We spend lots of time trying to forget in different ways

Waterlily

Salmijärvi

These photographs were taken a week ago at Salmi, which is in the northwest corner of Nuuksio wilderness, showing lake Salmijärvi which is rather shallow at this end, and the water is full of various water plants such as waterlily.

Are you using Feedly? It has become a popular alternative to Google Reader which was shut down during the summer. I migrated to Feedly, and despite some awkwardness here and there, Feedly has been a competent replacement to Reader. I'm following 312 RSS feeds which are divided into 12 categories.

Recently Feedly launched Feedly Pro, and this generated somewhat heated discussion.

Some felt that features of the Pro version should be available in the free version. And others felt that the cost ($5/month) is quite too much. In any case, Feedly sold out in a one-time only deal the available 5,000 "lifetime" Pro accounts in eight hours, even though the price was set at $99. Rather nice chunk of money for investing in additional hardware, development, etc.

Of course, it remains to be seen what "lifetime" means here, and how well Feedly is able to deliver promises of improvements in the service.

I'm not sure whether I made a good decision, but I bought one of the 5,000 Pro accounts, mainly because of the search functionality. The search has helped me already to find a valuable news item I remembered seeing but not precisely where. Given how much I'm using Feedly for work-related information gathering and personal hobbies etc., Feedly has become valuable to me indeed. However, Feedly search is rather slow currently. I hope it gets better with code optimization and scalable hardware.

(Posting title is from the poem The Feed by M.L. Smoker.)

Flickr vs. Google Plus - what is the deal?

Vine

Ferns

Dry

Amanita

Colors

Pond

Despite some small glitches occasionally, I have been satisfied with Flickr for storing my photographs online. I have used Flickr for storage, not much else. And the price suits me well.

I have bought a Flickr pro account for two years for less than 2 USD per month, that is hard to beat. For that I get unlimited uploads, storage and bandwidth which is the main thing for me. (Plus I'm ad-free.)

However, now Google is getting into the game with Google Plus - they have integrated Picasa Web Albums there. Some seem to love this.

But I have almost 20,000 photographs at Flickr, which means about 80 GB of storage needed. For 20 USD per year I would get 80 GB of storage from Google, and for 50 USD I would get 200 GB. So, currently Flickr is rather nice in pricing compared to Google, at least when you have lots of photographs.

But anyway, that is rather theoretical, as moving the photographs from Flickr to Picasa Web Albums would break all existing links to photographs here at Light Scrape. But if price is not a deal-maker are there some other advantages to using Google? Better integration with Blogger?

But anyway. I'm not really getting the point of Google Plus. Clearly Google wants to get a similar thing going as Facebook has right now. But are they able to something better? It doesn't seem so.

Of the social media platforms Twitter is the only that seems moderately useful, at least to some work-related stuff. Best of all, it has a more open attitude to third-party developers, and that is why it can be used for things that other platforms don't easily allow.

And then there is LinkedIn which is tolerable for work-related networking. But Facebook, it is a strange beast I can't grasp at all.

Why is Google targeting Facebook - or is there something really clever going on that I haven't noticed? Paul Lester posted some thoughts about Google Plus, which generated a nice discussion.

But still, I don't get it. I do have an Google Plus account, thanks to a colleague who sent me an invitation, but I just can't see the usefulness of it.

By the way, Paul also posted a nice farewell message to Cedric, who is closing his excellent blog. It wasn't often that he posted, but they were the more thoughtful and thought-provoking for it. Fare well!

Lake views

Shore, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Pier, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Snow, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Birches, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Here are four photographs from two different lakes, taken today while getting some exercise. The weather is getting colder. Today there was a biting wind which made it tough in wide open spaces. But still, it is good to have snow, it makes the landscape feel so light.

By the way, the New York Times discussed today the matter of Google generation a.k.a. digital natives, in an article titled Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction: "Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning. [...] Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention."

As I wrote earlier, this is an important and interesting topic. Are we getting dumber, and the young people most of all?

Thoughts on skimming

Stop, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Windows, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

School, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Here are some photographs taken today. I spent too much time in a car.

Thanks for the comments on skimming, that is, the behaviour of "Google generation". Before yesterday, I hadn't really looked at the Google Analytics statistics of this site, and it was interesting to ponder them.

By the way, these definitions of skimming are what I was aiming for: 1. To move or pass swiftly and lightly over or near a surface; glide. 2. To give a quick and superficial reading, scrutiny, or consideration; glance: skimmed through the newspaper.

Coming back to the Google Analytics statistics of this site, 22.2% of all visits come from visitors who did more than 200 visits here during the last month. That is quite a lot of activity. There seems to be a "fat tail" of visitors who come here regularly. Of course, another matter is whether these statistics can be trusted at all.

On the other hand, my Finnish language blog is visited quite seldom, and that is quite natural as it is my notebook of observations, for example of books I have read, and not written to engage the audience. However, on that blog there is now a steady stream of visitors with very specific information in mind, namely book titles and authors. Usually they don't spend much time on the site - a couple of seconds - but sometimes they really dig deeply into the postings.

I did some more reading on "Google generation", a.k.a. "digital natives", that is those of us who grew up using the net. Earlier this year there was an interesting conference titled emtacl10, and in the keynote presentations there were little gems here and there, short summaries of key topics. Here are some:

• the web has become a global laboratory for communication and sharing
  
• community is the new content
  
• specialization: do what you do
  
• in an environment of scarce attention high transaction costs equals low/no availability?
  
• the Internet makes everything available, but mere availability is meaningless if the products remain unknown to potential buyers
  
• data designed for appropriation
  
• a widespread change in behaviour takes 5-10 years to become mainstream
  
• open education - the idea that the world's knowledge is a public good and that the Web provides an opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge
  
• find, reuse, remix
  

We are living in a time of change. But hasn't it been always like that?

Skimming - and why everything has to be social

Kajaani, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Helsinki, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Crossing, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Lake, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Night, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Car, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Here are some photographs from yesterday and today - one from snowy Kajaani, one from moist Helsinki, and four from Vantaa.

Today I listened to David Nicholas lecturing on the "Google generation", or on the topic whether the net is dumbing (all of) us down. Young people don't spend time at web sites, they skip (or maybe the word is skim) from one place to another, reading no more that 1-3 pages at one site.

Update: you find the program of the event here - it is mostly in Finnish, though.

And they always expect to see signs of visitors or personalization, such as "25 comments" or "Recommended to you because of your X".

The social aspect is especially interesting. Young people trust their Facebook (etc.) friends more than research articles. I guess this is a kind of filtering effect because of information overload. However, I do hope doctors are not following this trend in their profession... (Nicholas hinted that this may actually be the case.)

If a site doesn't have any social aspects, it is "silent", like a church, and the web users don't like that. There has to be signs of previous visits. "The Google generation" likes company, and the wisdom of the crowd is the best they know.

Also, Nicholas say, we all are "Google generation". All of us are changing similarly, although the young are changing the most.

However, despite the skipping and skimming, there is a part of the crowd which is being enabled in a dramatic way. They know how to use the web, and they also know when to focus on a topic. They are the (rare) elite of the Google generation, those who have the ability to read a book once in a while.

Well, all in all, it was an interesting speech, as perhaps only the English can do it. You have a feeling that some people have a gift which captivates the listener whatever they say. This may also have something to do with the classically educated English accent - a pleasure to listen to.

This skimming/skipping is also visible here at Light Scrape. Usually there are 1-2 page views per visit, sometimes 2.5 pages or so. And typically one visit lasts 1-2 minutes, occasionally a bit more. However, during a rare day some time ago the average time on site was 6 min 5 seconds - I don't know why. On the average, there are 150-200 visits per day, sometimes a bit more. I don't know how many of these visits are made by robots, though. Does someone know the internals of Google analytics, what is counted and what isn't?