Says the founder:

Sigh. See also. And also. I guess the lazyweb gave me what I asked for...

If I had time to talk to people at work, I'd pick up the phone or answer their emails. (OK, maybe I wouldn't pick up the phone. But still.) I don't need an even easier instant communication channel for "PR professionals" to abuse.

'Cause let's be honest: In the majority of cases, that's who would use this to contact me right now. My email address and phone number are posted out in the clear on the websites of both mags I edit, for anyone to use—and maybe one out of every 100 outside emails I get on a daily basis is from a real, live human being without a PR agenda. I know: Increasingly, even sending an entire email is too formal for many ordinary humans. But if perceived formality or inconvenience are problems for readers wishing to connect with me, alternate means of communication are already at their disposal that are both less formal and more convenient.

As much as I personally dislike using Twitter as an instant-messaging app, and inasmuch as PR blasts and SEO/social-media con artistry abound on that service, too, it certainly serves the needs of anyone connected enough to have access to a realtime iPhone connectivity app. Not only that, with Twitter, you're allowed to silently separate the conversational wheat from the chaff. The idea of giving PR hacks another conduit to demand attention in realtime, especially in the name of "media accountability" or "customer service," raises my hackles.

Also, maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this just going to be yet another social-media message notification funneled into writers' already choked inboxes? If not, what sort of system will be in place to ensure that writers respond? (And do we really want to set up systems that mandate writers' response to nonsense?) Or is this just another glorified Web 2.0 comm widget?

1. Why is the signup page's security certificate invalid?
2. Is this in fact the Arch Reactor Twitter account? Why so quiet?
3. Why did you decide to hold meetings on Tuesday nights? Ever heard of LOST or V?

But as I noted in the comments, the problem with Curtis' argument can be summed up in two words: data portability.

When files are just databases routed through apps, how do you ensure your data is backed up? What happens if a user-inaccessible database gets corrupted? Pulling everything from databases and manipulating it in-app is great from a design standpoint, but not from a portability standpoint. That approach divorces people from their content and makes them (even more) reliant upon designers to anticipate their needs.

Also, contrary to the multistep process for dealing with files Curtis outlines, with current Windows or Apple computers, all a user really needs to locate is the file; double-click it and it'll (usually) open in the correct app. Right-click and you can see the apps the operating system suggests for it. Drag it to Dropbox or a flash drive and you have a copy. None of those things are terribly difficult.

Facebook entirely deleted my interests this morning. I guess I wasn't moving fast enough for them in transitioning to the new interests-linked-to-Pages system, as I'd been clicking away from the transition page for a few days—'cause I'd been too busy to go through and basically curate a collection of links to Pages for things I'm interested in and/or opt out by copy-pasting my interests over to another field. I had a lot of little things on there—quotes, lists, etc.—and I was trying to decide what to do with it.

So this morning, I finally decided to sit down and deal with the transition—only to find that all of my carefully collected data in that field was gone, gone, gone.

The most ridiculous thing? My fiancé, because he never logs in to Facebook, still has all of his interests and other data completely intact. The system only deleted my data when I decided to comply with its electronic demands for an update.

So you know what? Fuck that shit. I'm still me and my interests are still my interests, but it really upset me to see a collection of data I'd been building on there since 2004 just wiped out.

Basically the only thing left on my profile now is the following:

Edit: I managed to recover my interests list with the Give Me My Data app, per MetaFilter's jocelmeow. But don't think for a second I'll trust Facebook with it again...

Wait, what?

[via Boing Boing]

Sadly, that's exactly what so much of political reporting is these days: Asking the big guys what they think about the other big guys' (and occasional gals') performance, rather than their merits. Which, among other things, is just way too meta. "How do you think [he or she] came off at [his or her] [X] appearance?" "Do you think [he or she] contradicted [him- or herself] when [he or she] said Y?" These questions are so unnecessarily granular, a way to bury us in details at the expense of the big picture. And I suppose, looking again at the bottom line, a way to keep writers getting paid for churning out minuscule little tidbits.

Is all of this "industry" worth it?

That's the subtext of this blog post, which I wrote the night of the 2008 vice-presidential debate. Amid a crowd of microphone- and recorder-wielding professional reporters asking former New York mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani his thoughts on how Sarah Palin had come across in the debate, I'd played my part, wearing a little red blazer and wielding my own little recorder, and gently pushed my way to the middle of the scrum. Then I'd asked what I was later told was a "bush league" question:

It was a gotcha question, to be sure. An artless question, a question lacking in strategy or timeliness. It was all of those things—but it was also a question I genuinely wanted answered. I'd wracked my brain trying to think of something Giuliani could tell me about his support for Palin that I would actually be interested in hearing, and that was it.

He gave me the courtesy of a momentary pause to hear my question—then caught my eye for a moment, squinted balefully, and resumed his talking points. As he moved on, I stood still and let the crowd flow around me.