What is apparent, however, is that Scandinavians take their coffee very, very seriously. To reach the number one spot, the Finnish drank their way through an average of 11.8Kg of coffee per year each. At approximately 8gms coffee per 30ml shot, thats around 2 double espressos per day, for every man woman and child in Finland. And that’s just an average, there must be some seriously wired Vikings staying up all night on 10 cups of coffee to support those sort of figures.

I worked out my consumption at around 7Kg per year, which means I can take comfort that I am doing my part to keep New Zealand well comfortably inside the top 30.

The ‘limited’ invitation preview (limited to 500 invites per person.. so very exclusive) is already oversubscribed. Even Mark Zuckerberg has a profile. Techcrunch is reporting traffic from the preview network already ranking in their top 10 referral sources.

There’s already plenty of analysis about how Google may have finally got it right. All countered by the enormous weight of previous failures, on the back of simliar levels of hype (wave, buzz).

But there could be a few cards playing strongly in Google’s favour when Google+ is released to the general population.

1. Facebook fatigue.

The bug that killed MySpace. Speaking personally, Facebook was successful because I actually found friends I wanted to share with, instead of a 1000 slightly creepy strangers with animated GIF profile pics and nothing of any value to say.

It was also curious, in a kind of ‘Friends Reunited’ way, checking in on the personal lives of people I hadn’t seen since primary school.

But then, the people I actually wanted to hear from, stopped sharing. And those I’ve heard enough from, are still sharing to much. Plus there is that awkward back log of friend requests from 3rd cousins, step mothers in law, and people I’m not even sure I know. If I could easily lump them into a group of ‘also rans’ that only see occasional photos and witty status updates, I might friend them. But even with a reasonable level of technical competency, I can’t quite get my head around Facebook’s friend ‘lists’ and privacy settings. So in purgatory they remain.

There has been a murmur in the press recently about a slow down in Facebook’s growth. No doubt they’ll still hit the billion user mark, but if Google+ times its general release just right, maybe, just maybe, they’ll catch the (pardon the pun.. again) wave of users looking to start over on a clean slate.

2. Social networking for work

I still think this is an enormously untapped opportunity. There’s a few good services out there (Yammer, Socialcast) but it’s often hard to convince workplaces of the benefit of switching to an enterprise sharing platform, instead of a clunky and out of date intranet.

Many workplaces are already on Google Apps for Business. So the switch to using Google+ for work collaboration may not be so hard. And their clever Circles feature makes it easy to sort your work contacts from your friends – a feature that has always presented a problem in Facebook (do I really want to ‘friend’ my boss?)

3. Video chat as a passive ‘status update’.

Despite the decades of sci-fi longing, since it has arrived, video chat has never really taken off like we thought it would. It’s just a little too… weird. But with Hangouts, Google may have finally nailed it.

Why? For the same reason that ‘status updates’ killed instant messaging. A pop up message is too ‘in your face’, it compels you to reply immediately, and makes you appear rude if you don’t. Unwittingly, you find yourself stuck in a long winded IM conversation, when you really should be working. Or taking the doing the dishes.

Status updates are passive, like email. You can reply at your leisure. They are the cornerstone of all social networking. You don’t have to participate, and when you do, you do so on your own terms.

Google’s new group video chat, Hangout, appears to adopt a similar model. You set your status to ‘available’, and anyone who wants to stop by for a chat, can. Unlike Skype, which requires you to barge face-first through the front door.

Also, I resent paying for Skype’s group video chat. Now, with all my friends, family and colleagues on some version of Google, why would I?

The overal case for the success of Google+ is compelling. But the history of Google’s attempts at social suggests a different story. Which is why nobody is calling it yet.

Which is probably exactly how the team at Google like it.

It occurred to me, while falling in love with the place during an open home, that most real estate viewings take place in the middle of the day. Usually in summer. Of course the vendor will tell you it gets good winter sun, but experience tells me you should do your own research. But how?

Late last year I downloaded Google’s free Sky Map app to my Android phone, but hadn’t really done much with it, other than searching for Mars one night over the summer, after a few beers.  I figured it might be able to tell me where the sun is in the sky at the time I’m using it, but no more. Which isn’t much use, as it’s usually (ahem) blindingly obvious.

Not so. Turns out Sky Map has a Time Travel feature -and it’s mind bottling.

So I went back to the open home the following week, held my Android up to the sky, and set the time to midday on 21st June 2011. The shortest day of the southern hemisphere year. I pressed ‘search’ and entered ‘sun’ then bingo, it directed my hand to a spot in the sky, a few metres above the trees, where the sun will be in the middle of winter. I could see it through the window of my new living room. Amazing.

But more than that, you can actually ‘play’ the movement of the sky, at different speeds (10min/sec, 1hour/sec etc) and watch the sun rise and set during the day. It looks like I’ll get about 3 hours of sun on the shortest day, and 5 hours towards the beginning and end of winter. More if I get into a scrap with the bamboo on the north side of our section.

I cannot recommend this app highly enough to anyone thinking of buying a house. Which is why I’m sharing this tip.

You will note, of course, that I waited till after we bought the house before sharing. I may be nice, but I’m not stupid.

Since early 2011 I have been working at VendHQ, helping to raise the profile of the product online and build a loyal, supportive community of users and fans, though any and all communication channels (Twitter, blog, Facebook, email). I contribute towards the overall marketing strategy, product testing, new features, website content. I also man the help desk and help identify and manage support pain points, inbound comms processes, and updating the knowledge base. Vend also has a free pos software plan.

So a little bit of everything, really

http://www.vendhq.com

Read more about online pos software

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I recently upgraded www.hrc.co.nz from 3.05 to 3.1. All seemed well, and the upgrade was a sweet new version. Unfortunately, 2 weeks later, I discovered it had made subtle, but important changes to my carefully crafted permalink and category structure. There’s a lot of help forums on this topic, particularly relating to the Top Level Categories plugin (which I am using) but none of them restored my custom permalink/category structure properly.

So I had to downgrade from 3.1 to the version I backed up before before applying the upgrade. However, in the 10 odd days between, web content editors had uploaded a large number of new posts, pages and media files.

Rather than downgrade then copy over all the recent content manually, I discovered that you can keep new content quite easily, by using the upgraded MySQL database and just importing the pre-upgrade up wp_options table. Here is how I did it;

In this example, WordPress is installed in a directory of the same name (ie; /public_html/wordpress). It also assumes you have a working knowledge of MySQL and a backup of the WordPress installation directory and SQL database taken before the last upgrade. (If you don’t have a backup, why the hell not?)

1) Move and rename the upgraded wordpress folder (ie;  /wordpress -> /wordpress_3.1)

2) Copy or unzip the backup folder (ie;  /wordpress_3.0 -> /wordpress)

3) Copy folder /wp-content/uploads from upgraded folder to the backup folder (ie;  /wordpress_3.0/wp-content/uploads -> /wordpress/wp-content/uploads)

4) backup the live (ie; upgraded, 3.1) MySQL  database (just to be safe)

5) rename MySQL table wp_options -> wp_options_3.1 (or backup or similar)

NOW FOR THE FUN PART

6) import into the live database ONLY the wp_options table from the original, pre-upgrade backup MySQL database

Your site should now be downgraded to the last version of WordPress, but any posts, pages or media created since the upgrade will be intact. Test the site then, when you are happy, drop the wp_options_3.1 (or whatever you named it) table. It worked a treat for me. Provided you back everything up thoroughly, there’s no harm in giving it a go.

11 x 11 = 121

111 x 111 = 12321

1111 x 1111 = 1234321

11111 x 11111 = 123454321

111111 x 111111 = 12345654321

1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321

11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321

111111111 x 111111111=12345678987654321

More specifically, Zuckerberg says that talking to high school kids about email makes him feel old. High-schoolers, apparently, say things like “we don’t use email. It’s too slow.”

At a highly anticipated Facebook event today, Zuckerberg explained that people (more specifically, his girlfriend’s little sister and her friends) are using more lightweight modes of communication: SMS, instant messaging, status updates and comments. Which renders email – with its polite Victorian conventions such as a subject line, ‘dear sir’ introductions, and pesky hellos and goodbyes – increasingly obsolete.

So Zuckerberg, who has a canny eye for the future of the web (perhaps from all the time he spends talking to high school kids?) is, over the next few months, releasing the ‘Social Inbox’, which promises to be a seamless integration of all these lightweight, modern and informal messaging platforms. Oh.. and also email, because as much as high school kids hate it, 99% of the world still uses it.

The main points of Facebook’s revamped messaging system are:

• It will be ‘seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal & short”. So it’s good bye to hellos and goodbyes.
• It will merge, integrate and archive SMS, instant messaging, existing Facebook messages, and email into a private conversation stream, or ‘Social Inbox’
• It will tease apart messages, in a configurable way, from ‘Friends’, ‘Friends of Friends’ or people you don’t know, into separate layers; ie; “Messages”, “Other” and “Spam”. Users will be able to register for an @facebook.com email address (or variation thereof)

There is a lot of speculation about how this may eradicate spam, by using complex rules of association (friendships) to verify that any messages you receive are genuine. Plus there is a time & cost barrier to setting up a fake Facebook account – adding detail, photos, acquiring friends – that may reduce the attractiveness of spam marketing.

On the flipside, the more users’ trust their networks, the more vulnerable a platform is to being compromised. If you receive a ‘call to action’ from a close Facebook friend, it may be harder to determine whether it is genuine, or a hacker. (This has been an increasing trend recently on Facebook).

But all in all, it’s an ambitious project, fitting well with Zuckerberg’s overall plan for total domination of the web.

Unlike the rumours circulating in the tech media and the days leading up to the launch, Zuckerberg didn’t actually call his Social Inbox a ‘Gmail Killer’. Quite the opposite, in fact. He even went so far as to say “I think Gmail is a really good product.”

Which reminds me a little of a young, hungry boxer, heaping praise on his aging idol, moments after knocking him unconscious in the ring. Or a high school kid, under duress, agreeing that his father is a better dancer when drunk.

Fundamentally, he argues, clicking to ‘like’ a Save Darfur Facebook page, or Retweeting #beatcancer to generate a 5c paypal donation may make you feel as if you’re making a difference, but compared to riding a freedom bus through the southern states during the 1960s, at genuine risk to your own life, it doesn’t really stack up. If anything, by lowering the motivation threshold to action, it may actually discourage people from pursing genuine change.

..there is something else at work here, in the outsized enthusiasm for social media. Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is.

Predictably, this was followed by a backlash of heated online debate, both in support of, and refuting, Gladwell’s piece. Below is a round up of the replies.

Biz Stone (co founder of Twitter) writing in The Atlantic:

Rudimentary communication among individuals in real time allows many to move together as one–suddenly uniting everyone in a common goal. Lowering the barrier to activism doesn’t weaken humanity, it brings us together and it makes us stronger.

Evan Williams (co-founder of Twitter):

Anyone who’s claiming that sending a tweet by itself is activism, that’s ludicrous — but no one’s claiming that, at least no one that’s credible… If you can’t organize you can’t activate… I thought [the article] was entertaining but kind of pointless.

Paul Carr, writing on Techcrunch (in support of Gladwell):

In writing his rebuttal, Dixon neatly encapsulates two pervasive attitudes amongst bloggers and advocates of social media. The first of these is the knee-jerk impulse to defend social media against any attack, especially when it comes from someone who, as Dixon says of Gladwell “doesn’t seem to really use Twitter.

Then later, on Techcrunch, in a video interview with the author of Wikinomics, Don Tapscott:

Tapscott to Gladwell: “You’re Just Dead Wrong.”

There will no doubt be more to follow. I will endeavor to post them here. Feel free to weigh into the debate by posting your comments below..

OK, so that last part didn’t actually happen. But I would have done it.. if they’d asked. And paid. Handsomely.

And then, some time in the late 1990s, I learned to touch type. And my handwriting went to s**t. Literally. I’m lucky if I use a pen – for anything other than scribbling notes – once a month. Last year, after our wedding, we had to write thank you notes to all our guests. I spent an hour trying to work out if I could do it in Microsoft Word. I get nervous signing my name. More than once I’ve been asked to sign it again. Thank God for Eftpos.

This morning I wrote a note on a post it to a colleague. I had to scribble out and rewrite the lowercase letter ‘a’ because it looked too much like a nine. I was disgusted at myself. So I wrote a blog post about it. On a computer. With a keyboard.

See what I mean?

Sometimes it’s best to just shut up and post a pretty picture. These are the top searches people make on Google that sends them, often unwittingly, to my blog; weighted in order of popularity. I think it says so much more than a pithy bit of banter ever could.