A digital/analog life balance.

This week I did something I thought I would never do. I disconnected my blackberry from my work e-mail. No more compulsive checking of e-mail. No more replying to art directors or account managers during dinner. It's a bit liberating. It is the second step in my digital cleanse, in my quest to regain a digital/analog life balance. (The first step was making the temporary switch from iPhone to Blackberry) I found myself often in a panic at first, kind of like that feeling you get when you realize you've left your cell phone at home, like something is missing.

Between Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, e-mail, texting, photo messages, AIM and who knows what else, I rarely had the time to enjoy life because I was so busy cataloging it. After arriving at a restaurant, my group (BF, sisters, etc) would sit down and promptly take out their respective iPhones to check-in using their location-based app of choice. When dinner is served, again the group takes out their phone to snap a pic to tweet or post on Facebook. When dinner was over we'd be back on the iPhone: searching Yelp for a nearby dessert stop or checking Twitter to see who is where. It got to be sooo silly.

Now that I am no longer an iPhone user, I am always on the outside looking in. The one tapping her foot impatiently as she waits for the BF to finish checking his Google reader before pushing "play" on the DVR. The one twiddling her thumbs as the sisters check-in on Gowalla before ordering their dinner. I see all of these actions and how much time they take and shudder as I realize I once was just as addicted to tapping around the iPhone for no apparent reason.

My life is still mostly digital: I stream Pandora from the iPod as I cook, I watch all of my shows on the DVR or Netflix streaming, I sit in front of a computer for 10+ hours a day and document my life via blogging. But when it comes to connections and communication, I am trying to focus on old school analog approaches. Calling instead of texting. Meeting for lunch instead of chatting over AIM. Watching a musical instead of a movie. Going to a store instead of buying on Amazon. It's amazing to think of how much digital technology has changed our lives in the last 15 years -- I am just trying to capture some of that back!

Well, just until April when they release the iPhone 4G and I hop back onto the bandwagon.

I ♥ Facebook Ads

I wonder if this one was targeted especially for me.

How much effort?

Props to Mr. Persaud from Long Beach BMW who took the effort to write out an automated dealer response e-mail ENTIRELY in initial caps. Unless he was using notepad to write this, his grammar/spell check must have been SCREAMING at him to use proper capitalization.

Facebook Lite

So I was browsing Facebook when this message appeared above my feeds:



It immediately piqued my interest. Facebook lite? Does this have anything to do with Facebook acquiring Friendfeed today? My mind was a-flurry with thoughts about what this "lite" version of Facebook could look like. As my mouse pointer approached the link, my mind wandered to the Amazon redesign case study that was discussed in the recent UX meetup. How was I segmented to be included in this select group of people who get to test this beta version? Is it a select group of people? Do they have analytics in place to measure my engagement with the lite version, and if so, will they be using that to finalize their design?

So many thoughts flying through my head until... *click*

Nothing happened.

*click*

Still nothing happened.

Wait, is this a trick? Are they just doing this to test and see how many people would click on the link, hence gauging audience interest in such a feature? Or does "plenty of kinks" = page load fail?

Oh well. The thoughts were fun while they lasted.

Quiet

Funny. I don't ever notice how much I like to talk, or how much I have to say, until there is no one around to talk to. Max left for Ireland at 5AM on Monday morning and Vina has been staying in LA for school/work. So for a full 2.5 days I had the house to myself. And Lulu and Cora (who make pretty good listeners, actually). It's embarrassing to admit but I end up going about my day with a mental checklist in mind. "I have to tell Max this. I have to e-mail him this. I have to text Yona now. I better tweet this. Oooh, I'll e-mail this to Aai and Vina. I better text Aai so she'll open my e-mail. Oh this and this is interesting, but my family will think I'm stupid for e-mailing it to them, I'll blog it instead."

Do I have that much to say? Or is it out of habit that I have to share everything I experience with someone? I mean, it's not out of coincidence that when I have less people to talk to, I tend to blog more. Which is actually interesting to note about the years when I started both of my blogs. I must have had nobody around to really talk to. So am I replacing human contact and attention with my online soapbox where I can freely communicate the thoughts in my head that are directed towards no one?

The concept of blogging, tweeting and Facebook statuses is interesting. Everybody dubs it as "social media" or "social networking" which implies that there is an exchange of communications or a two-sided interaction but if you think about it, it's actually a one-way communication. It is not any different than broadcasting. You expel information outwards, but just provide a feedback loop in case (1) someone reads it and (2) someone finds it compelling enough to reply.

So if this one-way broadcasting has taken over the way people socialize online and real-life (I know some of you have tweeted or read tweets while in the company of another tweeter) then how does that change the way we look at socialization? In theory one could live in isolation, void of any real-world human contact, but still remain perfectly sociable through these online networks. And no one would know the difference.

So then that raises the question, what does it mean to be popular these days? Is it the person with (a) a lot of Facebook friends, (b) a lot of twitter followers or (c) the person with a lot of comments/wall postings? In other words, the person with the most consented friendships, the most admirers or the one that engages more people in conversation?

Sigh. I need someone to talk to.