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I'm Michael Koby, and I love technology. I'm also a programmer, currently doing Ruby on Rails development for a small Houston startup. Here I talk about technology, programming, politics, movies, music, and anything else I feel I need to talk about. If you would like to know more, you can check out the About page.Popular Series
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The Death of Common Sense
Occasionally you get a really nice forwarded email that you can’t help but share with the world.
Edit (2009-01-16): The original author, Lori Borgman, of this piece has commented with a link to the entire piece.
Below is the obituary for Common Sense:
‘Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn’t always fair; and maybe it was my fault.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended
from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.
It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an
abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I’m A Victim.
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.
Michael Koby 
Twitter vs. FriendFeed vs. Jaiku
Last week, Robert Scoble asked the question of “Why is Jaiku not discussed as a competitor to Twitter” over on FriendFeed. This started an rather large discussion about why FriendFeed is better than Jaiku.
Lets start with the basics, because many people might now know what Jaiku is. Jaiku is a combination microblog and life streaming service that was purchased by Google and is currently invite only. The thing is, Jaiku’s lifestreaming feature was similar to FriendFeed but was around before FriendFeed. I will say that FriendFeed definitely implemented the lifestreaming idea better than Jaiku.
So to answer Mr. Scoble’s question, the reason that Jaiku is not discussed as a Twitter competitor is primarily due to its invite only status. About 6 months ago, when I first got into the micro-blogging, I used Jaiku exclusively and they had their own set of downtime issues. However, these might get resolved with Jaiku moving the Google App Engine. However, the larger issue is that people can’t really use service because they need an invite to be a part of the conversations that take place there.
Robert Scoble is on record as stating that he will go where ever he can have interesting conversations so for him, a place that has a wall up on people’s ability to access the service, is not going to work so well for him. This is why he has embraced FriendFeed with feverish zeal.
My opinion? Jaiku had promise. With the advent of FriendFeed I’m not sure what they can offer in the way of lifestreaming. FriendFeed has really implemented this feature really well. Also, now that Twitter is really looking into their stability issues and taking them more seriously, Jaiku might become a needless service within the next 6 months. If Jaiku can finish their move to the Google App Engine and open up to let everyone sign up, they might have a chance at bring people over from Twitter (since it’s going to take them a while to fix their stability issues). However, convincing folks to move from Twitter to Jaiku is going to be difficult, even given Twitters issues.
Twitter’s problems have revolved around 2 things 1) stability and 2) lack of features. Well FriendFeed has pretty much solved both issues, though it is a different kind of service. People for some reason stick with Twitter regardless of its issues. With that in mind and the fact that FriendFeed has a solid lock on the lifestreaming concept, I think that Jaiku will die and dissappear into the ether of the internet. Of course, Google could have plans for it with regards to their mobile OS, Android but I’m not going to hold my breath.