Two weeks ago, I wrote about deactivating my Facebook account, as well as Instagram, to reclaim some time and cut distraction from “social” networks that were not adding any enhancement to my life. I kept a Twitter account active and also kept the LinkedIn app installed on my iPhone. Then I installed the Tumblr app so I could use it as a link blog and catch-all since I did not want to relegate my web site to that task. ...

I want to buy the new Wolfenstein game. That’s want, not need. However, I don’t want to spend the money on it right now, because there are better things to spend my money on, and I know what would happen if I purchased it. It would not run well at maximum graphics settings on my current computer, so I would feel the need to upgrade components and thereby spend more money. In addition, I would be hard pressed to find time to play it, and I would end up not finishing the game and feel even worse about wasting money. ...

Over on Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow posted about the Adobe Creative Cloud outage: “As Adobe Creative Suite struggles with its license-server outage, stranding creative professionals around the world without a way of earning their living, a timely reminder: a cloud computer is a computer you’re only allowed to use if the phone company and a DRM-peddling giant like Adobe gives you permission, and they can withdraw that permission at any time.” I typically find Cory to be very insightful. I think he has a point here, but misses another point. True, renting cloud servers and applications, particularly ones that rely on DRM and license servers, is putting yourself and your money at the mercy of another person or corporation where you have little to no control short of taking your money somewhere else. I understand that he is speaking narrowly of renting cloud software versus purchasing licensed software to install directly on a computer that you own (although with Adobe’s phone-home licensing, this would still be an issue if you lose Internet connectivity enough when attempting to use their products). ...

I deactivated my Facebook account at the beginning of April with the intent of taking only the month off as a sort of social media break. I also deactivated my Instagram account (it may as well be Facebook Photos). The only account that I kept active was Twitter, but I did my best to ignore it as often as possible. It’s ironic that I feel so loathe to delete the Twitter account altogether, but I also do not want to keep it active. I dislike the feeling of having a random open account just sitting out there on the Internet. It also makes it much easier to fall back into the habit of using it when it is there. So that is what addiction feels like. ;) ...

When the arctic air sets in for a week at a stretch, the body decides that staying indoors and curling up in the warmth of a blanket is the best course of action to survive the onslaught of the disagreeable elements. However, as a normal human being, the mind begins to wander as being trapped within the confines of brick and mortar, there is precious little to slow the onset of the the dreaded “cabin fever”. ...

Dave Winer on the next evolution of “sharing”: It’s pretty obvious what comes next, via extrapolation—from past turns of the wheel in software. What comes next is an easy way for the generation of people who grew up on Facebook to create their own social networks, accessible only by the people they want to share it with. A somewhat easier to use version of what AWS is today will be the platform. ...

The beauty of the Internet is that it can open doors to content that in years past would have been inaccessible and perhaps permanently unavailable to large segments of the world’s population. The TED conference is one of the many doors that has been opened to the world at large. What began as an exclusive conference for thought leaders in many fields of study has grown in to a multi-faceted organization with numerous events that attract everyone from industry moguls to tech hobbyists and expert scientists to cabaret musicians Thanks to the TED Talks videos being made available online, we can share in the profound insights and genius of an engaged culture of humanity that continues to think inside and outside the box in a forum where we share because we want to make a difference in the world. ...

Back in the data center, the Linux operating system runs on a majority of my servers, but as Miguel de Icaza puts it, Linux just never managed to cross the desktop chasm. Even with others like myself attempting to adopt Linux full-time on the desktop, there are so many pain points that a normal user would be hard pressed to last 15 minutes on the platform before giving up. Miguel’s is yet another switcher story (YASS?) is a recent spate of them, but it struck a chord with me as I wrote about my experience as a Linux systems administrator in the Apple world yesterday. ...

One of the more notable Apple, Inc. marketing slogans is “It just works.” While the slogan was used to market Mac OS X, many users have found that it is apropos to most Apple products and services. A contributing factor for the “just works” trait of Apple’s technology is the focus on user experience first. I previously wrote about user experience and removing user annoyances, and this really gets to the heart of the matter for me. I am a Linux expert and systems administrator by day. However, when my work day is complete, I am a user of technology at home, and as an end user of technology, the last thing I want to do when my work is complete is come home and do more work, so I have a requirement that any technology I use as a consumer and creator in my home must “just work”. Not only must the technology work with minimal interruption, but it must also fit into my workflow that I have developed over the years. In my case, that workflow is heavily Mac-centric. The reason for this is that my first Mac jump started my creativity, and I’ve become accustomed to the tools and processes that came about as a result of my working on a tool that got out of the way and allowed me to create things. ...

Kevin Ashton published a breakdown of the manufacturing of a can of Coca-Cola and in the process manages to wax poetic about globalization. The number of individuals who know how to make a can of Coke is zero. The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero. This famously American product is not American at all. Invention and creation is something we are all in together. Modern tool chains are so long and complex that they bind us into one people and one planet. They are not only chains of tools, they are also chains of minds: local and foreign, ancient and modern, living and dead — the result of disparate invention and intelligence distributed over time and space. ...