On the Edge

Gowalla 3 is gorgeous! Even though I’m still on-the-fence in terms of my personal checking-in habits, Cameron Moll’s thoughts here are spot on:

Founder Josh Williams:

Gowalla is now the easiest and best way to keep up with your friends across services with a combined activity tab that merges the whereabouts of your Gowalla, Facebook and Foursquare friends. Additionally, Gowalla now supports checking in on both Facebook Places and Foursquare in addition to sharing with both Twitter and Tumblr.

I’d say this was a gutsy move by the Gowalla team, but that wouldn’t be true — rest assured this was a very calculated move.

From what I can tell, none of the three leading services (Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook Places) have hit critical mass yet, so they’re all vying for attention from — and leadership among — users. It’s not unlike the early days of Twitter when Pownce was a solid competitor. It didn’t take long for Twitter to hit critical mass, and Pownce didn’t last long after that. But I don’t think we’ll see the same happen (at least not as swiftly) with location check-ins, which means Gowalla, Foursquare, and Facebook Places will probably co-exist for the foreseeable future.

Nice move, Gowalla.

The inimitable Frank Bruni, food writer for the New York Times, on the wonders of a less artisanal way of brewing coffee:

let’s pause and imagine something just as magical.

You stumble out of bed, struggling toward consciousness, in urgent need of caffeine. You drag yourself into the kitchen. And there, ready and waiting, are 10 cups of coffee, brewed automatically, just five minutes earlier, as a consequence of a few simple steps and some alarm clock-style programming the night before.

This isn’t cutting-edge technology. This is Mr. Coffee, many decades ago. The current generation of automatic drip machines preserves the tradition while improving, I’m told, on the product. Gastronomic guilt be damned, I just may put one on my Christmas list.

How would Mr. Bruni respond to a similar paragraph:

Let’s pause and imagine something magical: You stumble out of bed, struggling towards consciousness, and feel a growl in your stomach. You remember that you went to bed hungry, and now feel as if you may fairly collapse right back into bed. But then - a dinging noise! Grasping on walls for support, you make your way to the kitchen, where your microwave reveals a steaming Hot Pocket! The wonders of technology!

I genuinely love Mr. Bruni’s writing, and I think it’s important to continually evaluate whether a love for the artisanal veers toward the vane or pedantic. But let’s give coffee its due: it’s the result of long effort and hard working from a country much poorer than ours, roasted and delivered to our cup. Let’s not waste it!