Pinning All Over the World

I love Pinterest. it's a completely visual social networking tool where people post photos that they've taken or that link to other websites. But to me the links and comments aren't important. I like to jump on, browse the photos, and like / reshare (called repin) cool pictures, and jump out. This usually takes around 5 minutes or so. The elegant web design arranges everything is a grid and is very easy on the eyes.

Pinterest also allows you to follow only certain categories, called boards, that a user creates. So if someone is posting about ugly shirts, I can unfollow just that category and still have access to the other pictures from the user.

Then my man Pierre showed up. He began following me and I fell in love with his old school tech pics. The I went to his profile page and saw that it's completely in another language! If this was another network, the language barrier would have effectively prohibited us from easily connecting on the site.

Pinterest is not the first site to offer this visual view. Instagram comes to mind, but it's limited to iOS devices and the site design isn't nearly as good. And Flickr is a little dated and more suited to serious photography.

If you haven't been pinning, get to it! Follow me at Pinterest.com/shareefjackson

What's In a Name?

1. 

   I've maintained several website personas over the years, but eventually as I got older, I decided to start using my real name online. Now why would I do this? To control my message.

   More and more interactions occurr online, and tying those interactions to my real life persona is crucial for networking. I like to be able to say that my website, Twitter account, and other social networks are united under my name. It adds a sense of legitimacy and it also makes me accountable to what I'm putting out their online.

   By publishing my content under my name, I'm also owning my search results. If you do a Google search on my name, you'll get content that I've created. Because it's not limited to just my professional work, it makes me a well-rounded person and shows that I am more than my resume. Of course there's that one MySpace model who also shares my name, but hey, that's just one result :)

   Jeff Jarvis has recently written a book, Public Parts, that talks about this concept. He believes that embracing publicness is a strong asset in this Internet connected world. It helps us maintain what we really want to be private because the public information will dominate any search results, leaving the private information as secured as it can be. It's never 100% secure - if someone wants your information, they'll get it - but by embracing a public persona, this means that you can control it to the best of your ability.

   It might be weird, and it's definitely not for everyone, but try using your name a little more on the Internet. You might be surprised at the results. I mean, y'all love me right?

CNN gets live streaming - if you pay for cable

CNN has jumped into the new media game headfirst by allowing live streaming of its TV channel. You can log on anywhere and view CNN on your web browser, iPhone, or iPad. Yes!

The catch? You have to be a paying cable subscriber. Since I'm in Philly, I had to verify my Comcast username and password. The good news is that I'm not tied to my Comcast internet connection - I can view CNN from any wifi access point.

This is a great move by CNN, and I'm sure it's only possible because its restricted to cable subscribers. Still, it doesn't help me to cut the cord, get rid of cable, and stream all of my TV online. Maybe it's just a dream ....

Spotify: You Get What You Pay For

 If you're thinking about Spotify, pony up and pay the $10 / month. You'll get access immediately instead of waiting in the invite queue for the free version.  My (short) adventure with the free version is below.

I have a beta invite to the free version of Spotify, a music streaming service that just debuted in the US. Basically, Spotify lets you stream music from a huge library.  There is also a paid version, but I wanted to give the free version a try.

I downloaded the app on my PC and allowed it to connect to iTunes.  I installed it on my iPhone and I was able to see all my iTunes playlists - cool!  See I can see all of the songs that I've put into playlists, I can stream them, right? Especially since I own them?  Apparently not with the free version.

It turns out that the free version of Spotitfy is only useful for streaming Spotify's catalog on a PC or laptop, or downloading music that you already have onto your iPhone.  The latter is is exactly what you can already do with iTunes, albeit this is a wireless solution.  In other words, the free version is useless.

I upgraded to Spotify premium for $10 a month.  For the price of an album, I can stream from the Spotify catalog on my iPhone, as well as replace iTunes as the syncing device for my purchased music.  The best hard is that the songs queue up quickly over 3G, so much so that it feels like the songs are stored locally on the device instead of Spotify's streaming servers.  

There's also the option to download songs locally if you'll be without internet for a while. This is good if you can predict a bad internet connection - but how often does that happen? My advice is to always keep a core selection of songs on your phone, and use Spotify to access songs that pop into your head during the day. That alone is worth $10 a month.

Bottom line - you should expect to pay for a great service, and Spotify is just that.

Netflix: It's $6, people

I can spend hours on Netflix streaming

Netflix is currently $10 for unlimited streaming of its video library along with one DVD at a time.  However, this price will be increasing in a few months. Starting in September, Netflix will cost $16 for unlimited streaming video along with one DVD at a time.

I don't mind paying an extra $6 a month for a great service that provides what I want. Between Netflix for old TV / movies and iTunes for paying per episode for recent shows, my TV watching habits are satisfied.

Many of the arguments against the change are on a principle level - the fact that allowing a company to boost their prices by 60% is a slippery slope that will give other companies the leeway to raise their prices.  The truth is, Netflix put itself in this position with a low, almost impulse-buy price that I'm sure it realized was not sustainable in the long term. $16 a month is still a bargain, especially considering the amount of server space that Netflix uses to provide streaming content, and the resources required for its DVD service.

I'm sure Netflix will come out of this unharmed, despite the noisy echo chamber currently going on at a lot of the major tech sites.