@sbvet1

… texting without knowing cell phone numbers.

After I decided to kill my Facebook page, enjoyed Google+ (which remains a bit desolate, compared to FB) and reverted to good ol’ emails, I’m now finding Twitter very useful for a number of reasons that I will explain below.

1. Newsfeed

Twitter is the perfect news reader. Google Reader is very good for keeping up with various blogs and website you follow, but for news, I think Twitter is still the best choice. You just have to “follow” this or that newspaper, magazine, agency… anything you are interested in, and you can easily get headlines and links into your Twitter stream/feed. You spend less time browsing through websites and you can easily skip to news that interest you the most. Because let’s face it, anyone who uses the internet is at some point forced to deal with the infamous “information overload”. We were looking for something and suddenly / 3 hours later, we still haven’t found it, but instead we read about all sort of news, completely unrelated with our initial search. So, if you want to read the news, but at the same time avoid wasting too much time doing so, Twitter and a good Twitter app. are probably your best choice. I’ll talk about Twitter apps in another post, as there are quite a few with different features.

2. Work

Although I am still not sure merging private usage and work usage of social media is a good idea, I find Twitter a good way to keep up to date with news and events related with my work. More and more companies and scientific magazines have Twitter accounts. Organisations, discussion groups, conferences organisers… the Chief Scientific Adviser of the British Government! All have Twitter accounts and spread news about events, publications, reports of all kind. Then Twitter can be quite useful.

3. Social activities

A lot of cultural organisations, centres and interest groups now use Twitter to advertise their activities. Cheltenham Festivals, for instance, has a few Twitter accounts, one for each festival basically, and following them is a very quick and easy way to receive news on events and guests. Another example, I am part of a Swedish Club and we organise events, as well as weekly classes. I write the newsletter and a group member runs our Twitter account, keeping everyone up to date with what’s going on. This leads to my next point…

4. Texting

Now a lot of people use smart phones or can text their Twitter messages to a number and it will show up on their account. Even though I have my friends’ phone numbers, we might not text because international texting isn’t usually included in phone plans and therefore it could turn out to be quite expensive. But many have internet/data usage included in the plan and if not, there’s still the option to send a text to a “Twitter number”. The same happens with Facebook and status updates: you can sort of text yourself a status update. Therefore, now I can text with friends I usually just email with or occasionally chat on Skype. If you have friends abroad, then this trick could be useful. If you don’t have friends abroad, well, it could be useful too. In fact, I don’t know some friends phone number (see, Swedish club members) but we Twitter-text and keep in touch anyway. This is also a good way to deal with privacy issues and having to distribute your private phone number to many people. If you text via Twitter, no one will see your phone number so, problem solved.

In conclusion…

I still think that emails are the best way to keep in touch. They are quick and don’t necessarily have to be long. Some people might argue that emails are dead and social media is taking over. Are they? Well, I might be the wrong person to discuss this matter, as I do use emails and I still love sending postcards. The obvious problem with snail mail is that people move, the address changes and so on. Instead, you can keep your email address virtually forever and use it anywhere. This being said, Twitter might have interesting features and be potentially more useful than Facebook. There is something about Facebook that just doesn’t seem to get along well with work, privacy, sharing with friends and family. It’s all very confusing and layout tweaks and privacy settings constantly changing do not help. Twitter is less intrusive and can also be used as newsfeed. Next time I will write about a few Twitter applications I tried and what I think are the strengths and limitations of each one. I’m not an expert, then you’re more likely to read comments from the user’s point of view.

If only they could talk...

Cleaning up the list of social networks, keeping 2.

The joy of reading a book I’ve read many years ago.

A warm Sunday night.

A movie in the backyard.

October at its best.

Writer's block?

I recently joined the Post A Day/Week 2011 challenge (see, The Daily Post) and I’ll post whenever I get the time, at least once a week. It’s going well so far. I like to write stuff during breaks at work, sipping coffee or tea, chatting with colleagues.
One funny thing I realised today is that if you have Facebook and update your status say, at least once a day, well, there you have a topic for your blog. Check out your status messages and I bet most of them could become a topic for a blog post. Maybe add a few more sentences and a picture, and there you go.
After all, who said you have to write novels on your blog? Short, straight to the point, thought provoking posts are probably more effective than long, tedious essays. I blog for fun about random stuff and ideas. I like blogs that have short posts because I get tired of reading online. I already do it a lot for work. Blogs have to be entertaining, so… unleash your creativity and if you use Facebook, take inspiration from the huge amount of random information you certainly get from there. Some completely useless, but some might give you ideas for a debate. For example, some of my friends and I follow various newspapers and we post links to news articles and such. Conversations that come out of those are some times very interesting. Then, if you are struggling to find topics for your blog, there are plenty of sources you could get inspiration from!

Please Rob Me!

“At PodCamp Toronto yesterday, one of the intriguing sessions was Brad Buset’s presentation about privacy, and how there needs to be more awareness of how much information we’re disclosing via social networks.

It’s an issue that has been lost in the shuffle amid the excitement about sharing what you’re doing, thinking, eating, going, drinking, buying and where you’re located. Everyone is pounding away on their keyboards to broadcast everything and anything without much thought to whether disclosing this information has a downside. In many ways, we’re drunk on social media.

The reality is there’s a dark side to social media that people need to serious start thinking about now. Every tweet, update, video and blog post is micro-chapter of your public profile that anyone can access. Sure, it’s information that is created for friends, family and colleagues but it’s also out there for other people with less virtuous interests.”

Continue reading… The Dark Side of Social Media and Privacy | Mark Evans Tech

I must confess that, aside from the very easy-to-upload-&-share photo albums, Facebook has been rather useless lately. I ignore all applications, games, send a heart, send a dinosaur, send a stone, etc. Plus, quite a few of my friends have been experiencing issues with the chat and the messages. We mostly stick to emails, then as far as I’m concerned, Facebook is only for spreading the word about news or links I get from organisations I follow, or to put some funny line in my ‘status’.

My class was on a 3 days field trip last week and well, posting the various collections of photos on FB and commenting was very funny. And yesterday I found (or she found me, rather) an old friend I haven’t talked to in 5 years. Impressive, indeed…

But at the end of the day, if every week you have to check on your privacy settings and be careful nothing you didn’t want to disclose suddenly goes public for whatever glitch the FB gurus didn’t fix… really, it becomes a drag.

Now, Twitter instead, is a quick and easy way to either stay in touch with people in between a proper email or phone call or meeting, or receive news from all over the world and spread them too. No applications, no silly games or zoo animals to entertain. It’s just one person posting short messages. Period.

If images is what you want to share online, there are a bunch of photo-sharing services for Twitter and they are quite straight forward, simple to use. What you will share on Twitter, will be public or private. Not selectively viewable by a list of friends, which suddenly goes public anyway without you even knowing it. I’m not sure this problem in particular ever happened on Facebook (private lists going public), but as someone commented in the article on The New York Times, we could very well start doubting whether to trust Facebook or not. The Privacy settings are so many and there are applications that only work with “completely public” settings. Users might be confused as to which restricted information will go public and some may even disclose previously private information unwillingly.

Then, I guess Facebook will remain a news-spreader tool as far as I’m concerned. Twitter has replaced texting with those I cannot text. Skype and emails are still my favourite. But none can beat meeting and talking face-to-face!

via NYTimes.com

I turned off my Google Buzz yesterday, after 2 friends pointed out some privacy settings that were letting everyone seeing everyone’s contacts, or something like that. So I went to check the Google Buzz profile settings: after a closer look and asked myself if I really needed yet another thing to update daily to get in touch with my friends. My friends are already on my email and/or phone/address book, some are on facebook and I seldom use MaySpace anymore. Twitter is great to spread news. Period. I think I’m about to close down my MySpce account, I haven’t checked it in ages. And the new Facebook is OK, but still, I prefer to email my friends or call them or chat on a messenger (Skype is my favorite). So… This Google Buzz idea is completely useless. Google already has a chat (Gtalk) and Wave (very good idea for business meetings). I couldn’t care less for Buzz…

And now I’m off to the Farmers Market in Stroud with my crazy Ozzie friend Bex

via TreeHugger.com

Social Networks

(from my MySpace page)

I opened this MySpace account back in 2005 I think, and I haven’t started using it until 3 years later. I guess this shows my love to social networking.
I also have a Facebook account now and more than once I’ve been tempted to close either MySpace or Facebook, but I can’t choose. They sure are easy and fast ways to show photos to your friends, but-uh…

1- I only upload low definition photos to Facebook because of the Distribution Rights issue. Some photos I have printed in the past are obviously not viewable on FB, nor on MySpace. Ya never know…

2- Blog on FB sucks, while it’s doable on MySpace. Though I also have a wordpress blog I’ve been posting on for a while, on my real website. So… Which one do I keep?

3- Most of my friends are either on MySpace or on Facebook (or on both!) and now we don’t write emails anymore, we don’t have much time left to chat on the messengers either, so we resign to send short messages here or on FB.

All in all, social networks don’t really help friends keep in touch. They gradually stop talking. You end up clicking on tv shows you like, become a fan of this or that page, artist, film etc… and your friends get to know you like The Simpsons and Fawlty Towers. But they will eventually just send you some short hello note from time to time. We are all so busy we can’t talk to our friends anymore.
But are we busy with our 3D lives or are we busy with clicking on this or that MySpace / Facebook feature?

Don’t worry guys & gals I’m not gonna shut down my accounts. I’m just gonna try and finish building my real website and then link to that. I had a nice idea in mind for my website, but it requires quite some coding and programming. Then I got eye surgery keeping me away from the computer, so… Will be back to programming pretty soon.

Yeah… I knew you couldn’t wait