I ain't got time to Tweet
Posted: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 5:15 PM by Will Femia
"Blogging isn't dead, it's just a subset of something much larger and more important." Hugh MacLeod expands on his Why we're all blogging less post. He makes the argument that new social tools mean that people who were blogging because there were no alternatives can now move out of the blogging realm (into Twitter or Facebook or whatever).
That may be the case for some, but it's equally likely that people aren't moving to new tools so much as adding them on top of what they already use - leading to what is being called the social graph problem. Count me in for wanting a central clearing site for all of my social apps. I'm already at the end of my attention span after logging into MSN IM, Blogger and Flickr. Then I'm supposed to play with Facebook and Twitter? The funny thing is that I can see the advantages of those other tools but how many different times to I have to change my status to "out to lunch" before I get up from my desk? I understand most applications now have a way of rendering in Facebook and I know a lot of people who now use Facebook as their home page. I'm still working my way toward that.
Speaking of bringing outsiders into Facebook, their messenger now accepts outside e-mail addresses. That messenger has been the most useful thing for me so far. It's like phone book for online contacts. I've sent several messages to people who aren't even on my friends list (because who has time to deal with friends lists?) but who are friends and I needed a quick way to get in touch.
Speaking of who has time for Facebook, one Australian study puts the Facebook time suck at $5 billion bucks.
One thing I've finally made the time to add to my Facebook page is the NPR podcast app.
Speaking of streamlining your Web habits, The Not-To-Do List: 9 Habits to Stop Now - The items on this list that I already do are so useful that I'm giving more serious thought to the others. Scheduled e-mail checking (#5) is an interesting idea.
Here's that guy who filed a complaint against Fred Thompson with the FEC. It turns out it's the same guy who brought the Mark Foley business to light. The way I understand his complaint, he says Thompson is campaigning with money that's supposed to be for exploring the possibility of campaigning.
"In what will surely be seen as a defining moment for the 9/11 truther movement, the History Channel has delivered a blow for sanity and rationalism by airing a superior documentary entitled 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction." I missed it.
I don't use Skype, so the headlines about them having service trouble didn't really register with me. I did end up reading their explanation and found it interesting to think about. The problem was that Microsoft released some kind of security patch that required a machine restart. Everyone got the patch at the same time and rebooted at the same time. The problem comes when the Skype customers have auto-sign-in when they restart. So Skype got blasted with requests. "Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days."
Somewhere in my childhood I learned that there was bad stuff inside a battery and it was important not to break one open. So the recent spate of how-to videos that involve cutting open batteries are setting off all kinds of deep-seated mental alarms.
Remember that "Firefox is blocked" site last week? Not surprisingly it's been the subject of a bit of a backlash.
Will the new Google China blog search help Chinese citizens find censored material and ideas or will it help Chinese authorities track down subversive bloggers?
Ever see the Simpsons episode when Homer has an EZ Bake Oven plugged into the cigarette lighter jack in his car? Eat your heart out Homer!
A completely engrossing comic. Note that it's long, so don't start it if you don't have a few minutes.
Speaking of comics, the coolest thing about this one is that when you go to the punchline URL you find they are actually soliciting photos of women in the shower playing electric guitar. (Totally safe for work right now. Not sure what they'll do if they actually get some photos.)
Any guys out there looking for a clever way to propose marriage? Here's an interesting one.
Reddit has finally added a "media" channel for just pictures and videos.
Diet Coke is 99% Water (And That Is Now a Good Thing) - The idea is that it used to be an insult to say something is mostly water and now water is so desired that non-water advertises its similarity to water. Maybe it's a sign of my age then that I refer to things like decaf coffee and no-caffeine Coke as "brown water" in a bad way.
In case you thought those plastic snap-on spinning hub caps were the cheapest kind of fake bling you could add to your car, how about a giant magnetic fake sun roof?
Star Wars is bigger than Jesus.
Speaking of bigger than Jesus, I didn't know there was an anti-Santa movement.
Top three most expensive beers. Mostly noteworthy because number 2 is a Sam Adams beer. I wouldn't have guessed that.
Superman's identity revealed (20 times) - I like the Candid Camera one. What a cultural phenomenon that show was. There should be a cover about bloggers revealing his identity.
I didn't realize that if you don't live in an AT&T zone you simply can't have an iPhone. Apparently if you're doing too much roaming they'll cut you off. With so many AT&T complaints, and now this hint of an iPhone underground, I've been wondering why people aren't signing up for European iPhone service. I wonder if there's any way for that to be practical.
I had never heard of The Jena Six until I was allowed to sit in on a Nightly News story meeting on Friday. Now I feel like I'm seeing it everywhere. I can't get past the early parts of the story's telling that mention, "According to the school's unspoken racial codes, however, that area was reserved for white kids..." I know kids form cliques and unofficial turf areas, but "unspoken racial codes" is hard to get my head around.
