Till We Have FaceMail

My gripe about the lack of fmail was premature: Facebook is set to announce its new mail service on Monday. Whether this move is timed to silence me, only Zuckerberg can say; he's been very disciplined when it comes to bringing me up in casual conversation, so I don't see any reason why he should change now.

I'm glad to see fmail happening, it is a natural outgrowth of Facebook's social preponderance. Rumbles of this being a gmail killer are already being heard, as if Google is the only other party in town. Social network activity historically resembles the boom-and-crash patterns of capitalism, but when it comes to mail service users are not so fickle. How many of your friends use Hotmail? Several of mine still do. What I think will happen is that Facebook will further dominate socnets and folks will stay loyal to their mail providers, as they have for many years running.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying RockMelt -what I fondly refer to as FaceMelt, seeing how full integration of Facebook is its big gun for future browser dominance. I can dig it. The timing is good, dovetailing as it does with fmail hitting the scene: separation of my Google contacts from Facebook friends will be that much cleaner and the cognitive dissonance of mixing and matching between the two will be greatly reduced.

FaceMelt; or, life's a b, then you reboot

A friend pointed out to me, in advance of recent Halloween revelry, that the best holiday movies are the ones we ourselves create by living them. No argument there, particularly as said revelries this year were fantastic. Celebrating the harvest in San Francisco isn't what it once was, not since too many shootings in the Castro District forced the city to outlaw mass gatherings of Soylent Green-like proportions; that is to say, mass over-population that sang and danced like it was 1999. Those were the best. Still, though we might miss brighter days, it's just as fun creating new ones: it's all about having the right company along.

To a former denizen like myself, SF visits are rife with sentiment. Around every corner lurks a pocket of memory. The least expected naturally has the greatest impact, such as finding a comic shop thought gone for good. Just as gratifying was being recognized by the proprietor, Al himself, and chatting it up like it was only yesterday rather than a decade ago that we last saw each other. A moment right out of The Big Bang Theory, geek nirvana.

Family and friends made this a memorable Halloween, as they have in the past and will yet again for many more to come. Life and its fragmentary burdens underwent a soft reboot, provided by that offline service called Holiday. It makes all the difference, not least thanks to the ability to go online and further utilize it to maximum potential.

The lazy Sunday that followed was spent partially online, as we reviewed and renewed the previous night's joys by posting pics to Facebook. Happy little editors of our memories, tagging old friends and new, sharing the brilliant costumed figures who populated the night. I couldn't help but pity those in my life not blessed with a Facebook profile: they missed out!

Next year I may feel less hemmed: RockMelt lurks around the corner, with its premise of Facebook-integration. This will add yet another delightful dimension to Halloween, as FaceMelt gives distant relations sights as well as sounds of celebration, transcending borders real and imagined, coming to you like the thing itself, realer than real: we will not merely live the best holiday movies, but have an audience to cheer us and by vicarious association live the very best of times.

Looking Forward to RockMelt

I'm ready for the next thing, ready for my browser and social net to be united in the next step towards a click-free era. While my anticipation of Facebook offering email any time soon is purely optimistic, it looks like Marc Andreessen's Chrome experiment will be the next best thing. I hope to have a chance to play with RockMelt soon and get rid of this web fatigue that's been lately dogging my keystrokes.

Co-author of Mosaic/Netscape, the web's first browser, Andreessen got my hopes up for a unified service two years ago with Ning. Unfortunately it didn't pan out, but now he's having another go at web convergence. Will this one stick? With its unified presentation of mail, social service, search function and video streaming (and geospotting!), RockMelt's chances look very strong.

I'm spending more and more time offline and welcome a service that will enable me to reduce web surfing further: a one click solution is just the thing I want to maximize my online interaction. Though I've not seen any sign of it, including Skype with this new browser would make it unbeatable.