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Thoughts and things I care to shareReducing social networking increases productivity?
So I’ve been doing an experiment of sorts. Staying off most social networks, answering requests and status on only those I believe actually bring value. This was not totally planned, but is something I have meant to do for some time, as it’s my opinion that I was spending too much time on social networks.
During this period, I have also been paying attention to my productivity. You know, the real work I do to actually make real money. Of course, it’s not surprising that reducing the time involved in social networking will increase productivity, it is the ratio that seems interesting. I’ve no scientific data that indicates anything, and it doesn’t seem anything more than a one to one relationship to me.
That’s the main reason I’m not very active right now on many social networks. So that begs the question: What social networks do I find valuable right now? That would be Twitter, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed – not in any particular order. These are the networks that I’m finding value, sharing with friends, and meeting business opportunities.
I am, however, curious about other’s experiences. What networks do you find the most valuable right now, and why? Is it the tried & true, or the up & coming?
Campfire Computing
That about sums up what I’m doing this weekend. Amy and I decided at the last minute on Thursday to pack the camping equipment up and head out… and so we did. There’s been much fun just doing the usual thing of getting away and relaxing all the while.
Internet access is of course spotty, so I connect with my phone if at all, and decided to post a quick note. I wish I would have crafted the 4th of July post that I wanted to put together, but instead spent Thursday evening packing the SUV and trading stories with the family on the drive out. I think I chose wisely.
So here we are, somewhere in northern Wisconsin, watching the campfire and enjoying the quiet randomness of life that is too easily ignored. I wish you the best this holiday weekend, and look forward to getting back in touch on Monday.
Rick
Happy Birthday Liz
I’d like to take a minute and send birthday wishes to Liz Strauss. Liz writes over at Successful Blog about blogging and business, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the topic. She has a way of getting people involved, bringing them to engage with others and do great things.
Happy Birthday Liz!
I met Liz before really meeting her, as most of us bloggers usually do. Following her blog, she helped me find a few things that I didn’t know I wanted to do. Liz is one of these kinds of people who you really want to meet, to talk with, to learn from.
Luckily I was able to meet Liz in person at SOBCon08 in Chicago this spring. In classic Liz form, she brought together a fantastic event that really connected bloggers to each other, and has helped form a number of friendships and working groups that would never have had the opportunity to get started without Liz’s efforts.
I want to thank you Liz for all the great conversations you’ve started, for the things you share & teach, for the introductions to folks, for the tips & suggestions, and for making things happen. You’re an inspiration, a teacher, an instigator, an organizer, but mostly to all of us, your a friend.
Happy Birthday Liz!
And I can proudly say, that because of Liz, I’m an SOB!
Thinking about FADs
Do you ever get tired of the phrase "social media"?
I don’t get tired of the concepts, methodology, and excitement that encompasses what so many of us are doing or trying to do. However, I do get tired of hearing "social media" about everything. It’s like labeling everything "green" or "eco-friendly". I’m not against those concepts either, but I sure am tired of hearing the phrases.
How do we engage people and business without repeating the hype? What good are buzzwords anyway, other than to evangelize something? Where is the substance for business to bite into, for them to more easily recognize the opportunities within the hot new trends of social media?
There are several people who manage to convey the concepts and ideas of social media without needing to promote the hype. Their deeds in writing and working on the topic is an inspiration to follow. Similar to all the people who quietly recycle, cut back fuel consumption, or practice renewable techniques in more and more areas. They too don’t feel the need to worship at the alter of "green", yet their actions make the bulk of the difference.
I guess what I’m working towards is the real, usable, tools and techniques that make up "social media". I’m looking to work with those companies that are confused, and help them figure out what their business needs. Past all the buzzwords, past the fads, past the hype and into the needs of an organization and finding the right tool for them to use for the right purpose.
My question is: What have I missed that you believe is important to that end?
Photo credit: Boskizzi
June Catch Up
As it happens to me a few times a year, work & life take precedence over blogging. It’s a frustrating experience as it usually happens when I am in the middle of pulling a lot of ideas together.
At any rate, I have realized something this time around. I spend more time blogging when I don’t have much exciting things going on. Or looked at another way, I blog a lot less when I’m spending more quality time with family, friends, and making social media things happen in the real world.
Right now, I’ve been so involved with the transition from one client to another that I haven’t made a priority to talk about things here. There’s enough happening out in the real world, that I’m struggling to get back and talk about things here. To me, that’s doubly bad because I have a lot to talk about with you, and had just redesigned the blog to accommodate a lot more of these topics.
I’ve found there are a couple page to finish up here as well, to finish the refocus of things I learned at SOBCon08. Speaking of SOBCon, there were so many new learning’s for so many people coming out of that one event that it amazes me still, two months later. Start planning to attend next year folks, that’s all I can say.
Well, I’ve got a number of posts and post ideas in the works, and will be working on those and many other things. Hopefully I’ll have a few interesting pieces to share soon. Thanks your for patience – we’ll see you around the ‘net.
Photo credit: kevinzim
Connecting People
If you’ve been blogging or interacting on social media sites for some time, you’ll know the real reason many people are interesting in social networking. It’s the people of course! The power of social media is in it’s ability to shrink borders, provide publishing & broadcasting platforms, and do so in ways that make it very easy for people to use them.
That’s what I find most interesting about social media, being able to see people meet, plan new things, and build new things. Sure I like to be part of it too, but my goal is to bring people together so they can find the resources, ideas, inspiration or whatever it is that they need. I like seeing people make that next leap, that next step.
Watching it happen with people all over the world is a great thing, but it’s just as fascinating to see it happening on the local level as well. It’s one of the most important aspects of the social web, and one that I believe that is taking parts of it mainstream. I always hesitate to mention “mainstream”, but I see more and more people experimenting, or starting to use some social features on product sites.
It’s great to see that happen, because as our modern neighborhoods have kind of closed in on themselves, becoming safer, more secure, the physical interaction has waned. So it’s great to see people coming back around and getting more interactive online. In doing so, it seems that they really start getting interested in socializing in person as well. So I think it really generates a lot of community building offline as well as online.
Photo credit: roel1943
Steven Hodson – Now on Mashable
One of my favorite bloggers has been picked up by one of the big names in blogging today. Blogging friend Steven Hodson can be found blogging on Mashable in addition to his own blog, WinExtra.
Steven has a knack for bringing a practical approach to all this newfangled technology and sharing stuff. 
He’ll tell you that he’s “a cranky old fart wandering the Internet causing mayhem as he goes”, but I know better. He’s a knowledgeable blogger who’s not afraid to point out some of the silliness that we think is import in web 2.0, and also shares useful ideas for making it better.
So congratulations Steven! I have long believed that it was only a matter of time before one of the bigger blogs snapped him up to write for them. Check out his first “official post” as a blogger for Mashable.
Thoughtful Replies
Mark Evans has a post today in which he talks about the importance of thinking through our contributions to conversations. It’s something that I’ve learned myself in various businesses & projects that I’ve been involved in.
Taking even a half hour to contemplate and let the questions or ideas rattle around in your head allows you to better understand what was sent to you. It also gives you the time to formulate a more informative and relevant response.
Since we’re so connected and probably overloaded with communications, it’s too easy to simply reply right away. Sure, in doing so we demonstrate our ability to respond, we show that we’re connected and are willing to participate.
However, do we really give every communication we receive the full attention it deserves? How often do you take the time to fully contemplate the full context of what someone is asking? Do these quick replies really add value to the conversation or to the person who sent the message?
I think Mark is onto an interesting line of thought lately. Thinking about blogging, conversations and the quality involved simply in communicating with each other. Sharing information is a great thing, and we can do it so easily these days. The responsibility is upon us to use these opportunities of sharing information in a useful way. That means not sharing incorrect information, or being too verbose in our replies, thereby wasting time in misunderstandings.
What else fits in this area? What more can you add to what Mark is pointing out? There are many great tips that you have to share – leave one here or on your own blog. How do you handle replies? Quick or thoughtful?
Dumbphone
Ok, in a moment of weakness (or brilliance… you decide) I jumped at the change to go back to a simple feature phone rather than a smartphone. So my trusty T-Mobile MDA (my MDA Page is here) has been replaced with the phone you see to the right – a Nokia 5310 XpressMusic. I’d been planning on waiting it out for the US version of the HTC Touch Diamond that would leverage T-Mobile’s 3G network. Or biting the bullet and jumping from T-Mobile to AT&T just for the 3G iPhone this summer.
Instead, I found something that I hadn’t been looking for. Simplicity at a price that I couldn’t pass up. While talking with Amy about phone and such, it dawned on me that the one function of my phone that I use more than anything is… voice calls!?! Yep, turns out all the fancy ‘why? because I can stuff’ just doesn’t count for much when all I really used all my smartphones for over the years is voice calls.
Sure, I’ve used weather apps, email apps, feed aggregators, note taking apps, the new fancy touch-scrolling “today” apps, and many, many, many others. But in the last year, they’ve really not been of use to me. Probably because of having a laptop with me more often than not, and the proliferation of WiFi.
Still there where two items that I couldn’t live without. Tethering of my laptop and the ability to receive email. Tethering and using the phone’s EDGE service works fine, but alas, email simply sux. I’m working on a solution to that, but it’s not a show stopper. A nifty feature is the ability to sync music with Windows Media Player & Rhapsody’s 4+ million tracks. Kicks ass as a media player, something I hadn’t planned on but was drawn to in the end. I happened to capture a speedtest while connected via EDGE and testing that out.
![image[5][1]](https://rickmahn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/image51.png){kind=small}
Then nice thing is that for the first time in about 5 years (probably longer) I’ve got a sexy little phone rather than a big brick hanging off my belt. The fact that it was uber affordable in comparison to a smartphone that’d not use 1/10th of the features helps too.
Being a IT guy, and a technologist at heart, I still long for the big-buck devices… I just don’t have a real use for them at this time. We’ll see if this lasts.
Looking for 4 Firefox plug-in updates
My migration to Firefox 3 has been fairly painless. I specifically put off trying out most all the beta versions until the last release candidate. Since I’d embraced the plug-in feature of Firefox and installed upwards of two dozen of these spiffy enhancements to a great browser I knew a few (or many) would not be updated right away.
And I was right, many plug-ins were not updated when I installed FF3 rc3, and I had to do without a lot of functionality. The only thing that allowed me to ride it out from the release candidate to shipping code was the fact that Foxmarks was updated to work with FF3 – it’s my absolutely most needed plug-in.
But in the three weeks I’ve been running the latest versions of Firefox 3, I’ve seen updates to plug-ins on an almost daily basis! out of 21 plug-ins, I’ve only 4 that aren’t yet updated: Blog This in Windows Live Writer, coComment!, ColorZilla, and Thinger.
UPDATE: I just found the latest ColorZilla beta here that works with Firefox 3! In addition, I removed the coComment! plug-in as I see that the folks at coComment themselves will be getting their plug-in updated shortly. I’ve kind of given up waiting for any update to the Blog This in Windows Live Writer plug-in. That leaves Thinger, which I really do hope gets updated, because I really need a second (third?) bookmark toolbar.
@MAC_Arms Pay taxes when you make your money, pay taxes when you spend your money, pay taxes when you successfully invest your money, pay taxes when you save enough taxed money to afford a house, pay taxes to live in your house, pay taxes when you sell the house that you paid taxes on to
Yup, taxes are criminal and we need serious reforms. I've always said that if you want to see a tax revolt, make withholdings illegal and have Americans write a tax check every payday. They'll revolt for sure. You don't miss what you never had.
I think it’s safe to say that @GovEvers should stop blocking audits in Wisconsin and open the books…
“Only AMERICAN citizens should vote.”
Sen. @berniemoreno says voter ID and proof of citizenship are simply common sense.
“We’re talking about a very low threshold — identify who you are and prove you’re a U.S. citizen when you register to vote. I think we’re getting closer to
Wrong. Democrats are solely responsible for hours-long airport lines.
They voted to defund TSA three times and won’t even entertain a conversation about reopening it. Why?
They’re using it as leverage to stop enforcing immigration laws.