Ann Arbor is definitely a nice change of pace after living in Wilmore, KY for the past 3.5 years.  The city is big enough to have a great selection of diverse restaurants (Chinese, Arab, Mexican, etc.) and lots of activities.  But it’s also small enough to have the feel of a community.  My apartment is on the east side of the city, just a hop skip away from Ypsilanti, and is a great location in terms of commute and shopping.  Plus the University of Michigan is close if I ever start to think about grad school.  Overall I’ve been very pleased with Ann Arbor, or “A2″ as the locals call it.

Working at Google is both fun and challenging.  My role is to support advertisers that use AdWords, Google’s advertising platform.  If you’ve ever seen those text ads when doing a Google search, then you’ve seen an AdWords ad.  I’ll be on phones, chat, and e-mail answering questions our advertisers have about the system.

Google definitely has a unique culture, and it’s a great place to work at.  I personally like being able to wear jeans to work every day, because my “professional” wardrobe is scant.  Also, free lunch is nice, and is keeping my monthly grocery bill to a minimum.  But the best aspect of Google is being surrounded by really talented individuals; it’s already beginning to stretch me in terms of professional development.  I really couldn’t be happier with this opportunity, and can’t wait to see where it goes.

A while back, I read an interesting article on Wired entitled “New Cult Spares Members From Early Adopters’ Pain“.  In short, the article described organizing together a group of people that would enjoy technology on a two year delay.

The main reason for doing this was financial.  How many times have you bought a game or movie, only to see it being sold at half price six months later?  As a one time gamer geek, this happened to me all too often.  So I decided to experiment.  I wouldn’t necessarily follow the two year tech buffer mentioned in the article, but at least I wouldn’t go out and buy any new releases.

Unfortunately, the allure of Modern Warfare 2 was too great.  At least it was for my roommate, who promptly went out and bought the game on release day.  I tried to fool myself into saying that at least I hadn’t actually spent any money on this shiny new game.  But the truth is that I probably would’ve plopped down the $60 if my roommate hadn’t beat me to the punch.

Fast forward to yesterday.  After month of fragging Russians/Americans/whoever else was involved in MW2’s over the top plot, my Xbox 360 died.  The E74 error claimed its life.  No more blood spatter effects.  No more trash talking on Live.  Even the form fitting Xbox controller was now useless.

I was without a modern gaming system (I do have a Wii, but can a system without HD output be considered modern?).

I decided that it was time to return to my original pledge.  I would once again delve into the wealth of slightly outdated entertainment.  My first stop?  Soulcalibur II.  I picked up this game for the GameCube about 6 years ago in high school.  My friends and I played it to death, until we lost interested and moved onto the next game.  And so Soulcalibur II was forgotten, relegated to being nothing more than another game case on my shelf.

Upon firing up Soulcalibur II, the first thing that happened was that my Japanese Wii promptly erased my North American save data.  Oh the joys of owning an out of region console.  All the hours I had put into unlocking every character and weapon in the game were gone.  Not a great start.  But I pressed on, seeing it as an opportunity to delve into the game anew.

What I found was an addicting game with enough content to last for a few weeks.  Now this game dropped in 2003.  And while I don’t necessarily consider 2003 to be retro, it’s old enough by video game standards.

However, Soulcalibur II has aged quite well.  The fighting is balanced.  Button mashers and skilled players are on a level playing field.  There’s a plethora of unlockable content.  The graphics are crisp, and the animations are smooth.  My only real complaint (which is the same one I had 6 years ago), is that the English voice acting is laughable.

Relearning Yoshimitsu’s move set was like relearning how to ride a bike.  I was rusty at first, but soon enough I was stringing together respectable combos.  Now my college buddies, most of whom haven’t played the game before, are picking out their favorite characters.  We may have actually found how we’ll put off studying for exams next week.

So what have I learned from this ordeal?  It’s that you don’t have to buy new just to have a good time.  Sure racking up kills in MW2 with the M16 was fun.  But it’s been just as enjoyable trying to figure out how to counter Raphael’s deceptively long reach.  I’m sending in my Xbox for repair, so in a few weeks I’ll be able to enjoy modern gaming once again.  But now I definitely won’t go so long in between firing up a retro console and diving into a classic from yesteryear.

Simply put, the most effective use of social media is to make people feel like they’re part of the team.  Everyone wants to feel like they’re a part of something bigger; they want to be a part of a community.  And by bringing in people to the fold of an organization, it’s possible to foster that sense of community.

Now what does it mean to make people feel like they’re insiders?  Well, it takes a certain level of honesty.  It might mean that CEOs run a personal blog where they admit both their triumphs and mistakes.  Organizations also need to communicate directly with their clients and consumers.  Too many times when people try to talk with someone at a company, they get lost in a maze of bureaucracy.  Instead, a tool like Twitter can be used to create person-to-person communication.  There also needs to be avenues for open and public feedback.  Listening to what people like or dislike about what you’re doing offers room for improvement.

This sort of vulnerability is a bit frightening at first.  However, it’s foolishness to hope to control what people are saying about you in a connected world.  Instead, by creating insiders that feel like they’re a part of a community, you’ll receive more and better suggestions for improvement.  Not only this, but when you’re doing things right, these insiders will promote your identity and brand as if they were a company employee.

There’s still a lot of room for growth and change within social media.  No one set of static rules will define successful marketing methods in social media.  But marketing from an insider mentality will definitely get you headed in the right direction.

Wave is still trying to find its niche.  Users are experimenting heavily on how to best utilize Wave.  Right now, this takes the form of trying to adapt Wave to resemble older platforms.  In some cases this works, and in other it fails.  For example, Wave does a great job of being a small scale Wiki, organizing relevant information for a group of people.  However, on the other end of the spectrum, I don’t think Wave in its current form will replace message boards, due its inherent lack of structure.  It’s hard to follow the Forum->Thread->Messages progression on a large scale with Wave.

However, I think Google Wave’s biggest potential is as a tool for project based collaboration or the “Hollywood work model”.  I can see a company using Wave to pull together employees across different departments to work on a single project.  Workers would be able to organize their projects in their inbox, and monitor updates made by co-workers.

Wave could also be a big hit with freelance workers.  Imagine a graphic designer and web coder trying to put together a website.  Rather than zip files and e-mail back and forth, the two could work in real time on Wave.  The designer would post artwork to a Wave, the coder taking it and inserting it into the website framework.  The coder then shows the designer how the art has affected the site’s overall feel, and they can revise from there.  It not only speeds up the entire process, it also tracks all revisions made.

There’s a lot of potential for Google Wave in the future.  I think, like Twitter, it’ll take some time before Wave settles in.  And even then, it has a lot of room to change and grow.  If Google promotes Wave in the right way, it could be the next big thing.

So I’ve been on Twitter for a few weeks now, and I finally feel like I’m able to synthesize my thoughts about the service.

As far as my usage goes, I’m kind of using it like an interactive RSS feed.  To me, RSS feeds have always felt a bit like television; the content is coming at you, but you have no way to respond.  Whereas with Twitter, not only are you able to interact with news sources and makers, but you can also communicate with people who share an interest in similar subjects and topics.  Right now, I have Twitterrific up and running on my computer, which allows me to pull down tweets and respond with relative ease.

I particularly like how Twitter let’s me keep track of interesting articles from my favorite sources (New York Times, Wired, Ars Technica, etc.).  Now this type of article aggregation can be accomplished with RSS feeds, sure.  But with Twitter, I can re-share articles and information I find particularly interesting with my followers or specific people, something that RSS wasn’t designed to do.

The other experience that convinced me of Twitter’s usefulness takes the form of the following anecdote.  A few days ago, I was trying to play a Wii game, when an error message popped up.  This normally wouldn’t be a problem, but unfortunately my Wii is from Japan, and the error message came up in Japanese.  I couldn’t find anyone to translate, so as a last ditch effort, I took a picture of the error message and threw it up on Twitter. I ended up hash tagging “Japanese” in my tweet so it was searchable for anyone also looking for tweets regarding Japanese.  Within 15 minutes, someone fluent in Japanese responded to me with a translation of the error screen, and I was able to resolve the problem.

Overall, my Twitter experience has been great.  My only real complaint about the service are the number of spam followers you end up getting.  I made the mistake of posting my Twitter URL here, which gave me a deluge of spam followers until I removed it.  And until I decide to get a smart phone, I can’t really make use of Twitter’s on the go features.  These things aside, I’m looking forward to using Twitter, and seeing how it develops.

Even if you’re not into updating daily, I’d still recommend signing up for Twitter for the reasons listed above.  And if you do so, make sure to follow me, and I’ll do my best to sling interesting content your way.

Download Pages 11-20

Synopsis: Mike finds out there’s no work at the temp agency, so he heads home.  He goes to his garage, and takes a look at his racing trophies from yesteryear he won with his Camaro.  Mike decides to give Lester a call, curious about the opportunity he mentioned earlier.  Lester explains to Mike they plan to rob Charles Labash, the executive that shut down their auto plant.  Lester needs Mike to be the getaway driver.  But Mike isn’t so sure he wants to get caught up in a robbery quite yet.

1. Today, it came to my attention that the mp3s under the radio section of the website were not playing correctly.  I think this is a web host issue that I’m not sure how to work out quite yet.  So for the time being, all mp3s in that section can be downloaded in ZIP format.

2. The lack of updates about my movie are due to a massive amount of the script (approx. 30 pages) currently undergoing rewrite.  I should finish those pages this weekend, which will bring about a huge update for “The Getaway Driver“.

3.  I’m always late jumping onto bandwagons.  But I caved and started a twitter account.  You can follow the highlights of my week (or banality, depending on your point of view) here.

Stay tuned for more…

I’ve always liked movies.  So when I began my university studies, I decided to concentrate on film making.  However, what I came to find out is that I like writing movies more than producing them.  So this semester, I’m taking an screenwriting course, the goal of which is to create a feature length movie script by the end of the year.  Here’s a quick pitch for my film:

“The Getaway Driver is a drama about Mike Ralston, an unemployed autoworker who needs to convince his wife he can still provide for their sick daughter.  To get some quick cash, Mike decides to accept a risky, one-time job as the getaway driver for a kidnapping.  Mike struggles against Lester Franks, a former friend with a shady past and the mastermind of the kidnapping.  When Lester deceives Mike, Mike must find a way to foil the kidnapping, learn that the ends don’t always justify the means, and realize that providing for his family isn’t all about money.”

Each week I’ll be writing 10 pages, and will be posting them here after I make corrections and revisions, providing a short synopsis of the action that occurs in those pages.  As you read, feel free to provide feedback and critiques.

Download Pages 1-10

Synopsis:  Mike wakes up to his wife, Angela, holding the last severance check.  So Mike heads to the bar to think things over.  While there, he meets up with Lester, who mentions he has an opportunity for Mike, which he refuses.  When Mike arrives home, Angela, upset that he hasn’t applied for work, gives him one week to find a job, or she’s kicking him out.  Discouraged, Mike goes to visit his brother Dan to ask for cash.  Dan, unwilling to give Mike the money, instead gives Mike a recommendation note to take to the temp agency.  Mike heads to the temp agency to inquire about a job.

I talked to the registrar yesterday, who confirmed that I had everything lined up to graduate this December. It still hasn’t quite hit me that in 4 months, I’ll be done with my bachelor’s degree. But the prospect of what awaits me in the near future is exciting.

Now, I’m just looking forward to a relaxing Labor Day weekend, filled with lots of sleeping and college football. Life is good.

Also, this past week I finally made it to the Great Wall. What I didn’t realize before deciding to go out there, is that a lot of walking is involved. And as I’ve spent the previous two months of this summer doing little exercise, it was a tiring ordeal. However, the view more than made up for the exhaustion, and I’m glad to finally have seen this wonder of the world after not being able to visit it last year.

I still have another two weeks here in China, and I’ll be sure to relay any more anecdotes as they come. Stay tuned.