Over the past few days I’ve had a couple of posts that seem to prompt some folks to refer to me as everything from a dinosaur to an Apple defender. Rather than try to answer them separately I figured I would roll up my responses into one post.
The first one is regarding my post here yesterday giving Ed Bott a bit of a hard time over his kvetching about Apple’s Software Update Service. Ed’s point was that while he was accessing Windows 7 through Bootcamp on his Mac Mini he didn’t agree with Apple suddenly popping up the Software Update dialog with software included that he neither had installed on Windows 7 or that he even wanted in the first place.
It was his opinion that this was just another sneaky example of Apple trying to spread their software onto unsuspecting user’s machines. What got me into trouble with Ed via Twitter was my suggestion that there is nothing wrong with software companies (specifically operating systems companies like Microsoft and Apple) letting me know they had new versions of their products available.
Ed quite rightly called me on this (read bottom to top)
In this case I will willing admit that Ed was right and I was wrong. However my stance was also called into question by another blogger I respect, Zoli Erdos, when he first called me an Apple defender and then seem to suggest that my point about update notification in general is ridiculous.
In my original post I wrote
I have no problem with any software maker – operating system or otherwise – letting me know that updates are available.
To which Zoli responded with
Wow.. really? How about getting dozens (hundreds?) of software update proposals a day? there must be hudreds of thousands of software title out there, why not recommend all?
The thing with this statement is that yes the large majority of software programs out there for the desktop do provide new version update notification. Why? because users have asked for it.
Even with the software I use everyday these notifications are a part of the regular process of using them. Just as an example here are some programs that will notify me about new versions: Paint.net, FeedDemon, bDule – my Twitter client (and if IIRC the majority of AIR based clients do the same), GrabIT, VLC, and FileZilla just to name a few.
So I’m sorry Zoli but I would be willing to bet that if you asked any computer user if they want this option to disappear they would tell you – hell no.
I’ll gladly take the flack from both Ed and Zoli over my statements about Apple’s updating process but not my opinion about update notifications in general from the software we use every day.
Next up – being referred to as a dinosaur by John Zhu regarding my post on Inquisitr about Google’s Sidewiki; which I suggested as being a bad move by Google and bad for the blogosphere. I was also given a hard time over the post by Louis Gray who suggested that this angst about the fragmentation of the conversation was a dead topic.
Yes it is a dead topic and I have said on more than one occasion that I am more than willing to go where the conversation is happening when I find out about those places. But here’s the rub with Sidewiki we don’t know where it is happening because unless you install the Google Toolbar you will have no idea what people are saying about your post – either on your blog or elsewhere.
In a follow-up Daily Edition podcast with Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins I tried to clarify my thoughts on this as he didn’t see much wrong at first with the idea. Since I am still being called to task over this let me clarify it here once more.
The only problem I have with Google’s Sidewiki is that it requires myself and my readers to download and install the Google Toolbar in order to be able to take part in the conversation. Google is inserting itself between the blogger and the reader as well as in between individual readers.
I realize that the conversation can happen anywhere and I have no problem whatsoever in going to those places in order to be a part of those conversation. But they are conversations that are easily traceable either through trackbacks or announcements on social media services like Twitter, Friendfeed or Facebook.
Now Stowe Boyd notes that comments left via Sidewiki can be pinged to Twitter but that does me no good if I don’t download and install Google’s Toolbar. Even Stowe notes the problem here and suggests that they need some sort of javascript for bloggers to include in their templates so that the comments can be seen even if you haven’t downloaded and installed Google’s Toolbar.
I still think that sidewiki should offer me some javascript to put into my blog, so that anyone — even those who haven’t installed the Google Toolbar — could see the comments in place.
As I said to Mark in the podcast about Sidewiki having an API for developers – the moment that any of the third party comment systems like Disqus and JS-Kits incorporates this API, or we get a separate plugin for our blogs I would immediately withdraw my objections to Sidewiki.
I have now object to Google getting into the comment platform business but I have a really big objection to them putting it behind a wall by making us download and install their toolbar.
Stop doing that and I would install any plugin that let’s me include them on my blog – hell I would even consider using it exclusively.
That is not being a dinosaur – that’s wanting the conversation to be open not locked up by Google. As Jeff Jarvis notes in his follow-up post to this
Google could try to organize – but not hijack – the entire conversation; no one has really done that yet. It analyze comments on sites and understand them better and perhaps even try to find quality in them and their authors. It could use Friend Connect and Facebook’s APIs, as it has started to do, to enable those authors to establish and collect – on their own, via APIs – and burnish their identities across the web. It could bring together conversation about sites, whether those are blogs or companies’, as Technorati has done with blogs (that’s why I think buying it and putting it out of its strategic and technology misery would be the neighborly thing to do). It could then release an API (as it has done for Sidewiki) that doesn’t draw the conversation into one place but enables anyone to put up the conversation.
[….]
In a sense, Google thought too big, bigfooting the conversation everywhere. But in a sense, it thought way too small, creating a new conversation instead of trying to organize the conversation that is the internet itself. That would have been so much Googlier, don’t you think?
Thank you Jeff.
