I never really ‘got’ Facebook – so when someone at Google asked me yesterday to take part in the initial trial of their new Google + social media platform, I decided to read up on it a bit first to see whether it might be worth my time.

I have to say, after looking into it a bit, I was intrigued – intrigued enough to try it out over the next few weeks.

Why?  Because Google+ seems to address the one reason I’ve avoided Facebook: the list of things I would want to say socially in exactly the same way to every person I know is a pretty short list.

The folks behind the Google+ project seem to get it – Google’s new social media platform appears to be built upon the notion of groups, and it appears to be designed that way from the ground up.  This is in stark contrast to the opt-in, after-the-fact group-filtering mechanisms other social media platforms seem to have implemented reluctantly and seem to prefer you wouldn’t use.

And according to Bradley Horowitz (who along with Vic Gundotra is in charge of  the Google+ project), that’s just what’s wrong with today’s social media sites:  “In real life, we have walls and windows and I can speak to you knowing who’s in the room, but in the online world, you get to a ‘Share’ box and you share with the whole world.”

Amen, brother.   So I’ve just logged into my trial account and had a quick look around – I think I’ll give this Google+ project a try.  As a confirmed social media skeptic, it’ll be interesting to see if it feels like there’s something worthwhile there… stay tuned.

In my role as in-house/at-home IT support staff, I’m regularly called upon to respond to user trouble tickets, usually delivered verbally from my wife’s desk.   This latest one was particularly interesting – our bank’s website form for making online payments (nobody sends checks in Europe) was hanging in mid-transaction.  My wife, being pretty technically astute herself, had already tried deleting the cache and all her cookies – but still not go.

She had just updated to FireFox 5.0 a day or two earlier (we’re a Firefox household, tried and true) – so I suspected the new browser might have something to do with it.  Who knows, maybe our bank’s website is doing something in a slightly nonstandard way that this latest Firefox release is just being picky about.  It could be a JavaScript or an HTTPS issue, or maybe it’s something to do with FF5′s increased support for IPv6 – it didn’t matter, really: our bank’s website wasn’t working anymore, and it was up to me, as senior home help desk technician, to get ‘er done.

Hitting the same website from another browser on the same machine was the obvious thing to try… and lo and behold, everything worked just fine using the Apple Safari browser that shipped with my wife’s Mac.

After I blew the imaginary smoke off the tip of my extended index finger (why does my wife roll her eyes when I do things like that?), I started thinking about browsers, updates, and compatibility…

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We found Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform interesting enough to write about two years ago when it first went live – now, as the platform matures and it becomes clear just how central Azure is to the company’s future, it’s getting even more interesting.

And when one considers recent cloud-related new items such as the Amazon EC2 outage of a few months ago and the (still unsubstantiated) rumors that Apple might be using Azure to support at least part of its new iCloud service – well, the Microsoft cloud computing story gets more interesting still.

With that in in mind, we thought we’d pose a few questions about Azure to Jim O’Neil of Microsoft.

Fair warning: this is going to be a bit more technical than the typical digitalmissive post.  Hang in there, though, because we believe Azure is A Big Deal, and the opportunity to hear about it from someone at Microsoft – especially at this early stage of its evolution – makes for a worthwhile read.

Thanks to Jim for taking the time…

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Ready, set, go!   Today, June 20, Keith Olbermann starts his new old show on Current TV.

Now on Al Gore’s user-gen channel, the former host of Countdown on MSNBC will henceforth reach 60 million US homes (plus 10 million in the UK and Italy).  That’s not chump change, but it’s still a not-so-shy 35 million less than his previous target primetime audience.

Still, if all goes well, Current’s young(er)-and-social audience will dig Keith enough for maximum ratings – plus help with viral promotion of the program across the online social sphere – which in turn would, yep, help boost viewership.

Current also hopes Olbermann’s name will help with new subscriber acquisition.  Using its new anchor as it’s #1 spokesman, Current is now asking anyone inside Cablevision’s Long Island TV market to campaign for Current TV carriage.

But Olbermann’s arrival at Current TV marks more than just a new show.  Both Countdown and Olberman’s new role as Chief News Officer role further moves the channel away from its original user-generated video roots, towards a (hopefully) capable alternative to existing cable news.

Not sure whether this means a definite end for Current’s initial viewer-submitted short-form video format?  With Olbermann’s arrival, there seems plenty room for an entirely new TV news format.  Let’s see what the new Olbermann / Current TV duo can conjure up.

Meanwhile, off we go with pre-launch coverage about Olbermann the *feuding co-worker* , the *larger-then-life egomaniac*, or Olbermann the *millionaire media mogul*.

Be it as it may, Countdown on Current promises to be every bit as informative and controversial as Olbermann’s previous gig.

PS: If you happen to be a Cablevision customer not wanting to miss out on Current’s Countdown, here’s how to reach out to be heard.

When you live and work in the abstract world of zeros and ones, it’s nice every now and then to spend some time thinking about and looking at physical objects – so a few weeks ago, I went to the Berlin International Design Festival.  The venue for the festival was the now-closed Tempelhof airport’s terminal/hangar complex.

Speaking of physical objects – these massive buildings date from the 1930′s, and were intended by the 3rd Reich to serve as the showpiece gateway to their empire.  Happily, of course, that never came to pass – and after the war, this was the airport used for the Berlin Airlift.  In short, there’s a lot of history at Tempelhof, and I was happy to finally get to see the buildings from the inside.

The festival took up two full hangars, and was full of interesting and well-designed objects – the perfect tonic for the day-to-day digitally obsessed.  One particular exhibit that stood out was the Akkuschrauber Rennon 2011 Cordless Drill Race as presented by the Hildesheim College for Applied Science and Art: 16 teams of design students from universities across Germany and Switzerland were tasked with designing, building, and racing lightweight 1-person vehicles, each powered by identical Bosch Akku-Bohrschrauber PSR 18 LI-2 cordless electric hand drills.

The exhibit worked for me on several levels:

• First off, it was just plain fun – I’ve still got enough of the ‘little boy’ left in me that the sight of a modern, cutting-edge vehicle powered by a hand drill protruding out from its side just brings a smile to my face, I’ll admit it.
• Beyond the initial cleverness of the premise, it was clear that from a pure design and engineering perspective, the work was uniformly strong – and that the approaches taken by the competing teams were remarkably varied.
• Then there was the green technology angle: the project provided a great opportunity for the student teams to work with lightweight materials, and since, after all, it was a race, the emphasis was on performance and efficiency.
• On perhaps a somewhat more cynical level, the program served as an affordable yet effective marketing device, both for the schools involved and for corporate sponsor Bosch.

In short,  a win-win-win situation – and a good model for other industry/academia collaborations, I might add.

Here are a few of the Akkuschrauber Rennon entries on display:

P.S. And here, by the way, are a few of the other cool objects from the festival that caught my eye…

a couch…                                                                     an extension cord…

build your own pen…                                                     resistor-LED art…

The Problem: Video content owners are comfortable making their programming available over the internet only if the delivery device is a computer hitting a website (i.e. hulu.com or the thedailyshow.com).  More compelling platforms such as tablets (and, um, televisions) are denied access to this premium content – precisely because they are more compelling platforms  (and would be too disruptive to incumbent business models).  For example, note hulu’s cat-and-mouse maneuvering to fend off access by boxee television software for almost two years now – or Viacom’s threats to sue various cable providers over their new internet-based on-demand mobile device apps.

The Solution (for now, at least): If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  Until internet television really ‘happens’, the best solution (for me and many others) is to get video and audio from the computer over to the television, so I can appear to the internet to be someone sitting in front of their computer – when in fact I’m a guy sitting on his couch in front of his television.  This way, I have access to all that web-only content (take that, hulu!).

It does involve solving the technical problem of getting audio and video (in at least 720p resolution) over to the television, though.  That’s a lot of data to move, and an HDMI cable running across the floor is not an option – what’s required instead is a  ‘short fat pipe’ capable of moving a lot of data over a short distance wirelessly.  I’ve written about the various options available (and what I’ve been using for the past few months) here.

Is my solution a bit clunky?  Sure – I have to go to the computer, enter full-screen mode, and then control the video transport from there.  But the fact remains that until the business-side issues preventing true internet television get resolved, the web will continue to offer a richer video selection than dedicated systems such as Apple TV or Google TV – and for all its lack of elegance, my low-cost solution makes that problem just go away.

In fact, it has been working so well for me, I wonder if there’s a business opportunity being missed…

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I need to get a global phone from Verizon before I go to Berlin this summer, and found out last night that they approved an early upgrade for me.  I’m likely going to purchase it today, so that I can get going with setting it up and unlocking the SIM, but I need to decide which one to get.

It’s between the HTC Incredible 2, and the Motorola Droid 2 Global.

Help me decide!   Here are my thoughts:

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“(Their) whole brain appears to rewire because of bilingualism. “

OK. No wonder it’s been such slow going.

A year in Berlin, and my progress mit der deutschen Sprache ist leider nicht schnell genug für mich – but according to a recent piece in the New York Times, maybe it’s due not to a lack of time and/or discipline (my two most often-used excuses), but to all those years of ‘monolingualism’ having left my brain less able to handle a second language.

The article claims numerous advantages to having a multilingual brain: increased multitasking ability, reduced risk of Alzheimer’s Disease, and increased problem-solving ability, to name just a few.  So although I could get by here in cosmopolitan Berlin without speaking any German at all, I’m not giving up – I’d like to have me one of them multilingual brains.

According to the New York Times, it’s good for me (and I have to admit, it’s a challenging and interesting process to go through).

Andreas and Christoph are both bilingual.  My wife speaks three languages – fluently.  I’m as smart as these guys, right?   I hope so, because I now find myself in a race against time, a race against my 9 month old German-born niece: will I speak German as well as a 2 year old by next year?

It’s on, my ruthless, diapered rival.  OK, so you’ve got something on me in the cuteness department, that doesn’t scare me.  I’ve got a few tricks of my own up my sleeve, “baby”: I’ve got technology on my side: apps, audio books, google translate,  deutsche welle, and any number of the countless message boards out there.  In the brutal competition to come, I will show you no mercy.

Still, I’ve been trying to transfer all this data, this German language, onto my ‘system’ for about 12 months now – and I can’t help but notice that the transfer rate, the data throughput, has been a bit disappointing.

If the New York Times article is correct, maybe what I really need is a firmware update.

P.S.  Mark Twain (who, it turns out, is a lot funnier than I remember) went through a similar experience over a century ago.   For an idea of just what I’m up against, read his short essay “The Awful German Language“.