@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.

Let's try Google Image Search...

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that Google has changed their image search layout/interface. I have to be honest, I am not sure I like it. Besides, what was wrong with the previous image search?? I really don’t understand why so many websites, and now Google search too, have grown so fond of these image gallery scripts that are like a pop up window without being a pop up window. I’m not trying to be cryptic, I just can’t remember the technical word for those galleries.

So now, once you hit the Search button and got all of the images spread out on the page, you cannot scroll down the page without having previews of the images popping up if you rest the cursor on the image for more than 1 nanosecond. The image thumbnails are so packed close that you have to really meticulously look for a “free spot” to let your cursor still.

Result: it is very confusing unless you do as we were taught to read at the primary school, scrolling the letter with your index finger as you read them. If you use your cursor this way, you are going to be fine. If instead, like everyone in this world, you often let the cursor rest wherever while you read the page content, you are likely to be distracted by annoying previews overlapping the photos you are trying to search through.

Google Image Search wasn’t probably the fastest loading, smoother looking image search available, but at least you could see the results without wrestling with “pop-up-like” previews!

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!

This is a great series of documentaries summarising the history of the web. A must see! No need to register on the BBC website, the videos are free