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Wish List: Contact Priorities

I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the recent talk about how to classify relationships online and how that translates, at least for me, into actual practice. The truth is that as interesting as it would be to have hard data documenting exactly what kind of relationship I have with someone (be they a an old college roommate, an ex-girlfriend, a current coworker, a close friend, etc), that doesn’t really have a lot of functional use for me. I mean really what happened yesterday between me and someone else is already in my head and I don’t need a code to represent that. Besides often that isn’t a static piece of info, relationships change and who wants to be constantly updating that? I’m not saying it’s not important for a lot of reasons (I certainly understand the idea of letting this group of people have access to this group of info, and that group having access to a more limited amout of info), what I’m saying is that really what is more interesting for me is looking at tomorrow and how those people and relationships impact my daily life.

Depending on the kind of relationship I have with someone they have different priorities in my life at different times. If a business contact e-mails me during the week I’d like to see that relatively quickly, where as if they e-mail me on a Saturday I’d be perfectly happy not even knowing about it until Monday. If my family calls me I want my phone to ring, if the dry cleaner calls I’d prefer if that went stright to voicemail. If a friend IM’s me I don’t mind being interupted, however if someone I’ve only just met pings me I’d like them to see that I’m busy and will be back in touch later. What kind of relationship I have with these people isn’t really as important as what priority I’ve placed on their contact with me.

I realized while talking with someone about this the other day that what I really want is what already exists for so many other kinds of info but just hasn’t been applied to people yet. I can rate songs in iTunes and then tell it to only play songs with a 3 star or higher ranking at certain times. I can sort RSS feeds in Google Reader and chose which ones to read when. Why can’t I do this with my contacts? So that is what I’m wishing for – I don’t want something that better describes what kind of relationship I have with someone so much as I want something that helps me prioritize incoming contact from them. I want 5 star contacts to be able to reach me any time any where, and 1 star contacts to leave me messages I follow up on when I have a chance. Half of me feels like this is a horrible thing to ask, but in reality that’s what all this sorting is headed towards just in a much more round about fashion.

Late night propositions

In the last few weeks I’ve had a few conversations with people, mostly late at night, that may be worthy of further exploration so I figured I’d throw them up here for you all to pick apart.

Make Out Party. The first rule of Make Out Party is… you have to make out with someone before you talk to them. OK so basic idea here is inverting the social schema of meeting someone at a party, chatting them up for a few hours and maybe making out with them later on but throwing a party where in order to talk to someone you would first have to make out with them. Not some wimpy peck on the cheek either, really make out with them. Obviously there’s a ton of details to work out before this could actually happen, some kind of signifier noting if you were ok with kissing someone of your same sex, some kind of policy requiring you to bring someone you were sure most people at the party wouldn’t already know (because it would be pointless if you walked in and knew everyone there), and um, probably a lot of other stuff. I’m pretty sure this idea was sparked after a friend referred to himself as a kissing slut.

ebay coffee. I’m sure this had a better name but I don’t recall what it was exactly as it was late and we were in a pub in Dublin. In fact I don’t remember exactly who had the idea, Paul or Eoghan I think (guys, let me know who and I’ll give proper credit, or if *gasp* this is some kinda secret tell me and I’ll delete this) Anyway – the price of a product on ebay is determined by the demand, so what if coffee was priced the same way? At a specific shop anyway. OK, so for example let’s say a cup of coffee has a base cost of $2, but at 9am there’s a huge line at the coffee shop so the prices goes up to $4 a cup, late in the evening there’s almost no one buying coffee so maybe then it drops to $1. The price could fluctuate every 10 minutes or something and you’d have to go to the shop to see what the price was at that time. The idea being you’d spread out your customers through out the day with people who were happy to pay more and those who wanted to save a few bucks picking specific times to come, and the end result being you’d actually make more money as you’d have a constant stream of customers all day rather than just a few rushes.

“If your life flashes before your eyes and you don’t get a boner, you’re doing it wrong.” – Micah just posted that on his journal, proposing it might be the meaning of life. I might have to agree. Gender variations as needed.

Ok, good night.