibility issues are important overseas, it’s something that most U.S. based blogs ignore. I’m not an accessibility expert, but I assume that making each blog post audible must increase accessibility somehow.

Anyway, I invite you to try it out for yourself. Let me know what you think by adding your comments to this post.

And if you have a blog with a full-text RSS feed, why not give AudioFeed Creator a try?

Now if only I could figure out how to change the voice to a female’s.

Not exactly what I was hoping for.

After sweating out the morning, waiting to hear detailed news about Apple’s new products, I finally got my hands on the specs for the product I’ve been waiting for: MacBook Air. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s the product I’ve been waiting for after all.

Wait. Let’s start again. The above is what I wrote on Tuesday, before I laid hands on the MacBook Air. Now that I’ve fondled its sleek aluminum body and hefted its airy lightness, this article may have a different ending.

It’s Friday morning and I’ve been to Macworld Expo and back. And, at the show, I got a chance to look at Apple’s new entry into the sub-notebook field: the MacBook Air.

First, let’s talk specs.

Yes, it’s [currently] the world’s thinnest notebook, at about 3/4 inch tall. That’s thin. It’s about half the thickness of my obese 12″ PowerBook. (How did I carry that fat thing around for so many years?)

Other dimensions — for those of you who like all the numbers:
Width: 12.8 inches
Depth: 8.94 inches

Since my old 12″ PowerBook is sitting on my desk, let’s measure it up for comparison:
Width: 10.8 inches (estimated; I don’t have high tech measuring tools here)
Depth: 8.5 inches

The screen is a generous 13.3 inches measured diagonally. The PowerBook’s (for comparison) is about 12.25 inches.

It certainly is light, weighing in at only 3 pounds. That fat little 12″ PowerBook weighs a whopping 4 pounds and 11 ounces.

These are the numbers. And they are what disappointed me when I first went through them. Although thinner and lighter, the MacBook Air’s dimensions are also considerably larger than the computer I was hoping to replace with it. Because although “thin is in” and all that jazz, it’s overall size that can determine how truly portable a computer is.

Look at it this way: would the Moleskin people be selling so many of those little black books if they were the same size as the composition book you used in elementary school?

But I got to see the Air in person and touch it and hold it in my hands. And you know something? In real life it looks smaller than I expected it to. And the lightness feels lighter.

My overall impression was very positive. I felt myself wanting one of them, for reasons I couldn’t quite understand.

How does Apple do that? With smoke and mirrors? Hypnosis? Or it it simply the lighting in their Macworld Expo booth?

Now let’s look at what’s crammed in there.

There’s a lot packed into that slim case:

• 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 80 GB ATA hard disk
• AirPort Extreme (IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatible)
• Bluetooth 2.1
• iSight Camera
• one speaker
• Audio Out port
• USB 2.0 port
• Micro-DVI port
• 13.3″ (diagonally measured) monitor
• full-sized keyboard

There are some options — processor and hard disk come to mind — but that’s basically it.

Isn’t something missing?

Yes. It’s the optical drive. Just as Apple led the pack in the phasing out of the “floppy” drive when it released the original iMac all those years ago, it’s removed the optical drive from the MacBook Air.

This is a tough nut to swallow. Apple has built a $99 external SuperDrive that will only work with the MacBook Air, that I believe most people will buy. But Apple has also created “new technology” that enables you to access the CD/DVD mounted on another computer to install software, etc. (This is something I already do in a limited way, since the optical drives on both my 12″ PowerMac and 15″ MacBook Pro are dead; the MacBook is covered under warranty and is making its way back to Apple as I type this.) But what do you do if your Air is the only computer around and you didn’t bring along an external disc drive? Like when you’re on a plane for four hours and the movie is something you can’t bear to watch?

You’re SOOL.

Personally, I think the exclusion of this vital piece of hardware is a big mistake. And it’s what may prevent me from investing in a MacBook Air to replace my 12″ PowerBook.

What was I expecting?

Well, since I don’t read much on rumor sites, I wasn’t expecting anything in particular. I was expecting a “sub-notebook.” To me, that means something smaller than the usual notebook. It doesn’t necessarily mean thinner.

What I wanted, however, was a real replacement for my 12″ PowerBook: a modern version of the same machine that had modern processing power, a decent sized hard disk, wireless, and the all-important optical drive. And I know I’m not alone in that wish.

You see, I believe that the 12″ PowerBook is the best notebook computer Apple has ever made. Perfectly sized for travel, able to display at 1024×768 resolution, all necessary ports, wireless access, optical drive. What else could you ask for? I wish Apple would have brought that up to date by thinning it up a little — hell, it’s only an inch and a half tall! — and lightening it up a bit.

This is what I wanted. This is what a lot of people wanted. But this isn’t what Apple delivered in the MacBook Air.

But Don’t Listen to Me

If you’re in the market for a laptop computer, do check out the MacBook Air. For you, it might be a dream come true.

One thing’s for certain: It certainly will generate a lot of computer envy among your friends.