I recently posted some of my frustrations with the free email invitation service Evite.com. Since then I’ve done some research to see if there are any viable alternatives offered on the web.

Upcoming.org
This site is a bit more community-focused than Evite. Users can join “Metros” or metropolitan areas, and browse events that take place in that area. The invite itself is very bare, allowing users to confirm attendance with a “yes”, or “watch” the invite. In addition, there is a blog-like comments area at the bottom. The organizer has few options (far less than Evite) — there are no design tools, and all features are automatically activated. The only usable option is the privacy filter, which allows the organizer to hide an event from the general public (only registered “friends” can view it).

The main problem I see with Upcoming.org is that users are required to register in order to use the service. An event organizer can invite via email, but anyone new to the service will have to fill out a short form and wait for an activation email before being able to respond to the invitation. For groups of people who tend to be early adopters, this is a nice alternative to Evite, but most groups are a mixed bag, and I can’t imagine many of the people I know taking the time to fill out the application or remembering their login and password the next time they receive an Upcoming.org invite.

Overall, Upcoming.org is an interesting site for promoting events for a specific group, but doesn’t really measure up as an Evite replacement. I think novice users will like the simple, no-nosense format, but in the end Evite just allows for better event planning. Keep an eye on this one though.

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The other day my sister finally allowed me to read her senior project on Bruce Springsteen (she was hesitant because, as a huge fan, she feared I would be overly critical). Within this document, there were several underlined words, and although I was quite sure that interactive capabilities had not quite been developed for regular, old-fashioned printer paper, I felt compelled to click on the underlined words. I think I may have even tried to do so.

My point here is that the internet has rendered underlining useless in every situation that does not include a hyperlink, even outside of cyberspace. This convention has just become so accepted and understood that using it for anything else seems somewhat naive. Although I stopped using underlining in any situation years ago, many people still do not realize that this is a no-no. While I don’t necessarily expect a high school student to realize this, I find it frustrating that teachers still allow this usage for emphasis. Just like green is the new black (until fall, when black will be the new black), bold and italics are the new underline, and everyone should be directed as such.

Now that I think about it, I’m quite looking forward to interactive paper.

Recently I organized an event using Evite and became extremely frustrated with the experience. Evite itself seems great at first — extremely easy to set up and deploy, but for some reason most of the people I know just refuse to respond to such things unless badgered endlessly to do so. After discussing this very topic with some friends and colleagues, it seems I’m not alone in this frustration; People who are more tech-savvy and reliant on the internet for all things seem to love Evite’s potential, but those who are not quite as reliant on computers, for various reasons, are difficult to convert to Evite users.

There are, obviously, a lot of great things about a free service like Evite which don’t need to be covered here. What I really want to look at is why some people are unwilling to respond to this method of communication. Read the rest of this entry »

Check this out… a band called “The Red” has released an album on a USB Jump drive. As a promotion proclaims, “The Red is thinking FORWARD”, and one must admit that it is a pretty ingenious way to release an independant album. Perhaps it is just further proof that CDs are SO 20th century.

It would be really great if car stereos were equipped to take USB jump drive inputs. Obviously there would need to be some kind of software in the car that could play the files on the disk, but there’s no question that carrying a bunch of mp3′s on a 1 or 2GB jump drive is much easier than burning said files to multiple CDs. Even data CDs or DVDs don’t offer the convenience that a jump drive can.

Jupiter Research recently released an interesting report, “Video on Cell Phones: It’s Real in 2005, but a Paying Consumer Audience Isn’t”, which states that although 44% of consumers are interested in viewing video on their cellphones, only 19% are willing to pay anything for this service. Furthermore, only 4% of consumers considered the ability to play videos important when purchasing a new phone.

Emerging technology on cell phones, such as email, internet access and video, creates an interesting contradiction with regards to device size. On one hand, smaller phones are most certainly better, as people often carry these devices in their pockets or handbags. Small, light phones are cleary more easy to keep with you at all times than their bulky counterparts. On the other hand, producing a quality video experience on a tiny phone is extremely difficult at this point in time. For people who are constantly on the move (train commuters perhaps), any access to video from a mobile phone might be too good to pass up, but for others, waiting to be in front of a larger screen might be a more desireable way to experience this content. Read the rest of this entry »