Monday, January 18, 2010

Tags

I like tags, although I'm not fond of the tag cloud concept. Looks confusing to me. Tags are the truly democratic way of looking at taxonomy. The flexibility of the Web makes tags ideal. User-applied tags are a great way of determining how the public views your content.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Don't Look! It's IM again!

IM. Short for Instant Messenger. I've used it for years, but haven't endorsed it completely. Maybe I'm a bit of an old fogey. Perhaps IM stikes me as a bit too "Big Brother"; after all, IM always knows my status. Sure, I've found it really useful at times, sending quick hit messages to fellow workers in a nano-second. Receiving smiley face icons in return. Good stuff. But,I have concerns that it is too chatty. I for one, enjoy the control offered by email. I receive an email and a preview briefly appears onscreen before it is banished to Outlook. It is completely at my discretion to read and answer. Chats, unlike email letters, are real time events requiring immediate attention. Sometimes that's great, sometimes that's intrusive. One place I where have enjoyed using chats is online help. Let's face it, holding for the next available operator is no fun, but if I can get in touch with someone faster by chat, then I'm all for it.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Social Networking and Haiti

Interesting that in the midst of the turmoil following the horrible earthquake in Haiti, when no mainstream news was getting out of the country, the world found out about what was happening by way of social networking: short cell phone videos from YouTube, Twitter and Facebook entries.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Picture Sharing


It's nice to share. That's the premise behind picture sharing tools. I added Picassa 3 to my desktop at work and discovered that I had many, many more photos on my disk drives than I imagined. I have picked out a couple that I will share with you!

Talk About Twitter

It has been brought to my attention that I have shared little (actually nothing) about Twitter. Well, I will take care of that now. Twitter is an interesting tool. I use it, but not frequently and not actively. I am a passive Twitter user. A follower. I follow a number of sites on a daily basis but I do not add tweets. I just read what is presented. I do have an account and I even have a few followers. Why I don't know, since I don't add to my page! It is a strange thing to get an email saying so-and-so is following you, when you have no idea who that person is or why they are making the effort to follow.

Even as I have been less than enthusiastic about embracing this tool, I am still cognizant of its power. When riots broke out in Iran and the regime in power sought to close outside media access, they could not do so because of Twitter and Facebook. Extraordinary to think that little Tweets could somehow effect the future of governments!