Socially Mundane

I’ve been playing with a new …er, …hmmm… For now I’ll call it a “blogging” service. Except that it’s a lot more, but not quite as much. It’s kind of like Flickr, but it’s not quite as much, but also a lot more. Sort of kind of like YouTube, but not. Wait! It’s kind of like Tumblr, but not quite as much, but more. Sort of. 

Oxymorons aside, suffice it to say it’s a fun …thing.

I’m referring to a ridiculously fun-to-use newcomer called Jux.

Blogging has gone from long-form “web logs” to smaller “bursts” of multiple genre media sharing over the last few years. People want to write a little less and share a lot more other stuff like pictures and video and links and all sorts of things. Thus, “blogging” platforms and services have cropped up to cater to these desires and hence the popularity of relative  newcomers Posterous and Tumblr over other “heavier” platforms like Blogger and Livetype and such, though WordPress continues to enjoy a continued growth and caters well to long-form blogging.

Among other things (specifically the “dashboard”) that make Tumblr so popular is it’s ease of use and genre-specific post types, which include the requisite text article, but also specific presentation of pictures, video, links, chat logs and such - though it appears most people use it for photo-sharing.

What makes all these services, including Tumblr, basically the same is they are still pretty much “cliche-formatted” blogs - most recent posting at the top of the page with previous posts below in descending order based on the date and time posted. All blogging platforms support and rely on “themes” that create the layout, color-scheme and overall look of the blog web page.

This is where Jux breaks the mold.

The new Jux is not a lot different in terms of another blogging platforms… more or less. What makes Jux different - radically different is in the presentation of your blog posts. They are still displayed most recent first and in descending order, but the visual presentation is dynamic. Rather than rely on “themes” for the look of the blog web page - and hence every single post you contribute - Jux actually eliminates the “look” altogether. Rather you decide on the “look” of each post you make independently of every other post you’ve made. This is the game-changer in terms of “blogging themes” and “looks”.

What Jux does is pull the “interface” away from the presentation of whatever it is you are sharing with others: pictures, video, copy-text, etc. Additionally, you the blog owner, always see the presentation in exactly the same way everyone else does: in a full-screen (inside your browser window) without anything else not specifically related to the content.

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Have you ever peeked at someone’s profile and you see “voice-verified female”? I just can’t help but chuckle at this, my first thought being “why is it so important to you that you feel you must advertise this?”

I’m an old-fart, 100% all-american male who’s voice lay somewhere between a resonant baritone and bass… and I could put that “voice verified female” statement into my profile and be telling the truth.

Sort of, anyway.
Well, at least, convincing vocal gender-bending now exists in Second Life.

However, this post isn’t about that, though you’ll see why I bring it up a little later. Rather, I’m writing about the almost totally forgotten Second Life feature called “Voice-Morphing” and you know what? It is totally kick-ass.

A tutorial for playing with it (and then subscribing to it if you are so inclined) follows below. After I explain why you want this.

Very quick rehash: Linden Lab introduced “voice” (ability to speak with microphone to others in Second Life) a few years ago. There was some really loud, obnoxious, hysterical back-lash (secret gender-benders, anyone?). Linden Lab recognized immediately that there are many reasons people would refuse to use a voice feature in Second Life, not least of which: fantastical-themed role players. Think dragons, faerie, trolls, demons, etc. Hence, along with the announcement that voicing ability was coming, Linden Lab also mentioned that “voice morphing” will be added later-on.

That was a long time ago. Voice is here and so are voice-morphs.

Did you even know that?

When first announced, people dismissed the very idea of voice-morphing because after-all, we know that sound-morphing by computer sounds like sound-morphing by computer, right? The quality isn’t all that great and on top of that, Linden Lab expects us to actually pay for it! ZOMG! How dare they?!

So… the announcement that voice-morphs are now available came and went and no one thought anything more about it, if they even noticed it. Voice morphing became a completely forgotten feature of Second Life.

But here’s the thing: voice-morphing in Second Life really works.

Well, about two-thirds of the morphs work well, the other third is uninteresting to me (I speak only for myself, here. For example: “Arena” only adds an echo to your natural voice, nothing else). Many of these are actually a lot of fun and totally appropriate for many non-human role play characters (“creepy” is actually creepy-sounding). I don’t remember why I decided to investigate voice morphs… I think I spotted the “My Voice” option in the viewer menu and got curious.

Snarky tip for all you members of the Second Life Secret-Society-of-Secret-Gender-Benders: I, as an old-fart, very-very male-sounding man can quite easily convince you I am a “voice-authenticated female” through voice - one or two of the morphs are that good.

yes.
really.

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[UPDATE below]

I received an email from someone I didn’t know. It was an invitation I apparently asked for some time ago, but don’t remember. There was minimal information in the email itself, except to say my invitation came through and I get to be among the very few starters.

So I clicked-through to read more – and I see now why I’d requested the invitation: think “Twitter” with a bit more than 140 characters, but essentially works the same: a micro-blogging service with follow/follower “streams”.

However, the main difference is that you follow subjects, rather than specific people. Granted, you do follow people as a rule, however each “jot” (think: Tweet) must be categorized by a subject. Then, all followers of that subject will see the twee… er, jot. Nifty is the ability for Subjot to cross-post your jots to Twitter and Facebook if you choose to “connect” them to your Subjot account.

I think the concept is absolutely superior to Twitter in every way – with regard to those of use who follow others more for the information discovery rather than the personable “small talk”. Twitter is obviously far superior in this regard. And they make a wonderful compliment to each other, though I fully expect I’ll be spending the majority of my Tweet/Jot time in Subjot rather than Twitter – because I am more subject oriented rather than “person-oriented” in the Twitterverse.

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Article Summary:

• Email costs everyone of us if not in real dollars, in lost time 
• GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, GFX, and all the rest are bloated, archaic and lethargic solutions that are becoming too complicated with too many “features” we don’t need 
• Email communication, in a social aspect is on the decline as we prefer short-message services like Twitter, Facebook, Linked-in, Tumblr, Posterous and the like 
• Shortmail (shortmail.com), or at least the concept of it is the real savior of the email time-wasting mess we suffer through every day

My first Internet Service Provider was NETCOM. My first email application was Claris Emailer version 1.0 on Macintosh System 7 and it was an exciting new adventure, this whole Internet thing. The World Wide Web had only been invented months ago, but this email thing has been around far longer. I had an email address. I was finally “somebody” in a clique of a fraction of a fraction of the population proper. I was on the cutting-edge riding the wave that was sure to come.

Of course no one else I knew in the world had an email address. I was alone. Spam had yet to be invented and so it was exciting when I received my very first plain text email in courier typeface. A short reply to one of the dozens of emails I’d sent out that first week, often to web sites with queries.

It was a simpler, peaceful, pithy time.

That was then and this is now: unsolicited spam, garbage, solicited spam, trojans and phishing attempts, friends passing chain-mail jokes and stupid cat pictures, oh - and then there’s “professional” email we must contend with.

But there is a real solution.

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