I serve as an alumni interviewer for my alma mater from time to time and relish the opportunity to talk to high school students.  Sometimes I get asked for advice on college, and I used to tell them, half jokingly, to be careful in submitting a picture for the Freshman Facebook.  Why?  People spent hours poring over the Facebook (the hard copy that everyone bought).  Some people in my class submitted some unusual or memorable photos and, to this day, my classmates can imagine that picture and associate them with it.  Now it was possible to swap out another photo for the Upperclass Facebook but everyone would then know of your vanity that you went to the trouble of submitting another photo.  So what would seem like a trivial decision — submitting a picture for the Freshman Facebook — actually became a semi-momentous decision.

I was reminded of this when reading a new set of blogs published by Mediapost called the Digital Frontier in which they invite "Gen Xers" to blog about their digital lives.  Some of the posts are quite interesting.  The "Me.com" post in which David admits he’s an AOL user and talks about his screenname and how the people of his generation are bound by their cyber-identities.  He recounts slaving over his screenname choice because it’s very hard to change once you’ve picked one.

So screenname is the new freshman facebook picture (which is now easy to change via your own Facebook.com profile).  Fascinating.

My Toshiba CD/DVD changer is on the fritz.  It plays recent DVDs
without the soundtrack or without the voice (with the music track
audible).  So we’ve resorted to watching the DVDs on my PowerBook.  I
also have a stereo receiver connected to a KLH 5-piece speaker system.
Since I no longer use the setup much, I’ve been thinking about how best
to go digital.  I consume a lot of media but am by no means an audio or
videophile.   So I’m wondering how best to go digital.  Here’s what I have in mind:

-Buy iPod.  This would be used for when I’m out and about including when I’m in the car (via the Belkin FM transmitter).  Because iPod Nano doesn’t support the Belkin FM transmitter, I’d get the 60 or 80 GB iPod.
-Buy Mac Mini or a Media Center.  I’d hook this up to my TV and it would be used to story my music and play DVDs.  Drawback to this is that I’d have to boot up a computer to play music or watch a DVD, and I’d need a mouse and keyboard in my living room, which doesn’t sound great.  I thought about getting an Apple TV, but this comparison between it and the Mac Mini from the Apple Blog convinced me otherwise.  Also, it doesn’t have the ability to play DVDs, which I’d need since my existing DVD player needs replacing.
-Buy a simple but powerful speaker system that is iPod friendly.  A friend of mine got the Harman Kardon Soundsticks, and it sounded great.

Another scenario would be:
-Use existing laptop(s) as DVD player connected to TV screen
-Get Sonos to access music library and internet radio.

Downsides to this scenario are cost of Sonos and pain involved in hooking up laptop to TV everytime I want to watch a DVD.

Any other suggestions?   

Visit jacksonpollock.org (hat tip to VSL).  Nice.

Fred Wilson writes how he’d make every E-Merchant a blogger.  That makes sense, especially if the merchant blogs about sales, coupons and other things that would keep the subscribers coming back to the store.

But the other tool that could be even more productive, especially for a service provider like a real estate agent, is the one provided by Meebo, as described by Altos Research (via Infectious Greed).  MeeboMe is a widget that lets you chat with the person in real-time (if you’re online then) as the visitor is on your website.  It could indeed be a killer app for real estate brokers, art galleries, car dealers and sellers of other big ticket items.

It has of course been the big story all week.  To sum up most of the response, I think it’s fair to say that expectations were high and that Apple still blew them away.

Everyone weighing in but the two best analyses I’ve seen are by Robert Cringely, as to why Apple went with iPhone despite Cisco’s claim, and GigaOm, who noted the significance behind Apple dropping "Computer" from its name.

Many also questioned why Apple announced iPhone 6 months before it ships.   One reason not mentions is so that customers would have plenty of notice to plan to switch to Cingular when their existing cellphone contracts on other carriers expire.  If they had shipped it upon release, the high price tag + the early termination charges would have probably discouraged many potential customers resulting in what would have perceived to have been a low sales number.  Now that consumers have 6 months notice (and save up for it), many more will do so once it ships.