Tag Archives: Social Media

Hello! Still here…

I was just messing around with my twitter tools plugin.  It hasn’t updated my twitter updates for the last couple of weeks since I switched hostign providers so I was wondering if it was broken.  Looks like everything is ok.  Last time I was messing around with the blog apparently a few people who subscribe to my friendfeed or twitter account got spammed gloriously with all of my test posts.  I tried to delete them right away but it was too late, they were already out there in the cloud!  This dang interweb, its just way too fast for an old timer like me, lol.  I have noticed a reduction in my facebook friends as well.  I am probably going to guess they do not like the way my friendfeed has the ability to completely dominate their home page when I go on a crazy sharing spree.  Lol, oh well.  Be safe, my good fellows, I bid you farewell.

My parents gave me their 37 inch lcd TV on the weekend.  So its sitting in my place taking up massive amounts of space.  I was messing around with it and have it acting as a second monitor to my computer.  It works beautifully with Windows Media Center.  Today, I’ve been using remote desktop on it to remote into the office.  For some reason, the mouse wasn’t working.  I couldn’t figure it out and it was driving me crazy.  Turns out I was using the mouse to my laptop, which was off, and not the mouse to my computer.  FAIL.  My brother got me these sweet wireless headphones that I absolutely love.  I used them last night listening to some music while making dinner, to lying on my bed listening to some paraliminals, whereas before I had to drag my bed over to my computer because my wired headphones weren’t long enough.  Awesome!  And now, I am complete.  Good day.

Protecting your privacy online.

Its out there.  Every photo you share, every status update you provide, every email you send.  Off it goes, into the cloud.  Somewhere, sitting on some hard drive, that information is stored forever.  How many of you actually read the terms of service when you sign up for a website or service?  I’m going to say not many.

I believe in a more open, a more connected world.  I think the way the internet is moving is a fun and exciting thing to be a part of.  I recommend social media to anybody who has a computer and an internet connection.  It has many, many advantages and can be a very enjoyable experience.  But be careful, the information you put out there can haunt you for the rest of your life, can come back to bite you, or be just plain embarrassing.

Your history on Twitter or Friendfeed, as an example, stays with you.  You can post whatever you want on there, but keep in mind that future business partners, or potential/current employees, or new clients can just as easily find this information as the next person with a keyboard.  All it takes is some googling and BAM, there you are.  Every site you visit, every site you sign up for or digg or stumble, you leave a trail.  Do you really want a potential employee to find that picture of you drunk out of your mind, passed out on a police cruiser on your Myspace page?

A read a blog post on Seth Godin‘s blog a while back on one of his friends looking for a nanny for her kids.  She had it down to three people and so decided to do what any responsible parent would do;  She went ahead and googled their names.  I don’t remember exactly what the results were, but if I recall it was something like this:  Applicant 1 had a criminal record, applicant 2 had a Myspace page showing some bad pictures you definitely don’t want employers to find, and applicant 3 had a blog discussing how she is doing jobs she hates and that are below her just to pay the bills.  Brutal guys, just brutal.  Be smart about what you do online.  Just because you are not face to face with someone and are behind a computer screen does not make you anonymous, does not make it ok to act like a dummy.  Common sense still applies in the online world.

Sites like Twitter and Friendfeed encourage you to seek out strangers sharing similar interests.  Most of the people you decide to follow on those sites you don’t know, and probably will never meet.  That might make you think that its ok to write and do whatever the heck you please, but you would be dead wrong.  And then there is Facebook.  Facebook is more of a closed community in which you more or less know the people in your friends list.  They have just recently opened up the profiles so that anybody can be friends with anybody else and of course Facebook profiles can be searchable through Google.  This is really important to keep in mind.  You really should pay attention to your privacy settings on Facebook, allowing who gets to see what.  But its YOUR responsibility to make sure your friends don’t kick your butt, either.  See, your friends know the nitty gritty, darker, not safe for work, not safe for the world to see part of you.  All it takes is one slip up from your friend to ruin your reputation online or otherwise.

“Remember that time we went to Vegas and you did <insert bad thing not to be discussed over the internet>…” can seriously ruin a person if posted on a wall or tweeted.  Those pictures in your friends photo album that you are tagged in, in which you are doing something really silly, do you really want his 500 friends to see?  If his profile is open, googleable (is that a word?) and in the public, do you really want the world to see?  Probably not.  Your friends don’t know any better.  Take it upon yourself to ensure that they do.  Its your reputation on the line.  At worst, it could cost you your job, or that contract, or that potential relationship, etc.  Be smart and have fun, but be conscious of the actions you do that may affect you and those close to you.

Twitter for n00bs

Disclaimer: Written by a twitter n00b

What is Twitter?

I don’t know.  It is so simple yet so difficult to explain.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

That was taken from the twitter website.  But that still doesn’t explain it that well.  They call it “micro-blogging”, I guess.  Basically twitter lets you provide small updates (140 characters max) and they make it convenient to do so.  You can update via email, on your Iphone or Blackberry, on the twitter website, through 3rd party applications or websites, really almost anywhere.  Nice and convenient.

Who uses Twitter?

Everybody!  Celebrities like Shaq and Britney Spears.  For the record, Shaq is hilarious.  Politicians like Al Gore and Barack Obama.  Authors like Tim Ferris and Steve Pavlina.  University Professors and researchers.  Companies like Starbucks and Marvel Entertainment.  Sports teams like the San Diego Chargers and the Chicago Bulls.

They come from all walks of life!

So far so good.  But why use Twitter?

Because its fun!  You can let your friends and family know what you are doing and what’s on your mind.  You can share funny things you find across the web.  You can ask questions and get quick replies.  It can be an extremely useful tool.

A snowboarder that went missing in the Swiss Alps was found with the help of the GPS signal from his iPhone, while his friends were raising awareness about the accident on Twitter. His friend, unfortunately, was found dead after an extensive search.

Taken from Mashable

When Gmail went down a couple of weeks ago, Tweeters were the first to report it.  Slowdowns on the public transportation you rely on?  Check Twitter, I bet there is news about what is going on.  Companies are starting to pay attention to what Tweeter’s have to say.  If customers have a complaint, these companies want to gather this information to satisfy their customers. 

In short, twitter has past the tipping point and has hit critical mass.  There are enough people using it that you can get real time information very very quickly.  It can be used almost like a real time search engine, where the information comes in fast and furious.

How do you use Twitter?

Simple, go to twitter.com and sign up for an account.  Then you are ready to start tweeting.  You will need to follow some people to see their updates, and they’ll need to follow you to see yours.  If you don’t hide your tweets, they will also be a part of the public timeline so everybody can see them.

You can tweet from the website itself, or you can download apps for your Iphone, or extensions for your browser.  For example, I use Digsby as my IM client on Windows.  This has twitter integration and so I am able to see what other people are tweeting about and reply if want to.  I usually tweet using the Ubiquity Firefox extension.  The two most popular desktop  applications I keep hearing about are Twhirl and Tweetdeck, although I haven’t used them myself.  Its all supposed to make tweeting easier, not more complicated so don’t get overwhelmed.  If you are confused then just stick to the website for now until you get your bearings on it.

Twitter is the fastest growing social network on the web right now.  Facebook tried to acquire them and failed.  Very soon, your going to start seeing some changes on Facebook’s homepage.  This is a likely a direct challenge to twitter’s emergence, as Facebook will try to beat twitter at its own game.  It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

Changing it up around here.

I think I’m going to start mixing things up around here. Lately I’ve been writing about how to be awesome (actually, pretty much all I’ve been writing about since I revamped the blog) and I really enjoy doing it. I could probably continue writing about being awesome for the rest of my life. I highly doubt I would ever run out of things to write about. Writing about being awesome is really more for my benefit than anybody else. I have to constantly remind myself, and so I write it here. But the site is super duper awesome and really allows me to be a lot more flexible than that. There’s so much more I would like to share with everybody. My deep and sensitive side, my masculine and caveman side, my happy side, my goofy side, my sad side, my hugely over the top nerd side, and so forth. And I hope you all will contribute to the site as well. Its a lot easier to do so now, if you have Facebook or Gmail or OpenID or Seesmic you can do a lot around here. I know a lot of you enjoy reading my site and that’s great but it would be even more awesome if you dropped a note saying hello or shared some cool stuff that you happen to run into.

Right now all the rage for me is social media. It is blowing up across the world and I am happy to be a part of the ride. Social media involve sites like Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, and all that fun stuff that has a huge social aspect to it. I was rather cautious at first, as I’m generally a pretty private person, but it has proven to be really fun and now I don’t care. The internet is a valuable part of my life and this blog, as well as my contributions around the web, will be a part of my legacy. My manager is really big into social media and he said to me that the ones that are overly protective of their privacy are the ones that have something to hide, and I thought that was a fair enough statement.

I’m sure over time you’ll start to see more stuff from Twitter, Tumblr, and the like around here. I’ve already had my friendfeed life stream over on the right column if you haven’t noticed, as well as a list of sites I am a part of. I’m not active on everything, in fact I’m generally only active on Delicious, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Google Reader and to a smaller scale Last.fm and YouTube. I have just joined Tumblr yesterday and I really like its simplicity. I’m sure I’ll be adding to it whenever I get the opportunity. I’m still debating where I want to put my photos. I used to put them all on the site but found that it took up too much space. Flickr and Picasa are both good choices, but I don’t know the best way to go about doing it yet. I was thinking of taking up photography sometime in my future and I’d like to post that stuff to Flickr, and maybe put up all my travel adventures on Picasa. Miscellaneous stuff would likely get dumped to Photobucket, and the rest I find around the net likely would get a tweet or tumble.

If you have no idea what I just wrote, stay tuned… I bet I’ll get into more details eventually.