Geek Gestalt

CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's in-laws peruse the Internet via a Wi-Fi connection at their mountaintop, off-the-grid house.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

NICE, Calif.--Over the last few days, I spent hours with my wife's parents, Tyler and Donna, helping them adapt to the first Internet connection they've ever had. For them, living on top of a mountain at 4,000 feet, in the middle of a national forest, and entirely off the grid--this has been a big step.

For my wife and I, it's also been a big project, at least in terms of teaching them the basics, and helping them get ready to learn on their own. While their Internet proficiency is still low, they are learning fast, and over time, it should be interesting to see how much progress they make, and how they make it.

Three-part series
Getting my in-laws online, at last
Big progress for off-the-grid Net-newbie in-laws
Making an Internet list, and checking it twice

Over the few days that we just spent on the mountain with them, these are many of the things (in no particular order) we talked to them about, showed them on their new MacBook, and explained that they might want to investigate in the future:

• Undo/Control-Z. They wanted to know if there was any way to undo a mistake on their computer, and we explained that Control-Z (Command-Z on a Mac) is the way to do that.

• Pandora. They haven't used it yet, but we explained how this free service makes it easy for anyone to create a totally custom Internet radio station based on their musical interests. They asked how Pandora makes money. I couldn't answer that very good question.

• Rotten Tomatoes. We explained that this service is among the very best for crowd-sourced movie reviews.

• IMDB. They watch a lot of movies, and often want to know more about the actors involved. We explained that IMDB is the only site they needed to go to get fully cross-referenced information on actors and filmmakers.

• Skype. For my in-laws, Skype will be key in helping them save money on their cell phone bill. We showed them voice calling and Skype instant messaging.

• iTunes Store. Tyler was looking for a specific song by an artist, and I showed him how he could use the iTunes Store to listen to short clips of artists' songs.

• Downloading photos from digital camera. We recently gave them a Canon PowerShot G2, and now that they have a new MacBook, we showed them how to easily download photos onto the computer.

• iPhoto. After downloading photos, we showed them how to organize the pictures in the Mac's built-in photo management software.

• Printing wirelessly. Now that they have a Wi-Fi network (running on an old AirPort Extreme) I talked to them about setting up wireless printing to their HP DeskJet printer.

• Connecting the Mac to a TV. I bought them the connectors for linking their MacBook to their TV. At first they didn't see the value of doing this, but they eventually saw that as their vision gets worse, a larger screen will make computing easier.

• NeoOffice versus OpenOffice. They've been using OpenOffice on their Windows computer, and we loaded NeoOffice onto their Mac. I haven't used it, but I explained that my research concluded that NeoOffice is better on Macs than OpenOffice.

• Second Life. My wife and I are both longtime Second Life users, and we talked to them about whether they'd want to use the virtual world. However, their download limits (200 megabytes per day) would likely make it difficult for them to use such services.

• PayPal. They hope not to buy very many things over the Internet, but they do understand that having a PayPal account will make it easier for them to do transactions on services like eBay.

• Amazon.com. We walked in on them looking at prices for tarps on Amazon.com. My reaction was "hide the credit card."

• Facebook. While social networking is likely something they won't deal with for some time, we talked about how many people have used Facebook to connect with friends from past lives.

• Twitter. They have heard a lot about Twitter, and we showed them how the microblogging service is a great way to see what people around the world are thinking about things in near-real-time.

• YouTube. Among other things, I showed Tyler how he could use YouTube to find obscure songs he might be looking for.

• Netflix. We've managed a Netflix account for them (they would pick up the DVDs at their P.O. box) for some time, since they didn't have an Internet connection. Now that they do, they've taken over management of the account. I had high hopes they would be able to watch Netflix streaming movies, but their download limits may prevent them from doing that.

• Google Earth. We showed them Google Earth and used the service to locate their house, a process that took even them some time, given the remote location in which they live.

• Gmail. They are using Gmail for e-mail, and we set them up to be able to send and receive their Gmail messages using the Mac's Mail application.

• Control on PCs/Command on Macs. We explained that anything that uses the control key on a PC (Control-C to copy, or Control-Z to undo) would utilize the command key instead on a Mac.

• Windows Security patches. I uploaded Service Pack 3 and six Windows security patches on their PC.

• WhiteHouse.gov. They were excited to be able to send messages to the president and to be able to watch his weekly video addresses. They also were happy to be able to easily e-mail many other government officials.

• Instant messaging. We explained that instant messaging is a terrific way to carry on informal conversations, and we discussed some of the etiquette of IM.

• Commenting on Web sites/blogs. We talked at length with them about how comments are implemented on various Web sites and blogs, and how people use them for different purposes.

• Wi-Fi. We set them up with an Apple AirPort Extreme and made it so their new MacBook could be connected to the Internet throughout their house. They were more excited by this than by anything else.

• USB hubs. Tyler wanted to know how to print wirelessly and I explained that he would need to get a USB hub to split the cable coming from his printer.

• Bookmarks. We provided them with a long bookmarked list of Web sites, and showed them how to add new bookmarks so they don't have to type in entire URLs for sites they hope to visit a lot.

• Delicious. We want to see what kinds of sites they are interested in and encouraged them to use Delicious.com to share their discoveries with us.

• Safari versus Firefox. I explained that Firefox is generally considered the best Web browser for the Mac, but told them how to use Safari is they were so inclined.

• Never using Internet Explorer again. I said that because of its many security holes I would never let them use Explorer on their PC again.

• Registering for Web sites. They were interested in why people would provide their e-mail address and/or other information to register for Web sites, and we explained the many reasons people are willing to do it, and why sites want it.

• Adding an AirPort Express to extend the Wi-Fi network's range. We told them that by adding an AirPort Express to their wireless network set up, they could extend the range of their Wi-Fi connectivity to a metal shed near their house. It also happens that that is where my wife and I sleep when we visit during cold months.

• Google News. I showed them Google's clearinghouse for news stories. They didn't seem particularly interested in it, but I'm guessing that will change as they realize the site's utility.

• Using wireless keyboards and mice. If they do decide to connect their Mac to their TV, we explained, they would likely want to add a wireless keyboard and mouse so they could have more freedom of movement in their living room.

• eBay. We explained that this service would be a fantastic way for them to find the kinds of supplies that their local merchants often don't have, or charge too much for.

• iPhone (for the future). We touted our beloved iPhones, and tried to get them excited about the devices as well. This is clearly something for another time.

• Blogrolls. They asked what blogrolls were, and we showed them how many blogs offer lists of other sites they endorse and suggest readers look at.

• Using the trackpad on the Mac instead of a mouse. Having only previously used their desktop PC, they weren't familiar with laptop trackpads. So we spent some time explaining how they work, including how to use two fingers on the MacBook to scroll up and down pages.

• Wikipedia. I had already been touting Wikipedia, but now I explained how anyone can edit any page, and how it is possible to see the entire history of changes for a page.

On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

While it may seem normal to have several Net-connected Macs among a small group of people, this is the first time such a scene happened at the off-the-grid, mountaintop home of CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's in-laws.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

NICE, Calif.--As a San Francisco-based Internet junkie, I can't count the number of times I've been in groups with almost as many wirelessly connected Mac laptops as people.

So the scene in front of me shouldn't be new: four people, three connected Mac laptops.

But there's something completely novel going on: I'm visiting my in-laws at their off-the-grid, mountaintop house in Northern California, about four hours northeast of San Francisco. And I can say with absolute certainty that this is the first time such a scene has played out here.

How do I know? Because it's been less than two weeks since my in-laws, Tyler and Donna, had Internet installed on their property for the first time--in their case, the only available option was satellite--and it's been just hours since I personally set up their wireless network. In other words, Wi-Fi is a newly arrived house guest, and judging by the concentration on their faces, the occasional smiles, and the superlatives coming from their lips, it's a very welcome one.

For years, my wife and I had been trying to get her parents to cotton to the idea that their lives, at 4,000 feet, surrounded by national forest and steeped in the necessities of growing most of their own food, could be improved by getting online. But they'd gotten by just fine, thank you, for more than 30 years, without even a television.

Now, suddenly, there is a Wi-Fi network set up in their house, and I could see my in-laws' lives changing before my eyes.

For example, Tyler said excitedly to me one morning during my visit that he'd figured out how to use e-mail and the Web to do many of the things that used to require him to stop at the post office and get stamps.

"That's the end of snail mail for me," Tyler told me. And, he added, no more catalogs would be cramming their P.O. box.

Yesssss!

Working so much better now
My wife and I had conveniently--and coincidentally--managed to time our last visit to the mountain with the HughesNet satellite installation. But as I wrote previously, those first baby steps didn't go so well.

Thanks to glacially slow initial download speeds, the unexpected realities of a 200MB daily download limit, and the necessity of loading countless Windows updates onto their 2-year-old, Internet-chaste PC, we had retreated the mountain almost embarrassed by how badly it had gone.

This is the screen HughesNet customers can use to get up-to-date information about their Internet connection.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

So, I set out to make it all better by bringing them a refurbished MacBook, pre-configured at home with everything they'd need for a happy Internet life. I even unhooked my home Wi-Fi network and donated it to the cause.

After a less-than-stellar first attempt to get his in-laws online for the first time from the off-the-grid, 4,000-feet elevation house they've lived in for more than 30 years, CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman and his wife are returning to the mountain this week with a new Mac to help make the process better. And what could be better than a great view to go with your Internet?

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

Could a Mac be what it takes to get my in-laws to love the Internet?

Last week, I had the very rare opportunity to help get my in-laws, who live off-the-grid at 4,000 feet in the middle of a national forest, online for the first time and, my wife and I hoped, to instantly end more than 30 years of their being cut off from media innovations.

As I wrote afterward though, their initial experience was quite a bit less than stellar, mainly due to the vagaries of navigating what seem like fairly restrictive download threshold policies implemented by their satellite Internet vendor, HughesNet: After hitting the download limit of 200 megabytes in one day--which I'm certain we actually didn't hit--the connection slowed to less than 2Kbps.

But there were other problems, too, that had to do with what it takes to make a 2-year-old Windows machine that's never been online safe for play dates with the Internet. And for my in-laws, who had no experience whatsoever with downloading security updates, and XP Service Packs, and virus protection, I can only imagine how daunting it must have seemed. Even for me, a longtime computer user--albeit a Mac loyalist--it was confusing.

While my wife and I were on hand the day Hughes came to install the satellite, we had only that one day up on the mountain to help get things set up properly. But given that we ended up wasting hours trying, and failing, to download those security patches and virus protection packages, we weren't able to get much done before we had to leave. We couldn't even get their new Gmail account working.

But we have a plan. And it involves a computer that simply doesn't require security download after service pack download to be safe online.

Monday, a new (well, refurbished) MacBook arrived at my house, and over the next couple of days, my wife and I are going to load that computer up with as much necessary and fun software (starting with OpenOffice) as we can find, and then cart it back up to her parents' with us later this week. In addition, we're going to bring them an Airport Extreme so that they can use that new computer wirelessly all around their mountaintop property.

After all, while they may not understand the sense of freedom that a wireless Internet connection provides, we hope they will soon realize that sitting on their deck, looking down over the treetops at their stellar view, is a much better place to be online than stuffed into the tiny windowless office where they have their PC.

As for Hughes, after I contacted them last week to comment for the story I was writing, I was told by someone in their public relations department that the company would do what it can to help my in-laws. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but sure enough, the in-laws did get a phone call from someone in tech support, offering to work through any residual issues.

Originally, that call was supposed to happen Monday, but I suggested that they postpone it until Thursday when my wife and I will be back up on the mountain, so that we can help diagnose the problem and describe it to the technician.

That's important since, as I wrote previously, my in-laws don't have anything to compare their online experience to, and therefore would likely have trouble describing exactly what the problem is. But I can: Even before being booted to under-2Kbps speeds for supposedly going over the 200MB download threshold their account allows, the top speed they were getting on their 1.0 Mbps account was about 13 Kbps. Hardly high speed. So, we'll have to see if Hughes can do something about that.

Still, on Sunday, as my wife and I were hanging out, spending a little time online, an e-mail popped into her in-box. It was from the in-laws. And for us, having spent the last nine years working hard to get them to embrace the Internet as a way to stay in touch with us--and the rest of her family--it was a rather big moment.

If you have suggestions of important software that we should put on their new Mac--especially if it's free--please send them to me by Tuesday evening.

On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's in-laws live at the top of a mountain, are off the grid, and have missed the last 30-plus years of innovations in media. On Monday, they got satellite Internet installed. This is the view of their new dish from the deck of their mountain-side house.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

NICE, Calif.--This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Imagine getting to introduce to the Internet a couple of otherwise-normal 60-somethings who, having lived off the grid at 4,000 feet in the middle of national forest, have missed more than 30 years of media innovations.

That's what I did earlier this week, with my in-laws, Tyler and Donna. They're perfectly nice people. They just have never used the Internet before, haven't watched TV, really, and even their cell phone is turned off most of the time to conserve their limited solar power.

I've been coming to visit them for nine years, and there were countless conversations with them during which my wife and I, both Internet junkies, rhapsodized about its virtues. We gushed about Google. We raved about Second Life. We couldn't stop beating Wikipedia's drums.

We'd get weary nods and, "It sounds great, but we don't really have any use for the Internet."

For my wife and me, that was nothing but further motivation to get them online.

A couple of years ago, we replaced the ancient desktop computer on which they did their accounting with a new PC that we joked was the planet's healthiest Windows machine, having never been anywhere it could meet a virus.

We also began bringing them DVDs, and they fell hard for "The West Wing" and "The Wire." But it was my wife's masterstroke--getting them a Netflix subscription--that probably won them over.

They had no way to manage their Netflix account, so we did it for them. They'd get the movies at their P.O. box, 45 minutes away, watch them, return them on their next supply run, and repeat.

Two installers from HughesNet putting the finishing touches on the satellite dish.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Setting up their queue was beyond surreal. They'd seen nothing. Not "Goodfellas," not "Pulp Fiction," not "Gladiator," "The English Patient," "Traffic," or "Chariots of Fire." Hardly anything. Do you know anyone like that?

The last time we visited, Tyler asked me to find out how much power a satellite dish, a modem, and a wireless router used. He wasn't sure that their power system was up to the task.

It was, though, and last week, as we were getting ready for a visit, my wife said, "By the way, they're getting satellite Internet installed on Monday."

Our incredible toy
I'm a geek, so I don't mind telling you how eager I was to show off our incredible toy. Despite being avid readers, radio listeners, and now movie fans, my in-laws still had no idea that the world was coming to their door. On Monday.

Some friends visited the mountain with us, and they also got excited about introducing my in-laws to the Internet. Over the weekend, we made a list of Web sites everyone agreed they had to visit: Snopes.com, NYTimes.com, NPR.org, BBC.co.uk, Huffingtonpost.com, Google News, PostSecret, Craigslist, Flickr, BurningMan.com, Epicurious.com, TED.com, and others.

But on Saturday night, we asked them what they wanted to explore first. In my mind, it would be something fanciful. Maybe a site about science or history or politics.

"Oh, something about fava beans, I imagine," Tyler said.

On Monday, HughesNet sent two installers, and then, after nine years, it was game on.

In the in-laws' little office, where their PC lives, I sat down to work on getting the machine secured.

We're buying them a Mac, but for now, my eyes were on the prize: the latest Windows security updates. But the connection speed they were getting was painfully slow, around 13Kbps. Windows Service Pack 3 is more than 300 megabytes--more than eight hours of download time away. We had to leave long before that.

I decided to forgo SP3 and instead install AVG, a free antivirus package. But the connection was so slow that the download failed. Twice.

The screen on the computer of one of the HughesNet installers as the satellite Internet connection was being set up for the first time.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

I was embarrassed and frustrated. To diffuse the situation, we decided to turn the focus to picking a Gmail address. They suggested a series of what to any veteran Internet user were obviously unavailable names: Tyleranddonna, Donnaandtyler, Beautifulmountain. Using my MacBook Pro and an EV-DO card, we finally found something.

I also decided to download AVG on my Mac. That, too, was painfully slow--we were at 4,000 feet, far from town--but it worked, and I copied the AVG file to their PC via a thumb drive.

But AVG needed its own updates, and so it went looking for them. I noticed that the download speeds had slowed even further, now to less than 2Kbps.

Slowly but surely?
This was ridiculous. They had signed up for a 1.0Mbps connection, which, I read, promised downloads of more than 500Kbps. They were getting 1Kbps.

I called HughesNet, and a technician told me that the account had surpassed its "Fair Access" limit. It turns out that satellite Internet users get only so much bandwidth per day--in my in-laws' case, 200 megabytes. Go over the limit, you get dial-up speeds for 24 long hours.

The technician told me that there was nothing he could do about it, despite my insisting that there was no way they'd passed 200 megabytes. A supervisor confirmed that he had "no mechanism" to lift the limit for the day, even when I explained that I had to leave soon and that I absolutely needed to finish downloading the security patches before I drove off the mountain.

In the HughesNet pamphlet that had finally lured Tyler and Donna, a footnote I now discovered really concerned me: "Based on analysis of customer usage data, Hughes has established a download threshold for each of the HughesNet service plans that is well above the typical usage rates."

CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's father-in-law sits at his computer, looking at his Internet connection for the very first time.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

This was alarming, as one of the things my wife and I were most excited about was the idea of her parents being able to . This vision now looked endangered.

"In order to arrive at our Fair Access Policy, Hughes conducted an analysis of HughesNet customer usage and then established a download threshold for each plan that was above average usage rates," Hughes wrote me in an e-mail Thursday. "Certain activities are more likely than others to exceed the daily download threshold, such as continuous downloading or viewing streaming-media content such as audio or video programming."

Users do get unlimited high-speed downloads from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. EST. Long after the in-laws would be watching streaming movies.

This was not good. What worried me more was that even watching YouTube videos might quickly put them over the top. The Hughes e-mail, though, seemed to dismiss that worry: "Activities such as viewing Web sites, checking e-mail, watching short streaming-media presentations, i.e. YouTube, and automatic software and antivirus updates are not likely to exceed the download threshold."

Back on the mountain, I decided that, slow speeds be damned, I was getting them online before my wife and I departed.

So I pulled Tyler over to the PC and sat him down.

This would not be so simple. After all, he had no experience with a browser. He didn't know where to click, or how to enter a URL, or how to tab between fields. There's a huge learning curve here for my wife's folks. They need Internet for Dummies--and now.

We booted up Firefox--I had downloaded it for him, as I would never let Internet Explorer set foot in their house again--to head to Google (see the video below, which evolves slowly).

Starting with the basics
I showed him where to type, and a little while after he typed in "Google.com," he got his first look at the search engine's wonderful, spare home page.

It was a moment of truth: What would be the first thing he would look up? Would it be FDR? The Vietnam War? Barack Obama?

Nope. It was fava beans. He hadn't been kidding earlier.

Before we knew it, Tyler was on EveryNutrient.com, a good site, it seems, to learn about the nutritional value of fava beans.

After a little more browser 101--explaining that words in blue are usually hyperlinks, and how to use the back and reload buttons--we hopped over to Wikipedia. More fava beans.

But things went downhill when we tried Gmail so that Tyler could send his first-ever e-mail--can you remember when you did that? The site wouldn't load. The connection was simply too slow.

My wife and I had built this moment up so much in our minds over the years that we were clearly more excited than her parents. Yet Tyler was frustrated. And that was crushing.

Looking for a graceful way out, we adjourned from Gmail and moved into their living room to talk.

We asked them what they were looking forward to using the Internet for. And again, practicality won. Donna said she wanted to be able to get better fire information than she could on the radio, which makes sense, since they live in the middle of a forest.

I said there were always real-time maps online during fires.

"That's exactly what we want to know," she said.

Tyler added, "That'll be tremendously helpful."

They also said they were excited about investigating the various weather sites, since they are deeply subject to the whims of their environment. And, yes, they expect to spend a lot of time reading up on nutrition.

For my wife and me, it was time to leave. But I felt sheepish.

I had had such high hopes for this experience, and instead, it had been deeply disappointing. I couldn't even bring myself to ask what they had thought about their initial experiences on the Internet.

But it will get better. We'll go back soon to make sure.

If you're like many people deeply wired into a Web 2.0 lifestyle, your inbox is a never-ending flow of invites to new social-networking services.

Day in and day out, it seems, there's a new one. Today it's Notch Up, yesterday it's Naymz. Last week it was Dopplr.

And that's not even counting the steady flow of requests to be someone's friend on LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo or Facebook.

For me, it's a constant annoyance. I know I probably should jump on the LinkedIn bandwagon, for example, yet I never have, and frankly, don't expect I ever will. I suppose it's possible that one day, long ago, I created an account. All I know is that every few days, someone I know--often a distant acquaintance--will ask me to be their friend on LinkedIn.

And of course, what follows some set number of days later is a stern automated message warning me that my offer to be that person's friend is going to expire. Darn!

For some people, though, the issue with the constant stream of invites is becoming more than just annoying.

"I'm suffering from sheer invite toxicity," wrote Heather Kelley, the Kraus visiting professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University, to an e-mail list I'm on. "Regardless of source, exclusivity or debatable utility of the service, my immediate response to seeing one in my inbox is 'NOT ANOTHER ONE,' combined with annoyance at the friend who sent it--'What? You expect me to join ANOTHER time-wasting thingy just because you did?'"

And lest you think that Kelley is complaining too much, and why can't she just ignore the invites and move on, remember that for many people, staying connected to their friends, and current or potential professional colleagues is a little like breathing.

Whether that's a good thing is a conversation for another day, but you know these people are hardly rare--you may even be one of them.

And for people like that, there is an intense social and professional pressure to join whatever new social network is on offer, especially if the invite comes from a friend.

"That is pretty much exactly how I feel about it," said Mark De Loura, a San Francisco-based video game technology consultant. "There's enough of a net gain out of joining that I always (feel I have to) do it."

One of the major problems behind the flood of invites is that many of the services seem to mine users' contacts lists for names to send invites, either for joining a new service or for, say, using a Facebook application. Similarly, some systems force users to opt-out of adding their contacts to new invite lists rather than opt-in.

To some, that is a real problem that the companies behind the social networks need to solve.

"That behavior," said Kim Pallister, a technology blogger who works for Intel, "the opt-out spam list is going to piss off the user base...You need to have that be opt-in, not opt-out."

That's particularly true because, practically speaking, since many users quickly click through such opt-outs without noticing what they mean, they may not even see what they're agreeing to.

"The interesting thing about those invites," said Judith Meskill, a longtime social networks observer and blogger, and currently COO of a startup called CrowdFusion, "is that they are being spawned often without the knowledge of the spammer. This practice really must stop."

Meskill suggested that the only way it might stop is if the companies behind some of the services band together to create a set of behavioral regulations.

"It's their industry," Meskill said. "They should be protecting its rep. It really makes the whole industry look bad."

Still, if such standards were to be implemented, it's certainly not going to happen any time soon. And in the interim, the problem of people being endlessly frustrated by more and more invites continues.

One rather well-known tech executive, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates recently decided to quit Facebook because he was getting more than 8,000 friend requests a day.

That, of course, is an extreme example, but to people like Kelley, the never-ending invites often feel like a plague, and one that simply won't go away.

"I first noticed it like one notices a new allergic reaction," Kelley, who said she is or has been a member of at least 14 social networks, told me by IM. "Over time, I started noticing a more and more negative reaction to each new one that surfaced. It was similar to the feeling of hearing about a new startup during the height of the (dot-com) bubble. It just defied all logic and kind of offended me as a thinking human."

Not everyone, of course, feels that the number of new social networks is a problem. For some, it creates ever-changing ways to connect to important people in their lives, and more focused ways to filter lists of friends and acquaintances.

"I receive invitations for new social networking sites almost every time a new one hits beta," said Souris Hong-Porretta, vice president of interactive media at Entertainment Media Ventures. "I'm not so tired of receiving invites. It's part of my culture and part of my job to know what's out there."

Hong-Porretta said that she's even moderating a panel at the upcoming South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, about such applications.

But even she wishes the services weren't such time-sucks.

"I do sometimes wish that there was a magic button I could push that would fill in all my relevant information for me though."

Hong-Porretta, though, can see why for people less interested in staying abreast of every new service, the invite stream is a problem.

"I'm not surprised people are experiencing social networking site invite fatigue," she said. "The sites are time capital intensive in the beginning...I think people are going to be much more particular about the sites they sign up for now. I think a defining factor will be, 'Is this site useful or helpful to me?'"

One thing some would like to see would be an actual consolidation of the many services, precisely so there isn't social networking site overload.

"What I'd ideally like would be to have a couple different networks, personal and professional (that I could) keep separate," said De Loura. There might be "somebody I might want to connect to for personal reasons, but not for business reasons. (And) there are people I want to protect. I don't want everybody to be linked to execs at Microsoft who have been gracious enough to link to me."

Meskill thinks that De Loura is on the right track. She said she foresees a new set of social network sites that are "strong vertical offerings," sites like Flickr that give users a specific and focused set of things to do.

"I think a new generation of strong, user-focused offerings would be very well received," Meskill said, "in verticals like photos, music, food, tech, etc. Those plays have not arrived yet, however."

The thing is, though, that even if social-networking services do evolve as Meskill suggests, users will still find themselves accosted with nearly daily invites. And that's not necessarily a good thing. Especially when the invites come from friends.

In fact, there's even a term for the invites that come from friends: "bacn."

"It's spam from people you know," said Pallister. "It's worse than spam because you're not sure you should ignore it. 'Did they mean to send this to me? Should I delete it?'"

Meskill said she's aware that bacn has become a big problem on Facebook.

"Friends are dropping friends as friends," Meskill said, "because they are being hammered by a ton of this stuff."

So what's the solution?

It's hard to say. But to people like Meskill, it's become clear that the social network services are going to have to take action soon, or else they're going to risk turning off their users. And these days, it's more important to those companies than ever that that doesn't happen.

"Since we have advanced beyond the first adopters," she said, "and the next wave and are now into the broader wave of medium-to-late adopters, this is more imperative than ever."

Digsby is a new service that aims to give people a way to link their contacts from leading IM clients with e-mail and social networks like Facebook and MySpace.com

(Credit: Jeff Hester, BigBlueBall.com)

If you're the type of person who communicates with friends, co-workers, relatives, and such via several different IM services, e-mail, and Facebook--and you know you are--software could soon offer you one of the cleanest ways ever to link them all together.

The software, called Digsby, went into private beta Tuesday, and its goal is to give people a way to organize their contacts from Yahoo Messenger, AOL IM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Windows Live Messenger, as well as e-mail, Facebook, and MySpace.com into a single client.

Digsby went into private beta on Tuesday. It is the brainchild of Steve Shapiro, an MBA student at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

(Credit: Jeff Hester, BigBlueBall.com)

According to Jeff Hester, who runs instant message community site BigBlueBall.com and who wrote about Digsby late Wednesday night, the service is the smoothest integration of all the various communications tools that it links together.

Digsby offers the ability to have a single buddy list for all your (major) IM clients and to carry on several IM conversations via tabbed windows. Furthermore, you can create new aliases for each contact for convenience.

It also allows you to work with Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and other major Web-based e-mail services and to "stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook or MySpace accounts," including friend requests, messages, group invites, and other communications.

Currently, Digsby only works with Facebook and MySpace, but it hints at other social network support in the near future.

Hester said he thinks it works better with Facebook.

"The integration with Facebook is best," Hester wrote on BigBlueBall.com, "and (there) is even a Digsby widget for your Facebook profile. With Myspace, you get the status and updates, but to take an action, Digsby launches a browser and takes you to the full Myspace Web site. It might be nice if they used a mini-browser and the mobile version of the site, but only as an option."

Hester told me late Wednesday night by instant message that the integration with Facebook is cleaner because of the API.

For now, Digsby is closed to general public sign-ups, but a visit to BigBlueBall might net you an invite.

I have to admit, I'm not sure whether there are other services that can do all of this, but even if there are, this may be the best yet.

Using 3D Mailbox, e-mail recipients can see images of 747s that represent the origins of their messages. So, for example, a message from someone in Australia would be represented by a Qantas 747.

(Credit: 3D Mailbox)

You might have noticed if, for some reason, you have followed my work over the last couple of years, that I have a thing for 747s.

I can't really explain why that is. I suppose it's just that the jumbo jets are sort of a physical manifestation of adventure for me: When I see them flying overhead, I know they're off to some faraway place where I'd probably like to be going.

So when I heard about 3D Mailbox, an e-mail client that uses visual images as representations for e-mail messages, and the fact that the second version of the software uses an airport motif and 747s for messages, I knew I had to check it out.

Unfortunately, the software doesn't work on Macs, and I'm a Mac guy. So I wasn't able to play with it myself. But I had a good long talk with its developer, Robert Savage, who has built interesting projects I've enjoyed in the past, and I got the gist of the software.

It's actually very simple. As I mentioned above, the software employs 747s to represent messages. If, for example, you have a message from someone in France, you'd see an Air France 747 taxiing into the terminal (the in-box). Similarly, an Australian message would be seen as a Qantas jet. Messages with attachments are seen as UPS, DHL or FedEx planes.

If it's a message from someone in the U.S., 3D Mailbox randomly selects from one of 12 airlines' 747s.

There's even a separate terminal where Spam Air--spam messages--pull in.