Ridiculosity

I went to the local fairgrounds last weekend for a day at the steam show. What’s a steam show, you ask? Like almost everything else, it’s about people getting together. In this case, it’s about people who collect, restore, buy, sell, and tinker with antique engines, machines, tractors, farm equipment, even lawn mowers.

I’ve been going to this particular steam show, in Berryville, Virginia, ever since I was old enough to tag along with my dad and granddaddy. Granddaddy planned the whole trip around the threshing machine demonstration. When he was a boy, he carried water for an engine running a similar machine.

For Granddaddy is was about nostalgia. When I was a kid, it was about him and my dad stooping in the summer-dry grass, leaning in and explaining to me how some whirring, popping blunderbuss worked. I nodded my head earnestly, even if I didn’t really quite grasp the concept. I did, however, sense the gravity of that exchange: a birthright was being passed down. Knowledge was being transferred from one generation to the next so that it wouldn’t be lost to history. I’m amazed at how readily it comes back to me as I point and explain to my daughter how one of the old engines works. I realize how useless even these simple things would be without the knowledge to use them properly. read more…

Here’s a little Microsoft Word feature that’s pretty useful: you can print the custom key assignments of any Word document. Here’s how:

1. Open the document you want to print key assignments for.
2. Open the Office menu and click Print. The Print dialog box appears where you can select how you want your document to print.
3. One of the options on the Print dialog is the Print What list. This lets you print the document properties or markup, among other things. One of the choices available is Key assignments. Choose that.
4. Click Print and out comes a handy guide to the key assignments for that document. The printed key assignments will also include the key assignments that the document inherits from templates (including the Normal template).

I’m using Word pretty much all day every day recently, so I customize my Normal template quite a bit so that I can bludgeon Word into doing my bidding no matter how much it balks and whines. That means I create a lot of custom macros and keyboard shortcuts and a handy guide is useful to keep track of everything. It’s always nice to have a handy guide for anything. Happy Word bludgeoning!

Immediately on the heels of Google’s announcement of its newest social product, Google+, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he would reveal some “awesome” new Facebook features on Wednesday.

There was a little buzz about what the news might be, but for the most part the technorati seemed to see the announcement as a reactionary move in response to Google+. The overwhelming feel I got from conversations online was that whatever Facebook was going to unveil, it couldn’t possibly be as cool as Google+.

They were right. Facebook announced built-in Skype video chat in Facebook. Yawn. Gmail has had video chat built in since forever. The same one-on-one video chat is available in Google+. And what’s more, the new Facebook functionality doesn’t even come close to the awesome Hangouts group video chat feature in Google+.

Even with all this said, Facebook’s announcement is still a win for Facebook. There are two big reasons for this:

Facebook’s momentum: Facebook is just plain huge. It hit critical mass long ago and it’s reached 750 million users (another part of Wednesday’s announcement). Sure Google can pull away the folks who are always looking for the coolest bleeding edge features, but it has taken Facebook a long time to get everyone and her mom to join, and that user base isn’t going to abandon ship overnight.

Google’s barriers to entry: Google kills its own fragile momentum when even the people who want to get into Google+ and try it out can’t because the can’t get an invite. Even most of the people who have received invites from me still can’t get in. Not only has Google left eager users out in the dark, they’ve slammed the door on those of us who are stuck in Google+ with nothing to do but follow Robert Scoble.

So what does all this have to do with Skype video chat in Facebook? Facebook is the top dog in the social media scene. By a lot. Given the average user’s resistance to change–especially a huge change like jumping to a new product–they don’t have to do much to hang on to their user base. They only need to appease them with bare minimum features to compete with others throwing the best they have at them. Google+ is an awesome product. Google invested a lot of time and money into Plus, and it’s still not going to be enough to topple Facebook, at least not anytime soon.

Google+ has its warts, but it’s a fresh take on sharing information and experiences online. Google needs to step up and take the plunge and allow people to actually get in and use the thing. Until then, I’ll be seeing what Scoble has to say … a lot.