If the telephony could be worked out, I don’t see why a phone couldn’t be made to run on a thin, browser-like OS that accesses almost all its content on the Cloud. As HTML5 is helping web content become more app-like, and as more of users’ content is stored online, there may soon be little need for onboard apps at all. We may be doing everything we need with Web apps. This may be the end of the OS as we know it. No more bloated platform-dependent apps. Microsoft never was a trailblazer, and Apple isn’t blazing trails anymore, either. Apple is announcing iCloud and OS X Lion tomorrow, and I’d say they’re just playing catch up. Microsoft say Windows 8 is going to have an HTML5 panel screen instead of a desktop, and by the time it comes out in a year or so, it will be as old news as Windows 95 = Mac 84.

As someone who embraced platform-independent Web development before it was popular, I am thrilled to see that HTML and CSS have now taken us to the point where just about any app can be a Web app. Pretty soon, there won’t be a need for five different Facebook apps; there will just be Facebook as a web app anyone can use the same way on any device. You won’t have to wait for your favorite Website to come out with an app for your device’s operating system, because web standards and powerful web functionality will make the question of device and OS moot.

I’m already doing just about everything online with the Chrome browser now except for editing photos and videos and opening Office documents on my iMac. The only thing I do on my laptop other that the Net is Microsoft Office if I have to, and I’m already using that less as I use Google Docs more. I’m ready to move away from bloated software and over to something simple, fast, and standard. Chrome is the OS of today.

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In case you ever uploaded a video to Google Video and didn’t get the memo that they’re shutting down, here’s a copy of the email from Google yesterday:

Dear Google Video User,

Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide. [*Google Video is shutting down as a content host but will continue as a video search.]

On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)

We encourage you to move to your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already. YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner. To learn more go here.

Here’s how to download your videos:

Go to the Video Status page.
To download a video to your computer, click the Download Video link located on the right side of each of your videos in the Actions column.

Once a video has been downloaded, “Already Downloaded” will appear next to the Download Video link.

If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all.

Please note: This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.

Thank you for being a Google Video user.

Sincerely,

The Google Video Team

Google Video was the pioneer in closed-captioning Internet videos. They first introduced closed-captioning for Google Video on September 19, 2006. I was one of the first people in the world to use the technology when I publish my closed-captioned Google Video on October 4, 2006. Google then bought YouTube on October 9, 2006. They later introduced YouTube Captions and Subtitles on September 22, 2008, and I didn’t find out about it until May 7, 2009, when I uploaded my first closed-captioned video on  YouTube.

Since then, I went back and closed-captioned all my spoken videos on YouTube and I continue to closed-caption the videos I upload to my YouTube channel.

After careful consideration, I’ve decided not to root my NOOKcolor. I’m no troglodyte; in fact, I’m an early adopter and an Android OS fan. I bought the G1 and, later, the Nexus One, the day they came out. I was aware before I bought the NOOKcolor that it was, at its core, an Android tablet. I had read the reports that you could root it; that is, hack into it to unlock total access to the Android OS and all the apps one can download and install from the Android Market. I considered rooting or, rather, having a friend root my NOOKcolor for me, but then my wise husband asked me, “What would you be able to do on it rooted that you can’t do now?” After some time, I realized the answer was, “Well, um… nothing, really.” Here’s why:

1. I already own an Android phone. Anything Android I can do on my Nexus One.
2. I already own a laptop. Anything creative–writing, spreadsheets, presentations, photo & video editing–I can do better on a laptop than a tablet. And then I can view it on my NOOKcolor.
3. I’m not a gamer. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout killin’ birdies. If I wanted to shoot aggressive avians, I could do it on my phone.
4. I already spend too much time on the Internet! The NOOKcolor comes out of the box with a built-in Wi-Fi card and Web browser, and I already spend a lot of time using both. When I’m not using the Share feature to update my reading status, post a quotation, or rate/recommend a book, I’m shopping for more books on the nook store– and that’s before I even open the Web browser. Once I load the browser, I can do practically anything Internet. The mobile versions of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube work great on the NOOKcolor, so why bother with Android apps? In fact, with the larger screen, even the full versions of several of the websites I normally go to work fine on the NOOKcolor. The only one I’ve found that I must use the mobile version for is YouTube. So, I think I’m set for the Net.

Barnes & Noble already made a bold move by giving readers full access to the World Wide Web, not just a few Net Apps, and I can tell you personally that the ever-present Web makes it hard for me, sometimes, to stay tuned to a book. Rooting my nook would only complicate matters. Now, let me get back to that book I was reading…

Daniel Greene isn’t paid to write this stuff– he’s just a super nice guy with an insane need to spend hours writing blog posts for nothing. Won’t you stop the insanity with a small donation?

Lately, I notice — especially with Facebook — that I get pain in my elbow and wrist from so much mouse clicking to follow everyone’s posts. I read all my Friends’ postings, regardless of how well I know them, and I just keep reading and commenting and reading and refreshing pages. There are people in my Friends list that I’ve spent more time with on Facebook than in real life. But no matter what our relationship in real life, I find myself reading everything they post. It begins to seem as though my “best friends” are the ones who interact with me the most on Facebook. Yet that’s insidious, because it doesn’t mean they’re closer to me; it just means they’re on Facebook a lot and they like to interact with people on it. It’s seductive to sit there clicking, clicking, clicking on everyone’s content, yet I have to do something about my overuse strain. I am, after all, a sign language interpreter, and I have to save my hands and arms for work.

And speaking of seductive, it is so tempting to add all the people Facebook suggests to me as Friends– well, all the people I know, anyway. I never went and added all my friends Friends or anything crazy like that, but I did add almost all the classmates, coworkers, and friends I recognized. It got to the point where I had 378 Friends! As I started following more closely, I realized that I hadn’t even remembered some of my classmates correctly. In one case, I thought I was following a guy who was one class ahead of me until I realized that I was following his brother who was two classes behind me. He seems like a great guy, but the last straw was when he made that “tell me something you remember about me” prompt in his status message, and I realized, well, I didn’t remember anything.

Even more seductive is the ability to develop a fan base that will respond to what I post. But again, those who respond are not necessarily my friends. They are people who appreciate what I produce. They are fine people. Nothing wrong with them at all. But I have to be realistic with myself and ask myself why I need their validation, and why I’m spending time doing this when I could be doing other things that are more creative and productive. Or just spending time doing nothing at all, soaking up life and resting my wrists.

I’ve gotten overwhelmed with Flickr. I have 275 contacts right now, and I think I had even more at one point. There’s no way I can do them all justice. I tend to look at a few photos that show up on my home page, and sometimes surf from there onto other photos. I leave some comments and favorites. But I used to go crazy with it. Just as I do with Facebook now, I would view and comment on almost everything and then refresh the pages to see if there was anything else. I’m thinking about weeding my contacts list– not that I spend that much time on Flickr anymore. It’s been mostly about Facebook this past year.

And I just deleted about 250 Friends on Facebook. Many of them didn’t use their accounts much, but some of them used their accounts so much that I felt I had to remove my connection to them because I was overwhelmed by all their updates. Some of them, as I said before, weren’t even the people I thought I was following. Every single one of them was someone I spent more time with online than I ever did in real life. Yet, you know what’s sad? I now look at my Facebook home page and click Refresh because it looks so dull. But that’s real life! My real life doesn’t have that many people in it, so why should my online life be so peopled? I had Friends on Facebook from theatre, photography, interpreting, Flickr, the gay community, the deaf community, the deaf gay community, San Diego, Phoenix, Junior Theatre, the School of Creative & Performing Arts– and those are not the only communities I’ve ever made friends in! If I added all the friends I’ve ever known, my Friends list would be in the thousands.

But you know what saddened me even more? The fact that some of my friends from the past didn’t want to be my friends in the present. Sure, they added me as Friends, but they didn’t do anything with their accounts, didn’t call my cell phone when they said they would… or they didn’t add me as Friends at all. Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the past.

A lot of this struggle is about the distinction between past and present, reality and fantasy. The fantasy is that friends are forever. The reality is that friends are the people you spend time with, either in the present or the recent past, with plans to see each other again in the near future. When people aren’t doing things together, there’s less reason to remain friends. Due to the joy and pain I’ve experienced in life, I tend to want to heal my past and sooth my present with it, or reach back to my past and validate it with my present. I see the past, present, and future as a circle, and I want to mend that circle, let it be unbroken, integrate it. I want to be integrated, to have integrity.

The struggle is far from over. May we all find peace.

Just as a boat is chained to the sea, sometimes I feel chained to Flickr.

I am now going through the 420 photos I took during the six days of my trip. Four hundred and twenty photos that all came out well. Yes, there are some things that I took multiple shots of in order to get the best one, but still… how do you work your way through all that and post it on Flickr without boring people? I’ve been limiting myself to posting only three or four photos a day so that people will look at them, which seems to be working, except I have to ask myself why I share all these photos with the world. I took this working vacation on my own, and one of the reasons I took these photos was to share them with my husband, Andy, who couldn’t come on the trip with me. That makes sense to me– to want to share with my husband everything I wish I could have shared with him while we were apart. And I suppose it makes sense to want to share photos with family and close friends. But I’m starting to wonder why I care whether people I’ve never met will stop and look at my photos. I hardly make any money giving my photos away. I could write travel articles and get paid for the work I put into taking, geotagging, editing, organizing, naming, describing my photos… but I don’t. Instead, I spend several hours each day on the computer and on Flickr. I post photos and look at other people’s photos. I enjoy this, but often it seems like work.

I sometimes look at what I do as a creative outlet and a chance to share information with others just for the sake of sharing. I guess there’s a part of me that appreciates all the hard work other amateur photographers and bloggers put into what they publish, and I want to give back. I’ve always had a work ethic that demanded that I contribute to my community, be it local or global. So I guess this is my contribution.

But I have a B.A. in English, and I often think I should be writing for a living instead of writing for nothing. And with my 18 years of experience as an American Sign Language interpreter, I think I should be developing and presenting workshops on interpreting, or even writing books about it. But I’m not. So why do I keep giving away hours of my day, day after day, to Flickr? I don’t know. I guess, in a weird way, I’m lonely. I have a husband and two dogs, a few close friends and family who love me, yet I still crave an audience. I want to communicate with people, have them listen to me, receive their response and feedback. But couldn’t I do that as a writer? Sometimes I fear that in the process of communicating with images I am losing the ability to communicate with words. Perhaps it is my purpose in life to paint images with words, not just by capturing them in photographs. It is harder to say what you want with words than it is with images… or is it? I guess if the image above said it all then I wouldn’t be writing this now; would I?

I don’t have answers to any of these questions yet. But I need to keep thinking about what else I should be doing with my life and how being chained to Flickr may be stopping me from fulfilling my potential as a human being. I don’t need to prove that I can take a good photo. I know I can. But then again, one doesn’t do something again and again just to prove he can do it, does one? I mean, if I write a best-selling book, I will have proven that I can write a good book, but I’d still probably want to write another book, and another, and another.

I do know that I get a lot out of photography. The act of shooting photos is meditative; it allows me (or forces me) to really look at things, to see them from various angles, to see them as they are and to capture them as I imagine them. And when I take photos of people or other animals, looking at the photographs afterward helps me to see them, to really gaze at them and take them in in a way that might not feel comfortable for either me or my subject in the moment. I also get to explore my moods and the moods of others, including the earth’s (if you can consider a cloudy day or the flowers of spring as an expression of the earth’s “moods”). My moods often mirror those of the earth, and through capturing images at those times I can share my own feelings with other people.

I do have a need to be seen and heard. Always have. Call it what you will, but I accept it as a fact about myself. I have almost never worked behind the scenes. Even the work I have done behind the scenes (writing, photography) ends up in the public eye. So just about everything I’ve ever done for money or for nothing has been for an audience. Heck, look at what I make my living at nowadays– interpreting phone calls, being heard by hearing people and watched by deaf people.

I hate to think that I need to keep writing, acting, singing, photographing, etc. to feel loved and lovable. I would like to believe that I am loved and lovable regardless of how much I produce or create. I sometimes wonder if it is the occasional photo that gets a lot of response and/or ends up in Flickr’s Explore pages that keeps me going, makes me feel like a star for a day, gives me the feeling of being not alone, but a member of a global family. I don’t know. Whatever my reasons are, I aim to practice moderation and feel completely unchained and free to choose just how much Flickring I do.