The iWhat?

Thankfully, the hyper-hype over the "coming" iPhone from Apple is now all behind us after the introduction of the iPhone last night. Sure, we'll hear a lot more about it in the coming weeks, but the shrill pitches about how wonderful it was "going" to be are now all behind us.

I'll wander by the local Apple store at the Bellevue Square mall here in downtown Bellevue, WA in a little while to see if I can sense any real "sea change" in store traffic, but I don't expect much. I strongly suspect that all of the diehard Apple gadget geek technosexuals sated themselves last night, but we'll see.

Personally, I wouldn't even want an iPhone if they gave it to me... at a minimum 2-year service contract of $59.99, that's over $1,400. Way outside my budget.

I'm quite sure that the iPhone will be a very successful product for Apple and that the gadget geek technosexuals will find it to be a thoroughly satisfying experience, but that's a different world than the one I live in.

-- Jack Krupansky

Are you a technosexual?

I've always been baffled as to why so many people were so enamored with the Apple Mac and iPod, but now I've found the answer: I'm not a technosexual. According to the Wikipedia, a technosexual is:

A person (usually a male) with a strong aesthetic sense and a love of gadgets. In this sense, it is a portmanteau word combining "technophile" and "metrosexual", which was first promoted by creative professional Ricky Montalvo^[1] to describe "a dandyish narcissist in love with not only himself, but also his urban lifestyle and gadgets; a straight man who is in touch with his feminine side but has fondness for electronics such as cell phones, PDAs, computers, software, and the web."^[2]

I have absolutely zero aesthetic sense or even tolerance of aesthetics and I am usually offended by much of what is passed as "aesthetics" and the thought that people should be forced to pay extra for it, and I am attracted to gadgets only if and when they have significant utility for me. Mere mention of the word "style" makes me cringe. I have only two devices, this two-year old notebook PC and a five-year old Sony/Palm PDA. They work for me, they perform useful functions, so I keep them. I don't even have a cell phone (actually, I have a work phone, but usually it stays hidden away in my backpack) or a wristwatch or TV or DVR. For the most part, I consider devices to be an annoyance and certainly not an object of "desire." I frequently "fantasize" about replacing my PDA with a stack of 3x5 index cards and I cringe at the thought of lugging even a lightweight notebook computer around.

I am definitely not a "technosexual" and most certainly am not attracted to whatever they might be attracted to.

Sigh. (That's a sigh of exasperation, not desire!)

At least I now know the name of this insidious form of dysfunctionality.

My apologies to the technosexuals of the world: you're just not my type.

-- Jack Krupansky

Another Blog Break?

I have longs lists of topics I want to blog about and even more ideas in my head and encounter many more as each day passes by, but I'm finding that I have less and less energy to blog at all and start feeling that time spent blogging is taking me too far away from "real" life. I might be getting ready for another "blog break."

I work long hours during the week and have like zero energy to blog in the evenings. So, my blogging is almost exclusively during the weekends. But even now, after I get a few posts done, I simply feel exhausted.

On Tuesday I head to New York City for a week of "vacation." I'll probably take my notebook PC for email and a little web browsing, but I don't anticipate doing much blogging at all even though I'm sure I'll have plenty of fascinating stuff that I could blog about. We'll see. It may depend on whether the Internet access is free in my hotel room. My hotel is near the New York Public Library, so I can probably get free Internet access there if the hotel insists on charging me a "reasonable" fee.

I suspect that a prolonged "blog break" is less important than simply taking a little time out to review your blogging goals and reaffirm why you are blogging in the first place and what you really want to achieve over the coming six months. "Blogging for the sake of blogging" is probably a waste of time.

-- Jack Krupansky

Does wordsmithing really matter for blog posts?

Most people do a fairly credible job of wordsmithing their blog posts, with decent grammar, few misspellings, reasonable punctuation, and readable formatting, but I see quite a few blog posts where sloppiness is the rule rather than the exception, and from people who should know better, but the real question is whether such wordsmithing really matters much at all.

If a blogger has something interesting (or salacious) to say, people will want to read it regardless of the sloppiness of the wordsmithing. It is as if some people simply do not care, even though they must know that such sloppiness comes across as amateurish and decidedly unprofessional.

I try to do my best in this area, but alas, I am no "English geek."

This brings me back to the headline question: Does wordsmithing of blog posts matter much at all.

Part of me wants to say "Yes", but the practical part of me says "Apparently not."

-- Jack Krupansky