Google Contacts - from poor to fair (& hoping for more)

Since switching to the G1 I've become even more dependent on Google Contacts as my default contact manager (because it now powers my phone contacts automagically). I've never loved the product - it's always been slow, hard to navigate and even harder to edit - and I wasn't excited about increasing my reliance on it.

Thankfully, Google has recently made some tweaks to Contacts that suggest they're aware of the problems. First (thanks to a tip from Read/Write Web) I discovered that there's now a standalone page for Contacts - http://google.com/contacts - that decouples contact management from Gmail. Next, and much more important, Google (a) fixed the conflict rules that prevented two contact records from having the same email address, and (b) introduced a 'Merge contacts' feature that allows multiple records to be combined with two clicks.

These changes move Google Contacts from borderline-unusable to merely adequate, but given my dependence on the product that's an encouraging start. Given their big bets on Android and - more recently - Google Voice, it's a safe bet that more improvement is in the cards.

Book Review: Super Crunchers

I just finished Ian Ayres Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. It's very pop / light, along the lines of Freakonomics, but still worth a read for the reminder that (unlike pretty much everyone I interact with in the Web software world) surprisingly few folks are aware of the extent to which statistical analysis now powers business decision-making. In particular, I found the description of statistical applications in the government and medical spaces fascinating - I had no idea that randomized trial had become the default mode by which new human services public policy choices are being made.

The thesis of the book is a logical evolution of the behavioral insights pioneered by folks like Cialdini; it's well-established that human decision-making relies heavily on heuristics and that these analytical shortcuts and biases often lead to bad decisions. It comes as no surprise to anyone who shops at Amazon or uses Google that computers are really amazingly good at coming up with the right answer to a broad range of questions. Ayres just documents the fact that this kind of statistical analysis of large and diverse datasets is winning out over human judgment across an ever-broader spectrum of human endeavor.

The core assertion of the book is that statistical techniques have already replaced many traditionally human functions (with broadly excellent results) and that broad swaths of high-status and/or highly-compensated human "expertise" roles (e.g., medical doctors, teachers, and many different flavors of content analysts) are likely to suffer the same fate. He's careful not to overstep into machine-chauvinism, so much so that I was a little surprised not to find a mention of Nassim Taleb's arguments from The Black Swan (and elsewhere), that over-reliance on models can lead to even more disastrous results than over-reliance on intuition, due to the enormous potential impact of rare but catastrophic outcomes.

If you're a software developer or an experienced online marketer you probably wont find much new in Super Crunchers, but if you're one of the above and are trying to sell your offering in to clients or industries that still place intuition over analysis (e.g., most traditional media / advertising businesses, A&R in music, etc.) you might want to drop this on your clients desks as a warm-up to your next meeting...

I doubt anyone outside the echo chamber will care but...

...I've just punted on Facebook out of sheer annoyance with the redesign and am going to give Twitter whatever social software love I have to give (which isn't all that much). Thanks to AJ Vaynerchuk for the quick tutorial on linking Twitter to FB, and to Ralph Zimmerman and Thomas Marban for creating Twidroid, a great free Twitter client for Android (still loving my G1, by the way).

I still don't really get Twitter, but I can't see why I'd use a copycat version when I can have the real thing. Somebody please give me a shout when Zuckerberg decides to start listening to his customers...

P.S. - If I'm going to use the damn thing I might as well have some subscribers - if you're interested please follow me on Twitter.

Playing hooky

Semiotics Side Note: Slang and The Singularity

I've noticed a few phrases creeping into my everyday speech and am wondering if they reflect a broader trend or are specific to my little software / Web / high-tech world. These are:

• "Missing a chip" - denoting an inability to understand or process a certain kind of information, e.g., a friend and I were just marveling at how Bjork has any fans at all given her tuneless singing and annoying public persona, and my explanation was, "I guess I'm just missing a chip on that." The analogy is drawn from computing hardware, where individual chips are often assigned to perform specific compute functions like graphics processing.
  
  
• "Flipping a bit" - indicating a change (often sudden) in opinion or understanding, from one point of view to an opposing or significantly different one. Viz. the example above, were I to wake up tomorrow with the conviction that I actually *do* like Bjork, I could be said to have "flipped a bit" on Bjork. The phrase refers to the use of binary digits to represent a logical state, where '1' is the positive and '0' the negative state (or vice versa).
  

Are these common phrases in your lexicon? Is this further evidence that the singularity is nigh? Discuss...

Google Voice + Android

Lots of news & commentary today about Google Voice. I got my invite earlier today and, after clicking around a bit, am wondering why more of the analysis (as in none that I've read) doesn't mention the implications for Google Voice when combined with Android. As I noted in a previous post, it's not hard to imagine Android-powered devices (whether phones or netbooks, the distinction is becoming academic) that completely replace carrier-connected smartphones. My previous take on this relied on 3rd-party VOIP services like Skype or Truphone to provide the voice/SMS service, but Google Voice makes those services much less relevant.

I particularly like the seamless integration of Google Contacts across both Voice and Gmail. One of the most satisfying aspects of my G1 experience has been the ease with which my core Google services (Gmail / GCal / Contacts) now live on my mobile device. With voice in the mix Google can now make a credible bid to be my "default carrier", with mobile network minutes a commodity I can add on as needed.

With Google Voice in the house I'm doubling down on my earlier prediction: Android is going to be a much bigger deal than most people expect.

Pondering the Big Reboot

I'm not a doomer, but I *do* believe that the accelerating rate of technological change (i.e., Moore's Law) will continue to cause disruptions in our society and the global economy, and that these disruptions will likely increase in amplitude as the future acclerates toward us.

In that spirit, I've been following with interest the mainstreaming of the idea that the current economic downturn isn't just the business cycle at work, but rather a structural refactoring of the global economy. When the idea hits the front page of the New York Times, you can be sure that the mainstreaming is nearly complete. And while the Times treated the question with its customary objectivity, Jeff Jarvis offered a commentary on the piece titled The Great Restructuring that spells it out a little more starkly:

"The change in our society and how it is structured are both causing and necessitating change in the economy and its industries. The crisis is bigger than it appears in the rear-view mirror. It’s more than jobs lost and companies folding. It’s a new economy built on a new society that we are only just beginning to recognize if not understand."

My inner contrarian bristles at the hyperbolic certainty in this statement - the future is never so clearly viewed in advance, nor does it arrive as quickly or evenly as the breathless pundits predict it to - but the basic analysis feels correct to me: technology (and Web technology in particular) is creating a transparency and connectedness that is toxic to certain kinds of businesses, and that cannot be undone. The collapse of the global asset-pricing bubble is the root cause of the current crisis, but it is technology and not just economics that will prevent Humpty Dumpty from ever being put back together in quite the same way again.

Twitter Use Case

I'm still a Twitter skeptic as an individual user, but I just got home from the grocery store to find my neighborhood crawling with cops and three helicopters overhead. So I jump on Twitter, search for "Wallingford" and get my answer: a bank robbery + car chase ended about a block away (side benefit, one of the two results is from a friend and neighbor, Mandy Levenberg. Whoulda thunk it?...)