The grounds were muddy, the band was sad, people were broke, and it rained so much in the days before the festival, that what seemed like Army forces had to be brought in to help the masses get through those 3 days.

But now, five long years after leaving us in a cold, wet and dirty swamp in North Coventry Vermont, when the economy is in the dumps and our unemployment numbers have skyrocketed past 4.2 million people without jobs, Phish decides it’d be a good time to hit the road again. And best of all, to kick things off at Hampton Coliseum on Friday, March 6th 2009 – they opened with a juggernaut… Fluffhead.

Phish at Hampton Coliseum: Friday March 6th 2009

If you aren’t aware of the significance this song holds on the Phish community, here’s a little description: The song is 12+ minute composition that was not played once after Phish returned from Hiatus in 2002. It’s a Trey (lead guitarist) written classic that spans Phish’s entire generational gap in fans. They pretty much never play this song, and when they do, it’s a big deal.

Traffic heading into Coventry 2004, nothing new.. But still awful

Perhaps my good friend VJ said it best… “By opening with Fluffhead, Phish doesn’t need to address any awkward reunion small talk. They know they left us in a dirty, muddy swamp five years ago, and this is how they’re going to make it up to us.” No small talk, no bullshit… Just the best music they can play.

But why song one, opening night… after five years! What an oddly placed decision. Perhaps they’re opening the doors for a tour with no expectations from their fans. By playing Fluffhead right away, they get it out of the way. What was rumored to be “too complex of a composition” for Trey to play anymore, is now “just another song.” And this, for the sake of the music… is as good as we can hope it gets.

For more photos of Phish’s ongoing tour, check out the band’s flickr stream, and for updated set-lists, you can click here.

Now, when people find out that I don’t have a facebook account, they often times react with “wow” and “huh?” Sometimes I’ll get a chuckle and a “well, that’s just weird,” but for the most part I let it slide without feeling the need to explain my thoughts.

Aside from Facebook.com being a corporation that when squinting at looks like a small Microsoft replica, the entire thought that under no circumstance do I own my own content makes me cringe. I am not sure most people understand, but EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF CONTENT that you put on Facebook… They own. Every photo, every tag, every image, every word, every comment, every link, every click, every shared anything, every poke, every single thing. But you can just delete your account right? NO! Even when you delete your account… YES! EVEN WHEN YOU DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT !!! They own your content forever. This is makes me far too uncomfortable.

These are personal photos, letters, discussions, comments, that Facebook owns. These are people and system administrators working on the application itself that can, and most likely do browse your information unsolicited. Humans by nature will do things they are not supposed to do. If you put a big fat “don’t click” this in front of someone, they most likely will. And out of those 150+ people working at Facebook, you can be sure at least a few of them have illegally browsed some photos, comments and discussions. The only thing is, in a way… It’s not illegal. As the Consumerist intelligently points out, Facebook’s new Terms of Service agreement ever so slightly states that “even when you delete your account, they still own your content… forever.”

Here is the new Terms of Service agreement: As you can see it looks fine, but there are two important sentences missing from the end of this agreement.

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

And here are the two lines from the end of that paragraph, which happen to be missing now: As expected, they directly explain that you could at one time remove your content… Now, you cannot… Ever.

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

And, just for good measure, the agreement explicitly states what remains their property… forever.

The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.

I have accounts with Twitter, Vimeo, and of course Gmail. I have my contacts inside Adium, and I use my personal blog to express myself online. I will never join Facebook, and the slight moments of insanity when I consider it, the sheer thought of Facebook being able to peer into my life without any control over my digital content makes me realize that eventually this will backfire. Whether it be in a corporate shake-down where Facebook implodes while distributing your content to advertisers for direct targeting, or whether it be because Facebook employees were illegally learning about future employers, employees and competition to get a leg up. How it happens is yet to be determined, but at some point, Facebook’s intentions as a whole will emerge. And they’re not about “connecting to your friends.”

What’s really interesting is that fossils of these creatures can be found in Asia, Europe, North America and there’s some disputes over whether fossils have turned up in Africa or not. Particularly whether the fossils were actually Tarsiers, not whether they were found. However, due to their 45 year million long record of existence, it’s hard to compare seemingly 35 million year old bones to other creatures of similar size.

These days, Tarsiers are bound to Southeast Asian islands including the Philippines, Sulawesi, Borneo, and Sumatra.

From Wikipedia: Tarsiers are small animals with enormous eyes; each eyeball is approximately 16 mm in diameter and is as large as their entire brain.[3] Tarsiers also have very long hind limbs. In fact, their feet have extremely elongated tarsus bones, from which the animals get their name. The head and body range from 10 to 15 cm in length, but the hind limbs are about twice this long (including the feet), and they also have a slender tail from 20 to 25 cm long. Their fingers are also elongated, with the third finger being about the same length as the upper arm. Most of the digits have nails, but the second and third toes of the hind feet bear claws instead, which are used for grooming. Tarsiers have very soft, velvety fur, which is generally buff, beige, or ochre in color.

They catch insects by jumping at them, but they’re also known to prey on small vertebrates, like birds, snakes, bats and lizards. They can even catch birds in mid-flight when they’re jumping from tree to tree. Quite surprising when compared to the way they look when resting in a tree. You can see them in action for yourself in the video below.

“Gestation takes about six months, and tarsiers give birth to single offspring. Young tarsiers are born furred, and with open eyes, and are able to climb within a day of birth. They reach sexual maturity after one year. Adults live in pairs, with a home range of around one hectare.”

THE TARSIER IN ACTION:

Thanx to various flickr users for the photos.

But… The one feature missing from a crucial piece of the puzzle is becoming a nasty liability. One too risky for us to keep avoiding. We’ve tried to keep our mouth shut for months because we know there’s a wall around 37 Signals and they don’t like listening or taking requests for new features. But, we are long time partners who are deeply entangled with our BaseCamp centralization. By this feature being missing, we are considering doing the unthinkable, well until now… and leaving 37 signals.

37 Signals makes 4 pieces of software that can be grouped and used together, or one by one, depending on a particular person or company’s needs.  The products are called Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack and Campfire. In this post, I’m talking about Campfire.

Campfire is an application that lets a group of people collectively chat in a secure chatroom while uploading images in real time directly into the chat thread and much more. 37 Signals describes it as the following:

Campfire is a web-based group chat tool that lets you set up password-protected chat rooms in just seconds. Invite a client, colleague, or vendor to chat, collaborate, and make decisions. Link to a room on your intranet for internal communications.

Simple? Yes. Useful and completely essential? Absolutely. It takes seconds to setup a chatroom and invite everybody who is needed at the moment. Everything is cataloged, dated, stored, and easily reverted back to. Once you get to know it, you’ll wonder how you or your group ever communicated remotely without it. The below screenshot shows the Campfire interface. It’s from the “tour” section of 37 Signals’ website. Click the image for a bigger version.

So, getting to the root of the cause. When there is a group of people typing in Campfire, it does not let anybody know who is typing, or when they are typing.. For example, in countless scenarios I’ve been in multi-person chats in Campfire where it turns into chaos. Problems between the people chatting, that could have been solved, get rehashed because somebody is a slower typer than others. Other times the entire conversation halts because people don’t know what’s going on, who’s typing next or if what they’ll say will be drowned out by a competing or off-track statement.

All of this could be solved with a tiny little addition. Just like in Google Chat, Adium, iChat, Skype and nearly every other messaging service, when you’re in the middle of a conversation and the person on the other end is typing, a small little text line appears that simply says “Katie is typing” or “Mike is typing.” This way everyone knows who is typing and when they are typing. This little feature, so unbelievably small, so incredibly crucial, yet left out of such a key product.

37 Signals is a company that prides itself on making the best and most usable products around. A company who’s products rival beheamoths like Google and Microsoft. The subtle elegance found in their products is so rare, and very much appreciated. The incredible attention to detail, the stability, uptime, et cetera. Yes, credit is due, they have done an amazing job.  Yet such a small insignificant feature could make all the difference in the world. I see this feature as being subtle, unobtrusive, essential and best of all simple. Something Jason Fried (who is a major influence on me and the way I approach the web) and all of 37 Signals should be able to relate with easily. I know it sounds strange, but hopefully I see a “system upgrade” notice soon when I login soon. Maybe the missing feature will appear shortly after.

PerezeHilton.com rakes in nearly $54,000/day in advertisements for the homepage. WOW! 198 million pageviews a month with a stickiness factor of 45 minutes (which means users are staying on PerezHilton.com for 45 minutes on average), compared to TMZ’s 15 minutes. Pretty insane.

Here’s a link to some massively staggering analytics of Perez Hilton.com.