January 3, 2012
It’s almost here. Facebook Timeline is about to hit your screen (presuming that you’re an FB user) and as of anytime soon your Facebook experience is going to feel as though someone fiddled around with your well ordered and very familiar FB interface.
That and the fact that pretty much everyone who’s anyone (read: not internet savvy) is going to fall apart at the seams the minute they hit their Facebook accounts and discover that something incredibly horrible has happened to their homepage.
If you’re one of those people, be still your beating hearts. It was meant to happen. Facebook fully intend for you to wake up and collapse in shock, partly due to the impact of finding your FB account so damn messed up (that you thought your kids had gotten into your account and played around) and … and … in part due to the flashbacks you’re absolutely going to suffer from the last time the FB powers-that-be decided to mess around with your virtual world.
Remember when they decided to change your news feed? Recovered from that little débâcle yet?
Thought not.
Welcome (then) to the world of online evolution. Because, in a nutshell, that’s what the Facebook Timeline feature is all about. It’s (honestly) not so much about upsetting the entire virtual world so much as it’s about defining what Facebook always wanted itself to be – an accessible online space that’s all about … you.
You you you you … you.
Timeline is supposed to represent the good, the cool, the fun and the happening, all the stuff that you want to share with the rest of the world. And, if you’re that way minded, all the stuff you’d rather not share too. Think of Timeline as you would a resume. Only you include the stuff that would normally put a prospective employer off.
Which leads me away from you internet noobs and right around to the internet savvy – the hardcore (and not so hardcore) IM’ers – or Internet Marketers (to the uninitiated). Some appear to think that being able to get Facebook Timeline up and running is like being offered some kind of back door access to social networking heaven.
In truth it’s not. First of all you need to keep it current. Second of all you need to remember that every time you post something onto your feed, something else gets knocked off below it. That leaves your ‘subscribers’ *smiles* with the need to do a bit of donkey-work – if they’re interested enough to know what you did last night. Yesterday. Last summer.
Personally I think it’s all good fun. It is a bit hard to acclimatize to at first glance. Hell even a weeks worth of glancing at it makes it look a bit too in-your-face for my liking. However, it is happening and every user is going to find themselves faced with a whole new history-related interface (if not their own, someone elses) as of the weeks ahead. And you have one of two choices – dive right in and learn what it’s all about and have fun with yours, or go and find something else to do. Like … I don’t know … interact with real people.
Instead of whiling away your time on the social network site of the century or, even worse … decorating your Facebook Timeline ’til the cows come home.
December 15, 2011
A little over a year ago, Google bike maps became yet another layer added to the search engine’s mapping system. Likely that there was a good deal of whooping and joyous celebration from the mountain biking/outdoor sports brigade. At least – I should hope so, based upon the fact that Google actually had to put considerable time and effort into adding this extremely useful facility into their already impressive mapping application.
Of course they didn’t do it alone, having had to work in partnership with the Rails To Trails Conservancy organization, as well as listen to their user base and refine the trails and bike routes according to user feedback. On the face of it, it was an enormous task, and one year on it’s a popular method of searching for viable bike trails all around the US.
The biggest bug-bear (for some) when using Google bike trails is the UGC aspect – or, to the non-internet savvy, the user-generated-content feature. Allowing users a high level of autonomy can be more than a little counter productive, more so because there isn’t an easy solution when it comes to moderating what’s being uploaded by individual biking enthusiasts. On the other hand, an avid mountain biker isn’t going to add useless information to the mapping system, simply because it renders a map users enjoyment null and void.
At least – I’d like to think that people have a little bit more about them than to misdirect and endanger others just for the fun of it.
I’ve used the bike maps for trail rides in and around my home town, not to mention the times when I’ve gone out of state. Although I don’t claim to be an avid outdoors kinda guy, I like mountain biking enough that I can tell whether a ‘shared’ trail is full of dumb annotations, or not. Anyone that can follow a map would know the difference between good and bad info, besides which the minute the likes of me or my fellow mountain bikers ride a trail that just doesn’t cut it, we’re hardly going to sit back and let it go are we?
Back before the mapping app included all the bike trails, it was one of the most requested ‘come on Google, we gotta have it’ features, and now that it’s here, I’d say that it works just fine. Google bike trails ‘as is’ still need more work – there’s gotta be thousands of miles not yet loaded up. I’m in CT, and I know that in my state alone there’s plenty of trails not yet connected into the software. If you (as an example) ask the map for biking directions between Vernon and Manchester, you’re gonna get a kind of half-route.
That said, some places just don’t have bike trails worthy of sharing on the map, or they simply don’t exist. The point of the whole venture (though) was to provide cyclists with safe/interesting bike lanes, trails and pathways and on the whole, that’s exactly what Google bike maps has done. It’s still a relatively new feature and hasn’t yet spread around the map in the global sense. Judging on what I’ve seen so far, and the fact that you can annotate different routes (even input them if they’re not already in the system) benefits the long-term outlook for current and future users.
If you’re planning on using the mapping app for a bike ride any time soon, and it’s the first time you’ve gotten around to using it, just remember the following pointers before you saddle up and head out:
- check the satellite and/or Google Earth version for clarity. Routes change, places become inaccessible etc – make sure that you can get from A to B before you set off!
- take a notebook with you, especially if you’re hitting a good and lengthy trail. You can take notes of where the map route differs from the reality, and annotate, save to ‘my maps’ and then share your ‘map’ with the public
One last thing – Google bike maps remains in its beta format. Until it’s out of the beta phase, it’s gonna be a bit of a bumpy ride here and there. That’s what beta phases are for – ironing out the lumps, testing the system, finding the glitches or, in this case, the dead ends.