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I started uploading my photos into Picasa because it’s run by Google, just like Blogger is. And now I think I’m stuck. I certainly don’t want to move everything I’ve got in Picasa over to Flickr, and I don’t want to just start putting the new stuff on Flickr because the idea of scattering my photos across two hosting sites just bothers me.

There are too many people to follow, and it just got sort of overwhelming. I had a hard time following conversations between people, and before long I was spending huge chunks of my workday just trying to catch up on friends’ Tweets. On top of all that, I also had a hard time coming up with things to say in my own Tweets. Frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would find the daily minutiae of my life to be worth reading, and the 140-character limit on each Tweet seemed to prevent discussion of anything more deep.

All of a sudden, it seemed like everyone moved over to Plurk. This was about the time I took my little summer vaca from SL, and so I haven’t even given a serious look to Plurk, but my superficial examination has left me thoroughly confused. I guess it’s like Twitter on steroids, with all the pressure to microblog and keep up with other folks’ microblogs, but with the added pressure of a reputation rating called “karma”! No thanks.

How they sold a million phones I'm not exactly sure. By the time I got to the front of the line at around 10:30p Eastern I would say that 80% of the customers were walking away empty handed. The transactions were failing at the point where Apple connected to the AT&T database. Apple was doing their best to provide service to their customers at 10:30 on a Friday night. Their partner, the entity that could have sent most of the customers home fat and happy was not. AT&T customer support was closed. They were still working industrial era "office hours". Not only were they closed on Friday night, they were closed for the entire weekend. A dramatic example of two partners with very different DNA.

I've been thinking about this a lot. Somewhere I heard, and I wish I could remember where, that the average time for a person to get their first response via Yahoo Answers in Korea is 45 seconds. That's a remarkable response time when you realize that the answer is most likely being typed on a mobile phone. Now, that answer is most probably crap, but the point remains-- in this new world people have an expectation of an almost instantaneous response. If you aren't prepared to offer instantaneous service then you shouldn't attempt to offer the service at all as you are most likely going to disappoint.

The first rule of community engagement: You have to respond. A real person has to respond, and you need to do it lightning fast. Anything less and you've disappointed. It's okay if you respond and say, "We hear you, and we're working on it." But it's not okay to answer with dead silence, or to say "Well get back to you first thing Monday morning. Have a nice weekend."

There is clearly a need for CSS to be taken seriously by graphic artists. The Zen Garden aims to excite, inspire, and encourage participation. To begin, view some of the existing designs in the list. Clicking on any one will load the style sheet into this very page. The code remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css file. Yes, really. CSS allows complete and total control over the style of a hypertext document. The only way this can be illustrated in a way that gets people excited is by demonstrating what it can truly be, once the reins are placed in the hands of those able to create beauty from structure. To date, most examples of neat tricks and hacks have been demonstrated by structurists and coders. Designers have yet to make their mark. This needs to change.