Social networking week 7, what a pain

A few months ago a young friend bullied me into setting up a Facebook page and I inadvertantly tagged all my gmail contacts as friends - whoops, ended up with my ex as a friend (which begs the question, why did he confirm me as a friend?) So now my young friend occasionally posts embarrassing entries on my wall in the hopes of annoying him. Dear, dear.

Social networking is fun?

Social networking is dangerous. It has already been implicated in at least one well-publicised suicide. It's fun enough when used innocently, but has become a new way to bully that out-classes anything before.



Oh, one odd bit of small world trivia - Hennepin County Library was once my home library system. Long ago and far away, the little library on the prairie, now all grown up on facebook.

Technorati and delicious

So I had a look at delicious and decided to install it on my home computer - next day I booted up and voila! all personal data gone! Whoo-hoo! Restored it to a checkpoint before the delicious load and it was fine. It might have been a coincidence but I'm not going there again. I have all the bookmarks I want, anyway, and why would I want to share them?


Seriously, I can see the value of having controlled public tagging and bookmarking within a school, a library or other organization, but has anyone actually done any research into whether it's any better, or faster, or easier, than systems that already exist? Sites such as Facebook, youtube, and bebo already provide widespread invasion of privacy and accompanying bullying. Just because the stuff is there, does it make it good?


Oh, had a look at technorati, too, but explorer crashed before I'd done anything much.

Wikiing

Wikipedia is an amazing place - I get the Wiki How-to of the day feed on my iGoogle page. Learn how to make a duct tape mini skirt, or convert a silver coin into a ring. Great stuff, lots of fun. The idea of a universal collaborative knowledge bank is thrilling, but it has a long way to go yet. As a former school librarian, I've seen Wikipedia at its worst - little kids who do not have the prior knowledge or discrimination to question what they find. If it's on the internet it must be true, right? That's dangerous

On the other hand, I think I can see many uses for a wiki in a school setting. (sorry, I've only just left the school setting, it's what I know best!) I can see the kids doing a wiki for the school library; how to use the library from a kid's perspective, subject guides ditto, common topics, common mispellings!

Added my link to Manukau library wiki, and a favourite books post

Another Rant, wk 4 technology oog

My favorite bit of technology, let's see, cell phones? Allow you to keep in touch with every inane update possible? (like, I kid you not, "I'm walking down the hill toward my car. I'll be there in a minute or 2") How about Skype? Gosh, lets you talk to people all over the world, just like - wait a minute, long distance phone calls! How about Flickr? Wow, you can inflict 146 photos of your family Christmas on the entire world! How about Facebook? beats picking up a phone, you can keep in touch with your step-brother's step-son's girlfriend whom you've never met! Gosh, I love it all!

Seriously, I do love the internet. I use it on a daily basis to keep in touch with distant family, do research, find patterns and diy info, pursue obscure interests - just today I used it to settle that not all ginger cats are toms. Fancy that. But we are in danger of allowing it to become more than just a tool to use when necessary. It isn't, and shouldn't be, a way of life. We might be taking the whole thing too seriously.

So, my favourite bit of technology? The little machine that allows diabetics to track and store their blood sugar levels in seconds and as needed - now that's technology.

What I did for my summer vacation:flickr

More from Week 3 or is it 4? Getting lost. Anyway, photo added from Flickr. Uploaded from my youngest son's Flickr page, taken on New's Years Day 2008 at Minnehaha Falls.

Also links to a few favourite sites, thanks Marlowe, whoever you are, for the info on doing that.

Had a little technological hitch. I thought it would be prudent to see if all the links actually worked. The link to my son's photos wouldn't load, off to son for help. Ah, the power of correct spelling. I'd left the c out of Flickr!

Me and my Boys:images and librarything

Added an rss feed, just like that. not at all sure why it didn't work the first time, but I suspec t my brain may have thought it was still on a Mac. I've even added another image, taken in Minneapolis, Minnesota, while on a family trip in January 2008. I wanted to show the picture of the boys freezing to death near Minnehaha Falls (no really, that's what it's called) but I knew Lewis would never forgive me. So I've subscribed to an rss feed, added images, what's next? Librarything. Oh my gosh, it's yet another time waster. I added several books, hoping to find one so obscure that no one else had added it - The lost kingdom came close, with only 2, but really I suspect it may be cheating, I lost the book long ago. Just on my much-loved list.

Adding pretty images

Have added image, cool, waterlilies. Will later add some personal photos. Christine helped me!

rss and all that jazz

Started exploring rss feeds - had spotted the icons already on several sites, so I had a play around. Would it really be easier to have managed feeds from favorite sites? Is it genuinely time effective to go to the trouble to load all this stuff on? Or is it information overload (apologies for the cliche) And easy? It's fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. I can't help but think the internet in general, and web2 technologies in particular, are actually making more work as people feel pressured to do all this stuff.

Really, if I want to find the latest news on archaeology. org or the skeptic enquirer, I prefer to do it myself. I like the detective work. It's not crucial to my job, and I don't want someone else to do it for me. For a while I had a number of email feeds, but found I hardly ever bothered to open them, so unsubscribed from most. I enjoy getting into Google or following links from favourite places. It's relaxing.

Rss isn't bad, it would clearly be of immense use to people in some fields. it just isn't for me.

To blog or not to blog

I must confess to being annoyed that some geek has decided that we are all going to have fun, fun, fun exploring the wonders of Web 2. I'm not remotely interested in Web 2. I love the internet, I use it all the time, exploring skeptic sites, beading sites, archaeology, fringe science. I read several newspapers from around the world. I don't need 80 diferent rss feeds. Blogging has its uses, but is also one of history's greatest ever vehicles for aimless narcissim and attention seeking. So there.