Category Archives: personal life

iTunes Gift Card on Canadian App Store? (Updated)

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GRRR! :-E

Disappointed by an iTunes gift card

Disappointed by an iTunes gift card

 

[Update, December 27 8:55 pm: I received a reply from Apple:

Dear Alexandre,

Hello my name is Todd and i am happy to assist you. I understand that you would like a refund for your gift card that you purchased without knowing that you couldn't purchase applications unfortunately i am unable to approve a refund because once a Gift Card has been redeemed, it no longer has any value. The store credit on the card has been completely transferred to the account it was redeemed to. I did some research and i came across this link where apple customers go and send feedback about issues they have experienced and I think you may find this informative.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1780613

Thank you Alexandre for choosing iTunes Store and have a great day.

Sincerely,

Todd
iTunes Store Customer Support

please note: I work Thursday - Monday 7AM - 4PM CST

So it seems that the restriction is due to Canadian law. Which makes it even more surprising that none of the documentation available to users in the process of redeeming the code contains no mention of this restriction. I find Apple's lack of attention to this issue a tad bit more troubling in context.]

I’m usually rather levelheaded and I don’t get angry that easily.

Apparently, iTunes gift cards can’t be used on the App Store portion of the Canadian version of the iTunes store. It seems that, in the US, gift cards can in fact be used on the App Store.

This is quite disappointing.

Because of diverse international moves, I currently don’t have access to a valid credit card in my own name. During this time, I’ve noticed a few applications on the iTunes App Store that I would like to purchase but, since I didn’t have a credit card, I couldn’t purchase them. I do have a Canadian Paypal account but the Canadian iTunes doesn’t accept Paypal payments (while the US version of iTunes does). I thought that Paypal was able to provide temporary credit card numbers but it seems that I was mistaken.

So I thought about using an iTunes gift card.

And I started thinking about this as a gift to myself. Not exactly a reward for good behaviour but a “feel good” purchase. I don’t tend to be that much into consumerism but I thought an iTunes gift card would make sense.

So, today, I went to purchase an iTunes gift card for use on the App Store portion of the iTunes Store.

I felt quite good about it. The weather today is bad enough that we are advised to stay home unless necessary. There’s ice all over and the sidewalks are extremely slippery. But I felt good about going to a store to purchase an iTunes gift card. In a way, I was “earning” this card. Exercising a lot of caution, I went to a pharmacy which, I thought, would sell iTunes gift cards. I know that Jean Coutu sells them. Turns out that this smaller pharmacy doesn’t. So I was told to go to a «dépanneur» (convenience store) a bit further, which did have iTunes gift cards. Had I known, I would probably have gone to another convenience store: Laval, like other places in Quebec, has dépanneurs everywhere. Still, since that dépanneur was rather close and is one of the bigger ones in the neighbourhood, I thought I’d go to that one.

And I did find iTunes gift cards. Problem is, the only ones they had were 25$. I would have preferred a 15$ card since I only need a few dollars for the main purchase I want to make on the iTunes App Store. But, given the context, I thought I’d buy the 25$ card. This is pretty much as close as I can get to an “upsell” and I thought about it before doing it. It’s not an impulse purchase since I’ve been planning to get an iTunes gift card for weeks, if not months. But it’s more money than I thought I would spend on iTunes, for a while.

Coming back home, I felt quite good. Not exactly giddy, but I got something close to a slight “consumption rush.” I so irregularly do purchases like these that it was a unique occasion to partake into consumer culture.

As I was doing all this, I was listening to the latest episode of The Word Nerds which is about currency (both linguistic and monetary). It was very difficult to walk but it all felt quite fun. I wasn’t simply running an errand, I was being self-indulgent.

In fact, I went to get French fries at a local greasy spoon, known for its fries. It may be an extreme overstatement but a commenter on Google Maps calls this place “Best Restaurant in North America.” The place was built, very close to my childhood home, the year I was born. It was rebuilt during the year and now looks like a typical Quebec greasy spoon chain. But their fries are still as good as they were before. And since “self-indulgence” was the theme of my afteroon, it all seemed fitting.

Speaking of indulgence, what I wanted to purchase is a game: Enjoy Sudoku. I’ve been playing with the free “Enjoy Sudoku Daily” version for a while. This free version has a number of restrictions that the 2.99$ version doesn’t have. If I had had access to a credit card at the time, I would have purchased the “premium version” right away. And I do use the free version daily, so I’ve been giving this a fair bit of thought in the meantime.

So imagine my deception when, after redeeming my iTunes gift card, I noticed that I wasn’t able to purchase Enjoy Sudoku. The gift certificate amount shows up in iTunes but, when I try to purchase the game, I get a message saying that I need to change my payment information. I tried different things, including redeeming the card again (which obviously didn’t work). I tried with other applications, even though I didn’t really have a second one which I really wanted to buy. I read the fine print on the card itself, on the card’s packaging, and on the Apple website. Couldn’t find any explanation. Through Web searches, I notice that gift card purchases apparently work on the App Store portion of the US iTunes site. Of course, that web forum might be wrong, but it’d be surprising if somebody else hadn’t posted a message denying the possibility to use iTunes gift cards on App Store given the context (a well-known Mac site, a somewhat elaborate discussion, this habit of forum posters and bloggers to pinpoint any kind of issue with Apple or other corporations…).

The legal fine print on the Apple Canada website does have one sentence which could be interpreted to legally cover the restriction of applications from purchases made with the iTunes gift card:

Not all products may be available.

This type of catch-all phrasing is fairly common in legalese and I do understand that it protects Apple from liability over products which cannot be purchased with an iTunes gift card, for whatever reason. But no mention is made of which products might be unavailable for purchase with an iTunes gift card. In fact, the exact same terms are in the fine print for the US version of the iTunes store. While it makes a lot of sense to embed such a statement in legal fine print, making people pay direct attention to this statement may have negative consequences for Apple as it can sound as if iTunes gift cards are unreliable or insufficient.

I eventually found an iTunes FAQ on the Canadian version of Apple support which explicitly mentions this restriction:

What can I buy with an iTunes Gift Card or iTunes Gift Certificate?

iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes Gift Certificates can be used to purchase music, videos and audio books from the iTunes Store. iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes Gift Certificates may not be used on the Canadian store to purchase applications and games. iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes Gift Certificates are not accepted for online Apple Store purchases.

 

(Emphasis mine.)

As clear as can be. Had I known this, I would never have purchased this iTunes gift card. And I do accept this restriction, though it seems quite arbitrary. But I personally find it rather strange that a statement about this restriction is buried in the FAQ instead of being included on the card itself.

The US version of the same FAQ doesn’t mention applications:

What can I buy with an iTunes Gift Card or iTunes Gift Certificate?

iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes Gift Certificates can be used to purchase music, videos, TV shows, and audio books from the iTunes Store. At this time, iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes Gift Certificates are not accepted for online Apple Store purchases.

Since, as far as I know, iTunes gift cards can in fact be used to purchase applications, the omission is interesting. One might assume that application purchases are allowed ”unless stated otherwise.” In fact, another difference between the two statements is quite intriguing: “At this time” iTunes Gift Cards are not accepted for online Apple Store purchases. While it may not mean anything about Apple Store purchases through iTunes cards in the future. But it does imply that they have been thinking about the possibility. As a significant part of Apple’s success has to do with its use of convenient payment systems, this “at this time” quote is rather intriguing.

So I feel rather dejected. Nothing extreme or tragic. But I feel at the same time disappointed and misled. I’ve had diverse experiences with Apple, in the past, some of which were almost epic. But this one is more frustrating, for a variety of reasons.

Sure, “it’s only 25$.” But I can do quite a lot with 25$. Yesterday, I bought two devices for just a bit more than this and I had been considering these purchases for a while. Altogether, the webcam, mouse, and Sudoku Daily were my holiday gifts to myself. Given my financial situation, these are not insignificant, in terms of money. I’ve had very positive experiences which cost much less than 25$, including some cost-free ones but also some reasonably-priced ones.

But it’s really not about the money. It’s partly about the principle: I hate being misled. When I do get misled by advertising, my attitude toward consumerism gets more negative. In this case, I get to think of Apple as representative of the flaws of consumerism. I’ve been a Mac geek since 1987 and I still enjoy Apple products. But I’m no Apple fanboy and occasions like these leave a surprisingly sour taste in my mouth.

The problem is compounded by the fact that Apple’s iTunes is a “closed ecosystem.” I listen respectfully to others who complain about Apple but I typically don’t have much of a problem with this lack of openness. Such a simple issue as not being able to use an iTunes gift card to purchase something on the iTunes App Store is enough to make me think about diverse disadvantages of the iTunes structure.

If it hadn’t been for the restrictive App Store, I could have purchased Enjoy Sudoku directly through Paypal. In fact, the developers already have a Paypal button for donations and I can assume that they’d be fine with selling the native application directly on their site. In the US, I could have purchased the application directly on iTunes with a US Paypal account. In this context, it now seems exceedingly strange that iTunes gift cards would not be usable on the iTunes App Store.

Which brings me back to a sore point with Apple: the company is frequently accused of “hating Canada.” Of course, the sentiment may be associated to Canadian jealousy over our neighbours in the United States. But Apple has done a number of things which have tended to anger Canadians. Perhaps the most obvious example was the fiasco over the Canadian iPhone as Rogers and Fido, Canada’s only cellphone providers for the iPhone, initially created such abusive plans that there was a very public outcry from people who wanted to purchase those cellphones. Rogers later changed its iPhone plans but the harm had been done. Apple may be seen as a victim, in this case, but the fiasco still gave credence to the notion that Apple hates Canada.

Yet this notion isn’t new. I personally remember diverse occasions through which Canadian users of Apple products had specific complaints about how we were treated. Much of the issues had to do with discrepancies over prices or problems with local customer support. And many of these were fairly isolated cases. But isolated incidents appear like a pattern to people if they’re burnt twice by the same flame.

Not that this means I’ll boycott Apple or that I’m likely to take part in one of those class action lawsuits which seem to “fall” on Apple with a certain regularity. But my opinion of Apple is much lower this afternoon than it has been in the past.

I’m sending the following to Apple Canada’s customer service (follow-up: 62621014). Not that I really expect a favourable resolution but I like to go on record about things like these.

I would like to either be credited 25$ for purchases on the App Store section of the iTunes store or reimbursed for this gift card.

I bought a 25$ iTunes gift card specifically to purchase applications on the App Store. The front of the card’s packaging says that I can use it “for music and more.” Nothing on the small print at the back of the packaging or on the card itself says that the card may not be used on the App Store. Even the legal terms of the card have no mention of this restriction:

http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/ca/gifts.html

The only passage of that page which can be understood to cover this exception is the following:

Not all products may be available.

Bringing attention to this sentence may not be a very good strategy as it can imply that some music, videos, and audiobooks are also restricted.

The only explicit and direct mention of this restriction is here, in the support section of the site:

http://www.apple.com/ca/support/itunes/store/giftcard/

What can I buy with an iTunes Gift Card or iTunes Gift Certificate?

iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes Gift Certificates can be used to purchase music, videos and audio books from the iTunes Store. iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes Gift Certificates may not be used on the Canadian store to purchase applications and games.

Gender and Culture

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A friend sent me a link to the following video:

JC Penney: Beware of the Doghouse | Creativity Online.

In that video, a man is “sent to the doghouse” (a kind of prison for insensitive men) because he offered a vacuum cleaner to his wife. It’s part of a marketing campaign through which men are expected to buy diamonds to their wives and girlfriends.

The campaign is quite elaborate and the main website for the campaign makes interesting uses of social media.

For instance, that site makes use of Facebook Connect as a way to tap viewers’ online social network. FC is a relatively new feature (the general release was last week) and few sites have been putting it to the test. In this campaign’s case, a woman can use her Facebook account to connect to her husband or boyfriend and either send him a warning about his insensitivity to her needs (of diamonds) or “put him in the doghouse.” From a social media perspective, it can accurately be described as “neat.”

The site also uses Share This to facilitate the video‘s diffusion  through various social media services, from WordPress.com to Diigo. This tends to be an effective strategy to encourage “viral marketing.” (And, yes, I fully realize that I actively contribute to this campaign’s “viral spread.”)

The campaign could be a case study in social marketing.

But, this time, I’m mostly thinking about gender.

Simply put, I think that this campaign would fare rather badly in Quebec because of its use of culturally inappropriate gender stereotypes.

As I write this post, I receive feedback from Swedish ethnomusicologist Maria Ljungdahl who shares some insight about gender stereotypes. As Maria says, the stereotypes in this ad are “global.” But my sense is that these “global stereotypes” are not that compatible with local culture, at least among Québécois (French-speaking Quebeckers).

See, as a Québécois born and raised as a (male) feminist, I tend to be quite gender-conscious. I might even say that my gender awareness may be somewhat above the Québécois average and gender relationships are frequently used in definitions of Québécois identity.

In Québécois media, advertising campaigns portraying men as naïve and subservient have frequently been discussed. Ten or so years ago, these portrayals were a hot topic (searches for Brault & Martineau, Tim Hortons, and Un gars, une fille should eventually lead to appropriate evidence). Current advertising campaigns seem to me more subtle in terms of male figures, but careful analysis would be warranted as discussions of those portrayals are more infrequent than they have been in the past.

That video and campaign are, to me, very US-specific. Because I spent a significant amount of time in Indiana, Massachusetts, and Texas, my initial reaction while watching the video had more to do with being glad that it wasn’t the typical macrobrewery-style sexist ad. This reaction also has to do with the context for my watching that video as I was unclear as to the gender perspective of the friend who sent me the link (a male homebrewer from the MidWest currently living in Texas).

By the end of the video, however, I reverted to my Québécois sensibility. I also reacted to the obvious commercialism, partly because one of my students has been working on engagement rings in our material culture course.

But my main issue was with the presumed insensitivity of men.

Granted, part of this is personal. I define myself as a “sweet and tendre man” and I’m quite happy about my degree of sensitivity, which may in fact be slightly higher than average, even among Québécois. But my hunch is that this presumption of male insensitivity may not have very positive effects on the perception of such a campaign. Québécois watching this video may not groan but they may not find it that funny either.

There’s a generational component involved and, partly because of a discussion of writing styles in a generational perspective, I have been thinking about “generations” as a useful model for explaining cultural diversity to non-ethnographers.

See, such perceived generational groups as “Baby Boomers” and “Generation X” need not be defined as monolithic, monadic, bounded entities and they have none of the problems associated with notions of “ethnicity” in the general public. “Generations” aren’t “faraway tribes” nor do they imply complete isolation. Some people may tend to use “generational” labels in such terms that they appear clearly defined (“Baby Boomers are those individuals born between such and such years”). And there is some confusion between this use of “historical generations” and what the concept of “generation” means in, say, the study of kinship systems. But it’s still relatively easy to get people to think about generations in cultural terms: they’re not “different cultures” but they still seem to be “culturally different.”

Going back to gender… The JC Penney marketing campaign visibly lumps together people of different ages. The notion seems to be that doghouse-worthy male insensitivity isn’t age-specific or related to inexperience. The one man who was able to leave the doghouse based on his purchase of diamonds is relatively “age-neutral” as he doesn’t really seem to represent a given age. Because this attempt at crossing age divisions seems so obvious, I would assume that it came in the context of perceived differences in gender relationships. Using the logic of those who perceive the second part of the 20th Century as a period of social emancipation, one might presume that younger men are less insensitive than older men (who were “brought up” in a cultural context which was “still sexist”). If there are wide differences in the degree of sensitivity of men of different ages, a campaign aiming at a broad age range needs to diminish the importance of these differences. “The joke needs to be funny to men of all ages.”

The Quebec context is, I think, different. While we do perceive the second part of the 20th Century (and, especially, the 1970s) as a period of social emancipation (known as the “Quiet Revolution” or «Révolution Tranquille»), the degree of sensitivity to gender issues appears to be relatively level, across the population. At a certain point in time, one might have argued that older men were still insensitive (at the same time as divorcées in their forties might have been regarded as very assertive) but it seems difficult to make such a distinction in the current context.

All this to say that the JC Penney commercial is culturally inappropriate for Québécois society? Not quite. Though the example I used was this JC Penney campaign, I’m thinking about broader contexts for Québécois identity (for a variety of personal reasons, including the fact that I have been back in Québec for several months, now).

My claim is…

Ethnographic field research would go a long way to unearth culturally appropriate categories which might eventually help marketers cater to Québécois.

Of course, the agency which produced that JC Penney ad (Saatchi & Saatchi) was targeting the US market (JC Penney doesn’t have locations in Quebec) and I received the link through a friend in the US. But it was an interesting opportunity for me to think and write about a few issues related to the cultural specificity of gender stereotypes.

The Issue Is Respect

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As a creative generalist, I don’t tend to emphasize expert status too much, but I do see advantages in complementarity between people who act in different spheres of social life. As we say in French, «à chacun son métier et les vaches seront bien gardées» (“to each their own profession and cows will be well-kept”).

The diversity of skills, expertise, and interest is especially useful when people of different “walks of life” can collaborate with one another. Tolerance, collegiality, dialogue. When people share ideas, the potential is much greater if their ideas are in fact different. Very simple principle, which runs through anthropology as the study of human diversity (through language, time, biology, and culture).

The problem, though, is that people from different “fields” tend not to respect one another’s work. For instance, a life scientist and a social scientist often have a hard time understanding one another because they simply don’t respect their interlocutor’s discipline. They may respect each other as human beings but they share a distrust as to the very usefulness of the other person’s field.

Case in point: entomologist Paul R. Ehrlich, who spoke at the Seminar About Long Term Thinking (SALT) a few weeks ago.

The Long Now Blog » Blog Archive » Paul Ehrlich, “The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment”

Ehrlich seems to have a high degree of expertise in population studies and, in that SALT talk, was able to make fairly interesting (though rather commonplace) statements about human beings. For instance, he explicitly addressed the tendency, in mainstream media, to perceive genetic determinism where it has no place. Similarly, his discussion about the origins and significance of human language was thoughtful enough that it could lead other life scientists to at least take a look at language.

What’s even more interesting is that Ehrlich realizes that social sciences can be extremely useful in solving the environmental issues which concern him the most. As we learn during the question period after this talk, Ehrlich is currently talking with some economists. And, contrary to business professors, economists participate very directly in the broad field of social sciences.

All of this shows quite a bit of promise, IMVHAWISHIMVVVHO. But the problem has to do with respect, it seems.

Now, it might well be that Ehrlich esteems and respects his economist colleagues. Their methods may be sufficiently compatible with his that he actually “hears what they’re saying.” But he doesn’t seem to “extend this courtesy” to my own highly esteemed colleagues in ethnographic disciplines. Ehrlich simply doesn’t grok the very studies which he states could be the most useful for him.

There’s a very specific example during the talk but my point is broader. When that specific issue was revealed, I had already been noticing an interdisciplinary problem. And part of that problem was my own.

Ehrlich’s talk was fairly entertaining, although rather unsurprising in the typical “doom and gloom” exposé to which science and tech shows have accustomed us. Of course, it was fairly superficial on even the points about which Ehrlich probably has the most expertise. But that’s expected of this kind of popularizer talk. But I started reacting quite negatively to several of his points when he started to make the kinds of statements which make any warm-blooded ethnographer cringe. No, not the fact that his concept of “culture” is so unsophisticated that it could prevent a student of his from getting a passing grade in an introductory course in cultural anthropology. But all sorts of comments which clearly showed that his perspective on human diversity is severely restricted. Though he challenges some ideas about genetic determinism, Ehrlich still holds to a form of reductionism which social scientists would associate with scholars who died before Ehrlich was born.

So, my level of respect for Ehrlich started to fade, with each of those half-baked pronouncments about cultural diversity and change.

Sad, I know. Especially since I respect every human being equally. But it doesn’t mean that I respect all statements equally. As is certainly the case for many other people, my respect for a person’s pronouncements may diminish greatly if those words demonstrate a lack of understanding of something in which I have a relatively high degree of expertise. In other words, a heart surgeon could potentially listen to a journalist talk about “cultural evolution” without blinking an eye but would likely lose “intellectual patience” if, in the same piece, the journalist starts to talk about heart diseases. And this impatience may retroactively carry over to the discussion about “cultural evolution.” As we tend to say in the ethnography of communication, context is the thing.

And this is where I have to catch myself. It’s not because Ehrlich made statements about culture which made him appear clueless that what he said about the connections between population and environment is also clueless. I didn’t, in fact, start perceiving his points about ecology as misled for the very simple reason that we have been saying the same things, in ethnographic disciplines. But that’s dangerous: selectively accepting statements because they reinforce what you already know. Not what academic work is supposed to be about.

In fact, there was something endearing about Ehrlich. He may not understand the study of culture and he doesn’t seem to have any training in the study of society, but at least he was trying to understand. There was even a point in his talk when he something which would be so obvious to any social scientist that I could have gained a new kind of personal respect for Ehrlich’s openness, if it hadn’t been for his inappropriate statements about culture.

The saddest part is about dialogue. If a social scientist is to work with Ehrlich and she reacts the same way I did, dialogue probably won’t be established. And if Ehrlich’s attitude toward epistemological approaches different from his own are represented by the statements he made about ethnography, chances are that he will only respect those of my social science colleagues who share his own reductionist perspective.

It should be obvious that there’s an academic issue, here, in terms of inter-disciplinarity. But there’s also a personal issue. In my own life, I don’t want to restrict myself to conversations with people who think the same way I do.

Crazy App Idea: Happy Meter

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I keep getting ideas for apps I’d like to see on Apple’s App Store for iPod touch and iPhone. This one may sound a bit weird but I think it could be fun. An app where you can record your mood and optionally broadcast it to friends. It could become rather sophisticated, actually. And I think it can have interesting consequences.

The idea mostly comes from Philippe Lemay, a psychologist friend of mine and fellow PDA fan. Haven’t talked to him in a while but I was just thinking about something he did, a number of years ago (in the mid-1990s). As part of an academic project, Philippe helped develop a PDA-based research program whereby subjects would record different things about their state of mind at intervals during the day. Apart from the neatness of the data gathering technique, this whole concept stayed with me. As a non-psychologist, I personally get the strong impression that recording your moods frequently during the day can actually be a very useful thing to do in terms of mental health.

And I really like the PDA angle. Since I think of the App Store as transforming Apple’s touch devices into full-fledged PDAs, the connection is rather strong between Philippe’s work at that time and the current state of App Store development.

Since that project of Philippe’s, a number of things have been going on which might help refine the “happy meter” concept.

One is that “lifecasting” became rather big, especially among certain groups of Netizens (typically younger people, but also many members of geek culture). Though the lifecasting concept applies mostly to video streams, there are connections with many other trends in online culture. The connection with vidcasting specifically (and podcasting generally) is rather obvious. But there are other connections. For instance, with mo-, photo-, or microblogging. Or even with all the “mood” apps on Facebook.

Speaking of Facebook as a platform, I think it meshes especially well with touch devices.

So, “happy meter” could be part of a broader app which does other things: updating Facebook status, posting tweets, broadcasting location, sending personal blogposts, listing scores in a Brain Age type game, etc.

Yet I think the “happy meter” could be useful on its own, as a way to track your own mood. “Turns out, my mood was improving pretty quickly on that day.” “Sounds like I didn’t let things affect me too much despite all sorts of things I was going through.”

As a mood-tracker, the “happy meter” should be extremely efficient. Because it’s easy, I’m thinking of sliders. One main slider for general mood and different sliders for different moods and emotions. It would also be possible to extend the “entry form” on occasion, when the user wants to record more data about their mental state.

Of course, everything would be save automatically and “sent to the cloud” on occasion. There could be a way to selectively broadcast some slider values. The app could conceivably send reminders to the user to update their mood at regular intervals. It could even serve as a “break reminder” feature. Though there are limitations on OSX iPhone in terms of interapplication communication, it’d be even neater if the app were able to record other things happening on the touch device at the same time, such as music which is playing or some apps which have been used.

Now, very obviously, there are lots of privacy issues involved. But what social networking services have taught us is that users can have pretty sophisticated notions of privacy management, if they’re given the chance. For instance, adept Facebook users may seem to indiscrimately post just about everything about themselves but are often very clear about what they want to “let out,” in context. So, clearly, every type of broadcasting should be controlled by the user. No opt-out here.

I know this all sounds crazy. And it all might be a very bad idea. But the thing about letting my mind wander is that it helps me remain happy.

Thirty-Six Years Ago

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Total eclipse of the Sun.

List of solar eclipses – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It was also a very impressive thunderstorm. Some belief systems associate special powers to people born under such circumstances. Such a dramatic birth is an omen, some people say.

Haven’t received Britannica’s On This Day for July 10, yet. But the Wikipedia version has some neat tidbits. Including the births of Marcel Proust, Jessica Simpson, Nikola Tesla, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Carl Orff, Adolphus Busch, Béla Fleck, Jean Chauvin, and Jacky Cheung.

My guess is that Britannica will mention the Bahamas independence, the Louis XVI war declaration, the establishment of Vichy government, the birth of Calvin, and the Noriega sentencing.

As a Canadian, there’s a number of pieces of Canadiana associated with July 10 (as with any day).

My Blogging Life

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Phew!

I just finished what might be one of my longest blogposts, ever:

PHP #1: Austin, TX (USA) « The Compulsive Pedestrian

I guess I had a lot to say… 8-)
It’s on a new topical blog I created. That blog deals with what I now like to call “carfree living.” I was originally calling this “carless living” but “carfree” sounds better, for obvious reasons. ;-)

I’ve been using that blog to talk about places that I know and that I perceive to be pedestrian-friendly or pedestrian-hostile. Hopefully, some people will connect to some of what I say about those places and eventually leave me comments. (Hint, hint! :-D )

Actually, I’ve been receiving a decent number of comments through my blogs, recently. In fact, one blogpost became something of a forum thread, thanks in part to Carl Dyke who recently became a blogger. I “met” Carl on the anthro group blog Savage Minds, where Kerim Friedman and others have expressed their desire for more connections between anthro-friendly blogs.

For reasons which might not be entirely surprising, my blogpost comparing Texan and Albertan cities is getting a decent level of attention, especially from Edmontonians. In fact, it should be featured as a guest column on a community site. I even started looking at Edmonton as a place where I could live in the not-too-distant future!

Some of my other blogging activities are helping me get or keep in touch with diverse people. A coffee roaster, a former student, some local friends in both Montreal and Austin…

Though I tend not to care so much, I notice that visits to my main blog have been on the rise, in the past few months. If this tendency is maintained, I might get beyond my previous record of 5,867 visits in a month (in February, 2007). Through the rest of 2007, monthly visits to this blog ranged between 3,500 and 4,500, with a dip to 2,800 in June. (Yeah, I know. Fas-ci-na-ting.)

What’s more, I think that a larger proportion of visits to my blog are to posts I personally find interesting (as opposed to some silly posts which get lots of hits because their titles).

I’m now a bit more familiar with the new interface for WordPress.com blogs. Though the change was probably not visible to readers, the changes are rather extreme. What I find sad is that several features went away with the update: realtime wordcount, list nesting, automatic answerlinks, drag-and-drop widget management, and comma-separated categories. None of these features was really essential and the last one had good reasons to go, but it still implies a major adaptation. In fact, as much as I enjoy blogging on WordPress (and as grateful as I am to have access to a feature-full free blog host), I take issue with some of the ways Matt Mullenweg and his Automattic crew have treated WordPress.com users, on occasion. In this case, it would have been much easier if they had described the changes in advance, providing some documentation to enable a smooth transition. I know the update’s focus was on WordPress installed on people’s servers (i.e., not on blogs hosted on WordPress.com). But it does make me feel like a second-class citizen, which may not be what Automattic wants.

Thanks in part to changes in the way WordPress.com handles tags and categories, I’ve been able to clean up some of my categories for this blog. It’s still pretty much a mess, I know. But it’s much closer to being manageable than it was. And I notice the difference quite easily.

I also shuffled some widgets around my blog design, which was surprisingly difficult because of the changes in the WordPress.com interface. I think my blog is just a bit cleaner than it was.

The fact that my daily average blogpost count has increased in the past several days is partly due to a decision of mine to do more things through my blogs. I eventually realized what part blogging had to play in my life and these past several days were an occasion for me to use blogging as a kind of release. There really is something quite therapeutic about blogging.

One thing it might mean, though, is that this blogging spree will taper off relatively soon. As I’m preparing to move for the 22nd time since December, 2000, it’ll probably be best if I focus on other things besides blogging.

The cool thing is, blogging allows for this kind of behavior. The only thing a decrease in my blogging activities might mean is a drop in readership. But I care very little about hits and there are other ways for me to get in touch with people.

Well-Rounded Bloggers

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While I keep saying journalist have a tough time putting journalism in perspective, it seems that some blogging journalists are able to do it.

Case in point, ZDNet Editor in Chief Larry Dignan:

Anatomy of a ‘Blogging will kill you’ story: Why I didn’t make the cut | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

I didn’t read the original NYT piece. On purpose. As I’ve tried to establish, I sometimes run away from things “everybody has read.” Typically, in the U.S., this means something which appeared in the NYT. To the extent that, for some people, “if it’s not in the Times, it didn’t happen.” (Such an attitude is especially tricky when you’re talking about, say, parts of Africa which aren’t at war.)

This time, I’m especially glad I read Dignan’s piece instead of the NYT one because I get the gist of the “story” and Dignan provides the kind of insight I enjoy.

Basic message: blogging can be as stressful as any job yet it’s possible to have a well-balanced life as a blogger.

Simple, useful, personal, insightful, and probably more accurate than the original piece.

Oh, sure. It’s nothing new. It’s not a major revelation for most people that it’s important to think about work/life balance.

Still… As it so happens, this specific piece helped me think about my own blogging activities in a somewhat different light. No, it’s not my job (though I do wish I had a writing job). And I don’t typically stress over it. I’m just thinking about where blogging fits in my life. And that’s helpful.

Even if it means yet another blogpost about blogging.

Cultural References and Mass Media

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An effect of my not having a television is that I occasionally miss “references to popular culture.” Continue reading →