On a visit to the Download Squad earlier I chanced upon this video of a Google Tech Talk by Merlin Mann, creator of the popular 43 folders website.
Rather than send you a click further away I’ve hosted a copy of it here if you have an hour to spend.
He is quite a charismatic speaker and my hour was soon over. I specially liked his reference to rss feeds when he suggests both feeds and email tend to suck the time out of our days. I for one am seriously thinking of just reading my email and feeds just a few times per day and actually doing stuff the rest of the day. There again I’m a very good procrastinator in search of disciplined ways of getting things done.
I read an interesting post by Megan Berry this morning called “when worlds collide”.
She was musing over the fact that some Facebook users are worried over the collision between private and business profiles. She says :
“As a Facebook “expert” I get asked: “what Facebook apps do you use?” “why not just email instead of using Facebook messages?” I do my best to answer and sometimes wonder just what it is about Facebook that has so captured the minds of numerous thirty-somethings.
For this generation of thirty-something web users much of their business marketability has come from being web-literate, young, and in touch with the latest Internet trends. As a new generation joins the work force who is younger and learned to use a computer before they learned how to ride a bike the value of the thirty-somethings is slowly changing from youth and knowledge of current trends to experience. I suspect that many who try to join Facebook to prove their youth are instead finding that it makes them feel old.”
If the thirty-somethings are supposed to be feeling old where does that leave me and those in my age group? Do we fifty-somethings have somewhere nice to go on the web? Are there social apps geared toward us hidden somewhere? Is age a problem?
That got me to thinking that during the preparation of my daughter Jennifer’s wedding we spent some time with two of her friends that will be getting married in a few weeks time. They are a wonderful couple and we spent a few really nice evenings with them.
I remember saying in my wedding speech, while thanking them for their contribution, that only a few decades separated us from a great friendship.
Generations don’t mix easily in the real world and it would seem that they don’t fare much better online.
Came across an interesting article earlier that I must share with you. Here is an extract.
More than any other medium in the world, the time commitment difference between sender and receiver is huge. For instance, if you call me on the phone and we chat for 10 minutes, that’s 10 minutes of your time and 10 minutes of my time. If you write me a handwritten letter and I write you one back, that’s maybe 30 minutes of your time and 30 minutes of my time. If we exchange text messages, that’s 10 seconds from you and 10 seconds from me. But with email, often times the sender will ask two or three open-ended one sentence questions which elicit multi-paragraph answers. In these cases, the sender spends one minute and the receiver is asked, implicitly, to spend maybe an hour.
(Mike Davidson [here is the original post])
Now in my case if you send me a text message it may take you 10 seconds but it will take me minutes. Sign me up to the text messaging challenged group.
Be sure to read the article. Now maybe I’ll translate his web response to French.
This is something that you probably should have told me (but why would you have done that) a long time ago. I visit a lot of sites per day. I use(d) Netvibes as my start page because I love the magic of having the same start page over multiple sites and platforms.
I have a sidebar on my blog with the blogs of friends that I visit.
I’ve been on the web before it became the web (long story) and I’m an early adopter when it comes to buying into new technology. Specially when it comes to gadgets!
Some things take longer to sink in and although I’m a little ashamed I admit that I saw a poll today of how people read their feeds It was from reading the results that I learnt that most people use a web-based reader and a lot of them pick Google Reader.
I may be a little thick at times but I don’t think I’m an idiot or can’t change my mind on something so I’ve just set it up.
Although I’ll keep using Netvibes for all non feed related widgets I’m crossing over to the other side and adopting Google reader.
I honestly think that it will save me time and that is what we all have as a precious commodity. I think I will also just consult it a few times a day. The other problem with Netvibes is that the feeds are there but you have to reclick many times to get where you want to go.
I like to think of it as being the difference between going around your neighborhood looking for stuff and looking in all the shop windows or just having all that news delivered to your doorstep.
I’ll give you an update in a few days but would welcome any input or advice you could give me.
I often wonder if my dedicated readers just watch my feeds or actually visit or under what conditions they physically visit the blog.
You have to start somewhere and this is it. If you wanted the very first post on the blog you’ve found it.