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Metcalfe’s Law states that the “value” of any network grows exponentially with the number of nodes in the network. In the case of Twitter, those nodes are people and the value is the benefit users on Twitter gain from reading and writing posts, aka “tweets”.

In my case, my Twitter network is small and thus it’s benefit is small. Nevertheless, I persevere. This post is a shoutout to all those people who I think would enjoy Twitter but have so far resisted the urge to join the network.

I think the main reason more people haven’t embraced Twitter is that the value is not apparent. Luckily here’s two short but great write-ups on the value of Twitter:

• 12 Reasons to Start Twittering
• Why to Twitter

But chances are if you’ve been unwilling to start Twittering, you may be unwilling to follow those links. So let me quickly list the most important points:

1. You can use it to stay connected to your friends and family. Most of us have friends all over the country and we don’t always get to talk/email as much as we’d like. Twitter makes it easy and fun to let people know what you’re up to and to see what your friends are up to.
2. You’ll get a lot more context about what your friends are doing. If you follow me on Twitter, for example, you’ll be privy to the random thoughts and observations I have during the day regarding what I’m doing and what is irking me. I’ve found since starting to Twitter that I think about what my friends are doing a lot more and obsess over my own life a little less.
3. It’s not restricted to just a computer. You can get updates from your friends via your text messages (not recommended unless you have an unlimited text plan), on any smart phone via the mobile site or a native app, or on your PC or browser. It’s kind of like the “Truman Show meets instant messaging.”
4. It may be a complete waste of time but it is free and fun and really takes very little effort. You can start just by joining and following others (aka subscribing to their feeds). Then if you like it, you can start posting yourself.
5. Following your family and friends is fun. And it is a lot more meaningful than watching reality TV since you actually care about the people you’re following. Plus sometimes even in just 140 characters people can be really funny.
6. Many people in the news media use Twitter to alert people of breaking news or newly posted stories on the web. I follow friends but also Tech newsmakers so I can keep up-to-speed with the latest and greatest things in the Tech world. But if Tech isn’t your thing, maybe politics (Obama and Hilary are both on Twitter).

Of course, the main purpose of me convincing you to get on Twitter is so I have more interesting tweets to read. But so far I have really enjoyed following the few people I currently have in my network and I think you will enjoy being a part of the Twitter network too.

If all that failed, how about this argument. Everyone else is doing it. If you really loved me you’d do it too.

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So I’m a huge fan of Scrubs. I haven’t missed an episode since it first aired in 2001. Last year when Zach Braff announced he wouldn’t be doing Scrubs anymore, I was pretty bummed, but then he changed his mind and agreed to a 7th season. So I’ve been watching and enjoying this season like a good little fanboy. Then suddenly 2 weeks ago NBC announced the “series finale” would be this past Thursday. I couldn’t believe it - I had to watch it twice to make sure they really had said series finale. It was also weird because aside from that one mention at the end of last week’s episode, I didn’t see any other ads about it.

Anyway, I sat down to watch the series finale this week and quickly became extremely confused. The episode was completely out of order with the current story line. In addition, it was a lame alternate-reality plot that made no sense. If this was the way they were going to go out, I was going to be really pissed. Something wasn’t right.

Luckily a little Googling shed more light on the situation. Apparently there’s been a little fight going on between NBC (who airs Scrubs) and ABC (who produces the show). The outcome is that Scrubs is moving to ABC and the rest of the current season’s plot will resume when the show restarts on ABC next season. People are calling it the “worst kept secret in Hollywood”. Well this was the first I’d heard of it.

It seems NBC has decided to act less than gracefully about the loss of Scrubs. They didn’t make any mention of the switch and chose to run an old episode that had never previously been aired (probably for good reason - it sucked). And even though they claimed they would only call it the “season finale”, they ended up calling it the “series finale” since it is technically the end of the series on NBC. That’s bound to confuse people. Hopefully most of the fans will hear about the show in its new home on ABC.

So long story short, Scrubs isn’t over, it’s just moving to a new network. And if you haven’t watched the NBC “series finale”, don’t bother.

To tide you over until Scrubs returns, check out these two classic clips:

Guy Love:

Everything comes down to poo:

About a year ago I wrote a blog post about why I thought restaurant pagers were dumb. The main point of the post was that everyone has cell phones nowadays, so why not use those instead of limited-range, bulky pagers. This has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time. So imagine how excited I was to be alerted (by a comment on that post) to a new company that is trying to do exactly that.

Qless (pronounced, I assume, “Queue-Less”… very clever) sells a hosted software service (SaaS is so hot right now) which lets companies notify customers via their cell phone when it’s their turn in line. The system even supports text messages if cell coverage is not great in the area of use.

Originally pitched as a way to reduce long airport lines (see 1 and 2) it looks like they’re reaching out to more places where lines are common - theme parks, restaurants, even casinos (does the hot Blackjack table automatically call you when a seat opens?).

I think this is a great idea. Imagine being able to walk to your local super-hip restaurant, get in the queue, and then go shopping or even go home and watch a quick show. Ah, the future is glorious.

The website doesn’t explain how their hosted, web-based system will integrate with companies’ POS systems. But hopefully they’ve worked all that out and it we’ll see something like this at a restaurant near us soon.

The idea of a “gas tax holiday” this has been in the news a lot recently because it’s being pushed by 2 presidential candidates and rejected by another. Aside from the merits (or lack thereof) of such a concept, it seemed like political pandering to me. But usually this type of pandering works.

Which is why I was so surprised to hear that, in a recent poll by CBS and the NY Times (warning: PDF), only 45% of Americans think that suspending the gas tax this summer is a good idea, while 49% disapprove of the plan (see page 15, questions 49 and 50). Not only that, but 70% of those polled felt that the candidates had suggested the gas tax holiday only to help themselves politically and not because it will provide real relief from high prices.

It appears that Americans have actually looked at the details and thought about the issue and its consequences. Awesome!

In case you’re still on the fence about the issue, here are some of the reasons economists feel the gas tax holiday is a bad idea:

• It would only shave 18 cents off the price of a gallon of gas which is now about $4/gallon. On average that’s only a $30 savings per person for the summer
• Since refineries cannot increase their supply of gasoline in the space of a few summer months, lower prices will just boost demand and the benefits will flow to oil companies, not consumers. So essentially the price of gas will increase by almost the size of the tax cut.
• The federal Highway Trust Fund, which finances road projects nationwide, is already facing a $3.4 billion shortfall. And the federal transportation department says every $1 billion in highway spending creates 34,779 jobs, which means the a gas tax holiday could cost 300,000 construction jobs.
• To provide households in need with relief it’s more effective to offer a direct rebate instead of gas tax relief. Not all of the tax relief from a gas tax holiday will be passed on to consumers. Some will likely be kept by refiners. And what about families that don’t drive much?
• Eliminating the tax will lead to increased consumption of gasoline. It’s basic economics - reduce the price and people will use more of it. It sends the wrong signal on energy efficiency and is at odds with the need to combat climate change by encouraging lower U.S. carbon emissions.

Doesn’t sound like a good idea once you get all the details, huh?

So I’ve recently gotten into Twitter, like really into it. But as a result, I haven’t been writing blog posts here as much. But even as my post writing was trailing off, I still knew that I wanted a way to connect my tweets to my blog. Enter TwitterTools, a sweet WordPress plugin that gives me lots of ways to show my twitter activity on this blog. TwitterTools provides lots of functionality. The best of which is the ability to display my recent tweets on the right sidebar.

But I admit that I also made the mistake of thinking it would be cool if I turned a digest of my daily tweets into a blog post each day. This is also functionality that Twitter Tools provides and so I tried it out. And I have to say it was bad news. If I did lots of normal posts each day, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But since I only post a few times a week (if that much), the daily Twitter digest just seemed like noise. I’ve since removed those blog spam Twitter digest posts.

I promise I’ll actually try and keep the posts on this site interesting and non-spam’ish (at least relative to my previous posts).

But if you’re a twitterholic as well, let me know or just follow me.