This is, at long last, the short film based on Google My Keys, my short story from oh so long ago now. I’ve been itching for its release for a while now, and I’m happy to see that it has been well received (if controversial… but I said to myself a long time ago that I can’t pay any mind to YouTube comments.)

Here’s a brief history of it, in a slightly overblown fashion, but what the heck, it is my blog:

The Origin

It was late at night, driving home from one of my undergrad classes, when it hit me. Google is known to provide WiFi everywhere for free in at least one city, and they make Google Earth, so why couldn’t they combine the two and give WiFi for free everywhere? (It turns out Google Earth wouldn’t help at all, but I still think the core concept of WiFi everywhere is reasonable.) That lead to more thoughts, about embedding WiFi in everyday objects so they could always be found via Google. (Starting with, as I had near me when I had the idea, my car keys.)

It was the kind of idea that I recognized as needing to get written down as soon as I got home, which is what I did, and in the next day or two, I posted a quick draft to this here blog. I don’t do many short stories, or even much fiction at all these days, but it wrote itself in many ways as I considered the consequences.

Meanwhile, Melinda had been working on apocalypse comics, and I pitched a possible comic version. That never came about, but would lead to more later.

The Journal

The next semester I would find myself in a class I didn’t know much about when I signed up for it, and turned out to be one of my favorite classes. A mixed class of undergrad and grad students (the grad students in my future major, Publications Design), the goal of the class was to put together the university’s annual literary journal Welter. In addition to soliciting pieces for publications from the community, we were all encouraged to submit our own works. While there were several pieces I considered, ultimately, Google My Keys became the obvious choice for submitting.

As part of the selection process, the class was broken up into 4 groups, all mixed undergrad/grad. We were to review all the submissions and make our recommendations on what to include, and send them up to a grad committee (headed by the professor of the class) for final decisions. The professor emphasized that since we were working on it and it was the point of the class, to try and not reject the pieces from our classmates, and instead try and work with them to improve the pieces to turn them into publication-worthy pieces.

Our group met, I sweated as we got to my piece, and they all said they loved it! Woot!

With our recommendations set, the rest of the class worked on other aspects of the publication: the graphic design, the printing (where my Kinko’s experience came in handy), advertising. and so on. It was, technically, the day after the deadline to finalize when one of the members of the selection committee pulled me aside to discuss my work.

“Your story, Keys Google or whatever, just has no real voice to it. There’s just not enough to the narrator.”

Now, I’ve learned through my many classes about taking feedback. It’s not about you, it’s about the work and making it better. However, this bit almost made me lose my temper:

“Well, if I revise it, how long do I have?” “We’re past deadline, it would need to be in tomorrow afternoon.” “You mean tomorrow when I have a full day of work.”"Yes.”

So, some vague feedback on my only submission and I only have until the next day to fix and resubmit, during the period in which I work, if I want to get one of my pieces into the journal I had worked really hard on. Fortunately (and maybe just because I wanted to complain about that particular person), I talked to the professor after class. He told me to send it directly to him.

I sent it as soon as I got home, and by the time I woke up the next morning, I had a re-written piece in my email, one that emphasized creating more of a rhythm and tweaking it more towards prose. I was VERY happy with it. I made some tweaks, and I think went past the deadline anyway, but I got it in.

Google My Keys appeared in the 2007 version of Welter of which I have two copies hanging around in my shelves. We held a launch/reading party during finals week, where we each were to read an excerpt. My mom and brother came up to see it, but ran very late, so when my turn to read came up I asked them to skip me. Finally, my family arrived, but I had missed my turn.

Kate Jackson read a portion of her story, and once she was done, said “How about we get Dave up here to do his story?” since she put together what was going on. I gladly got up and read my excerpt in front of my family. Thanks again, Kate!

(I found out later that other people in the class had assumed I was just too nervous to read, then were surprised at how well my delivery was. I never really got until then how many people fear public speaking and assume everyone else does too.)

The Video

Melinda would later turn her idea of apocalypse comics into apocalypse movies, following discussions of forming a film studio from those of us who were in a 48 Hour Film Project together. That studio would be They’re Using Tools, watch them for more on the apocalypse movies.

As part of those discussions, we were all asked to pitch apocalypse ideas. I think I pitched 3 or 4, and Google My Keys was a clear favorite among the others. (I still have a soft spot for one of my unused ideas, Ragtime Over Innsmouth, concerning a group of happy hobos who stumble upon a sinister village off the rail line.)

Tools is in Rhode Island, I am in Maryland, and at the time this was going on, embroiled in grad school. The production of Google My Keys proceeded pretty much without my direction, which was what I wanted. Adam Russell pinpointed something I already knew but did nothing about: short stories don’t automatically make good scripts. And so he rewrote it as narration, for inclusion of visuals later (of which Melinda already had many ideas.) I thought his rewrite was brilliant. I suggested a few changes, and sent it back as the final script, which Adam would then himself

(Have you been reading closely? That’s twice now the original was re-written by other people in a completely awesome way, and yet I get most of the credit. So thank you again, Dr. Schorr and Adam Russell.)

I would distantly hear about the shooting, but again, had little to do with it. I would toss some ideas out during the massive editing/special effects phase, specifically a list of bubbles that could be used for the cars and locations, but mostly, it was all Tools. They did the hard work, I just had a good idea.

And though it would take a while to finish (and there were questions of the best way to release it because we all felt it was so strong), it did get released just a few weeks ago, and I could not be happier with the final product.

The Aftermath

It’s out there, it’s getting watched, and I’m doing my best to promote it using the Internet tools I’ve learned so well. (All you readers of this… please share the video with your friends!)

The negative comments seem to think that either it’s about the dangers of giving up your privacy (kinda) or just anti-Google in general (absolutely not). Neither of those concerns bother me.

What is interesting and bothersome to me is that it has already followed the path of established science fiction: it has already come true in some ways and become horribly dated in others.

Google did end up co-sponsoring a satellite, but it wasn’t to spread WiFi everywhere, and I think treaties and the military prevent such things.

Here on Earth they have launched Google Latitude (track the location of you or your friends, available on cell phones everywhere), Google Voice (which has already caused disputes with phone companies), Google Wave (a communication/collaboration tool that some think could replace email), Google Side Wiki (comment on any page), and many other services. Already I see the same pieces I was talking about, just coming out in a different way than I envisioned that night riding home.

Some day I’d like to do more science fiction, probably more near-future stuff like this. But I honestly still get chills whenever I hear “It was too late. We were… googled.”

I’ve had the thing for two weeks now, after Sprint finally pissed me off enough to make me abandon what’s got to be the sweetest cell phone plan I will ever have. I keep getting asked (mostly by current iPhone users) what I think about it. I can sum my feelings up thusly: It’s a worse smart phone but a better iPod.

As I knew I would, I hate the keyboard. I was a very fast typist on my old smart phones (with actual keys) and I end up with tons of errors when I use the iPhone touch screen, moreso when the application won’t turn sideways. Calendar, notes, and to-do list are much worse than what I’m used to- lots more options, difficult to do on the fly without navigating through several menus and button presses. The App store obviously makes up for a lot of this, with some truly amazing apps, and specialized programs for a lot of my often used tasks (like instead of using notes for a grocery lists, I can get a grocery list app, or the Twitter app, etc.) Also, the web browser is great and light years ahead of other ones I’ve used.

But where it’s really shined for me? The music. It works as an iPod (albeit a small one and even the largest won’t fit my entire music collection). Add to that adds like Pandora and Last.fm that let me stream custom internet radio. Add on top an app solely for my absolute favorite radio station of all time. Add to that an app that lets me stream my music library wherever I go without loading it on. Plus I can stream podcasts and other internet radio wherever I go. It’s an iPod plus all the advantages the internet brings.

I broke down today and bought an FM transmitter/car charger. I’m going to be experimenting with it over the next week, but if it goes as well as I think it will, I’ll probably be canceling my SiriusXM subscription, and possibly looking into selling my iPod. Having WOXY with me wherever I go (with my home music library as a backup) is just better.

So as a smart phone? I’m sure it’s awesome for the many people who never had one before, and it’s fine, and I’ll get used to it (and probably the damn fake keyboard too). But as a portable music player? It can’t be beat.

Just a quick note that I finally bought an iPhone and thus have a new cell number. If you’re my friend on Facebook, you can find it there, or if you need it otherwise, drop me a message.

1. Receipts. They’re always such a waste to me. Even if I’m doing my taxes, I just look at my old statements online. Ideally, there would just be an email tied to your credit card, and your receipt could automatically emailed to the email address associated.
2. Plastic bags. Also a huge waste- like receipts, just take a minute to think of the scale associated. Walk into a grocery store and see how many people there are shopping, most of whom will need multiple bags to carry their stuff. Then multiply by how many customers there will be in a day. Then multiply by every grocery store on the planet. This one is harder to solve than receipts, but it still bugs me.
3. “Change for change’s sake.” This phrase seems to come up even more often in scenarios where you can point to a text that says EXACTLY why something was changed, and yet it will just be “for change’s sake.” I don’t expect everyone to have read everything posted about a particular game everywhere, but doesn’t it usually make more sense to assume that there was at least some reason beyond just “change”, even if you don’t happen to agree with the reason?
4. “People are afraid of change.” This statement is so vague in its application to be completely useless in discourse.

This has been one of the best weeks of my life, a thought that just occurred to me tonight.

• I spent the week with my new awesome girlfriend e.
• I signed the lease to a new condo/apartment thingy in Germantown that has tons of space (including a kickass loft perfect for gaming that I can’t wait to customize) and is cheaper than the places I was looking at close to where I currently live.
• My group’s project (that came from my original proposal) won the award for best project, despite me not being there to help present it. Not only was there accolades at a ceremony, it comes with a cash prize, AND the project may have a future as an actual site.
• I GRADUATED!!!! I’m now officially a Master of Arts. Hopefully soon I’ll have a diploma to show it. As part of celebrating it, I went out with friends and family to Phillips and has plenty of delicious seafood, and on Sunday night had a party with a big group of friends in a hotel room.
• Additionally during the weekend, there was Balticon, which included two big D&D games that I ran. My writeup was linked to by Wil Wheaton, and I had an awesomely geeky conversation with him over Twitter. When I hear people bash Twitter, I can point to them that conversation and all the times I’ve been able to complain on Twitter and make things happen to prove its worth.
• e. and I went with Ginohn, TV Tom, and Petra to see a JoCo concert. I put this last so that I could embed the following video from it:

So all in all, an awesome week.

Witness… my acting debut!

…But still plenty to do to prepare for it. As usual, this is more of a to-do list for myself that I happen to be sharing with the world for whatever reason.

This weekend I’ll need to:

• Do taxes (more complicated now that I am a “Sole Propiertership”
• Decide what computer I’m bringing, and set it up appropriately for telecommuting. (If I do taxes first and find I’m getting a good refund, this may be the weekend I buy a Mac Book).
• Apply for the Doctorate program, at least the basic application.
• Pack! (The usual + promo copies of Get Bit + giveaway sharks… might be packing pretty light this year)
• Get as far ahead on school projects as possible, including work on the Inside Charm site and editing its materials, finish the flash project due on Monday, and do lots of work for Portfolio before meeting on Tuesday.
• Speaking of which, finish designing my logo, design my business cards, then get them printed. (It was a huge mistake last year not having them).
• Catch up on various RPG Bloggers work.

More added as I think of it! I have this strange feeling that there’s somebody at the Gathering whose stuff I’ve borrowed and I should return but can’t think of what in the heck it could be…

Hey, lookit, I’m on Amazon.

Eventually I’ll have my own page of course, but I do have a mention on Wikipedia already.

But despite the fact that my name appears in the credits of this movie, this is not me (and neither is this, which means when I do make it there, I’ll have to be an ignoble II).