High Tech, Low Tech, and On-line Afflictions

Tons of events, corporate sponsors, dedicated fans, traffic, people descending from all parts of the country and world, and lots of bright lights. Super Bowl?  No, it's a political convention. I'm on my way to Denver for the DNC convention, and it feels like I'm going to a Super Bowl weekend.

I've been to Super Bowl a few times and the weeks leading up to it are always spent figuring out which events to go to, how to snag a hotel room, securing a rental car in a scarce market, and coordinating with friends and acquaintances who are going to be in the event city.  This week has been no different and I'm amazed at how similar the lead-up to the two events has felt.

Former veterans of their craft are everywhere, talking heads will abound, and the real bigwigs are determined by who can get tickets to which events and parties. Sounds like Super Bowl to me.

Four people asked me what I wanted for my birthday last week and I gave each of them the same answer, “A new Filofax.” All four of them said the same thing. “No, you don’t. Nobody wants a Filofax any more. It’s so old-fashioned. Don’t be ridiculous. iPhone.” My daughter Maia was the harshest. She simply said, “Oh, Mom! iPhone.” It made me feel old-fashioned. It made me feel old.

For the record, I have an iPhone but despite the fact that four assistants over the last three years have religiously promised to transfer all my names and phone numbers into my computer and my iPhone, it hasn’t quite happened yet. And I never seem to have the time.

But I like my Filofax (even though it does sort of look like a truck ran over it.) It feels like a friend. I like it that it has names and addresses and phone numbers hand-printed into it. (Arguably, a few of them are dead, but I’ve learned not to notice. And I can’t quite bring myself to cross the names out. That would seem too final.) I use it in meetings to take notes. Sometimes, I’ll have a thought in the car or a random sentence for something I’m working on and I’ll pull over and jot it down into my Filofax. There are a few haikus that will probably never be printed anywhere else. I can gauge from them how sad I was on a given day. (Haikus are usually sad. The more comedic ones have found their way into my computer.)

After just 24 hours I'm more impressed with this device then I thought I would be and that says something because I was already sure it was a game changer. Most of the time when you have high expectations for a restaurant, movie, or gadget they rarely match and never exceed – but the iPad delivered.

Here are a few wow moments for me so far.

VIDEO: I know Jobs has influence over Disney but I'm still blown away by the free application ABC put out that allows you to watch in beautiful HD episodes of so many shows. I don't even mind the commercials since the content makes it so worth it. How other networks, (hello NBC, CBS & FOX), didn't jump on the initial wave is beyond me. If I ran a network I'd have every episode of a serial type show like Heroes up on this device yesterday on the chance it would intrigue some viewers to get back into the show. Other great apps such as steaming Netflix and MLB should also help deliver on the experience.

SURFING: Based on every review and the demos I saw I was expecting to be impressed by Safari. It was even better than everyone says when you are looking at sites you have seen every day.

As you may know, I like to view my very-nearly-fifty-year-old self as all hip and early adopterish. I have an unnatural dread of youngsters snickering as I hold up my new-fangled thingamabobber and look at it over the rims of my glasses, saying something like “tell me again, what button I push to see the grandkids in their space pod?” So when I started reading about Pinterest, I begged an invitation and checked it out.

As it turns out, Pinterest can be a useful tool or a waste of time and energy, or both. I am finding it tremendously useful, but it took some time and tinkering to sift out what I really wanted to see and “pin” to my virtual pin boards. At first, I saw no point in looking through hundreds and thousands of pictures and picking those that struck my fancy. A lot of what I saw seemed like nothing more than an extension of the bumper sticker or the Facebook profile - one more way to show off a little and tell the world that one had read (and liked) “Bleak House,” or spent time in Uruguay. There were also hundreds of cute animal pictures, cute kid pictures, and inspirational sayings of various kinds, things that might be diverting for two seconds but I am unlikely to “pin” and revisit anything along the lines of LOLCats.

The beauty of a good “pin,” though, is that there is a narrative portion that can tell you whether a picture is just “for pretty,” or whether one can click through to a recipe for that cupcake, or directions for making wall sconces from Dollar Store funnels. For me, the recipes and how-tos have been amazingly useful. I admit that I “collect” pretty pictures of things that I like, moons, owls, birds, flowers, and Paris street scenes…images that make me smile when I am stuck someplace for fifteen minutes and want a reminder of the beauty in the world. That’s good, but that’s the fluff.