Category Archives: Tech

Time for me to rethink my relationship with Facebook. Again.

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We’re all connected to the internet, but more of us are connected to Facebook than any other THING out there.  400 million people are ‘on Facebook.  Compare to Twitter’s 100 million.  The question is whether there is a way to access all of those users outside the walled garden that IS Facebook.  It seems that we have an answer, or at least a proposed answer –

Make the rest of the web look like Facebook.

You are going to see that “f” EVRYWHERE, sans serif!  Countless third-parties are going to jump at the opportunity to get plugged into your Facebook status, and friends, and photos, and the other companies you become a ‘fan’ of on Facebook.  The goal of this initiative is nothing less than an attempt to take over the World Wide Web.

Think of the web as limitless connections between different users.  What ff Facebook owned the the strands that make up the web?

My MySpace Page – why am I doing this?

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Why yes, of course – its “a place for music”.  That doesn’t make it any easier.  You will notice that there is no link at the top of the page in order to facilitate an easy visit.  When it comes to MySpace, I just don’t know.

I got to Imeem too late.  So late, in fact, that I didn’t get there at all.  By the time I figured out why I wanted to join Imeem (and, for that matter, what it was) it had been gobbled up by MySpace.  This happened just this past December.  And MySpace, being the wonderful folks that they are, immediately shut this popular social music network down.  They promise to restore its functionality, but I’m not holding my breath.

Lala was nice, but since Apple came in, the glow has dimmed.  I can’t seem to upload the rest of my music collection, and, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, the social aspect doesn’t work nearly as well as it does on Last.fm and Blip.fm.  Apparently, Imeem was pretty good for socializing, but that’s over now, and folks on this side of the Atlantic still have no (or very limited) access to Spotify.

So what’s a girl to do (right now MySpace has my gender as ‘female’)?  A lot of bands still seem to use or even depend on MySpace, and I can’t access updates or blogs without having my own MySpace account.  The other reason to join is reports of the massive music collection, bolstered now by the acquisition (and annihilation) Imeem.

But after spending a few hours working with their garbage interface and being inundated by countless adverts, I can say with confidence that the stories were true.  MySpace sucks.

And we’re off….!

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I take a few days off and the next thing you know, I’ve got about three hundred unread items in Google Reader.  Some of these items are from that haul and some of them have whiskers on them (meaning older than three days) and some of this isn’t related to anything at all.

Now I’m going back to sitting on my ass for one more day, getting ready to listen to the Eagles (vs. Dallas) on the radio and walking my big puppy in the sub-zero wind chills.

Tumblr makes me want to be a better blogger

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My recent update (I can’t call it a redesign, since I didn’t really design anything) to the WordPress site makes me happy.  It doesn’t have the clean look of the old MPomy.com, but it makes use of a lot of the new gadgets that can easily be implemented onto the WordPress platform.  So, yay!

But content is a different story.  All the beautiful widgets and plugins don’t add up to squat if the content sucks.  My personal blogging history has been up and down and up and down.  Usually, some new technical toy or fancy application tends to drive my desire to supply more content.  That’s where Tumblr comes in.  It has taken the interface and sociality of Twitter and packed it (tightly) into a lightweight blogging app.  You can post pretty much anything and the ‘pages’ can be modified quickly to give the user a personalized look.  Like WordPress, it’s kind of up to the user to determine who deeply this personalization can get.  Out-of-the box themes are available, but code can be accessed for infinite variety.  And all the posting on Tumblr goes through a really slick interface that is fast, intuitive and easy.  So the use can very easily post a picture, text, quote, music, whatever.

But the social aspect is, perhaps, what I like the best.  Just as with Twitter, you have a stream of other users that you ‘follow’ on your dashboard or home page.  This includes all of your posts and any posts created by those you ‘follow.’  Then, as with Blip.fm, there is a currency that promotes more use and more connections – ‘Tumbularity’.  You can use Tumblr just like Blogger or even WordPress and not give a rat’s ass about Tumbularity, but if you get sucked in, you will be rewarded for getting other users to follow you and reblog (like retweeting) your posts.  There is also a ‘like’ button, which is a nice borrow from Facebook.

Just as with Twitter, the feed can quickly get out of hand and I’ve had to get used to yet another flood of information.  The desired skill is filtering.  Tumblr doesn’t have a list feature, but if it continues to expand, that may be something that would be useful.  Currently, I follow 31 other users and it’s a very manageable flow of information.

Other stuff about Tumblr that has caught my interest: cross-posting is pretty easy to set up; Android and iPhone have nice apps, although the Android piece needs a little more work; the demographics I have discovered so far are a bit younger and more introspective.  I haven’t found any news or activist feeds yet.  I think it’s a bit more of a vanity project (even though it aggregates so easily) and it would be a bit unnecessary for a journalist to set up a Tumblr feed.

So, after using Tumblr for a few weeks, I’m inclined to bring some of the more impulsive habits to bear on my WordPress blogging.

My head may explode

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social_networking_sites

I post on Twitter.  I post on this site.  I post on this site and it automatically goes to Twitter.  I post on Tumblr.  I post on Tumblr and it automatically goes to Twitter.  I post on this site and it automatically goes to Tumblr and Twitter, but not twice to Twitter, even though Tumblr is instructed to go to Twitter.  I have a Facebook account, but nothing goes there automatically.  I take posts from this site and use a ShareThis plugin to post links from here to Facebook, unless I’m using Google Chrome beta browser for Mac, which doesn’t recognize the ShareThis plugin.

I listen to music.  I listen to music on iTunes and it is Scrobbled to Last.fm.  I listen to music on Blip.fm and IT is scrobbled to Last.fm.  Blip.fm will send my selections to Twitter and Tumblr (and Facebook) if I want and the interface works very well – simple on/off switches.  Lala also has simple on/of switches for listening to music and posting it to Twitter and Facebook, but not Tumblr, but I’m not using Lala at the moment because it was bought by Apple and I’m uncomfortable with the limbo.  I did/do like Lala ver much.

Posterous will post everywhere, or only im some places, and it works by email.  I guess that’s good for mobile devices that email, but don’t have good web interfaces.  Otherwise, just upload a tweet or a WordPress entry or a tumble or whatever through the mobile web .  Email is still the mobile web, right?

I have a Google Wave account and an Orkut account and I don’t really use either one.  I don’t have a MySpace page, but why not?  Lots of bands are on MySpace and I can’t interact with their pages (read blog, see pictures) without having a MySpace account of my own.

I have Flickr and YouTube accounts, but they’re really family accounts with Em.  My understanding of social network dynamics is based on individuals and not couples.  I can either adopt the paradigm, let it be, or open more accounts.  I also have a Picasa account that I didn’t even know about.  It went with my Blogger account, which I had recently used for semi-not-exactly-legit music sharing.  A few weeks ago, someone broke into my host and scooped out all the music.  Karma’s a bitch.  So the Blogger account is now just sitting there.

That’s enough for now.  I could do this all day, but I have work to do.  Does any of this make any sense?