1. Do You Have A Facebook Page?

2. How Often Do You Check it? (or do you just leave it on all the time?)

3. Do you accept friend requests from anyone who asks?

4. What are your criteria for accepting friend requests?

5. What is your facebook philosophy?

6. Why are you on facebook?

7. Do you post tons of pictures, and status updates and other stuff about yourself or do you just kind of lurk and watch what everyone else does?

8. Do you have facebook friends that you don't actually know in real life?

9. Has facebook helped you find old friends?

10. Have people found you through facebook that you wish hadn't?

11. Do you understand this article? Can you explain it to me?

the company announced today that it has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public at large by default instead of being visible only to a user's approved friends.

12. Does the above article concern you?

13. What else can you tell me about your facebook experience, habits and philosophy?

This is both uber-cool and a little bit frightening. This is an 8 minute video but well worth watching, especially once you get past the intro. It wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing devices like these soon, although I wouldn't like the part where someone blazons all my information (plus what they think of me) on my sweater while we're talking.



[Hat tip: The Anchoress]

I know I can google it or something. But I probably won't. I'd kind of rather not know.

"It" is this thing everyone is all of a sudden (it seems in the last five minutes or so) talking about on the internet. A "Kindle".

I honestly don't know what it is. A cell phone of some sort?

To everyone who's panting over it: you've done perfectly fine all these years without a "Kindle". What changed in the last day or two? Is this the next big thing we just can't live without?

I thought there was an economic downturn/Great Depression going on. I keep waiting for that to change our culture in some discernable way.

But then again, I don't even own an iPod, so I'm a good hundred years minutes behind everyone else.

I think I'm just old.



Update: OK, I've been educated on what this is. It's an e-book reader, and, though I don't enjoy reading books electronically (probably because I can't dog-ear the pages) I have to admit this is pretty cool. When I first posted this I thought it was some new cell phone or something. This is better.

I heard my local sports talk guys say today that only 15 percent of the population isn't on some sort of cable or satellite TV plan, so all of the digital switch brouhaha is to be blamed on a minority of people.

I fall into the 15 percent, so I guess I'm to blame. Too bad I was an idiot and let a couple of my government coupons expire before cashing them in on free digital converters. I did get one in on time, so the main TV in our living room is a sleek, svelte piece of digital equipment. (Actually, it's a 27-inch off-brand that would have looked impressive in anyone's living room 15 years ago, but looks downright homely by today's standards.)

The cool thing is with digital I get like three times as many stations as I did with analog. I feel like I upgraded to some sort of basic cable service -- it's awesome! The picture is crystal clear (for not being HD), and the reception is perfect.

I do feel sorry for the small population of elderly people who are getting snow on their screens today. I'm no technology slouch, and it took me a few minutes to figure out how to hook the thing up so it would work in conjunction with my VCR. It wasn't quite as simple as screwing in a light bulb.

I better cruise. Digital Lost is on in 30 minutes ...

New pill could erase bad memories.

Will make millions if it works.

I realize that I've been posting too many videos lately. Hopefully that's not a trend, but as the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the Apple Macintosh nears, I thought a little retrospective was in order.

First there's this article on what critics thought of the Mac when it was released. My favorite quote is from famous techno-grouch John Dvorak. He wasn't too thrilled with that needless gadget, the mouse:

The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices.

Here's that great "1984"-themed commercial that aired during the '84 Superbowl:



Finally, here's Steve Jobs introducing the Mac on January 24, 1984. The oohs. ahs, and rapturous applause coming from the crowd are illustrative of how far we've come in personal computing over these past 25 years. My favorite part is when the Mac "talks" (this was actually pretty advanced stuff for personal computing in 1984).



Note: I'm not a Mac-bigot. But I do really enjoy having one.

Mystery Roar From Faraway Space Detected

That rocks.

And I can tell you right now what it is: Alien Sasquatch

Found via Tech Blog.

I've been using Pandora's "intuitive" music program (www.pandora.com), and I like it pretty well. Kinda cool to have a radio station that learns you.

I appreciate the way it apparently figures out my tastes and preferences (even down to ideal bpm), but I hope they figure out how to walk the line between that and getting into a rut. I tell it I like one particular rap song and then it plays me 10 rap songs in a row.

And because you can only skip a certain number of songs every hour, I end up listening to more songs than I care to that I don't like.

On the following faddish verbiage:

Woot!

and

FAIL

Please stop. These things have jumped the shark quicker than the macarena.

Gmail has officially conquered all areas of my email life. Two days ago I set it up at work to run my work email through. I had been previously using Thunderbird, but the search function on Thunderbird is, well, pathetic. Gmail has officially solved that problem for me since you can set up a domain email to run through Gmail and, thanks to the fact that Gmail doesn't attach any advertising to emails, no one's the wiser.

Gmail is the Mac of email programs, with one key distinction (and this distinction makes all the difference): it's free.

I've posted my first "vlog" at Gospel-Driven Church. You can watch it here.

It's longer and rougher than I'd like (I recorded it at one a.m. this morning after much feasting and merriment with friends, and it was pretty much all off the top of my head), but I'll probably start trying to do one a week over there, hopefully improving on the pithiness and quality. :-)

Let me know what you think!

I have a new piece up at SearchWarp:

Obama Wants to Give Your Kids Cancer

Do you play fantasy football?
This is my second year, and I like it pretty well. I have a team in Element's FF League. Last year my team name was Rampaging Death. This year it's Violent Awesomeness. (Picking a team name is probably my favorite part, sad to say.)

We had our draft last weekend, and here's the lineup for Violent Awesomeness:

QBs:
Peyton Manning, Colts
David Garrard, Jaguars

WRs:
Reggie Wayne, Colts
Tory Holt, Rams

RBs:
Clinton Portis, Redskins
Ahman Green, Texans

Flex:
Donald Driver, Packers

TE:
Jeremy Shockey, Giants

Defense:
San Diego Chargers

Kicker
Adam Viniateri, Colts

Bench:
Colts Defense
QB Jason Campbell, Redskins
RB Ronnie Brown, Dolphins
WR Joey Galloway, Buccaneers
RB Justin Fargas, Raiders
WR Isaac Bruce, 49ers

I'm actually fairly ambivalent about this team, but only b/c I didn't get my android man-crush Tom Brady. I had 6th pick in the draft, and #5 in the first round took Brady right out from under my nose. (That was my friend John, the backstabber.)

How 'bout you? You playing? Who you got?

Anybody have connectivity issues with AT&T/Bellsouth internet service?

We switched from Comcast last year b/c of frequent TV and internet outages, but our AT&T internet connection is spotty. It comes in and out throughout the day, usually about 3-5 times a day, sometimes more or less, usually only lasting a few seconds, but sometimes several minutes.

Is this routine? Just part of internet service?

I don't know b/c we were late adopters to high speed, only ditching dial-up for Comcast 2 years ago. But I was so sick of not having connectivity I switched. Now I'm wondering if this is just something everyone has to deal with.

I called to have a technician come out but the barely-speaks-English man with the unlikely name of "Huey" said if it turned out not to be a problem connected to the AT&T service or device, they'd charge $80.
That's a gamble I don't want to take without more info.

Any insight?

Or crackpottery, depending on your perspective.

Former NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.

And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'

He said supposedly real-life ET's were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.

Chillingly, he claimed our technology is "not nearly as sophisticated" as theirs and "had they been hostile", he warned "we would be been gone by now".

Dr Mitchell, along with with Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, holds the record for the longest ever moon walk, at nine hours and 17 minutes following their 1971 mission.

"I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real," Dr Mitchell said.

"It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it . . .

"I really can't think of another important device or service that is as morally bankrupt, stupid, and plain worthless as Microsoft's Vista. Someone should do jail time."

-- Director Barry Levinson in his latest Esquire "Digital Man" column

We will soon start at Element a new series called Coffee Shop Theology, in which we're going to answer submitted questions and address submitted topics (similar to Mark Driscoll's recent "Ask Anything" series, although we had our idea before we knew about his). We received nearly 40 submissions, which our leadership team narrowed down to 13 options for voting.

Voting is open to the public. If you're reading this, this means you.

Go to www.elementnashville.org/coffeeshop and vote for the question/topic that most interests you. The top 8 vote getters will be messages in the Coffee Shop Theology series.

If you can figure out how, vote as often as you'd like for one topic or for several.

Go vote!

Glenn Lucke on illegal downloads:

My own experience in discussing this topic with students, including Christian students? Overwhelmingly they refuse to stop stealing, even when they acknowledge that they have stolen. I engaged literally hundreds of students about this topic at UVa, and after all the discussing, two root reasons would emerge from the students: 1) I can (technology enables me) and 2) I want to.

With a few exceptions, Christian students engaged in the same stealing, and deployed the same anti-Christian reasoning. One student finally became persuaded that it was stealing, so resolved to steal no more, but wouldn't pay for the 1,000+ songs she had already stolen, nor delete them.

Again, with a few exceptions, the only way to make a dent in the Christian students? Tell them of my personal friendship with Caedmons Call, and how Caedmon's band members related to me their perspective about having their hundreds of hours of hard work taken from them for free. Then the students would say, "Oh. Well, I won't download their stuff. I'll buy their stuff."

Meaning, these students were incapable of submitting themselves to abstract principle, but, if they felt some sentiment for a personal connection, then they might adjust their behavior. Effectively, the Ten Commandments only had force in their lives if they had positive sentiment for the person wronged in a violation of the Commandments.

Some reader will write in, as often happens here, and defend this state of affairs.

It happens almost every time we discuss it here, as well. In a post on lawsuits about four years ago, one commenter even suggested, should I ever be published, it'd be okay to buy a copy of my book that was illegally photocopied by someone selling his copies cheaper.

"I can" and "I (might) want to" was in full effect there, and the concerns of the artist (me!) over supporting his family with his work wasn't in play.

A commenter (Ken) wrote the following earlier in the week in a comment thread here at Thinklings.

"Perhaps it is by design, but your blog does not play well with Google Reader. When I use Reader on my iPhone I see the feed but every time I go to read a post I get an error. Using Reader in my browser works --- I can read the posts --- but the post titles (which are usually links to the post itself) are not links at all."

I believe I've addressed these problems; at least Google Reader now seems to be rendering our feed correctly in a browser, though I haven't yet tested it on a phone. Do any of you pull Thinklings in on a feed reader? If so, could you let me know what reader you use and if it's working right for you, or if you're having any problems? Leave a comment if you can.

And, of course, thanks in advance for your help in improving Bloo. This will aid me in my nefarious plot to make Bloo the supreme blogging tool in the Blogoverse!

[Bill strikes his Darth Vader pose].