Neal Tucker

Google Buzz

// February 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Twitter, internet

When a huge company like Apple or Google unleashes a new beast into the wild, the interwebs blows up. The tubes just can’t contain all the peanut butter being stuffed in from every angle – Twitter, Facebook, et al. And in this internet day and age, people are always looking for the Next Big Thing. It is my opinion that Google Buzz could be that thing. The following is my Why.

People have been asking really good questions about Buzz. Firstly, why a new product? Wave sucked. Hard. Why do we need a new G-app? Gmail and Gtalk work just fine. Don’t screw it up. Second, if we do get a new product, shouldn’t it at least be remotely intuitive to first-time users? And third, will Buzz be the Next Big Thing for which we’ve all been waiting and looking?

So, (1) Why a new (Google) product? This is two questions in one. The first is, why do we need a new web app to add to the internet chaos? And the follow-up is, why should it be a Google app? The first question almost answers itself. We need a new web app because there is internet chaos. If you’re like me, you use Facebook, Twitter, several media apps (Flickr, Youtube, etc.), a chat client of some kind (Facebook chat counts here), and everybody except Joe Paterno has an email address. Wouldn’t it be great if all these services worked together? Google answers affirmatively. Hence, we have Google Buzz. The second part of the question is, why do we need a new Google app? The fact that so many people use Google already makes it a prime candidate for this kind of service, not to mention they have the funds to partake in massive expenditures and undertakings. And they kind of own the internet, anyway. This last reason is actually why people may not want Google to be the King Aggregator. I, for one, disagree. I would love for Google, the one service that I’ve been using since high school, to be the hub for all things social on the internet.

The second question concerns the usability and functionality of the product. I would first like to say that Buzz is not Wave. Wave was a nightmare, and Buzz is no such thing. Also, was Twitter intuitive for everyone? Nope. Facebook? Nope. In fact, I know several people who had no idea how to use Twitter when they first started toying with it, telling me they kept trying to “write on my Wall,” to little avail, as you might expect if you’re a regular Twitter user. There is no universally intuitive product, web app or otherwise. Wave was a complete waste of time and energy, but Buzz, I think, is different.

Lastly: will Buzz be the next big thing? I think it has the potential to be the next big thing. I won’t say positively that it will be, but I do think it stands more than a snowball’s chance in hell.  Whatever the next big thing is, it needs to have several aspectual features:

- localized content aggregation — Users need the ability to access all media without leaving the site on which they find the content.

- combinatorial email/chat modality — Everybody emails. A lot of people use instant message. Combine the two. Put them in the same place.

- blogosphere integration — Nearly everybody and their mother has a blog now. And most self-respecting companies do. Integrate all of those.

That’s what I think anyway. If it has those features, it will be able to fulfill what I think is possibly another, final requirement: it needs to work more or less seamlessly with any new web apps. If it has the first three aspectual features and is capable of fulfilling the final one when it becomes necessary, this mythical product will be the Next Big Thing. Google Buzz is dangerously close. Here’s to hoping for the best. And the Buzz.

Talk soon,

Neal

Hughie & Krapp’s Last Tape

// January 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // blog

I saw Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie and Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape tonight at The Goodman Theatre downtown, both starring Brian Dennehy, with a 15-minute intermission between them.  Having read Hughie, I knew what to expect (more or less).  Having not read Krapp’s Last Tape, I knew only to expect Beckett (more or less).

Hughie came first.  Dennehy walked onto the stage, a vivid hotel lobby in the 50’s, from backstage left, in a large pinstripe suit, smoking, already reminiscing about his lost friend, the eponymous character we never see, Hughie himself.  The night clerk, Charlie, vaguely listens to Dennehy’s garrulous character, Erie Smith, spin his yarn for upwards of an hour.  Erie tells him about Hughie, the prior night clerk, and he tells Charlie of the stories he used to tell old Hughie, before he got sick, “was took to the hospital,” and died, a week before the play begins.  He tells Charlie how he’s lost his luck since Hughie died.  How he can’t win anymore – he’s a gamblin’ man.

Charlie listens in a torpor.  He hangs on to the ends of Erie’s sentences like an old faithful dog, trying but failing to attend truly to Erie’s words.  Hughie tells Charlie story after story, stories within stories upon stories.  Erie says to himself as much as to Charlie, “What I fed to Hughie wasn’t all lies…They was stories….” Not lies.  Stories.  Erie tells the story of himself and Hughie, because he needs Hughie.  Hughie, now dead, can’t help him save for his presence in Erie’s long-winded stories.  Erie clung to Hughie, because Hughie gave him confidence, gave him, in essence, a raison d’être, a reason for being.  Without Hughie, Erie can’t find joy in anything, in the women or the gambling, in the old memory-haunted hotel, or, worst, in his stories.  Several times throughout the one-act play, Erie heads for the stairs, a few times climbing up a stair or two, before turning around, facing the lobby, telling another story.

Nearing the end of the play, Charlie opens up.  His stupor clouding his poor judgment and ability to converse for most of the play, he finally reveals that he wants something that Erie has, something Erie needs to give away in order to live again: his stories.  Erie needs to tell his stories to someone who will believe them, who will “lap them up” as Erie says, someone who will sit at Erie’s feet and beg for more.  That person, it turns out, is Charlie.  Hughie can’t play that role any longer.  But Charlie can.  Erie recognizes this immediately, and we see a hint of the old spark we imagine Hughie had earlier in life, a spark we hope returns.

As humans, we need food, shelter, clothes, of course.  But we truly need something that’s much harder to come by.  Those are the needs we cling to, what we hold on to even after it’s gone, what we grope for in the dark, what we frantically try to replace when all is lost.  Erie needed someone to listen, someone to hear his stories, someone to believe him, someone that would give him reason to live, reason to be.  Hughie was his reason to be.  Having lost Hughie, he mourned.  He spent a hundred dollars he didn’t have to purchase a flower arrangement for Hughie’s funeral.  He returned to the hotel where Hughie had worked and listened to him for nineteen years.  In the end, he found Charlie.

Next came Krapp’s Last Tape.  Beckett is known for his absurdist, existential plays, stories without stories.  In Hughie, stories were the essence of Erie’s life.  In Krapp’s Last Tape, Krapp replays his own stories in order to remember, but also in order to forget.  He listens to tapes he has made on his birthdays, sitting in a black, dark room, with a single light handing from the ceiling.  He exits to a closet upstage a few times, but he always returns to his dark room.

Beginning as a return to vaudeville, the play draws us into the idiosyncratic life of Krapp, the play’s only visible character.  As the play moves on, we are invited to listen with Krapp as he plays a tape from thirty years prior, his 39th birthday.  We hear him recount events that he can now only imagine.  His 39-year-old self (the other character) is a different man in many ways, ways the 69-year-old Krapp would like, so he seems to intimate at times, to forget.  In order to forget, he must first remember.  Krapp listens and remembers, imagining the moments in his life, thirty years ago, living a different life, a life altogether unlike the one he is living now, the one in the dark room, alone.  We hear that 39-year-old Krapp also lived a solitary life.  What was once a refuge for a young, introverted man, has evolved into a hovel for a old hermit.

He eats his bananas and listens to his tapes.  He seems to have no life but the tapes.  Having listened to the tape he recorded thirty years prior, Krapp records one final tape.  He denigrates his young (depraved?) self.  He takes refuge in the simple fact that it is all behind him, or so he says.  He references old stories that his younger self engaged in, all those many years ago.  He talks of going to church, falling asleep in the pews, gathering holly at Christmas, being young.  He talks to himself and to the tape, though that distinction is dissolving, saying how he might be somewhere again, another time, another place.

He says, finally, “Be again, be again.”

The two plays are very different, but they have obvious similarities as well.  Erie and Krapp are similar men, longing for something they cannot have, Erie for his Hughie, Krapp for his younger self, though each claims he doesn’t want or need it, in so many words.  Erie finds Charlie.  Krapp finds his tapes.  Each has lost something, but each creates something else in its place, in their own, very different way.  Each clings to a life no longer lived, replacing it with stories and tapes.  Dennehy is brilliant, finding the (often comic) tragedy of both Erie and Krapp: living, telling, recording, but most of all, and most difficutly, being.

Project 365

// January 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // blog

If you’ve been clicking my links on Facebook or Twitter, you’ve probably seen several consecutive posts with a prominent picture and a tagline beneath it.  This is part of one of my 2010 Resolutions, Project 365 as some have called it elsewhere.  Basically, the premise is simple: take a picture every day and post it online.  I’m posting all my pictures to Flickr, which automatically posts to Facebook, then I’m blogging it here, which automatically posts to Twitter.

For this first week, I’ve posted my photo of the day every day.  Subsequently, I plan to change up my routine a bit.  Having gotten into a kind of rhythm, I now think that it is a resolution I would like to stick with for the long haul.  We’ll see how that pans out, but I feel pretty good about it, and hopefully that’s somewhat realistic, something else that only Time Will Tell.

My new plan is to post my pictures once a week, each Friday or Saturday posting the previous week’s photos.  I’ll figure out some way to post them all to one blog post without appearing too cluttered.  If you have a suggestion, I’d love to hear it.  I don’t really have anything in mind right now.  I will always post them to Flickr as well, so if you want to see my whole growing 2010 gallery, check it out by clicking on any of the pictures I’ve posted (or by clicking here on this red text).

That’s all for now.

Talk soon,

Neal

Day: 7/365 – Date: 1/7/2010

// January 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // blog

DSC02891, originally uploaded by Neal Tucker.

Chicago is covered in snow; this is a brick wall down the street, laced in ivy, topped and buried in snow.

Day: 6/365 – Date: 1/6/2010

// January 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // blog

DSC02864, originally uploaded by Neal Tucker.

A miniature snowman down the street.

Day: 5/365 – Date: 1/5/2010

// January 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // blog

DSC02856, originally uploaded by Neal Tucker.

Sheets of snow and ice on the balcony.

Day: 4/365 – Date: 1/4/2010

// January 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // blog

DSC02836, originally uploaded by Neal Tucker.

We flew back to Chicago today after spending the holidays in the South.

Day: 3/365 – Date: 1/3/2010

// January 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // blog

DSC02799, originally uploaded by Neal Tucker.

The young creatives at work. (Two of my nieces at Billy’s Bar and Grill in Birmingham.)

Day: 2/365 – Date: 1/2/2010

// January 2nd, 2010 // No Comments » // blog

My family’s dog, Tippy, at home in Birmingham.

Day: 1/365 – Date: 1/1/2010

// January 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // blog

One of my resolutions for 2010 is to take a picture every day for the whole year.  This one is of me and Ash on New Year’s, less than an hour into 2010.  I hope to upload all these pictures to Flickr and here on my site.