Tumblr-tastic

The crickets have been chirping a while here; it’s because I’m hanging out over at Tumblr’s place. WordPress, it was great fun, but it was just one of those things.

Come see me at shannalo.tumblr.com!

From Twitter to Tumblr

So I joined Twitter last year. At first, it was more like stopping by that new restaurant in town that everyone’s been talking about; you walk by several times, and maybe even peek in the windows. But then there’s that day when you finally give in and walk inside. You look at the menu. It’s simple, but it’s got that one dish you’ve heard so much about. Just as you walk in the door, you realize that a few friends are there, and after trying the signature dish, you become a regular. Before long, the waitors know your name. They call you Tuesday as a joke, because that’s the day you always come for your usual. Months go by, and you love being Tuesday. It’s your thing, and you can now join in the conversation around the water cooler at work about this great place.

Then it starts to happen — the flavors and atmosphere that were once so hip, so enticing, slowly become less interesting. Maybe even bland. You still like it, but Tuesdays just don’t have the spark they used to. This is where I am now with Twitter. I still love it, don’t get me wrong. But I am beginning to become disenchanted with it. My new social media avenue is a site called Tumblr. It’s like Twitter unleashed; you can follow other people, and they can follow you. What’s more, you can post links, pictures, quotes, audio, video…just about anything you could possibly want to post. It’s like a blog with a pulse, and a community.  I see it as a 2.0-esque merging of Twitter and blogs. There is a feed of followers, yet the content looks like blog posts in that it includes a variety of media. You can even call in on your phone and leave an audio post, should some sort of brilliance strike you while you’re away from the computer. Users can also install themes, both free and for charge. These themes are more like the blogger themes made available on WordPress and Blogspot. Twitter keeps it basic, and that’s certainly part of its allure; as a design geek, though, I like being able to customize my site a bit more, and to edit HTML should I decide to. I literally joined it this past week, so I’m still getting used to it, but I already love it. Whether I’ll maintain it as much as I did Twitter remains to be seen. For now, though, I’m Tuesday again. And I like it.

iPhone Addiction: There’s Not an App for That

Let’s face it. I would do this if someone took my iPhone away from me, too.

Alright, so maybe I’m not as bad as little Gibson (and maybe I am), but I think the technology behind today’s new smartphones is amazing. We flaunt them like we invented them most of the time, prodding our friends to check out an app as though we drew up the plans for it on a napkin at lunch last week. Apps like Facebook, Twitter, Shazam, and PhotoScatter let me share just about anything I like. A big draw for me is sharing photos — I love photography, so being able to post my pictures at once to Picasa, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter with my PhotoScatter app is right up my alley. For example, just last week, I had an amazing chocolate cake at a local restaurant, Amsterdam Cafe. My friend (and fellow iPhone owner) and I both took pictures of this mocha marvel and posted them to Facebook. By the time I got home, I had 8 different kinds of feedback to the picture. Of a cake.

What prompts some of us to share the mundane things of life, I’ll never know, but I do find it fascinating that community can be created over a mutual adoration of chocolate cake (with whipped cream on top).  While this isn’t necessarily anything new, the way we share life’s little things is changing. Social media apps allow people to be constantly capable of publishing; through the WordPress app, I was even able to blog as I was walking past Samford Hall earlier this month. So, apps can even be used for school!

Though I’m not sure what the future holds for smartphones, I know it will probably keep getting even better, especially as video technology and augmented reality software becomes more advanced. Until then, I’ll keep on posting pictures of favorite foods and places with my awesome iPhone apps.

Social Media Press Releases: Not Your Mother’s Press Release

As I’m typing this on my iPhone, I can’t help but think about how even blogging is changing from a dedicated sit-down with a computer to a more mobile, as-it’s-happening kind of experience. The WordPress app (oh, you had to know there was an app for that) even asked me if I wanted to enable geotagging for my blog, so you could hunt me down to a specific location and chat, debate, or stalk. I declined the offer, but even so, I feel that blogging itself is no longer “your mother’s blog”, so to speak.

Another major shift in social media is that of press releases. As audiences become more adept at sifting through, if not locating, information, a culture of more straightforward and honest news releases is emerging. No longer content with corporate-jargon-filled releases, people want to feel as though a corporation values and respects the intelligence of consumers and media. That said, I found this in an article about SRMs:

“Why Regular Press Releases Fail in Social Media

Here are the 3 main reasons why a press release would normally have zero chance of success in social media:

1. They have the wrong singular focus, which is on the company issuing the release.

2. They are full of marketing-speak that inherently engenders mistrust in the eyes of the social media audience.

3. They don’t have a specific audience in mind, and are written broadly and presented blandly.

Now, it’s perfectly fine to want to promote your company, because after all, we all have to make a living. But the social-web audience doesn’t like blatant sales and marketing speak.”

So, with the cultural shift in which the distance between corporation and consumer seems to be narrowing, the relationship must be handled differently than it would have been in 1984. A company of 2010 needs to take an approach that sees the consumer as more of an equal that understands the innerworkings of business more than people have in the past.

YouTube: Broadcast Yourself

One of my favorite uses for YouTube is music discovery and sharing. If ever I hear a song that I like, but the 30-second clip on Amazon or iTunes isn’t enough to convince me that I should buy it, I go straight for YouTube. Granted, this isn’t what most people use it for, but I love how any and every song I’ve ever looked for can be found there in its entirety. I’ve had to learn how to ignore the lousy videos created by the users who post them, and the annoying captions doused over the video — aside from this small drawback, I am fastincated by how songs found only on the b-sides of records have made it online. Another use I’ve found handy is finding some of my most treasured moments from my most loved show…Friends.

My Favorites list on YouTube is a smattering of music and oddities; from my interest in aviation to the fact that I find a small kitten acting surprised to be funny, much can be learned about me. I’m not much one for uploading videos, but I enjoy YouTube surfing, discovering newer videos from the Related Videos section. Here is an example of one such find:

Anymore, I don’t even feel like I need a TV in order to be entertained. In fact, I almost prefer finding videos or shows online, because then I can pause them and return to them later if I want to. I suppose it’s the control and customization that I like most. And, of course, the occasional surprised kitty:

My First Podcast

Take a listen!

 

Alright, so maybe NPR won’t be banging down my door anytime soon, but I did want to at least give it the good old college try. I wanted to do something really cool and interesting, but a head cold intercepted all my brilliant thoughts and I was left rambling about my meager experience with podcasting. Nonetheless, I did a podcast, so that’s a step in the right direction. I may try it some more one day, but for now, I think I’ll leave it to the pros.

Also, here’s the link to the church podcast site I mentioned:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/first-baptist-church-opelika/id218881636

Symphony

Symphony

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f’ɔːrəm

No, the title of this post is not an error — I used the International Phonetic Alphabet to spell out the “sound” of this week’s blog topic: forum. In a way, this is fitting, as forums are a sort of sounding board for people to post opinions, questions and interests to share with other people

The original “forum”, so to speak.

who would also like to discuss viewpoints, give answers or find common ground. I know I have gone to forums before in search of information pertaining to computer problems, as many of the unusual or rare issues aren’t found easily on the corporate Microsoft site. From doing a bit of research, I can see that forums are a key component in the video gaming world, as players can post secrets, clues and hints for other users. It’s a neat way to bring people with common interests together — when I first began to crochet, I joined a knitting and crochet forum to get help with my stitching situations. I loved being able to go on there and have these sweet ladies help me with my stitch count; after uploading a picture of my crooked stitches, I had several responses advising me about ways to keep my edges straighter. (Sadly, you’re supposed to count the stitches as you’re doing them. I can’t say I like math that much, so crooked edges didn’t seem so bad.)

Though I can’t say forums are a regular part of my online life, I do frequent them for specific purposes — usually an issue that is very specialized and probably not located on any primary kind of source like an FAQ page. For every situation, I can go online and find others who have had the same problem; this helps not only because I might get an answer, but also to show me that others are dealing with some of the same things as I am. I feel connected to them through our mutual mishaps.

So, to me, the forum is like apps — just as there is always “an app for that”, it seems there is likewise “a forum for that”, be it crochet, computer problems or, well, just about anything you can think of.

Social “Me”-dia

It’s amazing to see how much social media websites have changed how we interact — and even how we think about interactions. For instance, the term “stalking” has become much more ambiguous, as people perusing public profiles will call the activity stalking, even though they are viewing information that has been volunteered by the owner of the profile. If we don’t want people looking at our pictures from New Year’s or seeing that our favorite movies include Toy Story and The Notebook, then why do we post them? It seems there is some realization of self going on here, which is why I titled this post with an emphasis on the “me” in media – is it really about being social, or is it about constructing a version of yourself, if only to create a version as you’d like to see yourself?

The psychological underpinnings are entirely too deep for me to really get into, but I do find it very interesting how social media, particularly Facebook, has altered our interactions with others. Heck, we can even Google ourselves now, thanks to Facebook profiles becoming more public and search-able. And like this post by a fellow blogger, I think it’s critical that we realize the gravity of the online world and how accessible we can make ourselves. The concept of trust becomes all the trickier as people become more adept with online interactions, some for the good and some for the bad. The generation coming after us will have grown up in a world so very different — at eight years old, I was running around in my yard climbing trees, but an eight-year-old of 2010 might be sitting on her couch with a laptop, adding friends on MySpace or Facebook, branching out socially. Quite honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about this; as with any new technology, there are up sides and down sides. Whether the up outweighs the down, I can’t be sure.

For me, I find that Facebook is a fun way to keep up with people, especially since most of my friends are farther away or busy with school and can’t always meet up with me for lunch. So, I can still let them know I’m thinking of them by dropping a post on their walls. As my friends get married, graduate, or move away, I can also keep up with new events in their lives as they post pictures of a new house or a new baby. Somehow, Facebook became the new norm for communication; I would love to know how many relationships began through it. Like pen pals of the past, people can connect, like this couple who met as a result of a name search on Facebook. Think of it — there could be children who owe their existence to Facebook!

So, whether we like it or not, the way we represent ourselves and interact with others is changing with the proliferation of social media and its powerhouse websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Whether we’re really becoming more social, or whether it’s really more about ourselves, I can’t say.

Which ones are you on?

To RSS, or not to RSS?

Personally, I have never given much thought to RSS before; I recognized the icon after seeing it on webpages, but I have never used it. In fact, I didn’t know what it really was until this semester, when I have had two classes that talked about it. Even after discovering RSS, I don’t plan to use it — like this article’s author states, “Twitter has become a better medium, primarily because information moves almost instantaneously on Twitter. It can be minutes to several hours before a new post appears in your RSS reader.” I agree, as it would seem a very indirect source of news if, like me, you were interested in getting the latest updates instantly. Social media — especially that driven by what some would call “citizen journalists” – seems to be the first source of news instead of RSS.

Slate.com writer Farhad Manjoo falls into this same category with his post, “Kill Your RSS Reader”, stating that he preferred to organize his oft-checked websites into folders and tabs on his computer instead of having news and posts delivered to him en masse. The lack of visual distinction between posts on RSS readers bothered him, as well as the fact that he had an overwhelming number of news sites and blogs he wanted to check at different times and different frequencies. These two articles indicate a desire for users to seek out and find their own information, to create a unique experience instead of having it all posted in a giant ticker tape of blogs and news. I found this to be true when I made an RSS feed of local and national news — the local news tended to involve robberies and other miscellaneous crimes in Birmingham or Montgomery, and the national news told me things I already found out either from my homepage, MSN.com, or through social media such as Twitter.

Both of these articles were written in 2009, which is relatively recent. However, back in 2004, writer Paul Boutin revelled in RSS as he praised its capabilities to allow users to “ scan dozens, even hundreds, of fresh headlines a day without the time-wasting tedium of opening one Web site after another.” Then, this experience seemed nearly exhilarating, much like email was when people gleefully logged on to hear, “You’ve got mail!” Now, the greeting feels more like a chore call as users have to deal with what will surely be an onslaught of messages from friends, workers, and of course, spammers. At the time this article was written, social media like Twitter didn’t exist, and Facebook was only learning to crawl. So, there was no altertative in extistence to improve upon what RSS was doing, and, for that time, it was probably a great option for news junkies and bloggers alike. For 2010 and beyond, though, I believe there will be a decline in RSS readers and feeds and an increase in social media journalism. Who knows? Maybe in the year 2015, Facebook will be on its 18th redesign and users will have lost interest in navigating the newest interface. Maybe Twitter’s “new social media” smell will have turned into the stale pine-scented freshener of the Internet, and it will no longer inspire the fervor of followers it does now. Maybe. But for now, I’ll stick to checking notifications and following people for my 411 needs.