In that post, Mario Asselin brings together a number of notions which are at the centre of current discussions about social media. The core notion seems to be that “influence” replaces “authority” as a quality or skill some people have, more than others. Some people are “influencers” and, as such, they have a specific power over others. Such a notion seems to be widely held in social media and numerous services exist which are based on the notion that “influence” can be measured.
I don’t disagree. There’s something important, online, which can be called “influence” and which can be measured. To a large extent, it’s related to a large number of other concepts such as fame and readership, popularity and network centrality. There are significant differences between all of those concepts but they’re still related. They still depict “social power” which isn’t coercive but is the basis of an obvious stratification.
In some contexts, this is what people mean by “social capital.” I originally thought people meant something closer to Bourdieu but a fellow social scientist made me realise that people are probably using Putnam’s concept instead. I recently learnt that George W. Bush himself used “political capital” in a sense which is fairly similar to what most people seem to mean by “social capital.” Even in that context, “capital” is more specific than “influence.” But the core notion is the same.
To put it bluntly:
Some people are more “important” than others.
Social marketers are especially interested in such a notion. Marketing as a whole is about influence. Social marketing, because it allows for social groups to be relatively amorphous, opposes influence to authority. But influence maintains a connection with “top-down” approaches to marketing.
My own point would be that there’s another kind of influence which is difficult to pinpoint but which is highly significant in social networks: the social butterfly effect.
Yep, I’m still at it after more than three years. It’s even more relevant now than it was then. And I’m now able to describe it more clearly and define it more precisely.
The social butterfly effect is a social network analogue to the Edward Lorenz’s well-known “butterfly effect. ” As any analogy, this connection is partial but telling. Like Lorenz’s phrase, “social butterfly effect” is more meaningful than precise. One thing which makes the phrase more important for me is the connection with the notion of a “social butterfly,” which is both a characteristic I have been said to have and a concept I deem important in social science.
I define social butterflies as people who connect to diverse network clusters. Community enthusiast Christine Prefontaine defined social butterflies within (clustered) networks, but I think it’s useful to separate out network clusters. A social butterfly’s network is rather sparse as, on the whole, a small number of people in it have direct connections with one another. But given the topography of most social groups, there likely are clusters within that network. The social butterfly connects these clusters. When the social butterfly is the only node which can connect these clusters directly, her/his “influence” can be as strong as that of a central node in one of these clusters since s/he may be able to bring some new element from one cluster to another.
I like the notion of “repercussion” because it has an auditory sense and it resonates with all sorts of notions I think important without being too buzzwordy. For instance, as expressions like “ripple effect” and “domino effect” are frequently used, they sound like clichés. Obviously, so does “butterfly effect” but I like puns too much to abandon it. From a social perspective, the behaviour of a social butterfly has important “repercussions” in diverse social groups.
Since I define myself as a social butterfly, this all sounds self-serving. And I do pride myself in being a “connector.” Not only in generational terms (I dislike some generational metaphors). But in social terms. I’m rarely, if ever, central to any group. But I’m also especially good at serving as a contact between people from different groups.
Yay, me! 🙂
My thinking about the social butterfly effect isn’t an attempt to put myself on some kind of pedestal. Social butterflies typically don’t have much “power” or “prestige.” Our status is fluid/precarious. I enjoy being a social butterfly but I don’t think we’re better or even more important than anybody else. But I do think that social marketers and other people concerned with “influence” should take us into account.
I say all of this as a social scientist. Some parts of my description are personalized but I’m thinking about a broad stance “from society’s perspective.” In diverse contexts, including this blog, I have been using “sociocentric” in at least three distinct senses: class-based ethnocentrism, a special form of “altrocentrism,” and this “society-centred perspective.” These meanings are distinct enough that they imply homonyms. Social network analysis is typically “egocentric” (“ego-centred”) in that each individual is the centre of her/his own network. This “egocentricity” is both a characteristic of social networks in opposition to other social groups and a methodological issue. It specifically doesn’t imply egotism but it does imply a move away from pre-established social categories. In this sense, social network analysis isn’t “society-centred” and it’s one reason I put so much emphasis on social networks.
In the context of discussions of influence, however, there is a “society-centredness” which needs to be taken into account. The type of “influence” social marketers and others are so interested in relies on defined “spaces.” In some ways, if “so-and-so is influential,” s/he has influence within a specific space, sphere, or context, the boundaries of which may be difficult to define. For marketers, this can bring about the notion of a “market,” including in its regional and demographic senses. This seems to be the main reason for the importance of clusters but it also sounds like a way to recuperate older marketing concepts which seem outdated online.
A related point is the “vertical” dimension of this notion of “influence.” Whether or not it can be measured accurately, it implies some sort of scale. Some people are at the top of the scale, they’re influencers. Those at the bottom are the masses, since we take for granted that pyramids are the main models for social structure. To those of us who favour egalitarianism, there’s something unpalatable about this.
And I would say that online contacts tend toward some form of egalitarianism. To go back to one of my favourite buzzphrases, the notion of attention relates to reciprocity:
It’s an attention economy: you need to pay attention to get attention.
This is one thing journalism tends to “forget.” Relationships between journalists and “people” are asymmetrical. Before writing this post, I read Brian Storm’s commencement speech for the Mizzou J-School. While it does contain some interesting tidbits about the future of journalism, it positions journalists (in this case, recent graduates from an allegedly prestigious school of journalism) away from the masses. To oversimplify, journalists are constructed as those who capture people’s attention by the quality of their work, not by any two-way relationship. Though they rarely discuss this, journalists, especially those in mainstream media, typically perceive themselves as influencers.
Attention often has a temporal dimension which relates to journalism’s obsession with time. Journalists work in time-sensitive contexts, news are timely, audiences spend time with journalistic contents, and journalists fight for this audience time as a scarce resource, especially in connection to radio and television. Much of this likely has to do with the fact that journalism is intimately tied to advertising.
As I write this post, I hear on a radio talk show a short discussion about media coverage of Africa. The topic wakes up the africanist in me. The time devoted to Africa in almost any media outside of Africa is not only very limited but spent on very specific issues having to do with Africa. In mainstream media, Africa only “matters” when major problems occur. Even though most parts of Africa are peaceful and there many fabulously interesting things occuring throughout the continent, Africa is the “forgotten” continent.
A connection I perceive is that, regardless of any other factor, Africans are taken to not be “influential.” What makes this notion especially strange to an africanist is that influence tends to be a very important matter throughout the continent. Most Africans I know or have heard about have displayed a very nuanced and acute sense of “influence” to the extent that “power” often seems less relevant when working in Africa than different elements of influence. I know full well that, to outsiders to African studies, these claims may sound far-fetched. But there’s a lot to be said about the importance of social networks in Africa and this could help refine a number of notions that I have tagged in this post.
[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.
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.
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:
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.
When new features are added to a blogging platform, I figure I should try them. In this case, the QuickPress box in WordPress 2.7 is fairly neat.
But I’m mostly excited about the Batch Editing feature.
One thing I notice which is a bit off is that the French version of the Dashboard drop-down menu takes two lines, which looks a bit off. But that’s a minor point.
A bigger one, though, is that this QuickPress feature doesn’t auto-complete tags. That’s a bit counterproductive. Auto-completing tags is one of those very convenient features which makes special sense in quick blogging.
Not to mention that QuickPress doesn’t support categories.
Ah, well…
J’ai récemment publié un très long billet sur la scène du café à Montréal. Sans doûte à cause de sa longueur, ce billet ne semble pas avoir les effets escomptés. J’ai donc décidé de republier ce billet, section par section.Ce billet est la quatrième section après l’introduction, une section sur les cafés italiens de Montréal et une section sur le «café à la québécoise». Cette section se concentre sur l’arrivée du café de «troisième vague» à Montréal.
J’essaie de décrire un changement assez radical dans la scène montréalaise du café: la présence de cafés produisant du café «troisième vague» (“Third Wave”).
Depuis près de trois ans, Montréal dispose de cafés qui font un café d’un type très différent de l’espresso à l’italienne ou de l’allongé à la québécoise. Ce style de café, originaire de la Côte Ouest, est lié à ce qui a été désigné comme une «troisième vague» dans l’histoire du café en Amérique du Nord. Un peu comme la notion de «Tiers-Monde», le terme “Third Wave” est utilisé sans référence très directe aux deux autres termes qu’il sous-entend. Et, comme dans tout mouvement contemporain, il y a une certaine fluidité sémantique, un certain «flou artistique» face au sens et à la référence de ce terme.
Dans les milieux liés au café, le terme me semble surtout être utilisé pour désigner un établissement dont les membres suivent la «philosophie de la troisième vague» ou pour qualifier a posteriori un espresso qui correspond à une certaine norme de qualité. Cette norme n’est pas absolue. Elle correspond en fait à une «esthétique» particulière du café. Mais elle est fort intéressante.
Petite explication (ou «avertissement»)… Mon entraînement gustatif au café précède la troisième vague. Et si j’apprécie le café de type “Third Wave”, je crois avoir établi que j’aime aussi d’autres styles de café. Amateur de diversité, je me réjouis du fait qu’il m’est maintenant possible de boire du «café à l’italienne», du «café à la québécoise» et du «café troisième vague».
Avant d’entrer le détail de ce qui distingue le café «troisième vague» d’un point de vue sensoriel et technique, une petite historique de l’arrivée de ce type de café à Montréal.
À l’automne 2005 est ouvert sur le Plateau le premier Caffè ArtJava, œuvre de Spiro Karagianopoulos et de Mauro Maltoni. Ayant vécu à Vancouver, Spiro avait décidé d’«importer» le style de café West Coast assez représentatif de la troisième vague. ArtJava a par la suite ouvert une deuxième succursale, au centre-ville (Président-Kennedy et Université). Anthony Benda, originaire de Vancouver et formé au Caffè Artigiano, était chez ArtJava pendant quelques temps, tout d’abord travaillé sur le Plateau puis au centre-ville. Il y a environ un an et demi, Anthony a participé à l’ouverture du Café Santé Veritas, étendant ainsi la dimension «troisième vague» de la scène montréalaise du café à une seconde institution. Il y a quelques semaines, Anthony a ouvert le Café Myriade avec Scott Rao et c’est selon moins un événement déclencheur dans ce que je pressens être la Renaissance du café à Montréal (si si! j’insiste).
Une grande particularité de Myriade est d’offrir une variété de cafés (mélanges ou d’«origine unique») qui sont préparés selon diverses méthodes: espresso, siphon, cafetière à piston (à la Bodum), filtre conique individuel et Café Solo.
J’ai déjà blogué, en anglais, au sujet de Myriade, lors de son ouverture le 27 octobre. Mes premières et secondes impressions étaient très positives. J’avais de grandes attentes face à un café ouvert par Anthony Benda. Myriade répond à ces attentes. Outre la qualité du café servi par Anthony et ses associés, je perçois chez Myriade une sorte d’effervescence dans la communauté montréalaise d’amateurs de café.
Anthony Benda a donc travaillé aux trois principaux cafés que j’appellerais “Third Wave” à Montréal. Il est donc une figure marquante et je suis fier de le compter parmi mes amis. Mais il ne faut pas oublier Spiro Karagianopoulos, qui semble rester dans l’ombre, mais qui fait un travail acharné pour donner à Montréal cette impulsion qui, selon moi, peut permettre à Montréal de redevenir une destination pour le café.
Spiro est aujourd’hui lié à la maison de torréfaction 49th Parallel de Vince Piccolo, à Vancouver. Vince Piccolo a ouvert le Caffè Artigiano avec ses frères Mike et Sammy. Ce dernier est un champion canadien de concours de baristas, ayant remporté à plusieurs reprises le Canadian National Barista Championship.
(Pour la petite histoire… En tant que juge lors de la première journée de cette compétition, le mois dernier, j’ai eu l’occasion de déguster et d’évaluer l’espresso de Sammy Piccolo. À l’occasion, j’aime bien parler de mon statut de «juge de baristas» parce que ça m’amuse. Ce qui n’implique pas grand-chose.)
Puisque plusieurs cafés montréalais à tendance «troisième vague» utilisent le café de Vince Piccolo, les liens entre Vancouver et la scène montréalaise du café sont assez particuliers. D’aucuns croient même que la scène du café à Montréal ne serait rien si ce n’était de ces liens avec la Côte Ouest. J’espère avoir donné un autre son de cloche.
Outre Anthony et Spiro, il y a plusieurs autres acteurs dans la scène montréalaise du café qui réponde favorable à la notion de troisième vague. Un d’entre eux, Jean-François Leduc, a ouvert le Caffè in Gamba à l’été 2007 (peu après l’ouverture de Veritas). Si je n’ai pas inclus Gamba dans mon petit historique de la troisième vague à Montréal, c’est que Jean-François est, selon moi, parmi les rares «agnostiques» par rapport à cette distinction entre la troisième vague et le reste du monde du café. D’ailleurs, Jean-François importe des mélanges à espresso directement d’Italie. Avocat de formation, il s’est lancé dans le milieu du café suite à un séjour prolongé à Rome. Il a d’ailleurs des liens familiaux avec des italiens et a bénéficié assez tôt de ce «sens italien de la communauté» que j’ai mentionné dans un autre billet.
Gamba est un endroit unique. Pas seulement pour Montréal. En grand passionné du café, Jean-François réussi à apporter à Montréal de nombreux mélanges à espresso qui n’étaient disponibles que par correspondance. Parmi ces mélanges, certains sont assez notoires, dans le milieu Third Wave: Intelligentsia (Chicago), Vivace (Seattle), PT’s (Topeka), de Zoka (Seattle). Jean-François réussit régulièrement à obtenir d’autres mélanges, faisant profiter la scène montréalaise du café dans son ensemble d’une grande diversité.
C’est à l’ouverture de Gamba que j’ai commencé à parlé de «Renaissance montréalaise du café». L’ouverture de Myriade est donc la «deuxième lance», comme diraient les Azandé selon Evans-Pritchard. La mise en scène est désormais complète pour la nouvelle phase dans l’histoire du café à Montréal.
Jean-François Leduc est donc à la jonction entre le café à l’italienne et le «café troisième vague». C’est d’ailleurs en discutant avec Jean-François que j’ai réussi à préciser, dans ma tête, certains détails me permettant de différencier le café Third Wave d’autres cafés.
Je différencierai donc le «café troisième vague» du «café à l’italienne» dans un autre billet.
Turns out, this blend is much more flexible and much less finicky than I first thought.
Just tried (June 22) a few shots on a LaPa EDL12 with pressurized portafilter. Though all my shots on this machine are severely underextracted, I get some nice high notes in the middle of the taste and a dull but clean finish. In fact, it seems to work as a canvas since adding a drop of milk in it actually featured the milk. Also, I recently did some burnt caramel and I can pick up a caramel taste in the cup.
I’m also getting a lingering acidity, even though there’s little acidity up front.
Update: Tried the Meritage on several occasions. For a number of reasons (having nothing to do with Cuvée itself), I only got the package after the coffee had already lost much of its flavours and aromas.
Even after several weeks, it can still “work” in a moka pot, especially when blended with other beans.
Thanks a lot to Cuvée for all the coffee! I’m really glad I could try it on my own. It’s just really sad that I wasn’t able to taste it at its peak. In fact, as soon as I got the package, I tried to find a way to use it with a quality espresso machine at a friend’s place but wasn’t able to do it. The LaPa was decent but, with a pressurized portafilter, there’s really not that much you can do.
Giving Diigo a fair shake. Turns out, it might be cool for active reading. I still have issues with it (comments are private by default and they don’t disappear on pressing "enter"), but the main usage pattern seems to make sense.
So… Actively reading this Dare Obasanjo blogpost about technology adoption. Found the link thanks to @audio on Twitter.
All of it is very "knee-jerky" («réactions à chaud»), on my part. I like that. More RERO. And more efficient, I think.
BTW, a major point developers should understand: users should be allowed to be lazy, sloppy, careless, and thoughtless. Can’t remember the term but Blacktree’s QuickSilver had a whole explanation about "not thinking." I think enough already that I don’t want to think about my use of tools while I’m using these tools. A good example of where a problem may appear: forcing users to add tags or forcing them to edit a preview version of their comments. I see why it would make sense to "incite" people to do this. But there’s a context for everything and forcing users one way or another is very patronizing.
Early Adopters are risk takers who actually like to try new things.
Of course, they’re the most vocal. Especially online. And the most fickle. – post by enkerli
Laggards pride themselves on the fact that they are the last to try anything new.
I do that a lot. The Swiss or Amish version of the "wait-and-see approach." Works really well with updates. – post by enkerli
they listened too intently to their initial customer base
This seems to be well-understood, now. Of course, it appears to be the focus of this post, but it’s probably not the most interesting point. – post by enkerli
heralded as the next big thing by technology pundits which actually never broke into the mainstream because they don’t solve the problems of regular Internet users
Again, well-known. But good to keep in mind. – post by enkerli
aren’t many people who need a specialized feature set around searching blogs
And specialized searches have two unwanted side-effects: separate blogging from the mainstream and emphasize the echo-chamber effect. (This was well-discussed on TWiT, at the time.) – post by enkerli
Social bookmarking:
My sense is that it can still take off because the best solution hasn’t come up yet. Diigo (!) appears to be a good start. But there’s a lot which could be done to improve it. For instance, send pings or trackbacks when users comment on a blogpost. Importing RSS feeds from other bookmarking services should be (IMVHO) Diigo’s #1 priority. Making commenting more seamless with less button clicking would make the Diigo experience more bearable. Better auto-tagging and more obvious batch-tagging would also help. Some support for a kind of ubiquitous link clipboard would make it easy for both bloggers and "normal readers." Merging comment-tracking (à la cocomment) with Diigo’s approach to "highlight and comment" could really make sense. All in all, social bookmarking could be much bigger than it is but people do rely on it remaining geeky. I want it to be workflow. This is not a niche approach to social bookmarking. Even people who are relatively passive as readers (i.e., the statistical mainstream) would use social bookmarking if it’s really seamless. – post by enkerli
key technology which powers a number of interesting functionality behind the scenes (e.g. podcasting)
Excellent point. Podcatchers have it right, in terms of RSS. I sometimes wish RSS readers would be more like podcatchers and/or podcatchers could integrate more content types. Although… One reason podcatchers work for me is that I eventually found the right number of podcasts to subscribe to. I haven’t been able to do this with blogs and other non-podcast RSS feeds. – post by enkerli
RSS reader has not become a mainstream activity of Web users
Information overload (IO) in general is a big issue. Yahoo! Pipes could help, but I haven’t really been attracted to it enough to go on its learning curve (despite @ericbaillargeon talking about it so much). Some new RSS readers take a more radical approach to reducing IO, but they still don’t seem to work so well. I guess what I need is an adaptive RSS reader which will help me be more selective in the number of things I read. The reverse of StumbleUpon, in a way, though SU could probably help. Put simply, I want an RSS reader which "knows" me and which can help me decide what I want to do with a given piece of text: put on my "to read" list? Send to someone who might care? Keep on the backburner as a potentially interesting idea? Read actively? Blog about? Respond to? Send to my handheld for reading or listening while I do something else? Add to a "pile" with auto-indexing so the next time I want some info about this, the full text of the original will come up? – post by enkerli
How many people who aren’t enthusiastic early adopters (i) have this problem and (ii) think they need a tool to deal with it?
Well… I do have this problem and I do think I need a tool to deal with this. But RSS Readers don’t work, for my needs. My interests are too disparate, my attention to the blogosphere is too occasional… This is actually one context in which Twitter is helping me focus. – post by enkerli
harness the natural need of young people to express their individuality yet be part of social cliques
I don’t really like the wording (too fake-science-y) but I agree with the principle. We can probably now go into the "listening to what users need" tirade but I would prefer it if it were more ethnographic/insightful in terms of the relationship between technology adoption and innovation (invention+adoption=innovation), in social terms. It’s not a "natural need" for "young people." It’s "a common practise in a significant portions of different populations." – post by enkerli
solve problems that everyone [or at least a large section of the populace] has
Too bad it’s such an absolute/quantitative statement. Sure, adoption numbers matter, in meetings with investors. But what’s more important in terms of the adoption timeline may be based on the network effect and on the social butterfly effect. The same tool can be used differently by different people (unintended uses are the killer app?) if they already adopt that tool for some other reason. If it’s out of peer-pressure or just because of the invisible influence of an acquaintance, it still matters a lot in terms of making the thing "viral." We’re talking about networks, here, not a standardized population. – post by enkerli
Not a bad point and somewhat funny given the whole "make Robert Scoble cry" jokes of a few months ago. But, at the same time, Scoble is fairly good at being a cog in the wheel. People think of him as a direct influence on his "followers" (not just on Twitter). What seems to be more important, from his work, is that he has been able to get some people to think differently about some tools and companies. He’s definitely not like a journalist but it’s not accurate to think of him as the central point of a pack of geeky early adopters who would adopt those tools anyway. He’s someone who says a lot of things and some of them "don’t fall on dead ears" (is that the expression in English?). The reason he influences people, very often, is because there’s a fit between what he says and what people are open to hear. Not that he "says what people want to hear." But he says things which find a fertile ground, partly because those who first hear them run with it. Much of this about Scoble is "old." I get the perception that, at this point, he’s mostly getting "followers" who are following him because of his notoriety. Especially marketers and social capitalists. Problem with this is that these people don’t necessarily listen so much. They don’t really adopt. They sell. – post by enkerli
