Category: Society

Don’t Be a Cafe Wifi Moocher

Liquid Cocaine Know the term “moocher”? A moocher is, according to Urban Dictionary:

some one who uses you [for] there own good but never returns the favor.

Yesterday, I wrote about working in cafes. When I first started doing it, I admit I might have, well, sort of, you know, lingered over a table while nursing one small cup of iced tea the whole day. Yea.

Then one of my favorite cafes, Canvas in San Francisco, closed down. That place was frequented by cafe workers like me. Dozens of us would squat there for hours, while consuming a total of three and a half cups throughout the entire day.

“We were never able to make a decent profit” said one of the sad signs posted around the cafe. “So we’re sorry to announce that we’ll be shutting our doors. Thank you for your patronage.”

I don’t know what caused their shortfall exactly. High rent? Expensive supplies? Lots of debt? Or maybe… cafe wifi moochers?

The article “Free WiFi spawns cafe backlash” by Nate Anderson of Ars Technica sure seems to indicate cafe wifi mooching as a profit drain.

It was this problem that led one Seattle coffee shop to start shutting off the WiFi on weekends last year. Not only did revenue go up, but the atmosphere in the cafe changed as well.

The article also relates how cafe workers tend to make other patrons feel less inclined to talk, thus decreasing the sociability of the cafe. Personally, I go to cafes so there’s a healthy and lively level of chatter all around me. I try not to eavesdrop (though sometimes, it just sort of happens), but as a former New Yorker, I like the energy of being around lots of people.

But from now on, I’ll resolve to be less of a cafe wifi moocher and more of a consumer. I’ll still work in cafes, but I’ll make frequent purchases and chalk it up as my cafe wifi rent.

I’d encourage all other cafe workers to do the same too. C’mon, let’s pay our cafe wifi rent with more than just a small latte!

Annoyancetech

Trend Hunter Magazine Over the weekend, a friend told me about a device that scrambles mobile phone signals. That means that no calls can be picked up by the mobile phones within this device’s range.

He knows a guy who regularly carries such a device into movie theaters and restaurants, so that he can enjoy a nice, quiet, mobile-phone-less evening.

Before you rush out to buy one, I should let you know that this device is illegal in the United States (sorry).

But don’t lose heart. There’s a new trend of devices called “annoyancetech” that basically provide relief from annoyances, according to Trend Hunter Magazine.

A slew of gadgets have been invented recently with a range of social applications, from a jacket that zaps gropers on the subway to a harmless device that gets dogs to stop barking, to the Xcuse box, a contraption that produces background noise for phone conversations to let you fool other (sic) about your actual whereabouts.

Think of all the great social applications! The next time someone tailgates you on the highway, there’ll be a device that starts flashing bright red warning lights saying “Back Off!” Or, the next time someone farts, there’ll be a device that emits the gentle counter-balancing scent of flowers. Or, gosh, the possibilities are endless!

Free Stuff to do in San Francisco

SF MOMA Being on your own means you have a lot more “free” time. Well, honestly, it’s not free, because any time you waste now is your own time. And time is money.

But if you’d like to take a break from business and do something cost-effective (read: free), then here are some suggestions:

Parks

Take a nice stroll through one of San Francisco’s wonderful parks. Walk your dog, read a book, go for a run. Or just breath in the fresh air.

Museums, Art Galleries, & Zoos

Soak in some culture and brain candy at these great institutions. After all, one of San Francisco’s main charms is its culture! Some are free only on certain days of the month, others are free all the time.

Tours

Tours can be full of fascinating knowledge and surprisingly fun. At the very least, they make for interesting conversation pieces or help jump-start your brain when you’re in a mental standstill.

Movies & Concerts

Sometimes it’s fun to just relax and watch a good movie or listen to a good performance. During the summer and fall, San Francisco is full of such fun events.

Book Readings & Story Tellings

Another great way to get your creative juices flowing is to experience the creativity of others. These bookstores and organizations offer book readings and story tellings by established and up-and-coming authors.

Free Wifi Cafes

And what list of free stuff would be complete without free wifi cafes? These sources all list lots of great free wifi hotspots in San Francisco.

I’m sure there are a ton of other free things you could do in San Francisco. This city is a treasure trove of culture and activities. I haven’t even listed the yearly events that take place. That could be a whole other article in itself.

Do you know of any other great free activities?

The Caffeine Curve

Now for some Friday fun. This pic seems to be circulating the Interweb quite a bit; a friend forwarded it to me earlier this week.

Every entrepreneur lives off of caffeine one way or another. So what exactly happens when we ingest copious amounts of caffeine throughout the day?

Glad you asked. As this highly-scientific chart shows, you can reach deity-level elation at your peak, for those wonderful orgasms of creativity. Then you can drop down so low that you’re playing Duck Hunt with your neighbor’s dog.

The Caffeine Curve

Colorado-based cartoonist Tom Edwards is behind this hilarity. He’s pretty sure that he’s “the only cartoonist in the world who distributes his one panel cartoon almost exclusively on wheel-thrown porcelain pots.”

I’m not sure if he intended this pic to be a viral marketing gem, but it seems to have worked. This pic is on Digg and countless other blogs. He’s cleverly included his name in the pic, enabling people like me to be able to hunt him down. A smarter tactic would have been to include his URL, but hey, either way, he’s still gaining notoriety.

If you’d like to monitor your daily caffeine intake, you can purchase a mug and support Tom’s art. As an added bonus, you can even fill your mug with your favorite caffeinated beverage. Fun!

Globalism and Racism

Mister Wong There’s been some drama over the German social bookmarking site Mister Wong lately. If you’re in the US, you may be able to guess the controversy. If you’re not, you probably have no idea what could be wrong.

The controversy is over the branding of the site: it’s name, illustration, and slogan. 8Asians, a group blog of Asian American & Asian Canadian bloggers (of which I am a member) was the first that I know of to publicly decry Mister Wong. As written by Ernie, one of the founders:

Maybe people aren’t as sensitive to political correctness as they are here in North America. But seriously, one of their web badges has the slogan “ping pong, king kong, Mister Wong.” Which I, of course, interpret as “ching chong, Mister Wong” and get INCREDIBLY FUCKING ANGRY.

The first few comments were sympathetic. One commenter expressed some confusion though. “Enlighten me. What on earth is offensive about the Mr. Wong website?” he wrote. After a few back-and-forth explanations, the issue died.

Two months later, Kristen Nicole of Mashable wrote about how Mister Wong was launching a US version. In her review, she wrote, “Despite the questionable name, Mister Wong has a lot going for it…” A commenter there also expresses some confusion: “Kristen, can you explain why you think the name is ‘questionable’?”

Another commenter replied, “It’s not so much the name that is questionable, more the cliched stereotyped image of Mr. Wong that comes along with it. I really hope they get rid of that on the US beta at least, otherwise there’ll be some angry Asian Americans out there.”

Then Kai Tietjen, the founder of Mister Wong, removed the illustration from the logo.

It was never my intention, nor that of my company, to hurt anyone with the use of the illustration. We are extremely sensitive to this issue and the feelings of others. We removed the original illustration off the top of the page some time ago, when the issue first arose, in hopes that no one would be offended by it any longer.

Apparently the 8 Asians article and angry comments on Mashable’s articles led to this decision. A short time later, a German newspaper picked up the story and Germans flooded the 8 Asians site. Some politely expressed their confusion and defended Mister Wong. Others haven’t been as polite, unfortunately.

Pete Cashmore from Mashable followed up on the story and succinctly summed it all up:

These kinds of clashes seem inevitable when companies launch globally: what’s culturally acceptable in one place is a hanging offense elsewhere. Often, as in this case, people are puzzled by the fact that they caused any offense at all. The “racist” label, however, is one that all startups will want to stay a million miles away from, even if they don’t fully understand their infraction.

That’s the real takeaway here, especially for any business going global. You may not agree with the controversy, but once you operate in the global arena, you have no choice but to respect the sensibilities of all the societies with which you want to do business. Even if you don’t agree with or understand those sensibilities.

Remember the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy? That’s probably an extreme example, but you get the point. A less extreme example is the Chevorlet Nova and how it didn’t sell in Spanish-speaking countries because “Nova” translates to “doesn’t go” in Spanish. This is actually an urban legend, but it’s a commonly cited example of going global.

Ernie, in my opinion, may have saved Mister Wong quite a bit of heartache and money by expressing his views at the early stages of their entry into the US market. For better or worse, the US society is relatively much more politically correct than other societies of the world. Denounce that all you want, but I guarantee you that if Ernie hadn’t spoken up, someone else would have.

The Web Is One Big Party

A VC A few months ago, Fred Wilson of All Software Should Be Social. In it, he paraphrased something Clay Shirky said:

Clay Shirky once said that social nets are like parties. When they are small, they are really great, when they get big and crowded, they cease to be useful. Again I can’t find that post, or I’d link to it.

Clay’s right. But a huge social net that’s made up of millions of smaller social nets is likely to be even more useful than anything that we currently have.

This got me thinking, which, I know, is a dangerous thing.

Say the web is one big party. Like Clay says, a party with too many people is no fun. But this party is being held in an enormous warehouse with lots of nooks and crannies. So naturally, groups of people break off into their own niches.

Some people stay with their friends (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster.com, Second Life). Others stick with family (Famster), coworkers (LinkedIn), or even church group (MyChurch). People like to feel like they belong somewhere, and people with similar interests tend to cluster together. Thus you have cliques (Wikipedia, Flickr, Digg, Yelp, YouTube, Last.fm, Kaboodle, Dogster, Fanpop, Gather, FanNation, LibraryThing, Rupture, and on and on and on).

But people don’t stay within a particular group all the time though. They travel between several cliques, sometimes adopting different persona with each one. That’s okay though, because they still have their own identity; it’s just their outward behavior and language that changes (OpenID, PeopleAggregator).

Sometimes people want to share their life story and crave an audience (Twitter, Blogger, Xanga, LiveJournal). That can be difficult because this is one loud party; but you’re bound to find a few single people at the bar if you look hard enough.

Other times, people need a little alone-time and privacy, away from everyone at the party. This can be both easy and hard. It’s easy when you want to just leave the party (log off). It’s hard when you’ve been at the party for a while, had lots of conversations, then are trying to hide. If someone wants to find you, they will (Google, Technorati, Wink). At this party, everything you’ve said can last forever.

It’s also easy just to sit back and people-watch at this party (Google Reader, FeedBurner, My Yahoo!, Netvibes, Bloglines). There’s a lot to see and your eyes may glaze over after a few hours. But you’ll also see some really wacky and fun sights.

Then what happens when bullies start to get abusive? It’s tough to police this party; it’s so big that almost anything goes. Fortunately, some kind souls are trying to help (EFF, Creative Commons). Much luck to them. There are lots of predators at this party. I hope they don’t ruin it for the rest of us.

And there you have it. The web as one big party. It’s a fantastic one that’s growing everyday. This warehouse is infinite, save for our imaginations. So come in and have some fun. Just don’t drink too much; the hang-over is killer.

Late Bloomer, Late Genius

The Tortoise and The Hare I marvel at all the smart people around me. The people who’ve hit success at a ripe young age. The Jerry Yangs, the Larry Pages, heck, even the Shawn Fannings. And I wonder: is it too late to make a big splash?

Then I read Daniel Pink’s article in Wired: “What Kind of Genius Are You?” He begins with an anecdote about a 17th-century Dutch art class at Harvard.

On the first day of class, the professor displayed a stunning image of a Renaissance Madonna and child. “Pablo Picasso did this copy of a Raphael drawing when he was 17 years old,” the professor told the students. “What have you people done lately?”

Hmmm. I ate a banana for breakfast, read a bunch of emails, thought hard about improving some processes on my team… but no Renaissance Madonnas. Damn. What’s that say about me? Am I doomed to mediocrity?

Fortunately, no! There’s still hope!

The article explains how David Galenson, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, made an interesting realization. Using the careful analysis of a trained economist, he scoured volumes of data and “sliced and diced the numbers with his econometric ginsu knife.” The end result showed two types of geniuses:

Conceptual Innovators
These are people who “do their breakthrough work when they are young”, “then decline steadily.” Examples are Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles.
Experimental Innovators
These are people who go through “a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers.” Examples are Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock.

An entry by Stephen Dubner on the Freakonomics Blog corroborates these results. It cites an article by David Wessel in the Wall Street Journal: “Why Middle Age May Be Healthy For Your Wallet“.

Baseball players are said to peak in their late 20’s. Chess players in their mid-30’s. Theoretical economists in their mid-40’s. But in ordinary life, there’s an obvious tension between sheer smarts, often seen in the supple minds of the young, and experience, which comes only with age.

Ah ha! So maybe I’m an Experimental Innovator. Maybe I’m the kind of person who is able to arrive at genius through trial and error and experience. I know I’m definitely no baseball player.

So if you were to ask me, “What have you done lately?” I’d say, “I’ve done lots of things! Like eating a banana for breakfast, reading a bunch of emails, and thinking hard about improving some processes on my team… All things that will give me valuable experience for my budding late genius!”

(And heck, I don’t need to be the next Mark Twain. Wessel explains that most people make their smartest personal finance decisions in their 50’s. I’ll gladly settle for that.)