I just made a rough count of how many links there were to this Thing--articles, applications, badges, etc.--and came up with 118. If all the More 23 Things have that many links to explore, it truly will be a challenge to get through the program by May 20.
Suffice it to say that clicking through those approximately 118 links to do Thing 31 wasn't happening, especially as I still haven't warmed up to Twitter in the first place (but as promised, I do drop by and update it every now and then and scramble to keep up with others' tweets). I ended up skimming the list, trying to pick out the most promising. Since Thing 27, we have set up a Twitter account at work, so I forwarded the links to David Lee King's posts to our Twitterer. I also glanced over the "9 Ways Twitter Can Help in the Real World" article. I guess I've been hanging out in a law library too long: when the author jokingly listed becoming a super-stalker as one of the 9 hints, I just went, "No, that really isn't funny," and stopped reading right then. (After which, "Get Facebook friends to use Twitter without them even knowing" sounded downright creepy).
Of all the "fun" things listed for Twitter, the most attractive was the one that integrated it with LibraryThing. After all, unlike Twitter, I enjoy using LT. But then I was done in by being too much of a cataloger: when it said that it searched Amazon as the default, I just couldn't bear it (I use Library of Congress as my first search site)!
I've been more attracted to Twitter when I haven't been working through the Twitter website itself. I've got TwitterFon on my iPod touch, and it streamlines Twitter nicely. It's also easy to use when I'm out and about--which is about the only time I'm doing anything interesting enough that I'd consider twittering. I'm interested in TweetDeck too, but it's too big for a dial-up connection to handle and I haven't gotten around to downloading it somewhere else to my flash drive and carrying it home. So as you may guess, since the web is my least favorite way of accessing Twitter, I haven't done a thing with my Twitter page other than choose one of the most basic templates.
No one writes neutrally about Twitter, do they? I glanced over "The 5 Stages of Twitter Acceptance" and noted that acceptance is considered the desireable outcome. Even the suggested articles for those of us "struggling" with Twitter (I am not struggling: it's not terribly complicated to use) mostly seemed to take the approach that using Twitter is what we should want to do. "The Limitations of Twitter" was irrelevant to my situation. I wanted to point out to the author of "What Exactly is the Point of Twitter?" that maybe his friends were constantly on Twitter, so that it made sense for him to check in multiple times a day and stay in touch with them that way, but my friends mostly aren't on Twitter at all, so why should I bother? That said, I did enjoy "The Inspiration that is Twitter." I don't hate Twitter and I find the phenomenon itself interesting--I just resent feeling pressured to enjoy it (sort of, if you don't find Twitter to be a crucial element of your social networking experience, you're obviously not using it properly).
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thing 30: More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious
I see there is a slight misunderstanding here. Having read through Thing 30, it sounds like the More 23 Things program believes that I am actively pursuing more RSS feeds to follow, more websites to be kept abreast of, etc., and is helpfully offering me tools to manage the flood of updates. At present, I have a talent for finding RSS feeds that rarely update at all, so I'm only having to handle 10-20 updates/day. It just seems like overkill to filter them. I don't particularly want anything emailing my RSS feeds to me--if I'm online, I can just check Google Reader or Bloglines--and if they're sent to my cell phone, I'm going to end up paying for them.
Since I wasn't finding the "normal" use of RSS enhancers all that tantalizing, I decided to poke around some of the more creative applications. Simpletracking.com sounds promising. I get a bit obsessive about wondering where my packages are, and I have a tendency to leave the confirmation emails with the tracking numbers in accounts I can't access except at home. I was disappointed to see that UPS doesn't want to play with them, since most of my packages are sent via UPS, but I will try them out the next time someone sends me something via FedEx. Or the post office, for that matter. The post office's tracking system is horrid; I suppose Simpletracking.com isn't going to be able to do anything about that.
ReminderFeed looks really useful. It seemed a bit...um...simple. Like, all I had to do was come up with something to be reminded about, plus a password? That's it? I can handle that.
I did try adding RSS feeds to my homepage and this blog. I took them off again, though. I'm satisfied with leaving a button for Google Reader in my bookmarks and Delicious toolbars and checking it when I'm in the mood. I've also got a Bloglines account, but it doesn't seem to do things much differently than Google Reader, so it mostly feels like duplication. I had been hoping that Bloglines could handle feed authentication--Google Reader adamantly refuses to do so (perhaps because their blogs can't be made private, so you don't need feed authentication to read them?)--but it seems to choke on it as well. Rumor has it that FeedDemon manages it, but I'm running out of energy to just keep signing up for new accounts everywhere.
Okay, okay, I admit I underutilize Delicious. But it just feels horribly sloppy to bookmark tons of things I'll never visit again. It wasn't until Thing 30, though, that I realized that here you're supposed to be making connections (the network) with people you don't know and aren't communicating with. I thought this was like Facebook, where there was supposed to be more of a personal connection, and since I hardly know anyone who uses Delicious--that's more like, many people I know use it, but I don't know their usernames there--I felt sort of alone. No, no--I shall now go forth and connect with all sorts of strangers. How unnatural for me.
I do like the idea of Tagrolls and Linkrolls. I'm going to finish up this post and then see if I can get one on 23 Distractions without screwing up the layout too badly.
Since I wasn't finding the "normal" use of RSS enhancers all that tantalizing, I decided to poke around some of the more creative applications. Simpletracking.com sounds promising. I get a bit obsessive about wondering where my packages are, and I have a tendency to leave the confirmation emails with the tracking numbers in accounts I can't access except at home. I was disappointed to see that UPS doesn't want to play with them, since most of my packages are sent via UPS, but I will try them out the next time someone sends me something via FedEx. Or the post office, for that matter. The post office's tracking system is horrid; I suppose Simpletracking.com isn't going to be able to do anything about that.
ReminderFeed looks really useful. It seemed a bit...um...simple. Like, all I had to do was come up with something to be reminded about, plus a password? That's it? I can handle that.
I did try adding RSS feeds to my homepage and this blog. I took them off again, though. I'm satisfied with leaving a button for Google Reader in my bookmarks and Delicious toolbars and checking it when I'm in the mood. I've also got a Bloglines account, but it doesn't seem to do things much differently than Google Reader, so it mostly feels like duplication. I had been hoping that Bloglines could handle feed authentication--Google Reader adamantly refuses to do so (perhaps because their blogs can't be made private, so you don't need feed authentication to read them?)--but it seems to choke on it as well. Rumor has it that FeedDemon manages it, but I'm running out of energy to just keep signing up for new accounts everywhere.
Okay, okay, I admit I underutilize Delicious. But it just feels horribly sloppy to bookmark tons of things I'll never visit again. It wasn't until Thing 30, though, that I realized that here you're supposed to be making connections (the network) with people you don't know and aren't communicating with. I thought this was like Facebook, where there was supposed to be more of a personal connection, and since I hardly know anyone who uses Delicious--that's more like, many people I know use it, but I don't know their usernames there--I felt sort of alone. No, no--I shall now go forth and connect with all sorts of strangers. How unnatural for me.
I do like the idea of Tagrolls and Linkrolls. I'm going to finish up this post and then see if I can get one on 23 Distractions without screwing up the layout too badly.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Thing 29: Google Tools
So many options, so little time. What to play with first?
I started with Google News. I'd used Newsvine for my news ever since Thing 12--which is to say, I'd used Newsvine for a while, finding it to be the least obnoxious of the social media sites, and eventually reverted to picking up headlines here and there instead. Dang it, I don't want my media to be social. I rarely even read the reader comments attached to a news story. Using Newsvine or Digg or the other social media sites was like trying to read the newspaper while sitting in a room filled with people I didn't know calling back and forth to each other about what they'd just read or had seen online or whatever: hard to concentrate. Hmph. >:(
This Thing was the first I'd heard of Google News (I suppose it's listed on various Google pages, but it hadn't caught my attention), and I was wary--please, not another social media site! Much to my relief, Google is going to try to customize the news to what it thinks I want to read, not the most popular news of a bunch of people I may have nothing in common with.
My initial reaction leans toward the positive. It'll take a while to get used to the layout, but it always takes me a while to do that. I mean, I'm not entirely used to Newsvine's layout, and that's been how many months? Google's preference for simple layouts serves them well here, although the sheer number of links on the page is pushing that simplicity to the limits. There were a couple of glitches--for example, I tried to sign up for the local news of St. Paul, MN and ended up with the local news of a St. Paul somewhere in Canada--but they were worked out quickly. I liked the timeline feature, although when I clicked on what I thought was a story from 2004, I ended up with one from 2008. And ye gods, I'm lazy: it feels like such an effort to scroll down and get the news past the first part of the screen!
For productivity tools (oh goody, we're back to productivity tools!), I chose Gmail. I've been using Gmail for a while, actually; it's the email I've been using for all the Things that demand registration. I did a bit with labels back when I used this email for mailing lists, but that was about as far as my experimentation got. But for a while now, I've been thinking that this may become my main email address, and so it was time to take a closer look at it. I'd never poked into the Labs that I can recall. Now I've done so and have set up the gadget that warns you that you might be about to send an email without its attachment. And now I know why some emails have a > in front of them while others have a >>. Cool.
Drawbacks? Well, I'm still on dial-up at home, and Gmail is definitely oriented toward high-speed connections. Yes, there's the option to go for basic HTML, which delivers the mail just fine, but a lot of the fun features disappear (and no visiting the Labs while you're on basic HTML). I'm still a bit cautious about storing my main email online forever--never mind that I've had how many computers crash on me at home and have barely saved my downloaded archives each time? But in all the time I've had this address, Google has done an excellent job of weeding out the spam--that's practically enough to make me switch regardless of any other feature.
I started with Google News. I'd used Newsvine for my news ever since Thing 12--which is to say, I'd used Newsvine for a while, finding it to be the least obnoxious of the social media sites, and eventually reverted to picking up headlines here and there instead. Dang it, I don't want my media to be social. I rarely even read the reader comments attached to a news story. Using Newsvine or Digg or the other social media sites was like trying to read the newspaper while sitting in a room filled with people I didn't know calling back and forth to each other about what they'd just read or had seen online or whatever: hard to concentrate. Hmph. >:(
This Thing was the first I'd heard of Google News (I suppose it's listed on various Google pages, but it hadn't caught my attention), and I was wary--please, not another social media site! Much to my relief, Google is going to try to customize the news to what it thinks I want to read, not the most popular news of a bunch of people I may have nothing in common with.
My initial reaction leans toward the positive. It'll take a while to get used to the layout, but it always takes me a while to do that. I mean, I'm not entirely used to Newsvine's layout, and that's been how many months? Google's preference for simple layouts serves them well here, although the sheer number of links on the page is pushing that simplicity to the limits. There were a couple of glitches--for example, I tried to sign up for the local news of St. Paul, MN and ended up with the local news of a St. Paul somewhere in Canada--but they were worked out quickly. I liked the timeline feature, although when I clicked on what I thought was a story from 2004, I ended up with one from 2008. And ye gods, I'm lazy: it feels like such an effort to scroll down and get the news past the first part of the screen!
For productivity tools (oh goody, we're back to productivity tools!), I chose Gmail. I've been using Gmail for a while, actually; it's the email I've been using for all the Things that demand registration. I did a bit with labels back when I used this email for mailing lists, but that was about as far as my experimentation got. But for a while now, I've been thinking that this may become my main email address, and so it was time to take a closer look at it. I'd never poked into the Labs that I can recall. Now I've done so and have set up the gadget that warns you that you might be about to send an email without its attachment. And now I know why some emails have a > in front of them while others have a >>. Cool.
Drawbacks? Well, I'm still on dial-up at home, and Gmail is definitely oriented toward high-speed connections. Yes, there's the option to go for basic HTML, which delivers the mail just fine, but a lot of the fun features disappear (and no visiting the Labs while you're on basic HTML). I'm still a bit cautious about storing my main email online forever--never mind that I've had how many computers crash on me at home and have barely saved my downloaded archives each time? But in all the time I've had this address, Google has done an excellent job of weeding out the spam--that's practically enough to make me switch regardless of any other feature.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
in-between thing: twitter
Some time later, and no, I have not yet experienced the ecstacy that is Twitter. It still feels like I'm saying random, meaningless drivel into the void. I have, however, started finding a practical use for Twitter when it comes to following others. Following groups, organizations, businesses, and so on is proving to be informative. The groups that are on Twitter for professional reasons aren't wasting their 140 characters in random, meaningless drivel; they're posting actual news, using links to connect readers to more in-depth information. In 140 characters, I can decide if the story is something I want to know more about, and if it isn't, I haven't spent a lot of time on it. It might be nice if some of the organizations on Facebook moved this sort of thing to Twitter. For example, I connected to Magers & Quinn (a bookstore) on Facebook. I don't mind hearing about their upcoming events or their recommended books, but Facebook is feeding that onto my Wall, the same as if they were one of my friends. I'd be satisfied with getting that sort of news in a tweet, knowing that I could learn more from their blog, their newsletter, and so on.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Thing 28: Customized Home Pages
Well, this was hauntingly familiar. I'd dealt with customized home pages way back in August with Thing 13 (Online Productivity Tools). There seem to be a few more options out there this year, but the principle is the same.
Since Thing 13, I've been using iGoogle as my home page on my home computer. This time, I've been testing Netvibes and Pageflakes out as well. I want to like Netvibes more than I do, but it's been having small problems ever since I signed up. I had to sign up twice because it locked up the first time and my registration never went all the way through. Started simultaneously with Pageflakes, Netvibes takes noticeably longer to load which isn't much of a selling point, and sometimes it just doesn't load at all. And finally, something about the layout just rubs me the wrong way aesthetically. I've changed the template and colors, but it's still not to my taste. The various widgets do what they're supposed to do (mostly), but I find many of them unattractive anyway. I do like that they've got a fairly wide assortment of widgets, but iGoogle has more (so there).
Pageflakes' strong points are the things I didn't like about Netvibes: it loads faster, I like the layout better, and most of the time, with any given flake, I like its look more than Netvibes' corresponding widget. Its mail flakes seem to have more problems accessing my email than Netvibes' do, though. But at least I didn't have to sign up for it twice, and so far it hasn't had hiccups in loading.
I'm not quite ready to dump iGoogle yet. I may not like its layout quite as much as Pageflakes', but I find its basic simplicity appealing in its own right. And the gadgets I've found are mostly doing what I need them to do, although why the birthday reminder gadget occasionally just stops working puzzles me.
Some gadgets, regardless of platform, are just really useful. I like having my various email accounts viewable with a quick glance at one page, rather than traipsing around from login screen to login screen to check them all. I think Facebook and Twitter do just fine as small gadgets: it strips them down to their essentials and cuts out the noise (well, Twitter doesn't seem to have much beyond its essentials, but it still works great as a gadget--if you like it in the first place). And what's a start page without news headlines or brief weather updates?
Like giving Twitter a fair shot, I'll probably continue to try all these home pages for a while and see how they work out in the long run. There are always new gadgets/widgets/flakes to try, after all--may as well see them in three incarnations.
Since Thing 13, I've been using iGoogle as my home page on my home computer. This time, I've been testing Netvibes and Pageflakes out as well. I want to like Netvibes more than I do, but it's been having small problems ever since I signed up. I had to sign up twice because it locked up the first time and my registration never went all the way through. Started simultaneously with Pageflakes, Netvibes takes noticeably longer to load which isn't much of a selling point, and sometimes it just doesn't load at all. And finally, something about the layout just rubs me the wrong way aesthetically. I've changed the template and colors, but it's still not to my taste. The various widgets do what they're supposed to do (mostly), but I find many of them unattractive anyway. I do like that they've got a fairly wide assortment of widgets, but iGoogle has more (so there).
Pageflakes' strong points are the things I didn't like about Netvibes: it loads faster, I like the layout better, and most of the time, with any given flake, I like its look more than Netvibes' corresponding widget. Its mail flakes seem to have more problems accessing my email than Netvibes' do, though. But at least I didn't have to sign up for it twice, and so far it hasn't had hiccups in loading.
I'm not quite ready to dump iGoogle yet. I may not like its layout quite as much as Pageflakes', but I find its basic simplicity appealing in its own right. And the gadgets I've found are mostly doing what I need them to do, although why the birthday reminder gadget occasionally just stops working puzzles me.
Some gadgets, regardless of platform, are just really useful. I like having my various email accounts viewable with a quick glance at one page, rather than traipsing around from login screen to login screen to check them all. I think Facebook and Twitter do just fine as small gadgets: it strips them down to their essentials and cuts out the noise (well, Twitter doesn't seem to have much beyond its essentials, but it still works great as a gadget--if you like it in the first place). And what's a start page without news headlines or brief weather updates?
Like giving Twitter a fair shot, I'll probably continue to try all these home pages for a while and see how they work out in the long run. There are always new gadgets/widgets/flakes to try, after all--may as well see them in three incarnations.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Thing 27: Twitter
The hypothetical dedicated readers of this blog will have noticed that I haven't posted since February 4. Now part of this was because of catching That Cold and being busy at work, but it was also because I could see that the next Thing was Twitter and I just couldn't work up any enthusiasm for it. Unfortunately, I still can't.
I signed up for Twitter about a week ago and have tried to post daily. I've found a few people to follow and one person is following me (doesn't that sound like stalking?). I get that Twitter is microblogging, but my preferences run toward macroblogging: when I blog, I want to get into a topic and explore it at some length. This is not something you do when you have only 140 characters to work with.
I agree that Twitter would be more interesting if I had more connections there. More Things advises inviting people you know to join. I don't think I can in good conscience, because there's nothing to offer them. I readily admit, I wasn't enthusiastic about Facebook when I joined, but after a while, I realized that there were things about it I liked: applications that helped me socialize (vs. setting my teeth on edge), ways to find people I'd lost contact with, a way to blog while maintaining some privacy, etc. All Twitter is is the Facebook status feed. If my friends are already on Facebook, what do any of us need another status feed for? And heck, you can write more than 140 characters on Facebook. To be fair, I like that on Twitter you're not obliged to start your tweet with your name--but it looks like in Facebook's next incarnation, you may not have to deal with that either.
I note that others seem to be having trouble warming up to Twitter. The only person I get frequent tweets from has nothing to do with the More Things program. The people I'm following who are working their way through More Things have put out a few tweets and then quit. Heck, even mnmorethings, the More Things own Twitter identity, seems to have given up after January 29!
It's different for an institution like a library. I see that if you had actual news for your followers, Twitter would be a good way of getting them the bare bones quickly. Maybe I just lead too dull a life for Twitter.
I'm going to try to be quietly active on Twitter for the rest of the More Things program, to give it a fair try. Maybe I'll ask the one active tweeter in my life what she likes about it. But like with lots of the photo apps from 23 Things, this is an aspect of Web 2.0 that just doesn't fill a void in my life.
I signed up for Twitter about a week ago and have tried to post daily. I've found a few people to follow and one person is following me (doesn't that sound like stalking?). I get that Twitter is microblogging, but my preferences run toward macroblogging: when I blog, I want to get into a topic and explore it at some length. This is not something you do when you have only 140 characters to work with.
I agree that Twitter would be more interesting if I had more connections there. More Things advises inviting people you know to join. I don't think I can in good conscience, because there's nothing to offer them. I readily admit, I wasn't enthusiastic about Facebook when I joined, but after a while, I realized that there were things about it I liked: applications that helped me socialize (vs. setting my teeth on edge), ways to find people I'd lost contact with, a way to blog while maintaining some privacy, etc. All Twitter is is the Facebook status feed. If my friends are already on Facebook, what do any of us need another status feed for? And heck, you can write more than 140 characters on Facebook. To be fair, I like that on Twitter you're not obliged to start your tweet with your name--but it looks like in Facebook's next incarnation, you may not have to deal with that either.
I note that others seem to be having trouble warming up to Twitter. The only person I get frequent tweets from has nothing to do with the More Things program. The people I'm following who are working their way through More Things have put out a few tweets and then quit. Heck, even mnmorethings, the More Things own Twitter identity, seems to have given up after January 29!
It's different for an institution like a library. I see that if you had actual news for your followers, Twitter would be a good way of getting them the bare bones quickly. Maybe I just lead too dull a life for Twitter.
I'm going to try to be quietly active on Twitter for the rest of the More Things program, to give it a fair try. Maybe I'll ask the one active tweeter in my life what she likes about it. But like with lots of the photo apps from 23 Things, this is an aspect of Web 2.0 that just doesn't fill a void in my life.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Thing 26: Join the 23 Things on a Stick Ning
I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning way back at Thing 21. Okay, that was only five Things ago, but given the break between the two sets of Things, that was also five months ago. Not that I did much then. Heck, I'd joined Ning itself even earlier, May 2008, in conjunction with the Midwest Library Technology Conference, and hadn't done much with it then.
This time around, I am putting slightly more effort into the Ning. I finally got around to answering a friend request from last fall (in my defense, I thought I had accepted that request back when it was made), and I've just accepted another one. I've also left some comments on a wall. As it turns out, we're discussing knitting, not the 23 Things, but it's communication. (I swear, knitting has gotten me further in networking than my professional responsibilities ever have).
I have glanced over the Ning widgets and I'm not finding them compelling. For all that Ning can be used for just about any interest, because of the two groups I'm part of, it feels professional to me and no, I don't really want to add BuddyPoke! ("Express yourself! Hug, kiss, tickle, or punch your friends with your own personalized 3D avatar") to a professional group.
I considered joining another Ning group, perhaps one more in tune with my extracurricular interests. Oddly, I'm not coming up with anything. A search for "knitting" netted me some photos, but no groups--not that I really need another knitting group in my life, since I have Ravelry. "Writing" is far too general; "journaling," far too specific. Of course, the beauty of Ning is that I could run out and create groups for anything I searched for and didn't find. But that's not me. This is partly because my schedule is just crowded right now and partly because I'm only a half-hearted social networker at best. Give me an actual network of people I'm familiar with and I will participate pretty regularly. But starting one and luring people into it? Nah. I'd never follow through.
I did add the 23 Things Ning badge to my blog way back when. Indeed, that redesign that I mention in the most recent in-between thing was prompted by my realizing that the new template I'd chosen was cutting off the right edge of the badge. So if I hadn't been able to get DISQUS to work, could I have blamed Ning?
This time around, I am putting slightly more effort into the Ning. I finally got around to answering a friend request from last fall (in my defense, I thought I had accepted that request back when it was made), and I've just accepted another one. I've also left some comments on a wall. As it turns out, we're discussing knitting, not the 23 Things, but it's communication. (I swear, knitting has gotten me further in networking than my professional responsibilities ever have).
I have glanced over the Ning widgets and I'm not finding them compelling. For all that Ning can be used for just about any interest, because of the two groups I'm part of, it feels professional to me and no, I don't really want to add BuddyPoke! ("Express yourself! Hug, kiss, tickle, or punch your friends with your own personalized 3D avatar") to a professional group.
I considered joining another Ning group, perhaps one more in tune with my extracurricular interests. Oddly, I'm not coming up with anything. A search for "knitting" netted me some photos, but no groups--not that I really need another knitting group in my life, since I have Ravelry. "Writing" is far too general; "journaling," far too specific. Of course, the beauty of Ning is that I could run out and create groups for anything I searched for and didn't find. But that's not me. This is partly because my schedule is just crowded right now and partly because I'm only a half-hearted social networker at best. Give me an actual network of people I'm familiar with and I will participate pretty regularly. But starting one and luring people into it? Nah. I'd never follow through.
I did add the 23 Things Ning badge to my blog way back when. Indeed, that redesign that I mention in the most recent in-between thing was prompted by my realizing that the new template I'd chosen was cutting off the right edge of the badge. So if I hadn't been able to get DISQUS to work, could I have blamed Ning?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)