bluearsefly.com

Its certainly a week of heavy blogging for me, two posts in less than 10 days, and both of an enormous social importance!

I’m inspired to share more inane observations, ask more pointless questions, and drive to the real “issues” if not simply as a result of the masses of feedback I received after the last blog entry.

The question on today’s menu of irreverence is: How, who and why do I, or should I, follow people on Twitter.

A quick background:

I’m only a recent (6 months or so) user of Twitter. I was encouraged to sign up on the Mactalk forum based on this post. After signing up I did post and ask, “so whats the protocol, do I add people and let them know, do they add me and let me know, who do I know I want to follow, or not?”. To be honest the response I got was pretty random - “vice versa”. Still to this day I have no idea what that was supposed to mean.

So now that Im a semi seasoned user I thought I would put a few prevailing questions out there, maybe there is at least one other person on the planet, who will happen to read this post and yell out the word “Bingo” as their subconscious triggers the “Me to” reaction.

To the questions:

First to the how. Its not so much a question of how do I physically add someone, shit if I couldn’t do that I may as well pack up the blog and go back to being a porn star. Rather I mean how in the sense of how do I contemplate adding people. When I meet people online that seem interesting should I enquire as to their Twitter participation status? I cant really picture that conversation seeming at all normal. Lets be honest to, its highly likely that on Twitter they will turn out to be nothing like what they seemed in the broader Internet world (how weird was that statement).

Should I survey the global twitter posts for interesting people? Already I hear the crowd chant “Looser”, and, well yes, that would be true if that was what I was in to, which I’m not - reminds me of this beautiful song though: If you’re into it?.

I guess I could use my current Twitter friends as mini relevance ranking engines, surveying their followers and those they follow, but the fundamental flaw there is that even when I examine my current list of people I follow, who mind you were only randomly added during my initial sign up to Twitter, they are more different from each other than they have any similarities.

I think what I find really challenging here is the lack of preordained, predetermined structure. Nobody’s a member of anything, linked to some group, listed in a directory or ranked. They are all just randomly connected, and there’s something really strange about that, and I’m not sure why I feel like that.

One thought I had was perhaps I’m to be classified (see previous blog entry) in the Internet generation that has grown up with some form of order. I search Google, I get results, ranked from most relevant to least relevant. I join an online social network and I connect to people and must decide how I know them during the connection activity. Yet with Twitter I just randomly follow anyone, and they randomly might follow me.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing is that I am finding Twitter posts more interesting than facebook status. What the hell is with that?!? I don’t even know anyone in my Twitter follow list and I’m more inclined now to jump onto Twitterrific on the iPhone than facebook on any device.

There is something in this ladies and gents, and if any of you are a Sociologist, Psychologist, Psychiatrist or perhaps something similar with a “gist/rist” at the end of your title I would love to know what it is that’s so compelling about randomness from strangers over the daily movements, feelings and thoughts of friends, most of whom I know in real life.

This really then drives to the “why” question. Why follow anyone at all? Rather than speculate Ill simply offer the following experience. On my follow list I have a range of people. From what I can gather I have a small number of females (i.e. 1) and a range of blokes, some I know from other sites, most I don’t. A small number of people I follow Ive somehow discovered on Twitter itself. Of the list of people I follow there are 2 guys (i presume anyway) who provide me infinite laughs, information, links, news and other such entertainment. Ive also got guys that share pretty personal feelings and people who are quite open about their current activities. Some post once a week, others post 100 times a day.

And here’s the strange thing…

Somehow my mind has concluded that this is the right mix of people to know, that Ive somehow created a small secular group of uniqueness and that I couldn’t or shouldn’t contemplate disrupting in its perfectly balanced ecosystem!

IS THAT F*&$%#%$ UP OR WHAT!

So here’s my brain telling me that adding more people would not be a good thing, it might disrupt the force, unbalance the matrix. There are no rules or instructions to determine who to add and so here I am, stuck with those I have added so far, unwilling to resolve the Twitter follower expansion objective and questioning how I got here, and where to next.

As Brett puts it so eloquently in the The Bowie Song:

“It’s a chicken eggy thing”

Out!

For the past 15 or so years I’ve been an “internet junkie”, but it wasn’t always like that, it kind of snuck up and stole my humanness away, and more recently, handed it back!

Im probably showing my age here but it started at Uni when I was forced to use computers as the costs of computer literate people offering their services soared. I remember the day distinctly, when it became too damn expensive to pay a nerd to type up my written essay. I had to get out of the Uni Bar, and into the computer lab once a week and type the thing myself!

It was there that I met my first nerd and it was the beginning of the end. Within weeks I had forgotten the primary purpose of the lab and I was connecting to Bulletin Boards before I even considered opening Microsoft Word. Over the years this progressed to FTP’ing, building websites, music and video sharing and other such activities.

Since the mid 90’s the internet has become my sole source of, well…just about everything.

I don’t read newspapers, except when I’m really bored on Sundays and need to fill time with trash like the Sun Herald or Daily Telegraph. Instead I have a permanent ticker scrolling across my pc window of 100+ RSS news feeds.

I don’t watch TV, per se, I time shift everything and download TV series or movies I like on Apple TV. I cant remember the last time I watched an Ad on the TV.

I don’t shop in shops. I mean, sure, Ill end up purchasing big things in a shop but only once I know which model is the right one and what the right price is. Online stores that ship for free get my discretionary spend and all my research is based on online reviews backed up by questions in expert forums dedicated to the subject matter.

And most recently I’ve become obsessed with online social networks. At last count I’m a member of 20 or so, my desktop is full of people letting the world know they are going for a smoke, dropping the dog at day care, driving a tractor or swimming a marathon. I recently rejoiced when I found friendfeed, an application that offers the hope of aggregating all these social networks into a single feed of mashed up “socialness”.

So the question I have for all the millions of readers of this blog is, what generation am I? Because, quite frankly, I have a fear I can’t be classified, that I indeed transcend generations, could I be a “Gen xyz”?, pronounced “jenxyz”, really fast.

First, to define: Generation X are ages 24-32 years, Generation Y are ages 16-24 years and Generation Z are ages preteen-15 years. But what’s that got to do with behaviour. What if your behaviour is identical to the all the definitions sociologists assign to these ages?

What I am getting at here is that I think, since becoming a nerd, and coming to terms with being a nerd I’ve managed to create a new super generation, a combination of behaviours, and as a result I’ve come to the profound realisation that I need to invent my own classification or risk leaving myself open to poorly executed marketing campaigns such as direct mail selling me innersoles for shoes I haven’t FTP’d, downloaded, read about, seen in an episode of 24, or discussed on a forum.

Where to next you might ask, well that’s precisely the question I need an answer to. One thing I do know is that right after I hit publish on this post Ill be logging into friend feed and letting the world know about this pointless piece.

Its funny isn’t it, the detractors feared the internet would steal our humanness away and here we are, thanks to online social networks, more engaged and interactive than ever before.

But, sadly, some of us are left uncategorised, unclassified and feeling generationless (that’s a new word) and are forced to write original content about a pointless journey in search of meaning.

Peace

p.s. Christ I hope no one took this seriously…

If your not already across developments, today (6th June) is the landrush period for .me domains.

“Whats .Me” you might ask?, its the country of Montenegro’s domain identifier. Theres plenty of background info available on Wikipedia here but to the average punter here’s why its cool:

1. Are you like me and pissed of that you have missed the opportunity to get your name registered as every service was released over the past 15 years; Hotmail, Yahoo then frikkin gmail!
2. Here’s your opportunity to not only get YOURNAME.me, but even cooler..
3. To do something like register email.me and then create an email address like “why not” :). Ok so Im not creative but im sure you could think of some

Oh and of course the point about registering a .me account is no one can ever take it away from you, its you for ever (assuming you keep it registered), so as they are saying on all the registrar sites…

Express Yourself

Later

A colleague and good friend, Tom from Austria sent me a quick IM this evening:

“mate, have a look there: http://informationarchitects.jp/web-trend-map-2008-beta/”

To be honest, Im amazed! This outstrips any form of geekery I have previously indulged in. I feel compelled to buy the A0 poster and save it up for the day that I have a big office that needs a wall filled with something as cool as this.

Its astonishing to consider the amount of work that has gone into selecting the most influential websites in 08′, let alone filling them out on the wonderful map of the Tokyo undergorund. There are a few wallpapers available for download there as well as a clickable online map.

Kudos to the dood/s that did this. Order submitted…

Linkage

J-Man

This will be a rushed post, ill return later to describe the experience fully. Lucy is just lovely, squeaking every few minutes, and feeding well.

Mums tired and a little sore but shes happy and healthy. Dad’s…well….ecstatic!

My favourite pic from the album

For all the pics so far click here…

Peace!

I bought my iPhone at least 6 months ago. Having previously used a Treo I must say I had pretty high expectations, and was initially disappointed in its capability, largely because it didn’t address my business needs (wireless email & calender sync with Outlook). The reality is that Apple intends to address the “business use” shortcomings in the impending Version 2 release of the OS, slated for June/July 08.

Don’t get my wrong, as a media tool with a phone, its cool. Definitely the most brilliantly integrated platform available and the UI is so polished. But hey this post isn’t about critiquing the iPhone, its about telling you why it continues to amaze me

My iPhone and I have a love hate relationship, I get bored with it and it sits on the desk all day and rings, I answer then hang up. Then every 2 months or so I read about some app on the internet, install it and I cant keep the iPhone out of my hands.

The latest of these is Twinkle, a twitter’ing app. A couple of the coolest things twinkle does are:

• Lets you embed a quick photo taken by the iPhone into your post
• Lets you look at the location (proximity) of people to you by triangulating your position from cell tower information against (I assume) Google maps

So how does this translate into coolness?, I hear you ask. Ill demonstrate with the use case of me in traffic today..

Bored sitting in Sydney traffic i posted on twitter “loving Sydney traffic”, took a quick photo of stacks of cars lined up for miles and hit send. Now of course no one really cares about my predicament, but imagine if there was an accident and others could avoid it based on seeing the extent of it and noting my location. Or imagine you are lost in the bush, perhaps you could take a photo of a landmark and people could use that and the cell tower info to find you.

You can tweak the global posts so you only see posts within x miles from you and you can change to a personal messages v’s global messages view easily.

Its sweet little thing and has reunited me with my beloved iPhone..for now.

Later

At home I have a Mac laptop that has all of my home IM accounts, Twitter, Email etc setup.

In a bag I try not to open when I get home lives my work supplied Windows laptop. Installed on this horrible machine is the full range of work IM accounts, twitter, email etc for work purposes.

In a moment of frustration with my windows laptop I got to thinking, I wonder if I could get the main stuff I need for work on the Mac and I wouldn’t have to ever open the windows laptop again?

This actually proved pretty easy, I got my corporate email into Entourage, loaded all my work IM accounts into Adium and “bobs your uncle”, I was away!

But Skype was one I just couldn’t solve for. The reality is its impossible to run two simultaneous skype accounts on the one user account of OSX, and I think indeed Windows.

Solution: enter a wonderful applescript called: Peek-o-Matic written by a chap by the name of Andreas Schuderer.

Ive now got 2 skype instances running 2 different accounts alongside something like 20 IM accounts in Adium, Twitter and about 15 email address’s through Entourage

Ill be having a burn the windows laptop party later tonight.

Later

I feel pretty privileged to be a first mover. In fact, I ask that you do me one favour and remember it was me who said that one day this blogging thing will be huge!

In my internet life Ive had so many aspirations when starting out with something new like this and I’ve learnt one thing, dont!

So what will this blog be about, why am I doing it, will I keep it up or give up when the shinyness rubs off?…buggered if I know

What I do know is that I have insight, thoughts, opinions, views and observations on a range of things, all of which I feel compelled to punish the rest of the world with.

So here goes….